Introduction and Guest Welcome

Part 1 of 4 · Ep. 839

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's December 4, 2017 and we are continuing our very interesting series on the Denver Snuffer Movement or the Christ Restoration Movement, or I don't know what to call it. I don't think they do either. But last week we interviewed Kirk and Karen Strong. Epic kind of four, five, six hour interview. I don't even know yet how long it was, but it was fascinating to hear Karen and Kirk Strong talk about how Kirk taught Book of Mormon at BYU for 15 years, was in charge of admissions for BYU, served on like four bishoprics, and how he and his wife, as active, devout members of the church, started feeling like the church was going into apostasy in the mid-1990s and were already primed and ready, saw the Church becoming too liberal or too progressive from their perspective, and then when they discovered Denver Snuffer's books and writings, led them into the movement. So it's a great interview. You'll want to listen to that first before you listen to this one, if you can, because we covered a lot of stuff there that we won't try and repeat here, although we may do some repetition. But they're just an amazing couple, really honest and down to earth, thoughtful and passionate. And it's a great interview. So to follow today, we're going to be interviewing Matt Lohmeier. For those of you who don't know anything about any of this, a few years ago I interviewed Denver Snuffer. Denver Snuffer was a convert to the LDS Church, attended BYU Law School, served in his stake in Sandy for many years, including on the Stake High Council, but started writing books and blogging about sort of, I'll say, fundamentalist Mormonism with an asterisk. It wasn't, you know, polygamist Mormonism, but it's basically paying super close attention to the Book of Mormon, super close attention to the Doctrine and Covenants, to the words of Joseph Smith, and basing your devotion to the Gospel on those writings, primarily with a special emphasis on developing your own personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And some like to emphasize this idea of having a personal witness or visitation from Jesus. Some might call that having your calling election made sure, or the second comforter. I don't know the exact terms to use, but Deborah Snuffer was ultimately excommunicated in September of 2013 for his books. And he continued. His movement continued to grow. There are now thousands of followers. They have developed their own scripture that they're releasing soon. They're having conferences. They have house meetings or cottage meetings on Sundays. And they're even, as we learned with Kirk and Karen Strong. They are even waiting for the new location for the new Jerusalem for Zion and the date when the saints are to gather. And they're building a temple, or at least they're raising the money to build a temple. So all sorts of interesting stuff that is worth paying attention to. Now, why are we interviewing Matt Lohmeier? Well, I've never met Matt until today, but Matt and his wife Sarah are interesting for a number of reasons. So Matt joined the church as a convert when he was a teenager. He ended up he ended up attending the US Air Force Academy and flying F15s, which is cool. He also married Sarah McConkie, who is the daughter of Mark McConkie and the granddaughter of Bruce Armaconkie. Bruce Armaconkie was a Mormon apostle who kind of dominated Mormon thought for three, four decades until recently. And so I'm just going to tell two personal stories at the introduction. And and I do want to ask listeners, I want to thank all our listeners for joining us today on Mormon Stories, and I want to encourage them to please let us know if the audio isn't good. We've got some audio. I've got a technician here helping me. And if the audio is not good, we want to know that. But I'm going to tell two quick stories to introduce this episode. So after I left Microsoft In 2004, I went to Utah State University. While I was at Utah State University, I met a young man named Mark McConkie. And Mark McConkie is the nicest, most gentle, humble, but thoughtful and wise. You know, one of the most wise and thoughtful young people I've met in a long time. And Mark, of course, I noticed the name. We were Both getting our PhDs at the time in instructional technology, and of course I noticed the name. So Mark and I became fast friends. And Mark McConkey and I became friends right when I started Mormon Stories. He was someone that I talked to a lot about it. And we had these early, very doctrinal conversations. There were two conversations that I'll never forget with Mark McConkie. The first was when he said I was, you know, telling him about my impression of Mormon doctrine and Bruce McConkie and all these teachings and that had since maybe been distanced from by the church. And I had interviewed Greg Prince as my very first Mormon Stories interview, and I had just read David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. And in that book, he makes it clear that the book Mormon doctrine was not loved and appreciated by all the Brethren. And of course, he chronicles how eventually David O. McKay and Bruce Omakanki actually had differences. And the original Mormon doctrine edition had to be changed multiple times because the brethren weren't comfortable with a lot of things about it. Anyway, one conversation I'll never forget is when Mark McConkie told me, just because Bruce Apostle McConkie took things out of Mormon doctrine doesn't mean that those things were untrue or that the brethren didn't believe them. They were removed. Because maybe they weren't popular or, you know, they were uncomfortable for some. But he definitely gave me the impression that both, whatever Bruce R. McConkie took out of the book, it wasn't because he stopped believing those things. It was because, for practical reasons, they had to be removed from the book. So that was one interesting thing that I heard. The second thing that Mark said to me, and I'll never forget it, was how proud he was. He said to me, john, not one child or grandchild of any of Bruce R. McConkie's posterity has ever left the church. And he said that to me with sort of this pride. And this is in 2006, 2007, I'm guessing. And I was really stunned by that. I thought, certainly some of Bruce R. McConkie's posterity are gay, and certainly some of them are apostates or don't believe anymore because every family's got it. Like 40% of people raised in the LDS Church in the US leave. And so anyway, that's what was so interesting to me about this interview, first and foremost, because what I found out is that Matt Lohmeier ended up marrying Sarah McConkie. Sarah, for those of you who are Mormon stories listeners, Sarah was the institute or seminary teacher. Sorry, the institute or seminary student of John Maclay. So if any of you remember my interview with John and Brooke Maclay, Sarah was a student of John's at some point, and we'll probably learn a little bit about that. So that's another connection we have. But Sarah and Matt eventually got married, got married in the temple, and they were devout members of the church for many, many years. But at some point they learned about Denver Snuffer, his books, his writings and his teachings. And that led to them becoming believers or followers in the Bruce in the Denver Snuffer sort of teachings. And ultimately they were excommunicated in July, July of 2015, which was a few months after I was excommunicated. And you will find very interesting the letter that Matt wrote to his stake president, because it's really interesting, and I read it this morning, and he makes a really compelling case that the modern LDS Church is in apostasy. And he even uses the term Antichrist. And that's surprising because that's such a loaded term. And Matt's not a guy that I'm going to assume just throws around loaded language. He works for the Air Force today. He's, I think he's very deliberate in his language and in his speech. He's very thoughtful. But he uses the term Antichrist to describe the modern LDS apostles because they're teaching principles that are not putting Christ at the center. So we'll be sharing the letter that he wrote to his stake president. We're going to be going through it, and we're going to talk about not only his interactions with his stake president that led to the excommunication. We're also going to talk about the current status of the movement, and we're going to talk about the McConkie family and what their interactions with the McConkie family has been like, because Mark McConkie, Sarah's dad, is sort of like the remaining eldest member of the McConkie children because Joseph Fielding Smith has passed away. So we're going to get an understanding of what this is like for the McConkey family as well. I think that's the longest introduction I've ever done for Mormon Stories interview, but I'm excited.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:11:06] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [00:11:07] So, Matt Lohmar, welcome to Mormon Stories.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:11:09] Thank you very much.

John Dehlin [00:11:10] And shout out to Sarah. Sarah, thanks for joining us as well. We're grateful that you're letting us kind of tell the story, although Matt's not going to speak for you, and we'll be talking about that as well. So, Matt, I gave that long introduction. What disclaimers do you want to start with? Or corrections? You can correct the records.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:11:27] No, I won't correct anything that you said, I think. And it was Joseph Fielding McConkie. What did I Say, you said Joseph Fielding Smith.

John Dehlin [00:11:34] Oh, sorry.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:11:35] But yeah, Joseph Fielding McConkie was the oldest surviving of the McConkie Bruce's children. But Mark. Yeah, Marcus, Sarah's father, lives in Colorado Springs with us.

John Dehlin [00:11:46] Okay, so is there anything you want to correct about the record of the things I. Things I said? Real quick.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:11:53] Just one thing I would say in reference to the Antichrist comment, I'm hoping that as a part of the podcast link or the page on which the interview is going to show up, you'll have a link to the letter so that the readers or the listeners can read that letter and view the context of the statement.

John Dehlin [00:12:12] I 100% will include that.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:12:14] Yeah. And that's it. No corrections.

John Dehlin [00:12:18] Okay. So I want to thank all our listeners on Facebook Live. We hope that you will post comments and questions. This will be a long interview. We know we have to end at 4, but we're gonna go the full day and we will break for lunch also to recharge my iPhone because it runs out of batteries. But we wanna encourage you to make comments and questions on the Facebook feed because we'll incorporate them and that makes what we're doing kind of more interactive. So. So let's launch in. Matt, why don't you tell us about your conversion to the church? Sure. Start there.

Converting to the LDS Church in High School

Matthew Lohmeier [00:12:56] Yeah. I converted to the church in high school, like you'd mentioned. I was at a Catholic high school, was a freshman at a Catholic high school, and I'd been going to both the LDS church for some time, probably at least many months with my mom, who had recently come back into activity in the church. And I was also on Sundays, occasionally going to the Catholic church with my father and sometimes my grandparents on my father's side, the oldest of four kids, all four of us kids were going to both churches. And my mom was making the decision that it was an important point in her life to start being active again in the Mormon Church, and she felt compelled to bring her children with her to the Mormon Church. So we got to experience both the Catholic and Mormon churches. I wasn't the first to be baptized of my siblings had a younger brother and a younger sister who were baptized first. And I took the missionary discussions over and over again from different sets of missionaries saying that I would read the Book of Mormon or do the praying and do the readings, and never did until my freshman year at this Catholic high school in Tucson, Arizona. And that's when I had had enough contact with the message that the missionaries were teaching that I decided it was a good decision for me to be baptized into the LDS Church. That was not because I had had converting experiences to the gospel at that point. That was because I had a general sense that that was a good decision for me and a good path for me to take. And one recollection that I have that I need to mention now, that was actually important to me, although I didn't remember it until later in my life, several years before I started to meet with the missionaries. I remember my mom bringing in a book from the alley in the back of our house. And the garbage man would drive down the alleys in between the homes, and that's where the big trash cans were located. And she had. She's 5 foot 3, and I'm guessing that trash can is 5 foot 3 at least. And so she had to probably dump or tip this trash can over. And she had seen, when she was out throwing trash in the trash can, a blue Book of Mormon down in there that the missionaries had apparently given to our neighbors across the alley, the typical blue Book of Mormon with the gold lettering. And she had tipped that trash can over, pulled the Book of Mormon out, brought it into the house and dusted it off. And I didn't know what the book was. And I asked her what she was doing, and she said, that book does not belong in the trash can. This is my inactive mother. She had not started going back to church, but it tells you that in spite of her having left the church and left activity, there was a lingering testimony of the gospel that was in her, and that would eventually turn into her being persuaded by visiting teachers to go back into activity in the church. And that led to me and my brother and two sisters all eventually being baptized into the church. And for me, that was in high school, at a Catholic high school.

John Dehlin [00:16:04] Okay, so you say when you converted, it wasn't at first because you had some witness.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:16:10] Right.

John Dehlin [00:16:10] It was just. It felt like the right thing to do.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:16:13] Yeah. In fact, the missionary who finally baptized me was a lacrosse player at byu. And he was cool. And he basically, one Sunday morning, it was his last day on his mission. In fact, I've recently been in touch with this former elder. I think he's since left the church, but I was basically put up against the wall in the chapel. And he says, listen here, I know you believe this stuff. I was 14 years old at the time. That was December 4th of 1996. That was 21 years ago today. And he says, this is my last day on my mission, and I'm going to baptize you before I go home. So basically go inform the word that you're being baptized. And I was convinced. I said, yeah, that's the right. So I left church. My dad wasn't there. He was at home. I remember walking into the bedroom where my dad was laying down and I think watching television, if I'm not mistaken. And I said, dad, I'm getting baptized into the Mormon Church. And that was a very difficult. That was difficult news to bear to my father. And he was quiet.

John Dehlin [00:17:25] Why didn't he like it?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:17:26] Well, he had been raised Catholic and he had been potentially raised anti Mormon, but had certainly become anti Mormon at this point. And that will play into the story here in just a little bit. So he was displeased, I think, that I was choosing as the oldest of his children to join the LDS Church. He got dressed, he came to the chapel, and later that afternoon, the ward put together a Herculean effort to have a good showing to support this recently activated Lohmeier family, a part member family, as they call it. And I had a nice baptismal service. I don't remember anything about it other than that my father came, that meant the world to me.

John Dehlin [00:18:08] And you were how old again?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:18:10] That was two days before my 15th birthday.

John Dehlin [00:18:12] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:18:13] And then I went back to Catholic school the next day and took Catholic classes and was one of, as I recall, two active Latter Day Saints at that Catholic private high school. And that only lasted for the rest of that year. And then I left the Catholic school my sophomore year and went and joined a public school and actually played basketball at this public school for the same coach that my father had played for at that Same High School 20 years earlier. In fact, when my dad was my age now, I was playing high school basketball. But that's when I joined the church. And like you've pointed out, and like I said, I wasn't converted to the gospel. That was a couple of years later. And I continue to live my life how I had kind of sort of believing and being active in the Mormon Church, going to seminary at a release time seminary class and in between my junior and senior year of high school is when I had some experiences that were converting for me.

John Dehlin [00:19:16] Talk about those.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:19:19] And I want to point out. So as I get to this converting experience, I remember my dad and my mom, I asked them for permission to share this. Having arguments in the home over religion, that's hard for any child. It doesn't matter what the topic is. Religion is particularly poignant in some ways, especially when you've just chosen to be Baptized into a church over which your parents are arguing. And so being in a mixed faith home, as it were, and hearing arguments taking place, a child, I can't speak for the other siblings, but a child can't help but wonder how their decisions have impacted the relationship of their parents. But what also angered me was that I trusted that my mom had a. I trusted that she had evidence for her belief in the Mormon faith and that my dad was attacking her religion and her beliefs based on a stupid book he had next to his bed on the nightstand that was called the Kingdom of the Cults. That was my thinking at the time in high school, and I was angry about that. And so when my dad was at work and my mom wasn't looking because she wouldn't have condoned me going to look at this book, I'm sure I went and found that book and I brought it back to my bedroom and I remember this is me, unconverted me sitting in my bedroom feeling like I'm sneaking something very sinful into my room. And I flipped to the Mormon, the Mormonism section in the Kingdom of the Cults and I read I don't know how many pages that I haven't looked in a long time. 30, 40, 50 pages I read through of what I had considered anti Mormon literature about my faith that I had just been baptized into. And it was one of the darkest days to think I think these guys are telling the truth and yet it's a direct attack on my religion. And so that's one data point, if you will, that was kind of, it was compelling to me because I wanted to prove that my dad's arguments were wrong. And I couldn't do that unless I started to learn about Mormon history and actually figured out if my religion was true. At the same time, I had a wonderful teacher's quorum advisor who was teaching the gospel in a way that actually made sense to me and that drew me in. And I was annoyed with and frustrated with other teachers in the teachers quorum who seemed to not want to pay attention to what this man was saying. And I'm still friends with him. He lives in Bountiful, in fact, with his wife, they're an older couple. He was teaching the gospel in a way that was compelling to me. And so between the mix of emotions, between having arguments in the home of religion, having been exposed to anti Mormonism, and knowing that there's some issues with Mormon history and the fact that I was beginning to be concerned with my standing before God and whether or not I was doing the right things in life. I ultimately was led, and I'll say by the Spirit to be concerned enough about my standing to go make it a matter of prayer. And it was probably between, I think it was between my junior and senior years, I had the question planted in my mind that I'm going to ask God if Joseph Smith is a prophet. And I've not read the Book of Mormon before. I don't know anything about his life. But that was the question that was pressing upon me. And I thought, because it hinges upon this, and at least that's what I had been taught in church, it hinges upon this, this man. And I remember making a very humble attempt and kneeling next to my bed, and I can picture the setting and asking God verbally, is Joseph Smith a true prophet? And received an answer. And it was the first time I can remember in my life having had a sure, clear answer come to me.

John Dehlin [00:23:20] What did it feel like?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:23:23] I can describe the feeling that accompanied the knowledge.

John Dehlin [00:23:26] What was the knowledge? And then what was the feeling?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:23:28] Thank you. It was the best way to describe the experience. And it's easy in retrospect to describe the experience. For sure, it was clarity and it was peace, and that's the feeling that accompanied the knowledge. But the clarity that came, in fact, was potentially akin to what some have described as being baptized by fire. I knew that the man about whom I was asking was sent by God as a servant and was a true prophet. And I had a complete change of heart. That was born of a feeling that washed over me from head to toe and that changed my life. And so, without getting too emotional about

John Dehlin [00:24:14] it, what were you like as a high school kid?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:24:19] I would say I was a little bit rotten. My parents would say I was very good. And I think overall, in retrospect, as I look at kids, I was a pretty good kid. I had a foul mouth on the basketball court. I liked to get into trouble. I had friends on the basketball team and we liked to go out egging people's cars and houses and that, you know, just kind of rotten stuff.

John Dehlin [00:24:42] Were you a jock?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:24:43] Kind of stereotypical jock? I was. Did you like a good kid?

John Dehlin [00:24:47] Did you like.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:24:47] No, I was bored by academics.

John Dehlin [00:24:50] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:24:51] I didn't like to read. In fact, I remember my mom trying to get me to read anything. And it was where the Red Fern Grows. And she would lock me in my bedroom. She says, you will stay in there and you will read this chapter. And then I'd stay in there for half an hour doing whatever it was and then I'd come out and she'd say, did you read the chapter? And I'd say, yep, I did. And she'd say, no, you didn't. You're lying, because you'd be crying if you read the chapter I told you to read. And so I never liked to read. But that experience that I had where I knew that Joseph was a prophet, it fundamentally changed my trajectory because I knew that I needed to change my life, my actions. I really thought I probably should stop swearing, you know, those kinds of things. Small stuff. I wanted to start reading the Book of Mormon. And so I started to read the Book of Mormon. And in the process of reading the Book of Mormon, gained a testimony of the book, Book of Mormon. And so that's kind of where my spiritual journey begins. It's between my junior and senior year of high school. I'm called as the seminary president right after I have that experience and I'm converted. Now I'm in a leadership position, if you will, in high school, where I'm able to actually prepare and teach remarks and be concerned about the welfare of others. And that was all good for me developmentally.

John Dehlin [00:26:08] But this was in Tucson.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:26:09] This was in Tucson.

John Dehlin [00:26:10] Okay. So just as I'm kind of analyzing this a little bit, whether you look at it as someone being humbled and prepared for the gospel or vulnerable, like, depending on your perspective, but this fits a profile of someone who's seeking because your parents were in conflict about religion, that must have been distressing to you. Honestly, it's the same type of stuff that distressed Joseph Smith because his parents were differing about religion. Right. So there's some turmoil in the home, and you're probably not feeling like you're being the best person you can be. Probably feeling like you're maybe a little bit lost or. And so your heart was kind of ready for that witness. Is that what you think?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:27:02] Yeah, that's accurate. And this gets into another vital experience that I had that kind of changed my trajectory a little bit. I think without. I know you run the risk of talking too much about yourself, but this is an interview about me, so I'm going to talk about myself.

John Dehlin [00:27:21] Yeah, it is.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:27:24] I think I've been given a gift to believe, and I think I've been given a gift to seek. That teacher's quorum advisor that I had mentioned to you, he was constantly teaching, in a way, from the scriptures that was so compelling that I wanted to believe in the gospel. I found myself in high school going to his house. I say his house. It was their house. They were a couple who unitedly both understood Mormon doctrine. Not the book, the. The idea of Mormon doctrine, Mormon history. And every time I sat down and met with them, I was convinced. These are people I can come to to ask questions that I have about the gospel, whatever they are, they will sit and open the scriptures with me and they'll teach me from the scriptures what the answer to my question is. And that just blew me away because I was not getting that from friends. I was not getting that in church. But they did it well. And I would go to their house and I would ask them my questions. They would teach me. I remember getting in a minivan or suburban. It was spacious enough to be either. And we're driving to the Mesa temple. And there was another brother in the ward who happened to home teach this family. That was my teacher's quorum advisor. He was in the front seat with another brother who I think was in the bishopric. And they were talking about making your calling an election. Sure. I was probably 15 years old. I was maybe 16 years old.

John Dehlin [00:28:52] What year about would this have been?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:28:53] This is probably, I think this is 96, 97. I'm a sophomore. I think it's probably 96, 97. That's my best recollection. I'm sitting in a bucket seat closest to the front of the car and I'm listening to words that I've never heard before mentioned in church, never read about before. And meanwhile there's my peers around me tickling one another. And I mean, this is making light of this issue. But it really frustrated me that I'm trying to listen to this conversation about something that seemed like they were trying to whisper about. And they were talking about the sealing room and the temple and there's a special place. And I'm listening, I'm thinking, okay, we're not going to see any of that stuff today. I'm going to get baptized for the dead. I really wish these kids would be quiet because I'm really interested in the conversation. And so I butt in and I say, hey, what are you talking about? What's calling an election? And this brother, I probably shouldn't mention names, but this brother said that's something we don't talk about. And that was the end of it. And boy, did that pique my interest. You want to tell me? I mean, this is in fact taking place.

John Dehlin [00:30:08] Don't look at the closet. Don't look in the closet.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:30:10] If I can recall, this is before I had the experience where I'm praying about Joseph Smith and getting converted to the gospel that is Mormonism. But yeah, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. That really piqued my interest. And so you mix that with, I'm being exposed to anti Mormonism, I want to prove that my religion is true. I'm being exposed to the idea that there is something about making your calling an election. Sure. And that's all a backdrop. I don't investigate it at that time, but that's a backdrop for the seeking that then happens. And when I'm converted, that change of trajectory for me means I'm going to start buying as many books as I can about Mormon history and I'm going to start researching. And in fact, I think I had. I've teased with others, I had a disease. I would buy 10 books, read one or two, and I'd buy 10 or 15 more and I'd read one or two. And until I acquired hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books and have read hundreds of books about Mormon history and about.

John Dehlin [00:31:07] You have.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:31:08] I have. And I don't think there was any issue over time, whether it was polygamy or anything else. CES letter stuff. We'll talk about maybe some of that later. There was nothing that I was going to encounter after a decade of being at this that was going to be surprising to me.

Seeking Calling and Election Made Sure

John Dehlin [00:31:23] So real quick, was the reason you were so interested in this idea of a calling election made sure because you were feeling guilt and shame for being unworthy or unrighteous or, you know, a rough kid?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:31:39] I don't think so.

John Dehlin [00:31:42] Because that would explain your interest in calling election. Made sure. It's like, how do I make sure I get to heaven? Right.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:31:46] Yeah. There was something born in me when I heard the gospel preached. And as I started to read these books and learned about the early church and about what they were talking about. And then I read teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith and heard him talking about it. And he references John chapter 14 about how this is available to people in this life, this meaning, this experience of seeing God face to face, of having of receiving what Joseph calls in the teachings, the second comforter. This is me in high school, senior year in high school, learning about these things and feeling absolutely convinced that this is something I must be searching for. And it had nothing to do with what I was learning at church. It had everything to do with studying Joseph's words. There was a couple of other books that I'll mention that were fundamental to me. And they're simple things, but they were things that I had read that were fundamental game changers for me. One was a simple book called To Draw Nearer to God by Henry B. Eyring. And the premise of the book was, you need to not be afraid to listen to the Holy Ghost and ask God what it is you need to change what it is you need to do. And when he speaks to you, you need to be brave enough to do it. That was so hard for me. And I thought, okay, I'll do it. And so I start. And then I'd go and I'd get on my knees and I'd say, God, what do you want me to do? Because I'm seeking for these experiences that I'm reading about in scripture that I'm seeing in these books. Approaching Zion by Hugh Nibley. That was a life changer for me, the fact that I shouldn't be seeking for riches, but that I should be seeking for the kingdom of God. And then I start to read Mormon doctrine, and I start to read Bruce McConkie's writings and Joseph Fielding Smith's writings. I had a great seminary teacher. I went to him and I said, I'm interested in seeking for this, and you seem to know the gospel. Tell me what it is I should be reading. And to my seminary teacher's credit, he said, go buy the lectures on faith and read those. They're great. He says, read one at a time and take your time to think about it. He said, go buy Doctrines of Salvation by Joseph Fielding Smith and readings 1, 2, and 3. And so I bought them and I read them. And he says, and read Bruce R. McConkie's writings. And I said, got it. And so I started reading and I read it and I read it until I was convinced that these teachings about seeking for the face of God were true teachings. And they were actually the most compelling part or an aspect of the gospel to me. And that was my drive.

John Dehlin [00:34:11] So I have to ask you about that. So there are all sorts of elements to the gospel. There's faith, repentance, baptism, there's the Holy Ghost, there's learning, there's service, there's charity, there's missionary work, there's temple work. Like for a Mormon, there are a thousand things. There's journal writing, there's genealogy. Right. There's so many things, family history that you can think about in the Gospel. Why for you was seeking the face of Christ? Why was that the thing when there were a thousand other things? There are a thousand other things you could think about.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:34:52] And in sharing what I have, I'd be Remiss if I didn't point out that I was not disinterested in those other things. In fact, I tried to muster interest in genealogy, for instance, and I never actually got there. I tried to be interested in all of those many other things that you mentioned. And I was interested in all. I was interested in being a gospel student and a gospel scholar. I admired how Bruce McConkie knew the Scriptures better than anyone else that I was reading. And so I wanted to be that. And I started memorizing scriptures. And so for whatever reason, there was a drive to accomplish what I felt like was an ultimate mission in this life, which is to be redeemed from the fall, which means you're brought back into the presence of God while you're in the flesh. And I was nevertheless interested in all of those other things. So it wasn't and what some might view as an unhealthy exclusion of the other tenets of the gospel and solely focusing on maybe what would be called a hobby horse. But that was my underlying drive of everything that I was doing. If I need to figure out how to do that, I need to learn how to be charitable. I need to learn how to serve others because that's who Christ is. And I think that. So I wasn't neglecting those other things. But I'll tell you what I was most interested in was Mormon history. And it stemmed from those early conversations and arguments in my home where it seemed that those discussions and arguments were based on Mormon history. And I wanted to get to the bottom of those issues and see if there was legitimacy to the claims of the anti Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:36:42] I guess tension in your home, intellectual tension, knowledge based tension, would drive you to want to resolve that tension. Like what's true. Like to you the stakes were really high. There's conflict in your home. So like figuring out what's true is sort of almost your way of resolving that conflict, at least for you.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:37:04] Yeah, and some of it was pride, I'll admit, some of it was pride. I wanted to have the answers to shut down the anti arguments. What I became surprised at as I studied Mormon history was that, hey, you know, their best arguments are based in truth. They don't take false made up things and start writing anti Mormon books to convince people they need to leave the Mormon Church. They take historical, they take quotes from leaders of the church, they take historical vignettes and they use those to tell the story. Because when a Mormon is encountering those true stories, true quotes, and they discover that they're actually in Fact, telling the truth about what happened, that is their best ammunition to get people to be leaving the church or to lose their faith. And so I thought, I'm not willing to lose my faith because I've had God tell me that Joseph is a prophet. And that's not going to change. At least in the time being, that is not going to change. That is a truth. And I was able to hang my head on that. And it never has changed. And so with that solid foundation of knowledge, I was able to confront any of the scary things from church history that Antis were talking about and think they've explained how they are able to piece together those vignettes. But there's got to be a different way of looking at what has taken place. And so my labor for a decade, and it continues through college at the Air Force Academy, and it continues on my mission, and it continues after my mission and into my married life, was to discover how it is. I weave together a narrative of church history that makes sense of all the things that have taken place. That was a difficult task. It didn't mean I was swayed by some of the things I was hearing. But it was to me, there's too many gaps in the fabric. And with the traditional narrative of church history that the church was teaching me, I couldn't piece everything together. But I was getting close. And so if you don't mind, I'd like to share another experience, please.

John Dehlin [00:39:03] I'm going to tweak your microphone. Keep talking.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:39:04] Don't stop, please.

John Dehlin [00:39:05] Just keep talking.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:39:06] I'm recruited to play basketball at the Air Force Academy. That's how I get into the Air Force Academy. I go there. I'm still disinterested in academics. I'm interested in studying the gospel. I would buy books, and they come in the mailroom, and I'd run down the mailroom and I'd get them. And as soon as I was done with class, I'd go back to my room and I'd sit in my room for six hours, and I'd read about church history. And then I'd hope to get my homework done first thing in the morning before I went off to class. I mean, that's kind of what my rhythm was at the Air Force Academy. And I remember feeling this was before I ever went to the temple to be endowed. Before I left on my mission, which was in between my sophomore and junior years at the academy, I had gotten to a point where I thought, I've learned everything I can learn from these books, and there's Nothing else I can learn in church. The only way I can continue to progress in knowledge and in truth and in light is to actually meet Christ and to have him continue to teach me. And so I remember waiting for the school week to be over one week so that I could go hike the mountain behind the Air Force Academy. It's a beautiful setting. And I remember going up this hill and kneeling down and praying and asking God if he would reveal himself to me.

John Dehlin [00:40:34] Pre mission or post mission?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:40:35] Pre mission.

John Dehlin [00:40:35] Okay, so you're 18? 19.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:40:38] I'm probably 19 at this time. Not yet been through the temple. Don't know what that's all about. And I knew that was sensitive enough that I'm not willing to Google that stuff. So I'm praying and asking, and I'm fully expecting to have that prayer answered. And I wait and I wait and I wait and nothing happens. And I even hear a little bit of a rustling in the bushes, which is probably a bird. And I'm picturing, like, first vision account and Satan.

John Dehlin [00:41:07] Satan.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:41:07] Yeah, exactly. And that's what I'm expecting to happen. And I am fully anticipating that I'm going to meet an angel or meet the Lord. And I don't know if in my life I've ever approached the Lord with as much faith. That moment was peculiar. I really felt a connection to the heavens. And so there I am, waiting for the veil to part and for things to happen and it doesn't. And I jog back down the hill and I go to my bedroom and I needed. I had a roommate at the time, and I couldn't sit and weep in my bedroom. So I go down the end of the hallway there. At the Air Force Academy, in my squadron, there's a phone room where they had pay phones where you could call your parents on the weekends. And I went and I locked the door in the phone room, and I wept and I wept and I pled with the Lord and I said, you know, I had the faith. And I felt like I had the assurance that I was going to receive according to my desires. And the thought came to me that you need to read your Scriptures. And I did. And I opened up to Section 67 of the Doctrine and Covenants. And the Lord spoke very clearly to me in that section. And I can read what it said as a response from the Lord to me about why I didn't obtain the answer, if you don't mind, because. And the reason I share this. It's an important.

John Dehlin [00:42:23] People don't always pull out their scriptures on Mormon Stories podcast. This is good.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:42:26] Then you need more scriptures on Mormon Stories podcast. That's why I brought them.

John Dehlin [00:42:33] Yeah, let's do it. Do a wide shot.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:42:41] I'm distraught, and I'm expecting that the Lord is going to tell me why I didn't obtain what it was that I was seeking. And he said to me, you endeavored to believe that you should receive the blessing which was offered unto you. But behold, verily I say there were fears in your heart, and verily, this is the reason you did not receive. It goes on to say, again, I say unto you, it is your privilege and a promise I give unto you that have been ordained unto this ministry, that inasmuch as you strip yourselves from jealousies and fears and humble yourselves before me, for you are not sufficiently humble, the veil shall be rent, and you shall see me and know that I am. That was clear to me. That was one of two occasions when that very thing was communicated to me, that you need to continue seeking me. And I will. I will manifest myself to you. And so that was me at the Air Force Academy. I then go to the temple. I'm endowed. That was beautiful to me. I didn't have any. It wasn't a scary thing to me. I thought, this is the gospel I've been seeking for. I see the man Adam, who apparently is supposed to represent me, looking and looking for true messengers until angels come to him from heaven to instruct him, and then they prepare him to go converse with the Lord through the veil. And he does it. He enters the Lord's presence. That was the gospel journey that I had come to discover for myself before.

John Dehlin [00:44:14] That witness you received on that day was basically through that scripture you just read the Lord saying, don't give up. Humble yourself. Keep purifying yourself, and the witness will come.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:44:26] That's right. That's how I took it. And then the temple further confirmed to me that the path that I was pursuing was, in fact, the gospel. That was. I thought, yeah, this makes perfect sense to me. I am following in the footsteps of the man Adam, and he took the path that I'm taking. That was my confirmation. Yeah. So this is. This is what? There's no Denver snuffer involved in any of this. This is me, Matt Lohmeier. This is my. My journey. This is what I've gleaned From reading Bruce McConkie and Joseph Smith and Joseph Fielding Smith and being taught by people who know better. And I sought out the advice and instruction of those who knew, who I thought knew. Yeah. So this Is me leading up to my mission. I'm then called to serve in the Taiwan mission, which we can talk about if you want to get to that.

Mission Experiences and Spiritual Turning Points

John Dehlin [00:45:24] Whatever you think is important about your journey.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:45:27] Yeah. So there's three things I want to share from my mission that are also important. Framework. My father is still not a member of the church When I leave on my mission to go to Taipei, taiwan. But he was supportive of me going. I didn't have the money to fund my mission experience, and so people from my homeward back in Tucson Were willing to give the money to support my mission experience. I was so concerned about praying in faith that my father would be baptized while I was on my mission, because for some reason, I thought my having chosen to serve a mission Was going to influence my father to be baptized, that I decided I was going to make it a matter of prayer. And I was praying every day for my father to be baptized. And it was, frankly, quite distracting to the missionary work. I'm supposed to be focusing on these people who I've been called to serve, and I'm focusing on my dad, who's halfway around the world. And so we had a mission rule that you could only fast once a month on fast Sunday, which is the first Sunday of the month. And I thought, that's not. I need to somehow divert my daily prayers from my father To a weekly effort, which I will do in fasting and prayer. So within a couple of weeks of being on my mission, I went to the mission president's wife in the mission home, and I said. I explained to her that I'm completely distracted praying for my father, and I'd like to request your permission. Because she was apparently the one in charge of the fasting rules in the mission. I'd like to request your permission to fast every week for the rest of my mission for my father. And she was surprised and said, yeah, I give you permission to do that. And so every weekend, I would start a fast. And that was my time to focus on my dad. And the rest of the week, I'd made the commitment. I would focus on the people I was teaching. And before I left on my mission, my dad, all them. All the air force academy cadets, there's about 30 of us who were leaving on our mission at the same time. All of us were called the foreign speaking missions. They liked to send the air force guys, military guys, to these different countries to have them learn foreign languages. And there was one of my friends who, when he was waiting for his mission call, Said to his friends, guess Where I'm going, we're going to have the game where everyone guesses. And he sent that to my parents as well, because my parents knew who he was. And my dad said, again, non member, somewhat anti Mormon. He says, I'm guessing you're going to come to Tucson, Arizona. Highly unlikely, by the way, because we all went foreign speaking. And he says, and if you do come to Tucson, Arizona, I will let you teach me the missionary discussions.

John Dehlin [00:48:12] What?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:48:14] And so here I am thinking, that ain't happening. But if it does, that would be amazing, right? Well, he gets his mission call and he's called to Tucson, Arizona.

John Dehlin [00:48:22] No way.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:48:23] And I'm like, man, my dad is gonna eat his words. And then my dad said, if you get assigned to my ward, Tucson Mission is a big mission. There's, I think at least then there were five stakes. I don't know how many there are today. If you get assigned to my ward, I will let you teach me the missionary discussions. He was assigned to my dad's ward. And so my dad was kind of stuck at that point. And my siblings and my mother and me are all thinking, this is the culmination of many prayers and fasts. So while I'm on my mission, my friend is on his mission teaching my dad the missionary discussions. And it's a really good thing in many ways. But my dad doesn't get baptized at that time. And my friend comes home from his mission thinking, the entire reason I left and came on a mission, it seems to me, is to teach Matt Lohmeier's dad the gospel. And he rejected it. He didn't get baptized. I nevertheless continued that fast throughout my mission and then continued after my mission was over. And my dad ultimately was baptized into the LDS Church. And he had some sweet experiences where he was converted with interactions with his stake presidency, with his reading of some passages in the Book of Mormon. And so my family felt like we had had our prayers answered in that regard. And so for a time, he and my mom both are attending church together as active members of the church. And that was for a time. That's the first thing I want to mention about my mission experience. The second thing was on December 23rd of 2003, I was in the mission home across the street from the Taiwan Temple. I was an assistant to the president at the time and my companion from Idaho, Ray Widmer and I. It was 12:30 at night. We were up preparing for a conference. Well, after the hours where we were supposed to be in bed, we were preparing for a conference. On the east coast of Taiwan. And my mission president was in his office and we were on the fourth floor of a dalo a building. I think the temple president lived on the, maybe the sixth and seventh floors and the mission president lived on the fifth floor with his family. And we were in the mission office on the fourth floor. And there was a frantic buzzing of the doorbell at 12:30 in the morning on the 23rd of December. And instantly when, instantly when the doorbell rang, I had the impression that evil had come knocking at the door. And I knew that that's what we were going to encounter. And so I pushed the button and said wait, saying hello in Chinese. And there was a woman screaming on the other end and she says, we need the priesthood. And so my companion And I, these 20 year old kids, you know, walk down or go down the elevator and the elevator doors open and in the foyer, the opening of the building there that we were in, there's about a 10 foot gap of a foyer and then there's these glass doors. And outside the glass doors we could see a woman who is clearly possessed with devils being restrained by a man with all of his might and a woman standing beside them who is apparently the woman who had called us asking for us to come down and help. And boy, that was terrifying. And the first thought that I have, I've never encountered this before. I picture Peter in the temple endowment video and I think, well, I know what Peter did and that's exactly what I'm going to do. So I open the glass doors and let this woman in. And to shorten the story and to spare the listener some details, I do what I see Peter do the temple. And it was seemingly effective for about five seconds. And with all the rage and anger and hate that you could picture Satan having, we were mocked and jeered and verbally attacked by the voices of men coming out of this woman in a way that was more terrifying than something I had experienced in my life up to that point. And the struggle ensued and lasted for about 45 minutes where we're attempting to cast out evil. My mission president comes down and his first thought is when he sees it, to do the exact same thing that I had just tried to do. And he is temporarily successful and that doesn't last. And the resultant experience is he's jeered and mocked. And then the temple president ultimately comes down. The way that that ends up finishing is that there is a laying on of hands, there is the casting out of the devils, a command for them to not return. And that is a successful endeavor and we all kind of break up and go home for the evening. At one point, and I'll mention this, I'm sparing actually some details that I shouldn't say. At one point we are successful about 20, 30 minutes into this in casting out these evil spirits. And she with her spirit back into her, it was almost tangible. You could almost see her spirit come back into her body, but you couldn't see it. She walks back up to the glass doors and she points across the street at the temple and she says, they need my help. And instantly she was possessed. So there was something going on there where she had potentially invited this. The night is over and we walk back home and we lay in bed and it's like the walls are crawling and we can barely go to sleep. And my mission companion from Idaho says, I never knew that stuff was real. And he says, and if that was real, then there must surely be a God. It was this great revelation to him. And I'm thinking, you didn't know that stuff was real. Haven't you read your scriptures? You know, but none of us had experienced it. And at that point in my life, as a result of that experience, I was given a gift of discernment between light and darkness. And every time I shook someone's hand every day of my mission after that, I'd look in their eyes and I'd shake their hand and I would tell instantly whether or not they had the light of Christ was the guiding influence in their life or whether Satan was the guiding influence in their life. And I can't explain it, and I don't have the gift today, but I had it while I was on my mission. And I learned then that more Latter Day Saints were under the influence of the devil. Then were the Buddhist and heathen, as you might call them, Taiwanese people on that island. And that just blew my mind. Because I would have never supposed that the Christian community at large or the Latter Day Saint community would be under that influence, but they were. And that these good Buddhist people or Daoist people that I was teaching not knowing anything about Christ would be under his influence. And so that was an important thing for me to share. And it was an important fundamental change in my mindset as I approached the gospel going forward that I learned from that experience that night. The last thing I'll share and then I'll turn the time back over to you, I guess, because I've been going for some time to get into the Air Force Academy for the first time. I. I was Helped by basketball coaches, I didn't have the grades to get into the Air Force Academy. And so the first time that I got in it was with them pulling strings. And when I resigned to go on my mission, I had to reapply for a congressman's nomination and go through the whole process again. And I was denied acceptance into the Air Force Academy while I was on my mission. And I was on the street in Taipei telling my mission companion in English that I was probably going to go back and go to byu. I'm not going to the Air Force, because I wasn't. I didn't get back in the second time. And I feel a tap on my shoulder, and I turn around, There's a white guy standing there who's in a white shirt and tie, and he sticks out his hand, and he says, Gentry Stevens, 94 grad, do you want to get back into the Air Force Academy? This is on the streets in Taipei. There are no white people around, and you don't dare say no when someone offers you that. And so I said, yes, I do want to go back. And he gives me his business card, and we start talking, and he calls friends at the Pentagon and elsewhere, and I get back into school at the Air Force Academy. So I knew that that was the path I was supposed to go take. I was supposed to go to school there, and that's where I end up, going back to school and then later meeting my wife, graduating from there. That's how I end up in the Air Force. So those were pivotal experiences on my mission that I felt like I wanted to. Wait.

John Dehlin [00:57:01] He didn't know your backstory?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:57:02] Had no idea. He heard me talking to my companion on street about not getting into the Air Force Academy, and I'd never met the guy before, and he had the power to get me back in.

John Dehlin [00:57:12] And he got you back in.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:57:13] He got me back in.

John Dehlin [00:57:14] Was he lds?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:57:15] I don't think so. No, not to my knowledge. And I've never seen the guy since, so.

John Dehlin [00:57:20] So by this point, you're a believer in miracles.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:57:23] I am a believer in miracles. And that was one of them. That was one of them, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:26] Yeah.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:57:27] So I was supposed to be at least temporarily in the Air Force, and. And there's reasons why that. That was my path.

Marrying into the McConkie Family

John Dehlin [00:57:35] Okay, so you come home. How do you meet a McKunkie?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:57:38] Yeah. So singles ward. I was a junior at the Air Force Academy. I walked into the chapel, and Sarah had.

John Dehlin [00:57:46] And that takes you to Colorado Springs?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:57:48] That's where I'm at. Yeah. The Air Force Academy is just outside of Colorado Springs. And I was attending a singles ward in Colorado Springs. And I met Sarah one Sunday in church as she was walking down from the up near the front of the chapel. She had just got done playing the violin, I think, in a previous ward, and I was coming in for my ward, and she was a senior in high school, so I'd never seen her there before. She had just come to play a musical number.

John Dehlin [00:58:16] And what was Mark, her dad, doing in Colorado Springs?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:58:19] He was a professor. He taught at Colorado State University. UCCS. University of Colorado. Colorado Springs.

John Dehlin [00:58:25] Oh, Colorado State's at Fort Collins.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:58:27] Yeah, it's up further north.

John Dehlin [00:58:28] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:58:29] So I meet Sarah that day. She was. She was born and raised in Colorado Springs. We crossed paths and I stop her and I thought she was beautiful. And I stopped her and wanted to get to know her. And I knew that I hadn't seen her there before and there was a chance if I didn't stop her that day, I wasn't going to get to see her again. And I asked her on a date.

John Dehlin [00:58:47] You were how old?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:58:48] So I was just returned from my mission, probably 22 years old. 21 or 22 years old. And she was a senior in high school. She was, we'll say, 18, because I can't remember. So, yeah, senior in high school. And I said, I'd like to take you on a date. And she says, well, I'm leaving for BYU in two days. I said, how about tomorrow night? And I said, oh, by the way, you'll have to pick me up because I don't have a car. I just came back off my mission, and you can't get a car at the Air Force Academy until you're a junior. So she drives up to the Air Force Academy, and we go on our first date and have a pizza together. And neither of us was very hungry that night. But then she went off to BYU and we dated long distance for a really long time.

John Dehlin [00:59:30] Did you get the sense that she was. Did you know. Okay, so she told you her last name?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:59:35] She did.

John Dehlin [00:59:35] What did that mean to you at the time?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:59:38] So this was kind of fun. And Sarah and I discovered this last week as we were reading through. We were reading through some old things. We read through Bruce McConkie's biography that was written by his son, Joseph Fielding. And I have a note in that book, and it had a date. Because when I finish a book, I'll always put a note in there about my thoughts about the book. And I said something like, terrific book. I love the man, dated, whatever. And it was a week before I met Sarah. And so with that on my heart and mind, the fact that I loved so much this man, Bruce McConkey,

John Dehlin [01:00:17] it

Matthew Lohmeier [01:00:17] was all the more compelling to me that this is a good person who I'm interested in getting to know.

John Dehlin [01:00:22] Did she convey a sense of righteousness that maybe the average Mormon girl didn't? In your view, was there makanky goodness that rubbed off on her?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:00:33] There is a makanky goodness that she had and there is a makanky goodness. To be clear, what is that?

John Dehlin [01:00:42] Can you describe that?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:00:44] You meet a lot of people in the LDS Church and out of the LDS Church and I've met. You meet a lot of people. And the McConkies are genuinely salt of the earth people. And in fact you hit on it in your opening remarks about Mark Jr. Who's up in Logan. Wonderful. I couldn't agree more with your assessment. And so when I meet Sarah and shake her hand, I am recently home from my mission. I've still got this gift of discernment, but it's starting to fade. And this is a good person.

John Dehlin [01:01:19] Why would God take away your gift of discernment if he gave you on your mission?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:01:24] That's a great question. I think there's something to be said about proximity to certain experiences. I think there's a reason why Moroni visit so often with Joseph Smith. I think there's a reason why he encounters Satan. I think that. There's a potency in proximity to experience that the further away you get from certain poignant experiences. Men are weak. Everything in this world atrophies. I think that the gift I was given was in direct relation to having had the experience with darkness. I'm looking into the eyes of a person who has no soul.

John Dehlin [01:02:07] Right now?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:02:08] No, not right now.

John Dehlin [01:02:09] Just checking. Just checking. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:02:13] No. On December 23rd, that night, the woman who was possessed. I'm looking into the eyes of someone and I've never seen anything like it. That experience then translates to me being able to look into people's eyes and everyone's got light. Every human who's here that we interact with on a day to day basis. As you shake hands with people, you look into their eyes. There is a light. Even if they're not good people, there is a light that is in people's eyes. So I don't know that God took away the gift. It's simply a function of me being immortal here and not having had any Similar experience as the years go on, and I think it faded.

John Dehlin [01:02:50] But with her, you felt it.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:02:52] No. Yes. She's wonderful. And anyone who would meet her today would say the same thing. She's a wonderful person.

John Dehlin [01:02:58] Okay, so she goes to byu.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:03:00] She does.

John Dehlin [01:03:00] You stay. You guys date. That must have been hard for you to have this girl. Did you know. Did you know you loved her from the start or not?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:03:08] Very close. Yeah, she. She was. What a terrible thing to do to a new freshman girl at BYU is to date her long distance.

John Dehlin [01:03:17] Yeah.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:03:17] Felt bad, actually, in retrospect, not while I was dating her. I didn't feel bad, but I felt bad after. I thought, how do you do that to someone? You basically ask of her, her devotion. And I saw her once a month, and she's being faithful, as far as I know, to me in our relationship. And her heart is tied up with me. And we're seeing each other once a month. And she's at byu. I'm at the Air Force Academy. You can't get married while you're a cadet at the Air Force Academy. So we dated for nine months. We broke up. We have kind of separate paths for a little bit. We date other people for six years. We're apart. And while I'm at an air. While I'm at an Air Force base, six years, she never got married. She was close and I was close. I was engaged to be married to someone else. We stayed in contact. So this is long, long story, very short. But we stay in contact. In fact, I'd come to. She's living in New York City at times. She's living in D.C. doing work out there. This is post graduation from BYU, and I'm stationed in the Air Force in Tucson and then in Oklahoma. And I would come, for instance, to a Fourth of July parade in Provo, and I'd run into Sarah McConkey.

John Dehlin [01:04:29] Okay, why didn't you just marry her the day you graduated from the Air Force Academy?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:04:32] Well, we weren't dating the day I married.

John Dehlin [01:04:33] Why not?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:04:34] That was my fault. I'll publicly admit.

John Dehlin [01:04:39] You were slow.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:04:40] I was slow. I was very slow. And in fact, in retrospect, and Sarah and I both agree to this, and I'll speak for myself here, that was an important six years for me, that time period where I wasn't married and dedicated a lot of my time to digging deeper into Mormon history. That was an important time in my life where I needed to develop and actually had some worldview changes yet again that were important for me to have before I Decided who I was going to be.

John Dehlin [01:05:11] Did you kind of stray from the gospel a little bit?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:05:13] No.

John Dehlin [01:05:14] You were.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:05:14] I was very active in the church those six years. The whole time? Yep. But my views were changing and developing.

John Dehlin [01:05:22] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:05:23] In fact, I've got a few notes here. I want to make sure there's a couple things I get to hit on before we finish this segment.

John Dehlin [01:05:31] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:05:31] We need to talk about Adam God. Adam God theory, doctrine.

John Dehlin [01:05:35] How does it fit into your. How does it fit into your narrative?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:05:38] This is important. We need to talk about that. We need to talk about me being a temple worker in Oklahoma City before marrying Sarah. Yeah, the Adam God thing, certainly that was a dilemma I was encountering before. And this ties in. You're asking about that. So there were six years before we get married, that older couple in my ward in Tucson who I was going to. To ask gospel questions a few times while I was in their house. They said something like, Brigham Young said some interesting things about Adam. And like that made me shiver in my boots because I thought interesting means probably I don't want to dabble in that and I don't want to look into it. And that was me in high school. I get to the Air Force Academy, and there were a couple of occasions where I had opportunities to chat with them. And I was asking them questions about the gospel. I was asking them questions about Brigham Young and some different things I was encountering. And they said to me, kind of looking at one another, he said some interesting things about Adam. They were never willing to press something onto me. They were very careful and they figured if you want to go look into that, you can go look into that. And I thought, I'm going to go look into that. And so I start looking. First place I thought to look was the discourses of Brigham Young. There's not much in there. I mean, it's very carefully crafted, compiled. But I look in there and I'm seeing a few things and I think, you know, there's nothing really very interesting about Adam in here. So I start looking elsewhere and I start googling things. And what I encounter seems to me to be the work of anti Mormons. And therefore I shut it up and I stop investigating. I come back from my mission and something in me decides I'm going to look into that issue, whatever it is, and I'm going to confront it head on until I get to the bottom of it. And so after my mission, while I'm, I think, still a student at the Air Force Academy, I've acquired enough of A library. I've got all the Journal of Discourses. I've got enough stuff to start really looking into this. And I start to dig into what Brigham Young has taught about Adam, and I'm actually quite surprised. And it seemed to me that he was teaching that Adam was Heavenly Father, and that Heavenly Father came down to the earth and became the man Adam. And I thought, surely I'm misunderstanding this. And so I keep reading and I keep reading, and I find Fundamentalist Mormons books. And if any people was candid about their understandings of early Mormon history, it was the fundamentalist Mormon authors like Ogden Kraut or who. Ogden Kraut, Coley Christensen. David Dye is an author who's compiled some things about early Mormon history. Drew Briney has put together a book called Adam God Teachings, I think. And I read it all, read everything I could get my hands on about this thing. At the same time, I'm reading what Bruce McConkie said about Brigham Young's teachings. I read a letter that he writes to Eugene England in which he brings up the topic. I read what Spencer W. Kimball says about it. I read what Joseph Fielding Smith says about it. And I'm spending literally months looking at all of this. And I told you already how I viewed Bruce McConkey and Joseph Fielding Smith. These were heroes of mine in Mormonism who I looked to as prophets and apostles. And I respected their words very much. I looked at Brigham Young as a prophet at this time in my life, and the two of them were saying things that were incompatible with one another. That was really hard for me. If I had anything like a faith crisis, this was the moment in my life. It didn't mean I was having a faith crisis with the Church at that time or the Gospel. My faith crisis was in that, who do I trust? This guy or this guy? In 1852, Brigham Young gave a sermon from the pulpit in General Conference in which he said, I'm going to reveal something to you about Adam, about his position before he came here and who he is. And if you don't believe it, you will be damned. I've got it in volume one of the Journal Discourses, and I've got it all marked up. I read his letter, Bruce McConkie's letter to Eugene England, in which he says, if you choose to believe what Brigham Young taught about Adam, you will be damned. That's a big problem.

John Dehlin [01:10:05] That's pretty much a direct conflict.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:10:08] And I thought, if I choose to believe this prophet, I'm damned. And if I choose to believe this prophet, I'm damned. It's unacceptable. And, boy, for weeks and weeks, I really wrestled with this because I had to trust one of them. But if I didn't trust the other one, I was rejecting one of the prophets. It was a silly dilemma. But when you're so entrenched in a Mormon tradition that tells you you have to trust the brethren and that they can't lead you astray, when that's the doctrine, this is a really big problem. And so finally, I make it a matter of prayer. I ask God how to sort this out. And very clearly he communicated to me, stop worrying about what those men say. And that was surprising because I'm supposed to worry about what these men say. And he instructed me, meaning Bruce and Brigham. Bruce and Brigham, Stop worrying about what they're saying. This isn't your salvation has nothing to do with what they're saying about this thing. That was really helpful to me.

John Dehlin [01:11:08] Interesting.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:11:10] And it changed my worldview. That was a moment in time. And that's why I need to bring this up where for the first time in my life as a student at the Air Force Academy, I realized that what Bruce or what Brigham or anyone else who I respected for sure was saying about any particular thing, it didn't have any bearing upon my salvation. What did was my relationship with Christ. And in fact, I was able to go to God. He informed me. God informed me and find out answers to my prayers. I didn't have to rely upon them. And so I did that. And I prayed and I prayed and I searched more. And I kept reviewing these things until I felt like I understood the topic very well. And it was somewhat true what Bruce McConkie was saying, and it was somewhat true what Brigham Young was saying. But I also learned in that process that I think Brigham Young and that thing had learned some things from Joseph Smith and he had misunderstood them. And he and Heber C. Kimball and a few others came up with an Adam God doctrine that was somewhat tied to what Joseph was teaching about Adam, but wasn't a completely accurate representation of what Joseph had taught about Adam. And I still believe that's true. So learning that, for me, was huge. Learning that I didn't need to trust him or him or him who was a leader of the church to get an answer, that was huge. Changed my life.

Adam-God Doctrine and Temple Struggles

John Dehlin [01:12:35] It kind of explains the letter you end up writing to your Stake President.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:12:38] It explains how I'm in a position to. To then. And if you read the letter, we'll get to that. But, boy, That I had no problem speaking out against the idea that, trust us, we can't lead you astray. Utterly false. Yeah, utterly false. And anyone who studied Mormon history can't possibly accept that as a tenet of their gospel that they believe in. So there was that, and then temple work.

John Dehlin [01:13:07] All right.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:13:08] I cringe bringing up the story that I'm going to share, but I need to share it. And I think my wife might cringe at home. And so I apologize to anyone who is very active Latter Day Saint who would cringe at what I'm going to share. But it's important. As I mentioned, I'm continually seeking the experience of coming into the Lord's presence. I've learned in a temple at this point in my life that there are certain ways to pray. And I've also learned from the church that I'm not allowed to pray that way. That's a big problem, too. And I've also learned from the Adam God dilemma that I had encountered that I don't know if it matters that much what these men are telling me to do.

John Dehlin [01:13:48] And I'm just going to tell you, you're speaking respectfully. What I heard you say is you learned about the true order of prayer at the temple.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:13:56] Thank you. Yeah, okay.

John Dehlin [01:13:57] Yeah, I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:13:59] I learned that there is a true order of prayer, and to me, that means I need to pray that way. And, oh, by the way, if you'll recall what it says in the temple, you're instructed to pray that way. And then I go back into the church and the church says, hey, you can't pray that way. There's only the old people that work in the temple who officiate the ceremonies. They're the only ones that can pray that way. And by the way, they're only allowed to pray about these three or four things. And for me, I'm pleading with God. I remember the experience I have at the Air Force Academy where I'm climbing a mountain and I'm getting close, and I have jealousies and pride that I need to overcome and I need to humble myself. But I'm thinking I need to do everything within my power to show the Lord that I'm employing all of the knowledge that he's given me in order to pierce the veil. And as I see Adam do it, there are certain things he learns that he presents to God at a veil, that I need to follow that path. And so I am so determined to somehow figure out a way to do this. That I go and I talk to my stake president and I say, I need to become a temple worker. Because in my mind at that time, the only way I can have the experience of being obedient to what I've learned is if I'm the guy at the altar praying. And so I say, I need to become a temple worker. Why? Well, because it's important to me and I need to. So I. He says, okay, I'll recommend you. I go become a temple worker. I become a full ordinance worker.

John Dehlin [01:15:31] At what age?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:15:32] This is me. I'm an instructor pilot in Oklahoma for the Air Force at the time. And I'm probably 24 or 5 years old. And during this time you Learned to fly F15s?

John Dehlin [01:15:43] And now you're.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:15:44] So not yet. I was a T38 instructor pilot. I just finished student pilot training. It was the fighter trainer. And they kept me there as an instructor pilot for three years so I could teach the new students. It was after that that I go fly a 15th. And so. And I'll add here, because it's worth adding the. The title of this interview, I think, has Denver Snefer's name in it. I'd never heard of Denver Snefer. I'd never read anything he'd written. And frankly, at this point in my life, I think maybe he was just starting to write the book the Second Comforter or something. But I. I'd not heard of it. So I find myself in the temple being instructed by some of the older men who are my trainers, the things I'm allowed to pray for at the altar. And you're allowed to pray for President Hinckley or Monson at the time. Probably Monson. I can't remember. It was about the time there was a transition there. You're allowed to pray for the president of the church around what year? This is probably 2008 or 9. So President Monson is the president of the church. You're allowed to pray for him. You're allowed to pray for the names of the people whose names are upon the altar. You're allowed to pray for the missionaries and maybe the youth of the church. Beyond that. Don't say anything. People's arms will get tired. They're old. And they have to repeat what you say. You keep it simple. And I said, yeah, yeah, copy. And I thought, well, there's a couple other things I'm going to pray for, too.

John Dehlin [01:17:02] You're a righteous rebel by this time.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:17:04] A righteous rebel. But the reason it was important for me to share some of the Background is because you have to understand the path I've been on for this to make any sense. So I find myself in the temple. I go to officiate at the altar in a temple, and I get to be the voice in the prayer. And I pray for the things that they've instructed me to pray for. And I also pray for a few other things, like coming to know the Lord in the flesh and that kind of thing, because it matters so much that I get to utter those words while praying in a certain manner.

John Dehlin [01:17:35] Now, you were praying for yourself to come to know the Lord in the flesh.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:17:38] No, I was careful. I'm more discreet than that. And I prayed in a way that I thought would be agreeable to the company, and it was. And I had people come up to me afterward and said, I've never heard anyone pray for some of these things in the temple. And that meant a lot to me. Thank you. And I thought, yeah, that's right. We need to be praying for some things. Right? And so I'm able to have the experience. And because I had done that and because I was still dissatisfied with. With my ability to freely express the feelings of my heart to God in that manner, I had a decision to make. And the decision was, can I pray this way in my home? And I knew what the church's answer was. The church's answer is absolutely not. And at this point, I live by myself.

John Dehlin [01:18:32] Yeah, bachelor pad. Right. I need to do the tour, dear. Prayer by yourself.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:18:35] And I'll tell you, I'd read enough Mormon history to understand that they were building altars in their homes. And there were instructions. So in the early days, the church, throughout the 19th century, there were instructions at the stake level for how to make your own garments, how to build an altar in your home, and how to. How wide it needed to be, how tall it needed to be.

John Dehlin [01:18:57] I have never heard of people building altars, but.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:19:01] So Mormon homes would have. They'd have a sacred place set aside that they would have an altar in their home where they would don the robes of the priesthood and they would offer up signs and they would pray,

John Dehlin [01:19:12] meaning the temple clothing.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:19:13] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:19:15] In their homes. In their homes with altars.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:19:17] You read.

John Dehlin [01:19:18] Now, is this Ogden Kraut stuff or is this.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:19:20] No, no, this is. This is. This is well documented. Wilford Woodruff's journals. In fact, I can't remember if it was Wilford Woodruff or Heber C. Kimball, but it's one of the two of them said every time we gathered together to Pray and donned the robes of the holy priesthood and offered up the signs of the holy priesthood. And this is in his journal. Anyone can go by this and read this. We were answered by God.

John Dehlin [01:19:43] Oh my God.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:19:44] Well, that means something to me because I want to be answered by God. And so I thought, I'm not going to build an altar in my home. I don't. That, that was, that was for me, even that was uncomfortable. And. But I thought I've got to somehow be able to do what I've been instructed by the Lord in the temple to do, which is pray unto him in a certain manner. And so I sat wrestling with the potential of dressing in my temple robes. This is the part that makes me cringe. I mean, this is so I apologize to those who are listening for particularly my family members for whom this might be uncomfortable.

John Dehlin [01:20:26] But people, people are loving it. We have 230 people signed in. That's a big number. Krista writes, this is so great, Matthew. Thank you for sharing about the true order of prayer. So people are enjoying.

Discovering the True Order of Prayer

Matthew Lohmeier [01:20:39] I'm not sharing too much about it, but I'll tell you, I'm not advocating that anyone do what I did. Let me just tell you my story though. So what I do is I ask, I tell God I am going to don the robes in my home. I am going to pray in the manner that I have been instructed in, which I have only ever done in a temple. And if I am doing something that is not pleasing to you, I hope you will tell me. And I understand that I run the risk of getting into trouble if anyone in the church knew that I was doing this. But it doesn't matter to me what they say. I had already come to a point where don't trust in the men. Come to me. And so I did it. And it was. Boy, that was a frightful moment. This is me. Rebel righteous rebel me. I am fully active in the LDS Church. I'm willing to sustain the brethren from the lowest to the greatest. But it doesn't matter to me if they tell me I can't do this because in my temple covenants, God has told me to do it and I'm willing to do it. So I do it. And the fruit were good. Okay, wait, so I'm not.

John Dehlin [01:21:36] How do you pray alone in the true order of prayer? Because I think of in a circle and everybody's putting their elbow on the person next to them.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:21:43] Yeah. Without getting into the details of how I did what that took some deliberate consideration about how it is and I'll tell you what helped me was reading early Mormon history and finding out how they went about things. There were different circumstances in which they.

John Dehlin [01:22:03] So you had to kind of figure it out.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:22:08] Yeah. And there's the signs and tokens etc that we learn that we covenant not to disclose. There's more meaning to those in symbolism to me than just the action of doing certain things with your body, body language, making signs. There was actually symbolism involved there that indicated to God your preparedness to approach him at the veil. And so without talking about that, I understood what I needed to accomplish in order to approach the Lord in that way. And then to the best of my ability, I replicated what I saw in the temple as an individual without having other people around me. So for what it's worth, that's what I'm willing to say about it. You said the results were good, the result was good. And what I'll say about that was that I had a witness that my actions were pleasing to God. Not because, and this is my conviction, not because I had offered any signs, not because I had said certain key words, but because he knew in my heart I was willing so much to humble myself and disregard what men said and to do everything that I understood was within my power to approach God. And that was pleasing to Him. And I had a witness, not that I needed to continue to do that, but that my efforts were pleasing. And if I pursue that path, I will be successful.

John Dehlin [01:23:33] Right now I can see you tearing up a little bit. Can you talk about what emotions you're feeling and why?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:23:44] I'll say that it hasn't ever stopped. But from the time in 19, from the time in between my junior and senior year when I asked God about Joseph and get a clear answer to today, there are ups and downs in everyone's life. And you have moments when you feel closer to God and moments when you feel like he's distant. I have not had a break in communication with him where I don't feel like he's not willing to answer my prayers. It might take months and it might take years depending on what the issue was. But the reason I got emotional is because that was one more data point in my journey where I felt like the Lord was smiling down upon me and saying, continue what you're doing. And so nothing happened. I mean, I didn't pierce the veil in the day in which I decide I'm going to don temple robes in my house. But what happened was one more assurance that God is pleased with those who seek to live by the knowledge that they've been given. And so that was important for me, too. So I guess those are the things that, as a basis, as a foundation, I feel are important for me to share about my personal journey before I get to a point where I discover this guy named Denver Snuffer. So that kind of. I don't know if you have any questions about any of the things that I've shared up to this point, but I think that kind of takes us up to. And I'll mention. So Sarah and I are married.

John Dehlin [01:25:22] Did you tell her? Sarah? I practiced the true order of prayer in my temple clothes alone sometimes. And then did you feel like you were withholding things from her and not being fully honest? Was there a dilemma there?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:25:38] Sure. Great question. I don't have any recollection of having, you know, when we start dating again for the first time. Hey, let me tell you what I've been up to for the last six years in my private life. But we always have had from day one when we met, we've always had, and throughout our dating years, a very open dialogue about our beliefs. She knew, well back then, when we first started dating while we were students in college, that I was on a path of seeking for these things. And I think that surprised her a little bit. But I think it was something she welcomed and she was supportive of it and she was believing. And. And so we were. I was very open with her and sharing personal experiences that I'd had. When we started dating again six years later, I was still very open with her. And at that time, I was reading Denver stuff, and I was open with her, and I shared with her, I am reading this guy's stuff. It's very good.

John Dehlin [01:26:39] Before you started dating her the second time.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:26:41] Yeah, while when we started dating the second time, I shared with her some of the things that I was reading and she was leery. He was a member in good standing at that point. But I think the topic about which he was writing, you have this cover of a book and the young girl looking up and the second comforter conversing with the Lord through the veil. Temple language. Are you supposed to say that? That's temple language. I think that makes people leery. And so I think she was cautious. She didn't start reading his books, in fact, until after we were married several months later.

John Dehlin [01:27:20] Okay, so you discovered Denver Snuffer's writings and teachings prior to marrying Sarah?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:27:28] I did.

John Dehlin [01:27:31] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

Part 2 of 4 · Ep. 840

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. So can you talk about when you first learned about Denver?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:00:44] Yeah, as a part of my book Buying Disease, I was buying books constantly and I was on Amazon. In fact, this will tell you this will sound cheesy. I think I was googling how to receive the second comforter. I didn't care if they were Mormon or not. I wanted to hear about people who had met Christ. I had come to a point in my life where I believed that even Muslims were having encounters with Christ and converting to Christianity and it had nothing to do with the LDS Church. So I was googling and I was brought to an Amazon book called how to make youe Calling an Election. Sure. By a couple. I think their last name was Clausen. It was a little skinny white book. And when I saw it, now remember, as you called it, rebellion. As rebellious as I was being, I'm very active in the church. I've been conditioned by my reading of Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie at this point. And I'm very careful and I'm very deliberate. And so I see a book like Making youg An Election Shirt and my first thought is, if you're talking about it, you don't know what you're talking about. If you do know what you're talking about, you're not going to write a book about it. I'd been conditioned to think that way, but I still had to buy the book. And so I bought the Clausen book. And as I bought the Clausen book, there was one of those recommendations that shows up at the bottom of the screen and it says if those who read or liked this book would also like this book. And it had Denver Snuffer's book, the Second Comforter. And I'm reading the description of that and it's like 400 something pages. And I thought, holy smokes, how do you write a book about this topic that's that many pages. I know what's going to be in these books. I know it's going to be a recycle, repeat, rinse, you know, rinse repeat Bruce McConkie Joseph Smith's teachings as they show up in teachings. I know it's good. They're going to quote from Roy Doxie in a talk that he gave in General Conference. I'm familiar with all the material, so I order both books and I get both books. And the first book that I decide to read is the skinnier of the two by the Clausens. And it met my expectation. It's a bunch of recycled quotes, and they didn't seem to have any additional insight that they could share with me about the process. And so I wrote my name in the book and the date in the book like I always did, and I stored it on my Excel spreadsheet of all the books that I was buying and reading, and I stuck it on the shelf. Then I opened Denver's book. And within a chapter, he has at the beginning. I don't know if you've seen in the second comforter, the book, the second comforter.

John Dehlin [00:03:24] And where is that in the number?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:03:25] It's the first of the books that he wrote. I think he wrote it in 2006. It is now 2009. And I've discovered the book early, 2009, I think. And he starts every chapter with this italicized vignette about his personal life, kind of this journey from childhood all through adulthood about his time in the Air Force. And then what follows the italicized vignette at the beginning of a chapter is a simple. I mean, and I mean simple, like what Nephi says about faith. Here's a chapter about repentance. Here's a chapter about simple stuff. And it was so compelling to read. I've read hundreds of books at this point. And there was something that caused me to turn the pages of this book. And I knew from the very beginning that I was anticipating that when I get to the end of this book, at some point, this man is going to bear witness that he's met Christ. And that witness was so compelling to me to look for. And so I read every book, every page of that book with anticipation. And I get to the end of the book, and he bears that witness. And I believe that he was telling the truth. And I went to work the next day flying jets. I went to work the next day and start sharing the book with pilots that I work with who are lesbian. And they're reading the books and they're loving it, and they're saying, this is great. One of my friends who happens to be out of the Air Force and lives in Heber City. Now he says, we've got to take a trip out to Utah and meet this guy. I said, yes, we do. And we never actually. We never make that happen. I do make that happen, and I happen to be in Utah. I think my brother was living here at the time and might have been in dental school. And so I was visiting with him and some friends. And I decide that I'm going to swing by Denver Snuffer's Attorney office. And for the listeners, I don't recommend that course of action, by the way. I'll just throw that out there. That's probably not a good idea. And it's borderline an invasion of someone's privacy. But I was determined. And so I stopped in the office, and I had already been reading, I think, his second book, Nephi's Isaiah. And I'm convinced that there's something to this. And I go up to the secretary at the desk in his office and I say, hey, I'm here to see Denver. And I'm hoping to convey to her that I know who it is that I'm coming to meet with, and he's expecting me. And she is apparently used to that at this point already because she was very skeptical of me. And with a raised eyebrow, she said, does he know who you are? And I said, no, he doesn't. She goes back and she talks to him and says, there's this guy here to see you. And he invites me back to his office. And so this is my introduction to Denver Snuffer's writings, my introduction to the man. And I walk into his office, and he is not wearing a white shirt and tie, and he's got a beard. And it just about blew me away because the only people who know God have white shirts on, and they wear a tie and they have no facial hair.

First Encounters with the Snuffer Movement

John Dehlin [00:06:27] Just like Jesus.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:06:29] Just like Jesus.

John Dehlin [00:06:30] I'm kidding.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:06:31] And so I look him up and down, and you have to. And you'd expect that I'm being judgmental of this person because I believe what he's written. I'm expecting he's telling the truth. But my purpose in coming is to press him on the matter and to poke and to ask questions, do a Mormon Stories interview with him in the brief amount of time that I get. And so I look at him, and he's got this plaid shirt on. He's got a belt that's a little bit too long for him. It's one of those leather belts that's kind of thin leather straps that are woven together, you know, and. And he's wearing tennis shoes with a slacks, and he looks so casual. And I think this is the guy not expecting it. And he sits, he says, hey, have a seat. Very nice. And he starts pointing to the. He's got these diplomas and pictures and things on his wall. And he's telling me about where he got his law degrees. And I'm thinking, I don't care any. I don't care about your law profession. And I'm polite, and I'm sitting there listening, and he talks for about five minutes, and, oh, and then I studied with Dallin Oaks, whatever he was saying. And then he kind of. He didn't look at me once as he's pointing that stuff out. And then he looks at me and he says, why are you here? And I almost wondered in the moment, I thought, are you testing me? Like, do you want to know if I care about all this stuff? And I told him. I just ignored what he had said. And I said, I'm here because I read your book, the Second Comforter, and I'm here because I want to ask about your witness of Christ. And I think that changed his demeanor a little bit, and he became a little bit more serious. And he says, yeah, what questions do you have? And I said, I want you to share with me your witness. And I want to. I'm here to. I basically let him know I'm here to judge you. I'm here because I believe what you've written, but I want to meet the man and look into your eyes, basically. And he was okay with that and without sharing everything that he related. And I. And I have recorded everything that he related. He.

John Dehlin [00:08:34] You mean audio?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:08:35] No, no. I went down and I journaled what he had shared with me. We met for about 20 minutes. He was late to a meeting that he was going to, but he was willing to take the time to sit and answer my questions. He shared with me a vision that he had had of Christ's resurrection. And that was an emotional thing for me. Here I was, as active as I could possibly be in an LDS church, which I was utterly true to, aching every general conference to have someone tell me what I heard this guy who doesn't even look like those guys, share with me in person. And it was absolutely important and moving to me to hear his testimony. And then he had to go. And he told me something I'll never forget. He said he knew nothing about me. I didn't share a thing about me that I can recall. He said, the path that you are choosing to Pursue will become increasingly lonely until you will have very few people you can talk to. And he says, keep reading what I'm writing. And then I shook hands and I walked out the door. He had just started his blog, and so I went home and I read his four blog posts or whatever it was, and I started reading the blog posts. I continued reading his books until I had read, up until today, day after day for a decade, every blog post he's ever written, every book he's ever authored. It depends on how you count them. There's 16 of them on my bookshelf. And no one has written more extensively about Mormonism in an impactful way than Denver Snefer, in my opinion. And that's my opinion.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] Not even Joseph Fielding Smith or Bruce R. McConkie.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:10:29] And to be clear, Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce McConkey were fundamental to my understanding and a foundation that they laid for me. They taught, seek the face of Christ. You look in Millennial Messiah, you look in A New Witness for the Articles of Faith. You look in Mormon doctrine. Bruce R. McConkie helped lay the foundation for the things I was seeking for. And he laid a foundation that helped me to accept the teachings of a Denver snuffer, frankly. But no one has expounded on the scriptures pertaining to Mormonism in the way, in my view, that Denver snuffer has. And I've read, basically, in my view, all there is to read about Mormonism. And so I go back and sit in my car and I start to write down every word I can remember that he has that he had shared with me. And the thought as clearly as can be was spoken into my mind. That is a true prophet. So that was my introduction to Denver, and. And I've come to recognize that voice as the voice of God.

John Dehlin [00:11:38] What voice?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:11:38] The voice that came into my mind when I sat in my car that spoke to me saying, that's the true prophet.

John Dehlin [00:11:46] Was that the first time or was that the same voice that bore witness about Joseph Smith?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:11:51] Same voice.

John Dehlin [00:11:52] It was the same voice.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:11:53] Same voice, Yep. It's been the same voice all throughout.

John Dehlin [00:11:57] Is it an audible voice or just a feeling or. I have thoughts to your mind?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:12:01] Yeah, I've personally never. That I can recall. I might be. I've never heard an audible voice.

John Dehlin [00:12:06] So it's a thought to your mind?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:12:08] I take that back. I have heard an audible voice, but it was by way of warning, like a watch out kind of a voice. I've heard that a couple of times. But as far as revelatory experiences are concerned. I have not heard an audible voice speak to me, but I have had a voice come into my mind and say things to me. And. And there's a difference.

John Dehlin [00:12:33] Is it known? Does Denver can you quote has he written or spoken publicly about his witnesses? And if so, can you tell us what you're allowed to tell us about what his experiences have been?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:12:48] Yeah, luckily for me, I can say whatever I want about it because everything I've learned about what he's taught has been publicly written. So the first place that I can recall that he shares about his witness is in the book the Second Comforter all throughout. To the astute reader who's paying attention to what he's actually saying in all of his books, he is bearing his witness that the things I'm teaching you, I am not teaching you because because I've studied so much, I just know this stuff now, but because I've learned from heaven certain things. And so now I have a different lens through which I'm viewing the Scriptures. And I'm now able to teach you things from the Scriptures because I've learned and seen these things for myself. And so that was my perception as I read his blog, as I read his books, is that he was often bearing testimony about his experiences, but not in a subtle LDS Church leadership kind of way where he says, I know capital letters by words too sacred to share that I've had that God lives. It was by teaching us light and truth. And he was able to continually teach, year after year, things that expanded my view of the gospel in a way that I knew that he had experienced them for himself. Here's a good analogy. Having flown the F15, if I had a pretender come to me and say, here's what it feels like to fly an F15 and here's what the engines sound like when you are pulling an ING turn at corner velocity and you're in full afterburner. Here's what it sounds like and feels like. If he's had the experience and he's genuinely describing the thing, then I can say, having had experiences with that myself, I know this person is telling the truth. They've had the experience. If someone who's read a lot about it but hasn't had the experience tries to tell me what it feels like and sounds like to be pulling that turn a corner velocity, or to start up the engines on an F15 and sit up there, look over your shoulder in a BFM engagement, I can tell that you're not speaking from experience. You're speaking because You've read about it a lot. And I don't know if that's an apt example, but there's something subtle and a nuance to the experience of something that when people have had the experience and they talk about it, you can tell that there's a subtle difference in their ability to describe the experience. And after having heard someone write about and talk about having had the experience, I can go sit in general conference all day and listen to what they have to teach. And as good of messages as they are, they're not the authentic thing. And so that is for me, yet again, a data point. I've now encountered something that tastes good, as it were. It's delicious. And I can now, because of the proximity of the experience, have a better lens of discernment that I can then impose upon the world I'm seeing around me, in particular inside the LDS Church.

John Dehlin [00:16:06] So just like Joseph Smith publishes an account or multiple accounts, but he basically says, I was grove of trees, upstate New York, God and Jesus came down. You know, this is what they said to me. Has Denver given that level of detail about his witnesses? And if so, what can you tell us about what witnesses he's received and the details around it?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:16:33] Yeah, there's a great website. I know there's a lot of websites flying around these days, it's called Restoration Archives. And they've done a good job compiling every book, talk, audio file, PDF file that Denver has ever produced publicly. And in there you can find his accounts. There are several talks that he has given in the recent couple of years at some of the conferences that we've had where he shares visions that he's had of the Second Coming. He most recently, in his third of three talks to the Christian world out in Atlanta, he read from his book, Come Let Us Adore him, about his personal witness of the Atonement. And that's a place where you can go look to and read an account, both which I think, if I'm not mistaken, he took word for word out of his journal and published it. He shared in that book his eyewitness account of the Atonement and Christ's suffering in Gethsemane. And he shared his eyewitness account of the resurrection, the morning of the Resurrection, in a talk that he gave. And Boise, I believe, a year ago. He shares with the congregation there, if I'm not mistaken, his witness of Christ of having received his experience. And then he shares his vision of the Second Coming. And so those are a few places at least where listeners could go to and actually read or listen to the audio of instances when he shared the details of those experiences.

John Dehlin [00:18:19] Okay, so I just posted restorationarchives.com to the to the Facebook feed.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:18:25] Great.

Life Inside the McConkie Family Circle

John Dehlin [00:18:26] All right, so you leave that. It's 2009. Ish.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:18:31] 2009 is when I first encountered 2008. Or 9 is when I first.

John Dehlin [00:18:34] Can you leave that encounter with the witness that Denver Snuffer's a prophet?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:18:37] I do.

John Dehlin [00:18:38] And this is prior to marrying Sarah?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:18:40] It is.

John Dehlin [00:18:41] Okay. So how did things go from there in your story?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:18:46] Yeah, so I continue. For those that would be familiar with Denver's blogging, they would know. And I think Kirk and Karen point this out in their interview, that for a period, and that period lasts at least a year, it seems, if not two, he is posting every day, twice a day, morning and night. And that gives you gospel food for thought every single day of your life. And so I'm reading that every single day I'm praying about things. And what that did is it both expanded my view, but it also gave me encouragement that the path I had already been on was in fact a path that I should continue on. And at that point in my life, I have absolutely no intentions of ever. If you would have said I wasn't going to be a member of the church someday, wouldn't have believed you absolutely not have thought about it. I was in fact always in callings in the church and always teaching in the church and was content to do so forever. But I also was interested in teaching things that I was learning I wasn't teaching. Denver Snuffer but in fact, if I remember correctly, early on, there was nothing taboo about sharing a Denver Snuffer book with somebody because he's a member in good standing. It's a topic we don't talk a lot about, but most people aren't interested in reading new books, especially about a topic like that. So Sarah and I get married in 2011. We're married in May of 2011 in the Mount Timpanogos Temple. the time at which we've been married, we've been dating again for several months at least. Well, we dated for several months, got engaged, and then got married. Several months later, we were sealed in the temple by her uncle, Joseph Fieldy McConkey, who was a sealer in the temple.

John Dehlin [00:20:40] Was he pretty old by that point?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:20:42] Yeah, it was within a couple of years of his passing.

John Dehlin [00:20:46] He had taught on the BYU religion faculty for many, many years. He was the oldest son of Bruce R. McConkie.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:20:54] He was the oldest surviving son of Bruce McConkie. And there was a Bruce Jr. Who I think died at just several weeks old.

John Dehlin [00:21:00] Okay. How many total kids do you know, Bruce?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:21:03] Nine children.

John Dehlin [00:21:04] They had nine.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:21:04] They did.

John Dehlin [00:21:05] Okay. And is there anything you can tell us about marrying into the McConkey family, or is it just normal like marrying any family?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:21:12] It's normal like marrying into any family, and it is abnormal in some ways. One of the. There haven't been any people I've met who enjoy sitting around talking about the Gospel more than the McConkie family. And so that's been terrific. In fact, I'm guessing, I think, if I'm not mistaken, maybe Sarah's dad would even have recollections of when he was growing up, sitting on the doorstep with Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce McConkie, his father, and listening to them talk about the gospel. I mean, so there's a different culture in the McConkie home than is typical of even, even, unfortunately, modern Mormon families. When you go home teaching today in the LDS Church, it's almost like you kind of cringe when you say, okay, I gotta share a message with you before I leave, because I just asked you about your family and your work and your job and yada yada. But there's also the spiritual message part that we've got to share with you. And that's not true of every family, but that's true a lot of the time. It's not even commonplace to sit. And the focus of your conversations just happens to revolve around church history of the gospel. But that is the case in the McConkie home. And so that's been a really neat thing about marrying into the McConkie family. Sarah's siblings. Sarah's the seventh of nine children, and her siblings, both older and younger, are all studious. And they care about the gospel and they know their scriptures. And so that's fun to be with a group of people who know their scriptures. And it's also challenging if your views don't line up with their views because they know their scriptures. And so some of the best conversations I've had in the recent couple of years have been with one of Sarah's brothers who knows the scriptures very well, and he knows Mormon history very well. That's been fun and interesting.

John Dehlin [00:23:09] So they would have grown up with family. Evening and scripture study. Did Mark serve as a mission president? Was he stake president, Bishop? The father?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:23:19] He's been a stake president a couple of times. The father is Sarah's father. And, yeah, they had a. And this is my understanding of their family culture. But have a. They always have family prayers as they gather for dinner time. I don't know about the family home evening piece, if they did or didn't, but gospel study, scripture study is common. And the common method of scripture study or discussion is that Mark would teach the family. So I don't know if that's typical of McConkie families in general, but that's how Sarah's family worked. And it's always wonderful. You go knowing that you're going to be instructed well in scripture or in church history.

John Dehlin [00:24:08] Were there any interesting family lore about Bruce Armaconki or his role in the church or anything that you would remember that would be worth mentioning? I'll give you an example. So I had a roommate at BYU named Russ Waterson. I think he's a stake president in Denver area. He took BYU religion class from a Margaret Pope, who was Bruce Armaconki's sister. Is that right?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:24:40] I think I know who Margaret Pope is, but I don't know if she's Bruce's sister or. I think she might be.

John Dehlin [00:24:45] Okay, so.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:24:46] But I might be mistaken.

John Dehlin [00:24:48] So what he said is she would, she would teach that Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith were blood descendants of Jesus and that because, you know, because Bruce R. McConkie married Joseph Fielding Smith's daughter. Right.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:25:10] He did.

John Dehlin [00:25:11] Who had the blood of Joseph Smith through Hyrum. Right. That, like McConkie children, carried the blood of Christ in them. And that was like taught as a BYU course, like True or False. Joseph Smith had the blood of literal blood of Christ. So is that a, is that a McConkie family teaching or. I got that wrong.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:25:36] Not that I've. So from my experience, I've never heard the McConkie family discuss those things.

John Dehlin [00:25:42] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:25:43] I have heard that before from reading Mormon history. And so if you read some of what Heber C. Kimball and Bruce, I mean, Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff are saying and are recording in their journals and are talking about in their meetings. They're talking about that. But no, that's. As far as the McConkie family is concerned. There are simple vignettes about home life and that kind of thing that I've occasionally heard. But, but usually the setting in which we are in a family setting, if there were things that were more of a personal nature, I wouldn't be able to share those here anyway. But as far as that kind of, that related kind of teaching that maybe is part of early Mormon history or lore, as you might Call it whether it's true or false. I've not heard that kind of thing discussed in the McConkie.

John Dehlin [00:26:41] So when they. You say they're noted for their deep discussions about gospel doctrine. Were you ever part of those? Have you been a part of those?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:26:49] Yeah, often.

John Dehlin [00:26:50] Okay. It just doesn't go there.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:26:53] Usually not, no. They're typically deeply rooted in the scriptures. They're rooted in well documented church history items. And so that kind of stuff would probably either be viewed as speculation or as too sensitive or sacred. And this is my opinion. Again, this isn't something I talked about with this issue that you brought up, but things of a speculative nature are not conversations that I've really typically had with the McConkie family. I'm guessing that in the privacy of their conversations, they too engage in wonderings and speculations and things. But in a family setting where maybe the father is teaching the family, it's usually doctrine. You picture Bruce McConkie at the pulpit teaching doctrine, and in a family setting, it's more comfortable. But There is Father McConkie who will teach his family doctrine from the scriptures. And that's the culture of the home.

John Dehlin [00:28:05] Wow, that's intense.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:28:06] And it's good. It's really wonderful gospel discussion.

John Dehlin [00:28:13] Have you ever discussed with them? And we'll get right back to your story, but I like to set a little bit of context because you're marrying into the family, and that's interesting to a lot of people. You know, the sort of thing taught by Greg Prince or written about by Greg Prince about Bruce Armaconki's book not being warmly accepted by David O. McKay and him being asked to rewrite it and that sort of thing, and then him making changes to Mormon doctrine over time. Is that the sort of thing you would have discussed with the McConkie family?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:28:49] Not that I can recall. I don't remember. And I've known them for, you know, Sarah and I were married in 2011, and it was at that time that I more frequently have visited their homes.

John Dehlin [00:28:59] So six years.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:29:00] Yep. But if we've had any discussion about that in particular, I don't think that it really developed into anything or it was maybe passing in nature. So anything I know about the facts as I understand them relative to the publishing of Mormon doctrine are from my studies of the matter and not from discussions.

John Dehlin [00:29:25] Have you read David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:29:27] I have read parts of that book and there have been some other compilations of letters and things put together. I think David Dye, in fact, has put together a book about the evolution of the publication of the Book of Mormon doctrine. In there includes letters from David O. McKay and interactions that David O. McKay is having with Markey Peterson and Marion Romney, if I'm not mistaken. And just some of the discussion surrounding the initial publication of the book. I know that they go to Markey Peterson and say, hey, come back to us. Maybe Marion G. Romney's will tell us what all the errors in the book are, as though he's the authority and not Bruce. Now, Bruce wasn't a member of the quorum of the 12 at the time that he first published the book. And there was 1,067 errors that were discovered in the first publication of Mormon doctrine. That's all, of course, subjective and according to the other guys who critiqued the book. And so I know that the book. Had he been asked to remove the book from publication, which he did. And then later, I think in 1966, if I'm not mistaken, he is actually allowed to republish the book again with David O. McKay's consent as long as some certain edits were made to the book with the oversight of Spencer W. Kimball. That's my recollection of that, but that isn't something I've ever talked about in the home with.

John Dehlin [00:30:57] How can you not talk about that? That was the first thing I would want to say. Hey, father in law Mark, I got some questions for you.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:31:03] Well, maybe after they hear this interview, we might be talking about it a little bit. All right.

John Dehlin [00:31:08] Okay. So you marry into the McConkie home. Joseph Fielding McConkie performs the wedding ceremony. What is your feeling of the McConkie family as you're marrying into it? Did you realize. You obviously realized you were marrying the equivalent of Mormon royalty, right?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:31:24] Yeah, my feelings towards the Mormon family were. The McConkie family are very good and I think they had good feelings toward me, got along very well. These are. I'll keep pointing you back to Mark Jr. Because you've mentioned him and now his name's been mentioned. Your. Your relationship with him and your interactions with him that are so down to earth and so real and so nice. This is my relationship with the McConkey family.

John Dehlin [00:31:50] Is he the oldest?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:31:50] He is the oldest of Sarah's siblings. Okay. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:31:54] He was nice to you. You passed the test.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:31:57] I love.

John Dehlin [00:31:58] Did you pass his test? Did he. Did he give you his consent?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:32:01] I don't remember there being a test, but. But I love him and I think he loves me and he's wonderful.

John Dehlin [00:32:08] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:32:09] So. But yeah, we were sealed in the temple. That was a very good experience.

John Dehlin [00:32:17] Why Tippadogos?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:32:19] That was the temple that Joseph Fielding McConkey was a sealer in.

John Dehlin [00:32:24] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:32:24] And so we got.

John Dehlin [00:32:25] Is that near his home?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:32:27] Yeah, you know, I don't.

John Dehlin [00:32:29] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:32:29] I don't. It's not real close, but. Typical of the McConkie family. They're teachers, and so he taught during our temple sealing. And that was beautiful. It was really beautiful. And so we've recorded that. And then we were sealed. And then typical Mormon sealing, Mormon activity in the church. So that's all from an outsider's view, looking in, as it were, normal.

John Dehlin [00:33:03] Okay, so you marry Sarah, and then how does your faith progress?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:33:10] Yeah, I personally continue to follow the same path. I introduce her to Denver's writings. She is willing to read them. She reads the first of the books, the Second Comforter, and she likes it and finds it compelling. And I think from there, she and I continue to have open dialogue about it. And she continues to read his books just like I had been. And so I was a couple of years ahead of her as far as what I had been reading. But I think she's. I don't know that she's read all of his books, but she's read many of them. And she, like me, was believing when she was introduced to what. What it was that he was writing. In fact, I'll share this. She gave the book, the Second Comforter, to her father as a gift and asked that he would read it to Mark Senior.

John Dehlin [00:34:01] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:34:03] And he agreed to read it. And he read it, and to my recollection, enjoyed the book. But after the passage of some time and some discussions, I think, with folks, he had come to discover that this is, in fact, not a good man, a dangerous man. He is on the chopping block, and he will soon be excommunicated from the church for apostasy because none of that had happened at the time when Sarah and I were married in 2011. And so, of course, they were very concerned about what Sarah and I were reading and who we were reading.

John Dehlin [00:34:44] Did they express that concern? They did talk about that.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:34:47] I'll talk about it briefly. But of course, as you could imagine, they expressed. Sarah's father expressed in writing to Sarah, that you're. I'm basically warning you against continuing down the path that you're on and reading and learning from this teacher. And if you don't know already, he's really getting into trouble with his leadership, and he's going to be excommunicated. And so you're following the wrong guy, basically, is what he warns in the letter. And that was disappointing, of course, to Sarah, because she believes what she's reading and she was hoping that her father would be compelled to believe that this guy is telling the truth about his witness. And so as time goes on, more and more it seems we are convinced that Denver not only is telling the truth, but has things to teach us. And on the other hand, some of our family members, and this is both sides of the family, my family and her family are increasingly concerned about the path that we are choosing and what it is that we're reading.

John Dehlin [00:35:54] Who in your family was concerned about you in particular?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:35:59] I have a younger brother who has been concerned and vocal and we've had some dialogue and discussion over the years about what it is that I was learning and believing. And I think some of it he's found interesting, and at other times he's not found it compelling. And so he disagreed with our path.

John Dehlin [00:36:18] Is he the dentist or doctor?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:36:19] He is, yeah. He's a, he's currently a dentist in or he's in an oral surgery internship down in San Antonio.

John Dehlin [00:36:25] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:36:27] And I'll break in at this point to say if we get a good breaking point for the end of a part one here, I'd appreciate it for a restroom break.

John Dehlin [00:36:35] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:36:36] Say that immediately or close to immediately.

John Dehlin [00:36:41] All right. Well, it looks like we are going to take a break on Mormon Stories podcast. Why don't you. Why don't. I'm going to take a couple, I'm going to read a couple comments and take a couple questions. Why don't you go ahead and unclip your microphone? 12:30, 12:15. All right, so we're gonna do, we're gonna do about 45 more minutes of this segment and I am going to really quickly read some comments and questions from the audience. Leonard writes, margaret Pope was a neighbor of mine growing up and she is the sister of Bruce R. McConkie. Thank you, Leonard, for confirming that. Let's see, Sharon asks, is the purpose of Mormon stories to help strengthen our faith or to purport anti stuff? The last two I've seen weren't very faith promoting. I know information is good and maybe I've missed more positive stories. Well, Sharon, I guess faith promoting is in the eye of the beholder. I think there's a lot of people that feel like the Strongs and Matt are very faithful people. I tend to agree. I mean, they take the Book of Mormon and their faith in God very, very seriously. And they're Encouraging faith in Jesus. So from the standpoint of faithful, I guess it just depends. Mormon Stories doesn't have a position on whether people should stay LDS or leave the LDS Church. What we want people to do is to have as much information as they can to make informed decisions about their lives. So we allow people to tell stories from all different angles, from faithful, active, conservative, orthodox believing members to more conservative members. We interviewed Mormon fundamentalists. Ann Wilde was someone we interviewed early on who was a polygamist. We'll interview people following Denver snuffer sort of philosophies or theories or teachings, but we also interview people who have left the church, or we interview progressive Mormons, Mormons that don't believe some or all of what the church teaches or don't practice some or all of what the church says you should do. So liberal and progressive Mormons all the way to people who have left the church and are atheists and don't believe in anything. So, yeah, we just want. Our goal at the Open Stories foundation is to give people as much information as they can so that they can make informed decisions about their lives and then whether they stay in or out of the church. Faithful, not faithful. Believing in God and Christ, not. That's not our business. Our business is to have the conversations that frankly, members of the church during church are too scared to have because people deserve to hear different points of view. They deserve to have open, candid discussions and to know everything about what they're giving their time, their money, their energy, their commitment, their lives to. And so I hope that answers your question. John, can you bring Mike Norton in on the conversation, please? That's a weird. That's a weird request from Steven, my buddy. Steven, really quickly, someone's asking us to confirm or deny the authenticity of the recently released Mormon leaks McConkie documents. Are we gonna talk about that later or do you want to answer that question?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:40:14] I wasn't planning to, but I'm happy to answer the question.

John Dehlin [00:40:16] Okay, go ahead.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:40:17] The authenticity of them. Yeah, they're authentic.

John Dehlin [00:40:20] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:40:21] And I'll say it was what was released generally.

John Dehlin [00:40:24] This was Mormon leaks, Ryan McKnight and his, you know, cohort.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:40:29] Yeah, I haven't read all of the documents that have been released. I don't think my wife has either. But we have per through those documents to see what it is that's shown up. And I know they've been released or leaked in two different installments. And if I'm not mistaken, there's at least dozens of documents. They're typically unpublished sermons or talks that he was preparing or potentially books or papers or ensign articles or what have you that he had prepared that were never published. And anytime there is an expectation of privacy of certain materials and that is not met or it is violated, of course a family would take that as a blow. And so the materials there. And in saying this, it's not surprising it's captured in the leaks themselves. They came from a diary of one of the McConkey family members. And that diary, I think was probably shared with other family members in the years past and maybe by a disc or something. And then those journal entries and unpublished sermons that were shared with family because they wouldn't spread those abroad, they'd only share those with family, were then shared with other family members who then potentially ultimately shared those with friends who happened to feel like it would be a real good idea to leak those now. So the family was aware that that had happened. I think you even see on the leaks website that there is some dialogue with someone in the McConkey family and, or their attorney, and there's a discussion about trying to take those documents down and off the website. And I don't know that they ever have been. I think they're still up there on the website.

John Dehlin [00:42:33] And the McConkie family feels. What about those documents being shared?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:42:39] I think in one sense it's just fine that they're shared because a lot of the teachings are things that you, if you've read Bruce McConkie, have already been exposed to or familiar with. There's nothing earth shattering in what's been released, but I think it's just simply that privacy expectation that they might have had that, hey, these were in my journal. How did they end up on this guy's website? And because of that, that's just, that's troubling and it's hurtful. And so that's my perception anyways. And really the only people that Sarah and I spend most of our time with is her family, her parents, because we live in Colorado Springs with them. But I haven't talked to Sarah's siblings about, you know, their thoughts or feelings about that. I think there was, of course, a reaction initially for a week or two, but I haven't heard any chatter or discussion about it in the home at all since then. I think they've kind of just let it go, moved on.

Keeping New Beliefs Hidden from Family

John Dehlin [00:43:35] Okay, so going back to your story, Sarah shares the Denver Snuffer book with her dad, Mark. Yep. Who, who you say has been a stake president a couple times, he likes the teachings based on your recollection. But then when he inquires to Salt Lake, he gets the word that Denver's a marked man and that you should stay away. Talk about how, I mean, that's, I mean, obviously there's nothing more important to McConkie's than faith and religion. And there's nothing more important to you than faith or religion. You're the son in law. If from their perspective, you're dragging her down to hell, so to speak, you know, and you're living in the same town as them. So talk about how things progress as you're becoming more and more believers and the in laws are concerned. Probably deeply concerned.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:44:31] Yeah. I'll make a couple of corrections, I think. So we weren't living in Colorado Springs at the time that Sarah shares that book. We are now.

John Dehlin [00:44:40] Where were you?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:44:41] Because we're military. We've moved around quite a bit.

John Dehlin [00:44:43] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:44:44] So we've to be honest, I mean, we were living in Oklahoma when we got married, then we lived in Texas for a little bit, then we lived in Oregon, then we lived in Japan and now then we moved to Colorado. Okay. Hopping around. And so we've been hopping around. And to be fair to Sarah's dad, who read the book and I said he liked it, he also did share with us, it's not without flaw. So he took issue with some of the, I think doctrinal ideas in the book, but not the overall premise of the book. And you mentioned that he talked to Salt Lake. That's not necessarily accurate. He is having conversations with, I think family and friends about the book, wherever they might have been. And in the course of those conversations, I think is turned off quite a bit.

John Dehlin [00:45:35] Thank you.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:45:36] From the book. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so, but because one of the questions that we've been asked by family and friends, and not just once or twice, but throughout the past couple of years, is why were you so secretive with your beliefs? When you try and share something with those that you love and they oppose

John Dehlin [00:46:01] it, who are you secretive to first?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:46:04] So family and friends felt like when they found out, years after years go by and they find out, hey, you're not members of the LDS church anymore. What's going on? You mean you believed this, that and the other? How come you've never shared that with us? How come you were so secretive about your path or your beliefs?

John Dehlin [00:46:23] Okay. Before you get there, you're telling your father in law you're sharing the book with him.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:46:28] Well, so yeah, you've asked how does that kind of progress? And so I'M gonna. I'm jumping forward a little bit to kind of paint. I'm gonna paint backwards a little bit here, but. So one of the questions people have asked is, why have you been so secretive? Now rewind back to when we're trying to share a book with family. We gave that book to several people, different individuals. We gave it to family, we gave it to friends, we gave it to co workers because it was so impactful to us. And when those that you love the most are openly opposed to and share with you and warn you about the path that you're on and tell you that they're not interested in what it is that you shared with them, in one sense, there is absolutely no good reason to continue to press them about your beliefs. I don't care that you don't want to know about this. I'm going to continue to tell you about it and you're going to believe it one day. There's no utility in trying to push your beliefs on someone. And so when you're met with opposition, what that naturally tends to do is to have you practice your religion in private. It tends to make you not want to continue to bring it up at dinner tables, and you don't want to continue recommending new books. And so months would go by where we don't have any conversation with my family or Sarah's family about what it is we're reading, what it is, some new understanding that we've got that wasn't a common discussion item. In fact, we talked about church and our callings and stuff that everyone felt comfortable discussing. And then as time goes on and the culmination of our beliefs ultimately leads to church discipline, which we'll talk about later. Then for some reason, it was surprising to some people that we hadn't been sharing with them all along what it was that we were up to. And it shouldn't be surprising to people why it is that we chose to keep our religion to ourselves. We're trying to, one, be respectful of you and your path. We're not trying to make you uncomfortable, but we're content. Every person has the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. And so if you choose to not want to pursue this path, peace. We'll let you go about your path, and we're not interested in disrupting it. And so for our family anyways, that was kind of our approach.

John Dehlin [00:48:50] How did that feel to know that members of your family cared so much about talking about doctrine and the gospel, and yet you couldn't share with them the things you were learning, the things that were most precious to you. Was it okay because you're in your own family and you're only worrying about your own stuff, or was it sad for you on a level?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:49:11] It is sad on a level. Sarah and I both like talking about the gospel. One of my frustrations about the church was that I found myself there every week, unable to openly discuss the gospel. I mean, it just drove me nuts.

John Dehlin [00:49:30] Wait, you couldn't discuss the Gospel at church?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:49:33] You can discuss the leaders of the church at church, and you can discuss the lesson from the manual at church, but you can't. You don't. I remember I taught an institute. I was an institute teacher for some time, and the institute director for the region came and listened to my lesson. And I was teaching about Joseph Smith, and I talked about the Book of Abraham. And I went into one of the facsimiles a little bit, and after the lesson is over, this guy pulled me aside and he says, you did a remarkable job. Your lesson was so fascinating. But I have to caution you, the facsimiles of the Book of Abraham have no place in an institute class. And I thought, what is this a part of your gospel and your religion, or is it not? And so here was this.

John Dehlin [00:50:21] Was he worried that people would learn to question the Book of Abraham?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:50:24] No, I don't know what is. But I actually questioned that. And I. And I said, what do you mean the facsimiles from the Book of Abraham don't have a place? He says, your lesson was powerful enough without having to bring in facsimiles. And by the way, the lesson manual. And so, I mean, there's a culture that is almost unbreakable. There's a bubble. And when you're in it and you believe in it, you cannot pierce the bubble, the walls of that bubble, and start to see things. Being outside of the church now, it is very easy to see the impact of a culture on me upon. Upon a community of people within the LDS Church. It's basically correlation, and that's a big part of it.

John Dehlin [00:51:06] But some would say Bruce R. McConkie was part of creating that shell, that bubble. This is what you talk about. This is what you don't follow the brethren. Is that fair?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:51:20] In my view, the work that people like Elder McConkie did or Joseph Fielding Smith did was fundamentally important to the clarification of key doctrines or tenets, principles of the gospel in a way that was beneficial to the saints. There is a consequence with correlation. David O. McKay warned about that consequence, and he said it would lead the church into apostasy. That's a big problem, right? Yeah. I think that there's a problem when you're so afraid to talk about something that isn't in the correlated material that you're absolutely paralyzed in your ability to explore the gospel. And so to answer your question, there hasn't been an LDS apostle scholar like Bruce McConkie since Bruce McConkie and his teachings were absolutely fundamental to my worldview. But I see clearly, too, the detriment of Mormon correlation.

John Dehlin [00:52:38] Was Packer, not a scholar or Bednar? They wouldn't count. Some see them as like the continuation of Bruce R. McConkie lived on through Boyd Ki Packer.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:52:51] Yeah, they've all had useful. Some of them are powerful teachers. I've really liked listening to some of them teach. I very much liked Elder Packer's. A lot of Elder Packer's stuff. I've liked listening to Elder Bednar or Elder Uchtdorf. I think they can be powerful speakers. Elder Christofferson, I've really enjoyed. Sometimes Elder Holland, I really enjoy. I'm not willing to say that I've not enjoyed thoroughly listening and learning from them, but the path and trajectory in the church right now, or of the church and its teachings and its doctrine, it's becoming so fundamentally watered down that even those very good teachers would be unwilling to even repeat some of the things that Bruce McConkie was saying just a few decades ago. A good example of that.

John Dehlin [00:53:46] Well, they've taken Bruce R. McConkie's book out of print.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:53:48] Right.

John Dehlin [00:53:49] Mormon doctrine is, like, no longer printed and sold by the church.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:53:52] Yeah. I think there's probably a couple of reasons behind that. And it might not have to do with being afraid of what's in it. It might have to do with money and with sales and with new competing books. That's a personal opinion.

John Dehlin [00:54:04] Priestcraft, basically.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:54:06] But I will say that I lost my train of thought. Oh, yeah. So this idea of the Mormon Church is on a trajectory where it's not capable of allowing certain teachings spread because it can't continue. There are too many people that have access to the Internet, and there are too many people that are learning too much stuff, and they're really trying to clamp down and really get a hold on what people learn and don't learn. They've even had to open up and write these anonymous essays and publish them on various gospel topics because, after all, members are all starting to learn about this stuff. And if we don't say that we've been writing about it for some time. It's going to look like we've been hiding it. And so we're going to publish these essays and we're going to publish them anonymously and we're not going to put a date on them. Oh, have you seen the essays? They're online. We've had this on the lds.org for a long time. Elder Oaks recently was willing to go to Boise, Idaho with one of the leading church historians and to try and convince a congregation of saints that they shouldn't seek for the experience of the second comforter because it's a familiar trick of the devil. Compare that with Bruce McConkie's teachings in a New Witness for the Articles of Faith or as conference talks or. The Messiah series, the Millennial Messiah in particular. They're completely at odds with one another. And yet the current church's teaching is that trust us, look to us, we can't lead you astray. How is that true when fundamentally you're teaching things that are opposed to leaders that were just three and four decades ago. And it was all by the way to convince people up there they heard there was a stirring up in Boise over Denver Snuffer, in my opinion, and Elder Oaks went there to attempt to convince them that they shouldn't be seeking for the second comforter. And so he's willing to preach against the gospel Antichrist in order to silence a movement and in order to shut up Denver Snuffer. And to me, that's wicked.

John Dehlin [00:56:24] On Mormon stories, you just heard Donald Hoaks called an antichrist and wicked.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:56:32] The teachings. The teachings are Antichrist. The teachings are wicked. I don't know Elder Oaks as a man, and I'm willing to bet he's probably a really nice man, those teachings are Antichrist because Christ has commanded us to seek his face. A man who claims to be an apostle, God's church is saying that that's a teaching of the devil. To me, what you're saying is that the teaching that Christ has given us in the Scriptures and through his prophet Joseph Smith are from the devil. I'm not interested in learning anything from you anymore. And so for me, when I see that stuff taking place, not only does that and I'll tell you, I'm guessing it had the same effect upon hundreds of Latter Day Saints who are familiar a little bit with these topics in Boise. When they hear an apostle show up talking about don't seek for the face of Christ in this life, they're going to Start to raise their eyebrows and think, what are they up to? What's their motive? Because if you read Elder Oaks a decade ago, he's talking about some of this stuff, and now he's warning you against it. Big problem that they're having to face now, and it's a result of fear and their willingness to step out of. Step out and speak out against what they think is a threat to the church.

John Dehlin [00:57:47] Real quick, isn't there some exchange between Bruce R. McConkie and, like, Glenn Pace about McConkie warning people to not seek personal relationship with Christ?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:58:00] There was a talk that Elder McConkie gave. I don't remember the title of it, but it had something to do with the Godhead and the proper relationship between us as members of the church and members of the Godhead. And that was, as my understanding is, in direct relation to some. Maybe it was Glen Pace, like you said, teachings that I think were maybe being taught at BYU or promulgated about developing a personal relationship with Christ. I'm not familiar with what all of those teachings were. I can't remember. But I think he gave a very powerful talk warning against that very attitude.

John Dehlin [00:58:40] So it's a little bit confusing. Was he against the second comforter or for it, or do you even know?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:58:47] No. I'm familiar enough with what he's written that he is an advocate of seeking the face of Christ in this life. If you read through the talk that he gives, and I haven't read it or listened to it in the last few years, he's trying to caution and warn the saints about the impropriety of your worship and your devotion is focused on the Father in the name of Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost. That is the proper relationship of your worship. But there are some individuals who have a gospel hobby horse, and I don't know if he uses those words in his talk where they are so intent upon their relationship with Christ. And there might be more to the teachings behind the scenes of what those folks were talking about that I'm not aware of, that he was. And he's basically warning the saints and trying to teach them about the proper, respectful relationship between man and deity. I'm not saying that today. At this point, I fully agree with what he taught in that talk. I'd have to read it again, but I think that it was out of a genuine concern for what he saw happening behind the scenes, whatever that was, as a genuine threat to healthy spiritual relationship with deity.

John Dehlin [01:00:01] But listeners are saying it was George Pace.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:00:04] George Pace, okay.

John Dehlin [01:00:05] Not Glenn, I think I got it wrong. Okay, so you guys decide to keep your beliefs. You and Sarah decide to keep your

Matthew Lohmeier [01:00:14] beliefs to yourself, by and large. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:18] Let's take it. Let's talk to us more about the progression of where things start to become problematic or awesome.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:00:27] Both, incidentally. So. And how much time do we have? I don't want to get cut off.

John Dehlin [01:00:34] We've got about 30 minutes. Is it 20?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:00:41] Okay. So there's an experience that I have that's. That's important as well that I should share and I don't want to talk too much about. Some of this is personal to my family. I have the second oldest in my family. My younger sister was severely handicapped since she was born, and my mom in particular took care of her for the 30 plus years that she was alive. And in the last decade of her life, she wasn't able to walk at all. She had an electric wheelchair, wasn't able to push a wheelchair with her own strength. And I need to bring this up because it relates to a vision that I had had, and that's important part of our journey. So in 2000 and late 13 or early 2014, it's nighttime. I am asleep, but I have a vision. And you could call it an inspired dream. I've had lots of dreams, but this was a vision. And I know there is a. I was walking down a path, and I look up in the distance and I see a beautiful building. And I'm intrigued by the building. And I'm walking alone as far as I can tell. And as I approach the building, I notice that it has many rooms, many doors, many windows. And it looks to me Mormon. It looks to me like kind of a similitude of a Mormon temple, but it's much taller and quite a bit wider. And I'm intrigued. And I go into the building and I notice that it has many rooms. And those rooms are simple but decorated beautifully. And they're reminiscent of a celestial room. And I begin to eagerly pursue each room and to investigate what's in each room in the building. And I'm really surprised to discover that there is no one around and the building is completely empty. And it's clear to me that because I've been in several rooms and there's no one in those rooms, that there's no one in the building. It's vacant. And I leave the building and I walk back out, back out onto the path that I was pursuing. And I continue in the same direction that I had originally been traveling. And I get far enough away from the building to turn around and look back at the building. And as I look back at the building, I notice that the building is completely flat. There's absolutely no substance to it. It's hollow, it's vacant. It's leaning backwards. And it would fall down if it wasn't leaning on a different building that's behind it. There was a different building that was behind it that was large and solid. It looked unkempt, it looked neglected, and it was gray, as though. And the building in the front was colorful and beautiful, as though it had been there for a lot longer than the building in the front that was thin and shallow and leaning upon it. And it was solid and sturdy. And it was the building upon which the front building was leaning that enabled the front building to continue to stand. And it was apparent to me at the moment that the front building represented the LDS Church. It was shallow. It had become hollow. It was becoming vacant. And the only reason it was still standing is because the true gospel that was revealed through Joseph Smith was a solid structure that was going to stand forever. And if you were to take that away, that building would fall in crumble. And at that point in the vision, I noticed that my sister Gina is standing next to me, and she's walking with me on the path. And then I woke up. And instantly.

A Sister's Death and a Pivotal Vision

John Dehlin [01:04:49] She's your disabled sister.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:04:51] She was my disabled sister who couldn't walk. And instantly upon waking, I began to reflect upon what I'd just seen. And I say waking because I was in a sleepful state.

John Dehlin [01:05:03] And this is when. In your.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:05:05] This is late 2013, early 2014. Sarah and I are married.

John Dehlin [01:05:09] Wow.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:05:10] We are listening to Denver's 10 lectures.

John Dehlin [01:05:14] Were you traveling to try and attend the lectures?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:05:17] We were living in Japan for the first half of those. And so, no, we didn't fly back from Japan to catch any of them. We. We caught them after the fact online. So I have this vision in which I see these buildings. I wake up and I think, what did that mean? And I know that the buildings represented the gospel and the church. And what did it mean that Gina was walking next to me? And very clearly the impression came to me that her appearance in the dream or vision was a chronological marker of when things were to happen. That doesn't make sense unless I explain it. But I had every desire, as a result of that vision, in the moment that I'm considering its meaning, to proclaim to others that I had discovered the truth of the fact that the LDS Church had become a hollow replica of the Original, and that the original is the only foundation that the LDS Church can lean upon and have any kind of meaning. And that my sister's appearance standing next to me and walking beside me on the path means that when she passes, I will have an. Excuse me, I will have an obligation to speak up. And so several months go by and she passed away. And that she was, my sister was very influential, an influential glue in my family.

John Dehlin [01:06:54] Did she have full cognitive abilities?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:06:56] She did, yeah. Severely physically handicapped, full cognitive abilities and a witty thinker, blogger, doctor who lover, you know, just wonderful.

John Dehlin [01:07:08] And she lived till.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:07:09] And she lived until 30. She was born in 83 and she passes away in 2000. And so she's 31 years old, I think. And in that moment, I felt a sense of responsibility and calling from the Lord to make it clear where I stood to not sit quietly and allow something like, trust us, we can't lead you astray. To be taught to people who I loved, my family, the members of the ward that I loved. And so I made a determination that I would take a stand for truth. And that didn't mean I was going to go ruffle feathers, but I needed to not passively stay silent about things that mattered to me and that I felt were impacting the souls of men. And so that's what leads to me writing a letter to my stake president is my obligation to speak up about the truth. I wasn't willing to go start causing a ruckus in my ward, but I thought, my temple recommend is coming due. I need to write a letter to my stake president and tell him why I'm going to answer certain questions the way that I am going to. Namely, he's going to ask me if I support and sustain the leaders of the church as prophets. And I'm not willing to do that anymore. And so in order to make that clear, so there was a fall conference. I think it was the fall. It was the fall wherein there were three speakers who spoke in general conference at the LDS Church, all teaching very emphatically that you need to trust us, we can't lead you astray. And that lit enough of a fire in me to pen a letter. That's that seven page letter, I think, is what it is that I gave to you that you read, in which I mention those speakers, I mention what they were teaching, I put in direct quotes. And then I try to share from, I think over 30 scriptures and some quotes from Joseph and even Brigham Young, how that is not a true doctrine. The idea that you should trust a Man, and that they won't lead you astray is false. And that is when I call the teaching Antichrist. And it's strong language. We think sherem Nihor, korihor, and we shy away from those words. But the fundamental truth is, if you're

John Dehlin [01:09:38] preaching, I get called up all the time.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:09:39] You might be called that all the time. And so you're used to it, and so you're used to the language, right?

John Dehlin [01:09:43] Yeah, Nihor Korhor.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:09:46] But for me, I needed to explain to my leadership I'm in the Elders Quorum presidency. My wife is an early morning seminary teacher, which we should talk about, by the way, too, because the students loved her class. And I need to explain in writing to the people who I sustain as leaders why it is I can't answer the temple recommend questions the way that they would expect me to. That's what led to the letter. And I asked them in the letter, at the end of the letter to repent of false teachings and to teach the truth. And by the way, I've laid out the truth for you here in this letter is basically what I was, what I say. And that, of course, is viewed as arrogant and of proud and of not being willing to take instruction. And I was okay with that because God knew my heart. I've come to a point in my life where it doesn't matter to me what someone thinks about me. What matters to me is that in my heart and in my conscience, I'm trying to comply with what I feel is an obligation that's devolving upon me from God. So that's what leads to the letter.

John Dehlin [01:10:47] So I just shared the letter in the Facebook livestream for those who want to download it. It's a really powerful letter. We're going to go over it. But just so I can summarize in terms of the narrative of the story, your sister's death prompts a vision.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:11:05] Back up. That prompted me taking action based on a vision that I had had while she was still alive.

John Dehlin [01:11:10] While she was alive, you had a vision. You're concerned about her. Did you know during the vision that she was close to her?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:11:18] Good question. She, for many months, had been deteriorating to the the point where we anticipated within a year or two that she might pass away.

John Dehlin [01:11:25] So you were worried about your sister, whom you loved. Her health was deteriorating. You have a vision that she's involved in. That's sort of a vision that to you means that the LDS Church is kind of not going in the right direction?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:11:40] Yeah. I had already discovered for several years that the LDS Church was on a path that was. It was losing light and truth. And it was on a path that I found divergent from the original gospel that had been restored through Joseph. That was my view. And so for me, that experience that I have of the inspired dream or vision that I had was, to me, not teaching me that the LDS Church was hollow and shallow. I had already discovered this in many ways, but that rather, now that I understand this information and I have been on a path that has brought me into that building and out from that building, I now find myself on a path when my sister is deceased because she is walking next to me. And that was a chronological marker, if you will. And it told me that there will come a time, and it will be after she has passed, where you will be required by me, God, to take a stand for the truth and to speak up, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [01:12:45] And so upon her passing, you. You feel prompted that that's the time to write the letter.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:12:54] Yeah. You know, at the time of her passing, I knew that it was time for me to take a stand for truth. I had no intentions of writing a letter. She passes away on July 18th of 2014, and in July 19th of 2015, we were excommunicated from the church a year later. And after she passes on July 18, several months go by and general conference happens. And it's as a result of those talks that I feel like I need to write a letter to the state.

John Dehlin [01:13:26] Okay. Those that happened in fall of 2014.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:13:29] The fall of 2014, just.

John Dehlin [01:13:31] I have to note something. A lot of Joseph's angst, Joseph Smith's angst about the afterlife was because of his brother Alvin passing. Did you connect in any way to Joseph Smith about having a sibling passed? And did you even make that connection? And was your. I'm just struck by how intertwined your sister's passing is with your feelings about Christ and the movement. And I just wonder how much you've reflected upon the connectivity and relationship with all that.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:14:06] I can't say that I was at the time thinking about Joseph's. He and Emma had a lot of experience with death.

John Dehlin [01:14:15] Little children would pass away. Yeah.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:14:17] And I've reflected on that often. But I can't recall that during that time in my life, that was a connection I was making. But I will say that I should probably not continue to talk about. About this. And it is personal in nature. So I apologize to the listenership for being personal about my personal life. But all of the members of my immediate family, my Father and my mother and me, and now two younger siblings who are still alive are all the people that we are today, whatever that means to us. We all have the views that we entertain today, and we all have the worldview that we have today because of my sister.

John Dehlin [01:14:59] Why is that?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:14:59] No question about it.

John Dehlin [01:15:00] Why is that?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:15:01] There is something, I think everyone is influenced and impacted by their own personal circumstances. And for you, that's different than from me and from your listener named Mike, whoever that might be. Whoever we are, we've all got some things in our lives that have really made us who we are. And one of those major things was 30 years of living with our sister. And having her in our home and the interaction that we had with her, us being all physically capable people, athletes, and having a sister in the home who, when she turned 16, couldn't get a driver's license because she didn't have the strength to push on the gas pedals and the brakes and the motor skills, and realizing that, hey, I'm not going to end up developing like all of my peers. And so that tenderness that that brought to each of us, I think, shaped our perceptions of the world. So I feel particularly affected by her life when I look at others. I am personally affected by the lessons I learned from her and how I then view others, I think. And it's helped me to be more compassionate.

John Dehlin [01:16:31] Do you know what her beliefs were towards the end of her life?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:16:33] Yeah, she was baptized into the LDS Church. That's a good question, by the way. She became more and more private in her life. She wasn't able to go to church for many years. And by the time she passed away, I don't know that my mom and dad were still actively participating in the LDS Church anyway. I can't remember. But that isn't something that she would openly discuss with my mom or my dad. But she had been baptized into the LDS Church and had been and had been active while she was physically able to go to church. The path I was pursuing all this, this isn't something I'd talk about with her. This was, we would show up, we'd spend time together. She lived a hermit life. She lived at home with mom and dad. She watched her shows. She had her radio shows. So anyway, more than I ever anticipated, I would share about her on this podcast. But the important reason for me to bring it up is because seeing her walking next to me was an important indicator for me about the timing involved with when the Lord expected me to take action.

John Dehlin [01:17:48] Do you wish you could have Bore witness to her before she passed? Or do you wish you could have found out what she believed?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:17:52] No, I'm perfectly content that each life has its own struggles, circumstances. I had no intentions of teaching to her what my views are. And I think that. And I'll say this without sharing the experience. On that note, a year after she passed, I was up in the mountains. I was praying to God and I wanted him to convey something to her for me. And I think that was done. So I'll leave it at that.

John Dehlin [01:18:33] Are you comfortable sharing what you wanted to tell her? Nope. Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:18:38] But. But yeah, I'm confident that that was done. Sorry about the emotions.

John Dehlin [01:18:47] Stop apologizing. We're pro emotions on Mormon stories and we're pro personal stories.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:18:53] I know I'm making my mom cry at home probably as well. What's happened, that makes me even more emotional, so I'll stop. But all of us are very grateful for the family that we had. All of us have circumstances that shape us, and so that's why I bring that up.

John Dehlin [01:19:09] Well, so we have 200 listeners plus that have hung in over this entire interview. We're really grateful for everyone who's been tuning in. It's been a great audience. We've heard so many great things about your story so far. So, Matt, it's been super moving. Thank you so much for what you've shared, listeners. This is what we're going to do. We're going to take a quick break. We're going to recharge my cell phone. We're going to grab lunch, and we're going to start in about an hour or so. And we're going to cover Matt's excommunication with the stake president. We're going to talk about the fallout that this happened for Matt, for his immediate family, for Sarah, for the McConkie family, for, you know, Matt's, for the Lohmeyers, for others, and just kind of what it's like and how he interacted with his ward and his stake and how they handled that. Then we're going to talk about the movement. We're going to talk about where it is. We're going to talk about the scriptures, we're going to talk about the covenant that they recently made. We talk about Zion, talk about the new Jerusalem, talk about all that stuff and how things are shaping up in the movement. And then maybe I'll ask some final questions about the kinds of things that I would struggle with or the questions that I would have about the consistency or the doctrine or the teachings or the problems we'll get into things from the CES letter, problems with Mormon history, Mormon doctrine, historicity, and we'll try and cover those a bit since Matt's willing to talk about it. That's not, I don't think, central to this interview, but I think a lot of us would be curious how he would answer questions about the Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, historicity, Joseph Smith's polygamy, a lot of controversy over whether or not Joseph was a polygamist. So we'll talk about all that from Matt's perspective. We didn't get into that as much with the Strongs, but stay tuned on Mormon's Stories. We're going to have at least another two or three good hours with Matt and we'll cover a lot of good stuff. So thanks for tuning in. If you want to email or message me or post questions or comments, we'd love to incorporate them to the second half of this interview. But we're grateful for everyone who's tuned in. Thanks for everyone who supports Mormon Stories podcast. Go to MormonStories.org if you want to support us financially. 10, 20, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford allows us to have a nonprofit, a staff, accountants, transparency, marketing, technology, budget. All that stuff comes from your support. So we just want to thank everyone who makes this possible. Thank Matt for tuning in and please join us in about an hour on the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page for part two of my live Facebook interview with Matt Lohmeier. Take care everybody. Talk to you soon. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

Part 3 of 4 · Ep. 841

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Hello everyone and welcome back to Part two of my interview with Matthew Lohmeier. We have been talking about Matthew's conversion to the church. We talked about his time at the Air Force Academy, his mission to Taiwan, his desires all throughout his late adolescence and early adulthood to see the face of Christ or to know Christ and to follow Christ. We've talked about him meeting Sarah McConkie, granddaughter of Bruce R. McConkie, son of former stake president Mark McConkie. Their courtship that lasted multi years. It was a multi year, epic courtship that ended in their getting married. We talked about Matt wanting so much to converse with the Lord, with Christ or with God, and to get direct revelation from God in Christ that he even sought out a job as a temple worker so that he could pray in the true order of prayer. How he decided or felt inspired that he should be able to pray in the true order of prayer, even from his own home, dressed in the robes of the holy priesthood, and how that was a very important spiritual experience for him. How he learned maybe in his mid-20s, that he needed to trust his own relationship with God in Christ over maybe necessarily what church leaders taught, how important that was to him and over time how he and Sarah ended up getting married and as they tried to share their new teachings and practices and the principles that Denver Snuffer taught that I should say Matt was learning and following and believing and prior to ever learning about Denver Snuffer, when they tried to share this information with with Sarah's dad, how he wasn't very receptive to it and how that led them to want to keep their beliefs in Denver Snuffer and in the movement more quiet. And that lasted for a certain amount of time until the point that Matt received a vision that communicated to him that the church was sort of going in the wrong direction, that it was going to be time for him to speak out. And that vision came in conjunction with his sister becoming ill and passing away. And so where we left the story was that Matt and Sarah weren't speaking about their newfound beliefs or long Standing beliefs to her parents. But at some point, Matt felt like he needed to write a letter and share it with the stake president. His stake president in I believe, the Colorado Springs area.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:03:45] That was up in Parker, Colorado, just about an hour up the road.

John Dehlin [00:03:49] Okay. So that. That kind of. I was just trying to give our listeners kind of a preview of what you've already said. So let's take it at the point where you write that letter and you share it. What was your. What was your. I'm going to pull up the letter now because there's several things I want to read from it. But just remind our listeners what your motivation was in writing that letter, what you hoped it would accomplish, thought it would accomplish.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:04:17] Sure. I felt an obligation to take a stand for the truth in the face of the teaching that we can't be led astray by our leaders.

John Dehlin [00:04:28] So it was that fall General Authority Conference, General conference, where a few things were taught. I'm going to pull those up in the letter.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:04:37] And I can mention, because it's in the letter and because it will be public here, I'll mention which three talks in particular taught that idea that I found to be not only unacceptable, but damaging to the membership of the church. Although it's a popular teaching and. And it was taught by Elder Ballard and Elder Nelson and sister McConkie. And so I specifically draw attention to those talks in the letter.

John Dehlin [00:05:08] So those talks fall of 2014 got you kind of riled up.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:05:16] We should think that was the year. Yeah, well, yeah, I felt like this is the opportunity. I'm approaching my temple recommend interview with my bishop and my stake president. I'm going to answer the questions of the temple recommend interview in a certain way. And it would be important for me to not just show up to an interview unprepared and say no to certain questions and have the stake president scratch his head and not understand where I'm coming from. And so I felt like it was important for me to put in writing why I was willing to take a stand and say, true prophets don't teach this idea. They don't say, follow me and trust me. I will never lead you astray. And so I capture that in the letter. And what happens after I write the letter is I walk it to our stake president's house. He lived right down the street from me. And you have to understand, the stake president had just recently, like a few months earlier, called Sarah to be an early morning seminary teacher. He said in that calling, when he extended the calling, that he felt a certain Surety and peace by the Holy Spirit that that was a good decision and that she would be a blessing to the seminary students. And we reminded him of that later.

John Dehlin [00:06:38] Yeah, I'm sure.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:06:40] But he is a he. The stake president and his wife and family, they're just really likable people. And Sarah and I have always liked them. And I want to make that clear. So I walk this letter over to his house and knock on the door. And he comes to the door, and we spend about 20 minutes talking. And I hand him the letter. He doesn't read it while I'm there. But I explained to him what the premise of the letter is. And I also explained to him I knew that the views outlined in the letter wouldn't be that he probably would disagree with them or not like them. But I was asking that he hear me out and that it was important for him to understand where I'm coming from as I approach my temple recommend interview with him. And so he was very nice and said, oh, I'm sure we can work this out and it'll be just fine. And he hadn't yet read the letter. And then I left, and I went down to my truck and I drove to my bishop's house. And I delivered that same letter. I had changed the heading a little bit so that it was addressed to the bishopric. But I wanted to deliver that same letter to my bishop so that he was aware that I went direct to the stake president with the letter, knowing that both the bishopric and the stake president would get involved ultimately in a discussion over the contents of that letter. He wasn't home when I got there. And so it was several days before I was able to actually get that letter to the bishop. The letter was addressed to the stake president and to the stake presidency and to the high council. But I decided that in delivering it to the stake president, I would ask him if he would be willing to share it with his councilors and with the high council. And he told me later that he was not willing to share that with his stake presidency councilors or the high council. Although I'm of the impression and recollection now that by the time that we ended up in a church court, his counselors had read the letter. But I don't think that the high Council had. I might be mistaken about that. So when I left my stake president's house and walked down the street back to my house, I had the distinct impression come to me that I would be disfellowshipped over the letter. And I think that's so that's the delivery of the letter. It was about two weeks that go by before I ever hear from the priesthood leaders a response. And it was my stake president asking if I would come in for an interview with him to discuss what I presumed was discuss the letter. And so two weeks go by, I agree to go in to meet with him. I had anticipated that. I sat down with him for a two hour meeting and almost the first thing that he said was that I would love to discuss the contents of your letter. But instead of discuss your letter, what we're going to discuss is the need for you to sustain the brethren and talk about their keys. As we had a conversation and I tried ultimately to bring it back to the letter a few times. I made it clear in the letter and to him personally that I'm not intending to go cause trouble in your stake. But if I'm sitting in Sunday school and the lesson happens to be on the 14 fundamentals of following the prophet, for instance, and the teacher says, brother Lohmeier, because they often did, what do you think about this, that or the other? I'm going to be honest and I'm going to say I think that's a bad teaching. And that was the first time, it was in the first meeting that he said, if you say that publicly, I will excommunicate you from the church for apostasy.

John Dehlin [00:10:26] Say what?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:10:28] If you say that it's a false teaching, that you can't be led astray by the current leaders of the church, if you take a stand against that teaching, the teaching that was just shared in that conference, that, trust us, we can't lead you astray, keep your eyes on us, yada yada. If you speak, speak up against that. I don't care if you initiated it or if someone else asked you a question. If you say that, share that publicly, I will excommunicate you from the church for apostasy. Those were his exact words. And that was one of three times in the first interview that he threatened me with excommunication over the concepts involved with the letter.

Writing a Letter of Doctrinal Objection

John Dehlin [00:11:05] If it's okay, let's read some excerpts from the letter. Do you want to try and recapture what you said in the letter or do you want me just to read it?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:11:14] You're welcome to read whatever you'd like.

John Dehlin [00:11:15] Okay, so the letter is dated October 16, 2014. And in my timeline, this was after Kate Kelly had been excommunicated, after I'd been threatened with disciplinary counsel, but before I was excommunicated. So for me, it's fun to always kind of put things in a timeline. So this is the same fall I was waiting to hear my fate for from my church leaders. But was this written immediately after the Fall General Conference? This letter, it was like, within a

Matthew Lohmeier [00:11:49] few days or a week, within a week or two of the conference.

John Dehlin [00:11:51] So there were three talks that you outlined. You basically say, hey, I just listened. October 2014, General Conference. There are three specific speakers that said things that were really disturbing. And the first was Elder Nelson. Russell M. Nelson?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:12:08] Yeah, I don't remember the order.

John Dehlin [00:12:10] Yeah, Russell M. Nelson is one. And you lay out the teachings you object to. So the first was when Elder Nelson taught, quote, Trust me, these 15 men, prophetseers and revelators know what the will of the Lord is when unanimity is reached. And then you also quote Nelson as saying, the church today has been organized by the Lord himself. He has put in place a remarkable system of governance that provides redundancy and backup. Counterbalances and safeguards abound. So that quote, well emphasized by you in italics, so that no one can ever lead the Church astray. Now, what did you not like about those teachings?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:12:53] This had been growing in me for some time. It stems back to, if you remember, in part one, I mentioned this Adam God doctrine dilemma that I have, where there's two leaders of the church saying different things. If you were to look, I won't be able to quote it exactly, but if you look at the letter that Elder McConkie wrote to Eugene, England, he mentions this very doctrine in their Adam God. And he says that he quotes from Second Nephi. And he says, Nephi says, woe, woe, woe unto them that preach false doctrines, for they shall be thrust down to hell. Then he says about Brigham Young, if you believe in the false teachings that Brigham Young taught, you will go to hell. And then he says, but Brigham Young is exalted. That didn't make any sense to me. But that's what he says in the letter. He says, it's just a matter of choosing which Brigham Young you want to believe. The one that taught the true doctrines or the one that taught the false doctrines. And as I read that letter, this is years ago, before I ever get to this situation, the problem that presented itself to me is, how can you teach that we will never lead you astray if believing the words that are taught by the president of the Church will lead you to hell, how is that not leading the Church astray? And what he said in his letter was, I'm telling you, if you believe what Brigham Young taught, you will go to hell. Because it's about a fundamental doctrine of the gospel, namely the Godhead, that was fundamentally problematic to me. I don't share that, to criticize anyone other than to point out that I had already begun to see years earlier that there was this fundamental inconsistency with the idea that leaders of the church were teaching, we won't lead you astray, trust us, when in fact they were contradicting one another and they were saying, if you believe what that past guy did, who is now dead, if you believe what he taught, you're going to go to hell. That, to me, there's no greater definition of leading someone or a church astray than if you believe what they teach, you're going to go to hell. So that's putting it bluntly. So when I continue to hear this taught, Elder Nelson, for instance, that just about. I mean, that was getting me to use the phrase, a fire in my bones. I thought, I've got hundreds of people in this ward that I love and appreciate, and they love this doctrine. And evidenced by the fact that testimony meeting came the week after conference and people were getting up and talking about those talks. And I shared that with my stake president. And. And I said, it's clear to me that people love being taught that doctrine. They love the thought that they don't have to do the thinking and that they can trust what's being taught to them and all is well and they're going to go to heaven. That's great doctrine. It's a great doctrine that people like to receive. Right. It's comforting. And so for me, it was, to answer your question, what about that teaching was off putting to me, it's that I had already come to grapple with this and found it to be so damaging to my ability to connect with God. That trust in men, that was like the eternal conflict of my life. I wanted to help take a stand for the truth so that people could realize when I was asked about it, there's a different way of viewing this, and it's not going to destroy the gospel of Jesus Christ that you have a testimony of if you simply acknowledge and realize that that's not a true teaching. In fact, men can lead you astray, and by teaching this, they are leading you astray. So that's why I was compelled to write the letter.

John Dehlin [00:16:39] And there's even scripture that says, trust not in the arm of flesh. Right?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:16:44] Yeah. In fact, after several months of interviews, we'll get back to this But I was called in for another interview, and I was asked specifically, did you or did you not give a lesson in which you said, trust not in the arm of flesh? And I said, yeah, I did teach that. And in fact, it was at the very beginning. It was at the very beginning.

John Dehlin [00:17:05] It's from the Scriptures.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:17:07] And he says, you know, basically, you can't teach that. And I said, I was quoting Nephi. Second Nephi. It was actually direct quote. I didn't teach it. I was reading the Scriptures, and someone turned me in and said, hey, he's teaching this doctrine, basically. So this was problematic. And ever since writing the letter, I know you're gonna get back into this and start reading it, but ever since writing the letter, there were folks showing up and monitoring, making sure we weren't saying anything in church. But we'll get to that, I think.

John Dehlin [00:17:33] Okay, so the second talk you didn't like or that you had objections to were from, ironically, sister Carol F. McConkie. Now, obviously, is this a family member? Is she related to Sarah?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:17:48] She's married into the McConkie family. But, yeah, I don't know her personally. I don't know any of the three of them personally.

John Dehlin [00:17:57] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:17:57] But this was, for me, nothing personal with any of them. It was just incidental that it so happened that there was a sister McConkie that had given a talk also. But I wanted to make the case

John Dehlin [00:18:07] this wasn't like Sarah's aunt that you knew or anything like that.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:18:10] I don't know who she is. But the fact was, here are the talks that I'm able to pull from that I remember listening to and thinking, this has got to stop? When will the church members put their foot down and say, hey, we're sick of hearing that. You're not drawing us in anymore. You're actually scaring us off. You're pushing us away.

John Dehlin [00:18:34] Okay, so you quote her. In the conference talk concerning the living prophet. The Lord commands the people of his church, thou shalt give heed unto all his words and commandments, which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them walking in all holiness before me. For his word ye shall receive, as if from my own mouth in all practice and faith. For by doing these things, the gates of hell shall not prevail against you. Now, my guess is that what you interpreted her to be saying was that when she was reading the scripture, she was basically saying that we as members of the church, when we hear Thomas S. Monson or the current prophets, seers, and revelators speak, we should Consider that as if the Lord himself is speaking to us.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:19:27] Right.

John Dehlin [00:19:28] And there is Scripture for that as well. Joseph Smith writes, whether by my own voice. No God writes in Doctrine and Covenants, whether by my voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same. But you feel like this had a more narrow interpretation. Is that right?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:19:46] Well, yeah. You're referencing section one. It's one of the last verses, if not the last verse of Section 1. I believe that verse. I believe that the principle that's being taught is that when the Lord authorizes somebody to speak in his name a message that he has given to them, then he will regard it as. As though He Himself has spoken it. But what I don't believe is that anyone who is called into some church position, whether that's high or low, can just simply speak in the name of the Lord. And because of the virtue of their church calling, you have to regard their words as, in fact, being as authoritatively binding upon you as if God had spoken them. In fact, case in point, we've already discussed Brigham Young. If the teaching is. Since he is called as the president of the Church, therefore you must necessarily accept what he is teaching as the voice of God. And members of the church surely did. I'm sure many of them did. Then you necessarily have to accept the fact that he taught that Adam was God and this, that, and the other. But the modern church leaders would point to that teaching and that day and to Brigham Young and say, do not believe that. So there's that conflict again, and you can't have it both ways. The issue I was taking with what she was teaching was that she took these scriptures that specifically in that case, applied to Joseph Smith. And she then painted with a broad brush a picture that, for the church membership, says, any president of the church has that same prerogative which the Lord had given to Joseph. I didn't personally believe that. I shared that again in person in that first meeting with my stake president. I just reviewed the notes from these interviews. I took very copious notes, very good notes. As a result of those interviews, after I get home, I'd sit down, I'd type everything up. And I remember sharing with him. He wanted to know, too, why I took issue with that. And I said, that's a prerogative of the prophet Joseph Smith in my mind, that the Lord had given by revelation. And it's not to necessarily be applied to every successor just because they sit in Moses seat. And he responded to me that if I believe these words apply to Joseph Smith, I've been deceived by the devil, is what his direct words were to me.

John Dehlin [00:22:13] Who is this?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:22:14] This was my stake president. Okay. And we had many of those conversations. And so oftentimes, the rebuttal to my view of Scripture was that that's the spirit of the devil that has got you to believe the way that you currently believe. It didn't matter if I said, no. It's not the spirit of the devil. Yes, it is, because it's contrary to what the brethren are teaching. If you believe you've received some knowledge that is not in line with what they are teaching, then it's clear to me that you are under the influence of the devil.

John Dehlin [00:22:51] Yeah. Basically, the position is that anything the brethren are saying now is directly from God. And so to disagree with the brethren now is to disagree with God. And the two problems with that are that, number one, many of the things the brethren teach now may conflict with things said in the past. Things said or done in the past. So it kind of takes away the, you know. So number one, which, you know, like you said with Bruce Armaconki versus Brigham Young, you don't know which brethren to trust. But then also it's taking away the possibility that the brethren could lead us astray. And you don't like that idea. You don't like the idea that the brethren can't lead us astray?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:23:40] Yeah, I know that's not a popular idea in the LDS Church, but for me, you can't unlearn stuff. And when you encounter all that church history, you see how this has unfolded. It's just an untenable position to maintain, and yet the Church is able to maintain it quite well and have it be liked by the members.

John Dehlin [00:24:06] You go on to quote Sister McConkie as saying, we never need to be deceived about where to look for answers to our questions or uncertain about which voice to follow. Quote, following the prophet is always right, end quote. So obviously, we know why you didn't like that. And then you go on to quote Elder Ballard, M. Russell Ballard, where he said, in conference recently, I spoke at the new Mission President seminar and counseled these leaders, keep the eyes of the mission on the leaders of the church. We will not and cannot lead you astray. He again repeated, teach your missionaries to focus their eyes on us. What's wrong with teaching missionaries to keep their eyes on the brethren? You say this in your letter, but where should our eyes be focused?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:24:59] Bottom line, Problematic. Underline the spirit of that is not Christ focused.

John Dehlin [00:25:06] Our eyes should be Focused on who?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:25:08] So you're thinking, you sit there and you think, yeah, my eyes should be focused on you, you, leader of the church. No, not at all. Right. I mean, this is. The members of the church are smarter than this. And they know that as apostles, the message should be, I bear witness of him. You should have your eyes on him, meaning Christ. But that's not the message we were getting. It was. It was almost born of fear. And we're trying to grasp you before you leave us. Trust us, we are not going to lead you astray. You need to follow us. So all three of those talks, the premise of their talks, at least the relevant portions which I quoted, are tied up in the same idea, the same theme. And it was focus on us, but rather than focus on the Savior. And so that's why I include those talks and then talk about those ideas.

John Dehlin [00:26:06] And you write these teachings. This is your words. Now, these teachings, which were clearly and unequivocally taught in General conference, are unscriptural, are opposed to the teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith, and will lead the souls of men into carnal security and, and carefully down to hell. And you quote second Nephi 28:21 with that phrase. And then you say they point to men instead of Christ, and in that sense you say they are antichrist. To preach these ideas in the name of Christ is to take the name of the Lord in vain. Those are some pretty strong statements.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:26:45] So I understood my stake president would not like that. I mean, it's clear as I write that, and I felt impressed to write that. I know that as I hand that letter to him, I just cringe and think, I know what he's going to think of this, but I hope that he'll consider what I'm trying to lay out. And I think I do. There's over 30 scriptures in there that I think teach the point that I'm trying to make, that that is an unscriptural idea.

John Dehlin [00:27:11] Yeah. And I'll just read from some of the scriptures. This is out of the Book of Mormon. Second Nephi, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man. You go on to write, he warned that in the last days which we're in, men would deny the power of God, the Holy One of Israel. And they say unto the people, hearken unto us and hear ye our precept. For behold, there is no God today. For the Lord. And the Redeemer hath done his work, and he hath given his power unto men. And behold, hearken ye unto my precept. You talk about King Benjamin saying, salvation cometh to none, except it be through repentance of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You talk about how he didn't desire his people to fear him because he was only a mortal man, that he had, quote, infirmities in body and mind. So you're talking about how the prophets

Matthew Lohmeier [00:28:08] were humble and they were trying to teach something. They were teaching differently than what I was seeing being taught by those who were leading the church.

John Dehlin [00:28:15] Yeah. And then you go on to quote 3rd Nephi, Whoso shall declare more or less than this and establish it for my doctrine. The same cometh of evil and is not built upon my rock. And that's basically anything other than baptize, believe in me. So a real focus on Christ's teachings. Believe in Christ, believe in baptism, believe in his word. Don't add to it. And you're saying the brethren, modern LDS apostles, are kind of adding things to Christ's pure gospel.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:28:50] Yeah, in this regard, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:54] All right, so I just posted the link to this letter to the feed. We'll also include it in the main post when this gets published. But you get the sense, and it's a really great letter. And you also go on and quote how Joseph Smith himself and Brigham Young even were basically warning the saints to not put their full heart and faith in the brethren. Is that right?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:29:25] Yeah, that is right.

John Dehlin [00:29:30] Yeah. So you've got Joseph Smith saying, we have heard men who hold the priesthood remark that they would do anything they were told to do by those who preside over them, even if they knew it was wrong. But such obedience is worse than folly to us. It is slavery in the extreme. And so you've got lots of harsh quotes from Joseph Smith and others condemning this idea that you just follow the brethren blindly.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:29:56] Let me make a point about that last quote that you read, because a month ago, actually it was brought to my attention by somebody else that that quote that you just read was there's question as to whether that was Joseph that said it, but it was published in his I can't remember. I probably cited it there if it was in the times and seasons. And there's question as to who penned those words. And so I'm not positive that came from Joseph, although at the time that I wrote the letter, I was certain it came from Joseph because it was attributed to Joseph. The source seemed to me to indicate that that attribution was accurate. But I'm not 100% certain that is Joseph. But it's a great quote.

John Dehlin [00:30:41] But you've also got Brigham Young saying, I have often said to the Latter Day Saints, live so that you will know whether I teach you the truth or not. Suppose you are careless and unconcerned and give way to the spirit of the world. And I am led likewise to preach the things of this world. So Brigham Young is acknowledging that he could be led away, led astray.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:31:01] Right.

John Dehlin [00:31:02] And to accept things that are not of God, how easy would it be for me to lead you astray? But I say to you, live so that you will know for yourself whether I tell the truth or not. That is the way we want all Saints to live. So none of this follow the brethren blindly stuff.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:31:20] Sure, yeah. Not in these quotes. No. I'm aware of some other quotes from Brigham that. That some people might be aware that they could even post in opposition to that quote from Brigham. But for the purposes of my letter there, that was a great quote to fit in with the fact that early church leaders had also taught against the idea of putting your complete trust and faith in him.

John Dehlin [00:31:42] Okay, so let's go back to the story now. So you share this letter with your stake president and some others. He takes his time, but eventually he calls you back, but he doesn't want to talk about the letter. Did you try and get him to talk about the letter?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:31:56] I did a little bit, but after a while, I didn't press it. And again, I'll say up front, I respect the guy. I think he's very nice. And I actually think that he understands the Mormon Church's narrative of church history quite well. I think he really does. But starting in that first meeting is when the threats of excommunication began to come in. And it had nothing to do with Denver Snuffer.

John Dehlin [00:32:29] The name didn't come up.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:32:30] Not now. Okay, not at that time. But what had come up was that I had written this letter. And to be clear, he said that if you teach this publicly, I will excommunicate you from the church for apostasy. And it was clear that I never had taught publicly against the Church's teachings. And it was even made clear at the trial nine months later that Sarah and I were both able, in that trial, which we'll get to, to share our testimony, basically, that we have not been publicly teaching this in the Word. We have not taught the senior stake, though we might share our views privately with family members on different things. That is not publicly teaching contrary to the teachings of the Church after having been instructed not to, which is the definition of apostasy in the Church Handbook. So we tried to keep the councils of the church leaders in as much as we were able without not also complying with the instructions of the Lord to us or the Spirit to us. We weren't willing to deny what we believed to be true, but we also weren't going to cause a ruckus.

John Dehlin [00:33:47] So again, back to your intent with the letter. You said you got the feeling that you'd be disfellowshipped because of the letter you wrote.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:33:56] After I handed it to the stake president, I had that impression. And in that first meeting. Yeah, thanks for bringing me back to that. By the end of that first two hour meeting, he had decided that he needed to take my temple recommend and said I wasn't worthy of a temple recommend and that I was breaking my covenants.

John Dehlin [00:34:17] And again, it's for teaching that the brethren have the potential to lead us astray.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:34:23] Yeah, and it was for teaching that in the letter because again, I'd never said anything like that publicly, but it was in the letter. I've captured this. And he said that I wasn't keeping my covenants, I wasn't worthy. And I said, I am worthy and I do keep my covenants. And he says, you have no right to judge your worthiness. And I said, then why do you ask that? As the last question in the temple recommend interview. But you know, it wasn't a dialogue that was filled with animosity. We had a genuine exchange. I'm sure he was annoyed with me because here's this young guy who's taking a stand, a hard stand on this. My intent and the hope of my outcome was that a stake president or the high Council who are basically responsible for teaching the Saints in their stake would be persuaded that what was being taught was wrong, that the views I had outlined in the letter were correct, and that there might be more people as members of the church, although they'd be in leadership positions, who would be willing to teach the truth when called upon and at least not continue to spread those ideas. Yeah, that was my hope.

John Dehlin [00:35:33] Yeah. So the two things that are just really weird to me about this is, number one, you're teaching from the Scriptures. Number two, you're teaching the types of teachings that not only are in the Book of Mormon, but the Joseph Smith and Brigham Young taught specifically. And then three or four, you're not teaching them publicly. You've only written them in a letter to him. That's a really weird combination of factors that would lead to your temple recommend being revoked.

Losing Temple Recommend and Church Callings

Matthew Lohmeier [00:35:59] That's right. So the recommend was taken. He told me he would release me for my calling in the Elders Quorum presidency. And he told me that I should not speak in church anymore. Speak or pray about anything. When you hear the mix of those things that is being disfellowshipped, that's pretty much disfellowshipped. But there was no court or anything. And that word was never used. But in retrospect, as I look back, I had that thought that I would be disfellowshipped. And that's exactly what happened. As a result of handing him the letter within the first meeting, I was disfellowshipped. And so I go back to church the next Sunday with my wife, and everything's like, normal, at least from an outward perspective. Looking in, that was my last week, I think, in the Elder Scorm presidency. And I was released. A week goes by, and I call one of my home teaching families to set up my home teaching, because I do my home teaching. And he informed me by phone that his new home teachers had contacted him. Bless you.

John Dehlin [00:37:02] Meaning you had been released.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:37:04] I had been released and replaced, but that was not shared with me.

John Dehlin [00:37:07] No one told you.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:37:08] So I found out by trying to accomplish my home teaching that I was no longer a home teacher.

John Dehlin [00:37:14] That's so passive aggressive.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:37:16] So I went to the Elders Quorum. I went to the Elders Quorum president, and I went to the bishop, and I asked them how that happened. And both of them apologetically explained that they thought that was the best course of action. And. Sorry, no one told you about that? No, no one told me about that. But the bishop made it clear to me that that was his decision to do that. He felt it was was best that I not be a home teacher. And so yet another. Without telling you that directly, without telling, I'm guessing when discipline begins to occur over ideas and over doctrine, that is a really uncomfortable situation. I think no one wants to get into a conflict over ideas. And I get that. And for that reason, I think while I might have seemed like a thorn in the flesh, I think to my stake president, we had some respectful dialogue. We have another meeting. A couple of months go by, he calls me back and we have another meeting. We're into the new year, and then Sarah is called in for an interview because we had gone through the new year and we had not gone in to renew our temple recommends. And so she.

John Dehlin [00:38:34] Was she still teaching seminary at this time?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:38:36] She was.

John Dehlin [00:38:36] She was, yeah.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:38:38] And a note on that. She taught seniors in high school. She had received Personal notes from some of her students saying, I've been a seminary student for four years, three, three and a half years. And for the first time in my life, the gospel is coming alive to me. Thank you so much for your instruction. She had a class that was so interested in what she was sharing because she's a good gospel teacher and she knows her scriptures and she knows church history. And she's called in for an interview and she has asked, do you read Denver Snuffer? I have not talked with my stake president about Denver.

John Dehlin [00:39:25] Name hadn't come up.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:39:26] Name hadn't come up. Not once. But he had heard from a different stake president that potentially Matt and Sarah Lohmeier are Denver Snuffer readers. And so he then presses her about it in the interview and asks, and she says, yes, I do read Denver Snuffer. He warned us not to read Denver. His teachings tear families apart, this kind of stuff. And we knew better because we've been reading him for about four years. And so during that meeting, he said he was going to have to release her from being a seminary teacher and that her last day of seminary would be tomorrow morning. Go say goodbye to your students and we'll replace you with a different teacher. Boy, that was the hardest news I think you could have told her. And her temple recommend was taken. And don't speak or pray. And by the way, don't play the piano either, because we don't want you operating under the spirit of the devil. That was what was said.

John Dehlin [00:40:22] Oh, wow. You weren't making.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:40:24] You can't play the piano. And Relief Society because people who are under the influence of the devil shouldn't be playing musical instruments in the church. I'm not exaggerating. This is 100% truth. So that you can imagine that news was not. That was very difficult for her. And this whole process was, I think, more emotionally difficult for her than it was for me. She had more friends than I did in the church, the Relief Society. And her interaction and involvement there and in seminary was a very important part of her religious devotion. And that was taken in a day because she said she read Denver. Snefer, our stake president, didn't know anything about Denver Snuffer. He said to us that he was somewhat familiar with what Denver is teaching. But you can't be somewhat familiar with what Denver's teaching if you just Learned about him 2 days ago and now you're. So that continues. I'm speeding forward month after month.

John Dehlin [00:41:24] How did Sarah feel to be released?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:41:25] That was very sad.

John Dehlin [00:41:27] Very hard okay, so I have a question about that. I know that the day that I bought the microphone for Mormon Stories podcast and started broadcasting, I knew that the clock was ticking and that at any point I could be excommunicated. Now, I was surprised that it took, you know, it took 10, 11 years, but it eventually happened. Or at least where I was called Interdisciplinary Council and told to stop doing what I was doing and be quiet or I'd be excommunicated. But my point is, oftentimes you kind of know what you're pushing for once you start pushing when you write that letter. And I assume she read the letter before you wrote it or sent it, and you start reading Denver Snuffer, and then you find out that Denver Snuffer was excommunicated, which he had been by this point. And then you write this letter to the Stake president, she knows about it. You kind of have to know what's in store a little bit. I don't think you operate with that directness and openness without realizing what's in store. So in some sense, you had to have known what was in store. And so then someone would ask, well, you weren't sad. She wasn't sad. You guys knew what you were doing, and you knew what would happen if you did it. What would your response to that be, generally? And then for her sadness, specifically, when she was released.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:42:55] Yeah, fair enough. So you'll remember at this point, it's 2014, fall now into 2015. I've been reading Denver since 2008 or 09, and Sarah and I get married in 2011 just to kind of repaint the timeline. And she's been reading and studying and believing since then. Denver has given his 40 Years in Mormonism lectures, the ten parties lecture that he makes down the Utah Mormon corridor. We've been watching all of this happen. We see the impending trial of Denver Snuffer and see the outcome of that and see him get excommunicated. Anyone who is closely following along with the movement, if you will call it that, at that point in time, seeing those things happen, realized that it might just very well be a matter of time before we had heard of other people who had been called in, who had been questioned as to whether or not they were following Denver Snuffer's movement and they were being excommunicated from the church. So that's in our mind, and we're familiar with and aware of those stories as we are. As I am writing this letter and then delivering it to my Stake President, I'm aware of that. And I'll say, I admit that I was aware that this would almost certainly culminate in church discipline, but it wasn't because it was simply the result of taking a stand for what we had come and what I had come to believe was the truth. It didn't mean that we didn't enjoy serving in the church, and in fact, we'll talk about it. But we attended church weekly for six months after our excommunication from the church. We loved serving in our callings. We loved to teach the gospel. And we think that others were interested in learning from our lessons that we were teaching. And so to have your seminary calling removed, that was very poignant. So, yeah, we. And I'll say me, I anticipated that this would potentially culminate church discipline, but it didn't mean that Sarah wasn't devastated when in a moment her seminary calling is taken away. And that intimate relationship that she was developing over the course of a semester with all the seniors in high school who were about to go off to college, many of them BYU like she had attended, I mean, she loved those kids and they loved her as a teacher. And to know that someone else is going to come in. Now, the reason that was given why she had to be released from her calling was that you are unable to teach the fullness of the gospel. And by that, what the stake president meant was you're unwilling to bear testimony of the current leaders of the church. That's what he said.

John Dehlin [00:45:46] Did she say she couldn't?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:45:47] And Sarah, support the leaders, said this came out in the course of her first interview when she was asked, do you agree with the views that your husband has already been sharing with me? And she said she did. She pressed the matter and I think said, so you're telling me if I'm able to teach and testify of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, of the divine calling, of the prophet Joseph Smith, of the divine organization of the church, those things to you are not teaching the fullness of the gospel. And the missing piece of the puzzle is if you can't bear testimony of the living prophets, then you're not welcome to teach anything in the church. I won't rehash some. I mean, there's a lot of conversation I've been able to remember in the last few weeks that I could bring up. But that was kind of the crux of the issue was the Brethren Denver snuffer now being in the picture and my stake president continuing to learn in coordinating councils and from other stake presidents and from the Area Authority 70 about what was happening within the movement gave him all the more reason to feel justified. That this stance that we have taken against the leaders of the church as it seemed, all the more reason to pursue a court because they're caught up in a movement that is bad, and that's why they're bearing bad fruit.

John Dehlin [00:47:17] So that's towards the end of 2014,

Matthew Lohmeier [00:47:22] beginning of 2015, and that continues until our trial in July. We find out in May, I want to say it was May, that we were going to go to a church court of 2015.

John Dehlin [00:47:35] Got a letter.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:47:36] Yeah. We were told first by our stake president that, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to bring you to a church court.

John Dehlin [00:47:41] Have you done anything publicly from January to.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:47:44] We had not.

John Dehlin [00:47:45] May.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:47:45] We had not. No. This was. There's more to the story. I'll say this first. Yeah. Two men that we didn't know showed up and delivered the letters to Sarah. Hey, have a nice day. And here's your letters. And you've been summoned to a church court. We found out at the same time that we found out we were going to go to a church trial that we were pregnant with our first child, which was a miracle to us because for four years plus, we'd been married and had been trying to have children and had not had children. And as a tender mercy from God to call it that, the moment we found out that men would pursue judgment to kick us out of our church, that was the moment God decided he would tell us, I approve of the path you've chosen, and I'm willing to send you the child you've been praying for and waiting for. And so disapproval in the eyes of men to us, a sign of God's approval to us in his eyes. And so we get that news then. And then it's about a month and a half before we go to trial.

John Dehlin [00:48:48] So I guess what I'm kind of wondering is what additional things did you do between January and May or June to make them pursue it? Versus just leave you alone.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:49:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:02] Were you speaking out publicly on the Internet? Were you attending things? Were there spies? No.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:49:10] What had come up in the course of many hours of interviews was that as he, our stake president, was understanding about the movement from others, he was asking us pointed questions about our private devotion. Do you take the sacrament in your home? Yes, we do. Do you use wine with the sacrament? Yes, we do. That kind of stuff is not authorized. You're breaking the word of wisdom. Although there's provision for that in the word of wisdom, why don't you pay your tithing to the Church? Have you been rebaptized? Those issues came up. And I'll remind you that in the first interview, there were three threats of excommunication from the Church that had nothing to do with any of those things. But later, when there was sacrament and baptism and things which are not authorized, for sure, and I understand that that was the further impetus, I think, to pursue the church court because we were performing ordinances that were not authorized and we were unwilling to agree to stop doing those things, stop doing that. Like sacrament in our home, for instance. And so again, the crux of the matter was the brethren and their keys and sustaining them. And then the actions of our private devotions, which we'd never shared with them until pressed, were the cause, I think. And they were the reasons for the charges of apostasy that were given in our church court. The first and foremost reason that was given was for not believing that the leaders of the church held the keys and that they were prophets, seers and revelators. That was charge number one. Not believing. Not having publicly taught against them, but not believing that they were prophets, seers and revelators. Not believing that they held the keys.

John Dehlin [00:50:57] Yeah, that's weird. Apostasy is supposed to be for teaching false doctrine publicly.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:51:03] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:51:04] And you're saying you guys weren't teaching?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:51:06] Yeah, in fact, I've got it recorded. The charge was for believing. For not believing that the brethren were prophets here.

John Dehlin [00:51:11] And you said thought police. Were those your words?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:51:13] Thought police? Yeah, that's my words.

John Dehlin [00:51:15] Because the. Why?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:51:16] There's no. Several times in our interviews, the stake president said, you can believe whatever you want, you just can't teach it. And now here I am at a church court with the charge of apostasy for not believing that the brethren hold the keys. Then some more understandable charges were that we were participating in false ordinances, was the charge to include sacrament in the home, and rebaptism.

John Dehlin [00:51:43] But what's kind of weird about that is early members of the church got rebaptized. They did a lot. And I'm sure they passed the sacrament in their homes. And I'm sure they used wine in their sacraments and in the church for

Matthew Lohmeier [00:51:56] sacrament until the early 1900s.

John Dehlin [00:51:59] Yeah. So, I mean, it's just a matter of the fact that I guess at some point the brethren just started wanting to control and control and control the ordinances more and more. And as they did, that became. It's always about authority, isn't it?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:52:17] Yeah. Well, that's what it came down to in our trial was it doesn't matter what the early saints did. It doesn't matter if the scriptures teach in support of your view, if it's not currently supported by the men who hold the keys, then it's not supported and therefore unauthorized. So in that regard, I understand completely the view, because I've had it for my whole life up until a point, I get their view. I disagree with the premise upon which they were charging us, but I get it. I understand why they pursued discipline. I think it's unjust, it was unkind, it was wrong.

John Dehlin [00:53:00] So you find out in May or June of 2015 that a disciplinary council has been summoned.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:53:06] Yep. And then July 19th is the day that we have the trial.

John Dehlin [00:53:11] Was you and Sarah together? Was it you and Sarah?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:53:13] We were tried together and we were given that option. She was told by the stake president that she would go be tried by the bishop bishopric. And I had read the church handbook enough to understand that she had the right to refuse that and then to request to be tried by the stake level. And so she did that. And then he offered to have us be tried together. So. So we sat at the end of the table together and were tried at the same time. One thing that's worth mentioning as a part of our interviews, and I'm sure my stake president, in listening to this interview, might even think, I didn't say that. But you say things in a moment when you're emotional that you might not even believe. But as we continue to discuss the ideas involved in my letter, although we never did open that letter back up and address anything he told me, what this comes down to is that you can believe that Joseph Smith was a bad, despicable man and remain an active member in good standing in this church. He says, but you cannot believe that the current leaders of the church are not prophets, seers and revelators. That was it. And I, and I think it was at that time when I told him, then you and me believe in a different church, a different religion. And so we agreed that, yeah, we saw the gospel very differently. And so that was the crux. That was the point upon which everything hinged, was the brethren. And so we go to the church court and proceed.

John Dehlin [00:54:49] What was that like?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:54:53] It was what I anticipated. Sarah and I, on the day of our trial felt peace and felt like we had the spirit of the Lord with us. We were confident in our beliefs and we weren't doubting. And we knew that our stake president would prefer some charges against us and, and make an argument and that we would be given the opportunity to address those. In fact, one last point about that, in the meeting before our church court, he said, I need to explain to you how the court process is going to work, and we're going to be asking you questions about your beliefs and the gospel, etc. He says, he says this to me, if you open your scriptures and try and convince them of your views from the scriptures, I'm going to interrupt you and stop the council. And so I wrote him an email later that night and I quoted to him from the church handbook of instructions, where it says that any evidence that you'd like to bring before the council in your accusation of the accused that was gleaned from confidential interviews with the accused, and these are my words, you have to receive the approval or the consent of the accused who are on trial to use that evidence that was gleaned from confidential interviews. So I wrote him the letter and I said, I know that you have no evidence against us of apostasy other than what we talked about in private conversations in your office. I am therefore willing to consent to you using that information against us if you. You allow us to use the Scriptures to teach the Gospel while we're in the church court. He wrote back and agreed and said, I think you might have misunderstood me, but you're welcome to use your scriptures. So he opened up, had 20 minutes where he shared the charges, which I've already mentioned, and he tried to show from the Scriptures that we were in apostasy. I felt bad for him because he was uncomfortable and he wasn't successful at proving from the Scriptures that we were in apostasy. And then he gave us each 20 minutes to share our view from the Scriptures relative to the charges against us of taking wine with our sacrament of being rebaptized. And so we were able to share our testimonies about the Restored Gospel. We bore our testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and that we believed in the Restored Church and that we were willing to suspect, sustain him as a leader. So we share this. And the High Council, I think, is thinking, holy crap. We're going to excommunicate these people and they're bearing their testimony to us about the Restored Gospel. And they've said they're not guilty of any sin, any grievous sin that would cause them to be here, except for

John Dehlin [00:57:45] not sustaining the brethren.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:57:46] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:57:48] And that is the most grievous Sin, right?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:57:52] It seems so. So the trial is four hours long and we have every question under the sun we're asked. And I felt like Sarah and I confidently were able to defend our beliefs and to share kindly with them why we view things the way that we do. Denver Snefer came up in the. In the church trial. How long have you been reading his things? Are you polygamists? Do you plan to be polygamists? I mean, every question under the sun. And the answer to that was no, by the way. And in the end, they were left to deliberate. And that took some time. And it's my suspicion, and I might be wrong, that there took some. A good amount of time to convince everyone to sustain his decision. That is not required. He could have made a decision about the outcome regardless of their support. But I think it was important to him to have all of their support. And so they took some time to get that. In the end, everyone supported that decision. And then the verdict was announced when we came back in that we had been excommunicated for apostasy for. And notice the difference in wording now, teaching publicly that which is contrary to the laws of the doctrine of the church after having been counseled not to and for participating in false ordinances. And we had established in the trial that we had not been teaching publicly that which was contrary to the church's doctrines. And that was between us and the stake president in private conversations. So that's how things wind up. And I think unless there's anything else on the trial that you're wanting to talk about, that's kind of how things culminate.

Formal Excommunication and Its Aftermath

John Dehlin [00:59:29] You probably didn't love them. Claiming that you were teaching things publicly when you weren't. Right.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:59:35] Yeah, I think I even, I think I even interjected at that moment when he said, we found you guilty of apostasy, you're being excommunicated. Here were the charges. And when he read that first one, I think I might be misremembering, but I think I spoke up and said, that's not true and we've proven it. And it didn't matter. The charges continued to be read and then it was over.

John Dehlin [00:59:57] It's a little bit deja vu for me just because I, you know, I gave my TED talk in fall of 2004, 2013, where I expressed public support for LGBT Mormons and same sex marriage. And it was just a matter of a couple months before my disciplinary council was convened. And so to me, it was always clear that my public advocacy for same sex marriage was a part of my disciplinary process. But they didn't want that to be the reason used because they. That didn't look good in the press. Church excommunicates someone for supporting same sex marriage. So the whole reason why I'm getting to that is so many people were telling me that had nothing to do with why you're excommunicated. And the stake president was saying that has nothing to do with why you're excommunicated. But ultimately what it seems to come down to is they can do whatever they want. They can use whatever justification they want that the rules really are kind of arbitrary and they end up violating any rule that they feel like they have to to reach the conclusion they want to reach. That was my experience. Was that your experience?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:01:10] I agree that yeah. Our stake president was empowered to do what he felt like was. I mean, he asked us at least two or three times in the month or two leading up to our trial, will you please write a letter to Salt Lake and request that your names be removed from the records of the church. He felt an obligation to excommunicate us and he knew that was going to be the outcome. And he did not want to go through that process and have the responsibility for making that decision. He was hoping we would make that decision so that we would be the ones responsible for leaving the church. We told him we had no interest in doing that. And so he had to proceed then with trial because he felt the obligation to proceed again. Very nice man. And we get along pretty well. I think a couple of weeks after we go to church every week after our trial, we keep showing up.

John Dehlin [01:02:05] Why?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:02:06] That was our community of friends, to use the term fellowship. That was our fellowship as a habit. We liked being in church. We enjoyed their fellowship. I'll tell you, a part of me thought, I'm not a member of that church anymore and I can say whatever I'd like. That was appealing. Although I'll tell you, we were very quiet and we really didn't speak up. Six months went by, we didn't speak up. We. He asked. He told us at the end of the trial that we were welcome to continue coming to church as long as we didn't say anything. And we were, by and large, I think we were compliant with that. I went over to the stake president's house probably weeks after the trial and met him at his doorstep. And we embraced. And I told him, I have no hard feelings towards you and I hope you don't me. And he said, likewise, I have no hard feelings towards you. And this was interesting. He said, I know that God will sort all of this out. And he says, and I hope that God will judge you mercifully so that you can have all of the eternal blessings and rewards that you've ever deserved. Which indicated to me that he felt an obligation to do something. But in his heart of hearts, he didn't want to judge us. He just wanted to love us and not judge us. And he hoped that God wasn't going to judge us based on the actions that he took. And that was moving to me. I thought that was nice of him to share that.

John Dehlin [01:03:41] Did you get the sense that Salt Lake was telling him to excommunicate you?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:03:48] No, I don't think so. In fact, I even asked him once if he was getting that direction, and he said, no, this is. And so I'll take him at his word. He said, this is completely my decision. Although he had admitted to learning about what he thought our beliefs might be from the Area Authority 70 and from other stake presidents. But he said the decision to pursue excommunication was his decision. Six months go by, we've been going to church.

John Dehlin [01:04:19] Did they announce it? Did they announce it to the ward, to the stake? Did your friends know? Were you attending with everyone knowing that you had been excommunicated?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:04:28] I'm guessing most people in the ward didn't know that we were excommunicated. In fact, almost no one in the ward would have known that, except for maybe some of our closest friends. We were at home in Arizona for Thanksgiving, and I got a call from our former stake president, and he says, would you mind coming to meet with me when you get back in town? I said, sure. I'd be happy to. Sarah elected not to go to that meeting. So I went. It was December 6th of 2015. It was about six months after our trial and my birthday, incidentally. He didn't know that. But now you know it. He said, I'm going to have to ask you to make an agreement with me that you will never speak in church. Remember, we haven't been speaking in church. I'm going to have to ask you to promise me that you'll never speak, even if the spirit of the Lord prompts you otherwise. That's what he asked. And I told him I was very, at this point, speaking.

John Dehlin [01:05:25] Meaning what? Like saying hi to someone?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:05:27] No, he means make a comment about the gospel. Make a comment about the scriptures in a Sunday school class. And I made it clear. I said, one, we were excommunicated for having taught publicly that which is contrary to the Church's teachings, after having been counseled not to. And that was not true. And since our excommunication, we haven't been speaking. Why are you demanding this of me now? And I pressed him quite a bit on that. And he says, because I'm afraid that you will say something in church that will be persuasive to other members of the Church, that you've got some valid viewpoints, whatever, etc. And I said to him, I said, I wasn't willing to agree to that when I was under your direction as a Stake President. I'm surely not going to agree to that now that I'm not a member of the Church, I'm not going to promise you that I'm not going to speak up. So he said, if you can't promise that, I'm going to have to ask you to leave and never attend church in my congregations again. The words he used were, never attend a Mormon Church building ever again. Then he threatened and said, if we see you here again, we will pursue other means to make sure that you never come back. By that, I thought he meant maybe a restraining order. This is, again, we're being a quiet couple. We're well liked in the Word. And it was driven by the fear that we might say something that was according to his words. And so, for better or for worse,

John Dehlin [01:06:53] since you weren't talking, why didn't you just say, okay, we'll stay quiet?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:06:58] Because he deliberately worded it in a way that he knew I would not be willing to agree to, namely, even if the Spirit of the Lord prompts you to say otherwise. And so he knew that I would be. Based on our conversations, we had spent hours together, and he knew how important it was for me to try and obey the guidance of the Lord. To me. So his question was framed in a way that if you can't agree to not ever speak, even if the Spirit tells you to speak, I'm going to have to uninvite you from coming. And he knew that the outcome of that would be me not agreeing and that he'd ask us to leave. So I shared with him, and perhaps I wasn't. I mean, this was one of the first times that I really felt like I was going to get animated. And I said, you're upset. I said, you're a coward. I defend your right of free speech, and only tyrants in history have told people they can't speak. And so I said, I. And so I wanted to make that clear. To him. And I told him that you'll regret your decision and you'll realize one day that we were not the enemies of Mormonism that you thought we were. And that was kind of the end of our conversation. That was the last time that we had talked. And at least that was the last time we met in his office. We might have run into them on a walk or something. I mean, we live so close, so that's how. That's how things unfold. And at this point in time, my family knew the outcome and Sarah's family did not. They were unaware.

John Dehlin [01:08:36] So, wow, those are. That's a tough conversation. And so did you stop attending at that point?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:08:44] We did. That was the last day we went to church.

John Dehlin [01:08:46] So the end of 2007.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:08:49] Yeah, December 6, 2015 is when I had that meeting. We had been at church that day and it was a nighttime meeting. He told us also that because we were unwilling to make that commitment, that the following Sunday he would be announcing in the Word that we've been excommunicated, which we were told would not happen unless we were publicly preaching our views abroad. So he asks the bishop to go to the various quorums to make that announcement. And so it wasn't announced over the pulpit and sacrament meeting. It was announced in Relief Society and Elders Quorum and High Priest group. The words that were used were, the Lomires have been excommunicated from the church for conduct contrary to the laws of the church, period. Well, that could mean a whole lot of stuff. And so because a friend in the ward told us that that's what was said, and because we found out later that that's what was said, I wrote a letter to the ward. It was just a short email. I think it was a one page letter explaining that it was over ideas or doctrine and it was over disagreements with current church teachings, basically. And it had nothing to do with us not being faithful to one another. And then we bore our testimony of the restoration and we wanted to be clear to them that we we've not lost the faith. We are your advocates and believers in Mormonism. How did you share that letter I sent? Well, I had been on the Elder Scorm presidency, so I at least had all of the emails in the Elders Quorum presidency, sent it to the High Priest group to release the sight in the Elders Chrom presidency and attached that little letter as well as the letter that I had written to the stake President back in October of 2014 and said, this is all tied in together. This is what we were excommunicated about and over didn't mention Denver Snuffer or things we believed. It was really just a simple, you want to know what happened? Here's what happened. And we had probably count them on one hand. People reach out to us and say, we sure love you guys. Thanks for sharing. That was it kind of just cut contact off from the word.

John Dehlin [01:10:54] Yeah. That practice of announcing that vague message warning to the whole community, it just feels so kind of gross and a little bit violent in the sense that it leads people to just wonder and speculate as to why. Yeah, it can do that, rumor mongering and all that. But it's also just a matter of marking you all with the scarlet letter and basically saying you're evil, you're not to be trusted and it's a very shaming act. How is it for you guys?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:11:32] Well, yeah, it's true that if the reason for your discipline is tied to ideas, that is a really scary, that is a really scary thing for members of the church to confront. If it was because I had robbed a bank or was unfaithful in my marriage or you name a number of things, there seems to be a greater potential for members to reach out, try and love and support and extend a hand of fellowship and say just keep trying and get through this repentance process and come back. In fact, I maybe shouldn't share this. There's a guy that I know in. There's a guy that I know who had left the church, had been excommunicated from the church for different reasons and then been rebaptized and then was excommunicated again for those same reasons. And don't think too hard, but you can imagine what that might be. The same stake president was pursuing, pressing him, saying you need to be rebaptized into the church. And his answer to the stake president was, sorry, president, I like the ladies too much. And there's that effort going on in that lane and then in our lane if it's over ideas, it's not only do we not want you to come, we're not going to fellowship with you, we don't want you to ever come back again. And we're telling you we'll get a restraining order. And those words weren't used, by the way, but we'll make sure to it to see to it that you can't come back.

John Dehlin [01:13:20] Yeah, yeah. They're really threatened by beliefs. Right. By the key, you know, they're motivated to keep the doctrine pure. Right?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:13:31] Yeah, that's Right.

John Dehlin [01:13:32] And to protect their authority. Really?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:13:34] Yep. Yeah, that's right. Now, all of that, I feel like I've been spending hours talking about myself. It's starting to make me sick. But all of that's important background, I think, for the whole reason why we found ourselves in this situation and what we believe and maybe what. So I'm kind of. You want to jump there, but I'd like to stop talking more about myself and maybe more about ideas and more about what's going on in the movement, if you don't mind. And let's do it. Cool. Oh, no, there's one.

John Dehlin [01:14:07] You can just hijack my interview and control it however he wants.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:14:11] Hey, there's a question you're going to ask, I'm sure. And since I've insisted that we move on, let me share this. Because it was about three months after the trial that we went and sat down with the McConkey family to share with them that we had been excommunicated. And without. Without sharing all of the details. We waited that amount of time for certain reasons. We went and bought them pizza and we sat down. It was just Sarah and me and her parents down at their home. And. That was. Had to be one of the most difficult things for Sarah to do is to share that news with her family. It had to be one of the most difficult things for her family members to hear come from their daughter. I'm sure at the end of. As far as the question, how did they react goes, as in my view, respectfully and kindly as you could, given the circumstances. And as we left the house that evening, Sarah's mom came, ran to the front door and said, wait. And she says, I have something for you. And she ran back into the kitchen and grabbed two roses and she gave us each a rose and said, I didn't want to send you out the door empty handed. And to us that means a lot because there are any number of ways you could react to the news that we had shared with them that night. And it's so telling of Sarah's mom that she would think I have to send them out the door with roses and not empty handed. And so very, to be clear, very difficult. And that has led to months of conversations and things, but. Or years. But the response was kind.

John Dehlin [01:15:58] That's a lovely response. So that's nice. Must have been hard for them, right?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:16:06] Imagine it was. Yeah, still is.

John Dehlin [01:16:08] Yeah. Okay, so let's transition to talking about the snuffer kind of movement and where it is and where it's going and then we'll end with some just questions.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:16:25] Cool.

Structure and Identity of the Snuffer Movement

John Dehlin [01:16:26] Okay. So, you know, I talked to the Strongs about this, but it's probably the best place to start. The website seem to not want to refer to Denver as a prophet, and yet clearly people kind of see him as such. So talk about what Denver is and isn't to you in that way.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:16:52] So the first thing I'll say is I had that experience when I first met him in his office, where then I go to the car and have the experience where I believe I have that witness come to me that he is a true prophet. I agree with you that there is a reluctance on the part of those who are in the movement to talk about him. Even he has set it up that way. It seems by what he has taught. He has been very deliberate in trying to make sure that he isn't the focal point of his teachings, but that Christ is. And I think whereas in the church, on the one hand, a pendulum is way over here and members of the church want to talk about their leaders, all day long, a pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction for many people where, because of the way in which Denver's approached his message and calling and teachings, some people will go so far as to say, I don't want anything to do with them. These are people in the movement. I don't need to talk about Denver. I don't need anything from him. And in my view, that's gone too far. You wouldn't be where you're at today in this movement if it wasn't for everything he's been teaching for the last decade. And if you're willing, he's either telling the truth about the things he's experienced and he's telling the truth and is teaching light and truth about the Scriptures and about a narrative of Mormon history that conflicts with the traditional Mormon narrative, and that's all true, or he is not deserving of any attention and he's in fact, a very bad man because he's a liar. To me, it's black and white. I think he'd potentially be willing to say as much and maybe has said as much. But I think that his role in what we've been calling the Denver Snefer movement, his role in the movement has been absolutely crucial because it's by virtue of the teachings that he's given to this people and their willingness to believe in those teachings that's led to everything that's happening. You don't have what's happening because Matt Lohmeier is standing up in church saying, hey, you shouldn't believe this idea of the brethren can't lead you astray. And so, not that I was doing that. I wasn't standing up in church doing that. But yeah. So his role is crucial. And I'll say that I believe he has a calling to do what he's doing and therefore has been sent to do what he's doing. And there's. I guess that's how I'll start it off. There's serious implications about what it is he's been claiming for me.

John Dehlin [01:19:47] Why not call it a church? Why isn't it a church? Why isn't it the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day, Latter Day Saints or the Restored Whatever Church? Why not start a schismatic church?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:20:02] Yep. There have been a lot of those in Mormon history, too, as you're aware.

John Dehlin [01:20:07] Several hundred.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:20:08] Yeah, there have been. And there's a book called the Divergent Paths of the Restoration. And in it, it talks about some of those divergent movements. And a lot of them look and smell and feel really similar. And I can see to an outsider looking at what's going on, that at a glance, what we have going on looks and smells and feels really similar to some of those others. But to an outsider who's uninformed and uninitiated, communism and Zion look a lot alike, too, and they're not the same at all. And so why not call it a church? I have no problem calling it a church. I don't think most people in the movement would say that. But my definition of what a church is that stems from Doctrine and covenants section 10, that those who believe and repent are my church or are the church. I think that's exactly what we see happening here. A servant of the Lord has been sent to proclaim the gospel. There have been a small group of Gentiles of the LDS Church who have been willing to believe that and repent and be rebaptized. And that group of people has been willing to voluntarily organize the themselves into a body of believers that looks and smells a whole lot like a church. So it's a matter of semantics, but Denver has clearly said over and over, I will not start another church. What he means by that, in my view, is that he's not going to incorporate. There's not going to be a structure, there's not going to be a hierarchy, and I will not be your leader in that movement. And I'm not going to do what Joseph did when he started a church and there were 12 apostles called that's not how we're doing business. And the reason for that, in my view, is because as the aim is to establish the new Jerusalem in Zion, you can't follow the patterns of all of the churches that have come and gone over the years and accomplish a different end. What you'll get is a hierarchy. You'll get people ruling over one another, and you'll get people telling one another what to do. And that is the antithesis of what Zion community will need to be. And so that, in my view, is why he has been adamant that he will not start a church. But it doesn't mean that the people who have repented and believed won't organize themselves, won't organize themselves into communities, which, by the way, are basically essential to Christian worship communities. You make covenants to support one another. So we have been organized. I have a fellowship. We call it a fellowship. I could call it my church. And there are many churches. There are many churches who believe in the same teachings, who have come from primarily Denver.

John Dehlin [01:23:02] So when you say fellowship. Yeah, it does. When you say fellowship, do you mean a local group that meets in Colorado Springs area?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:23:09] Yeah. And when I first heard that term, it actually bugged me a little bit. I thought, like, Lord of the Rings,

John Dehlin [01:23:14] what's wrong with that?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:23:15] And I like the movies. I haven't read the books, but I was so traditional Mormon that using different vocabulary bugged me. Why do we have to use different vocabulary? But I understand it. This idea of fellowshipping with others who believe like you is crucial to Christianity. It's crucial to our movement. And so those who find themselves in a similar position are banding together so that they can pay their tithing together and administer it to the poor according to common consent. They're having meetings together where they sing hymns and pray and they discuss the gospel. So, yeah, these fellowships are local.

John Dehlin [01:24:04] How many attend yours?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:24:06] So, currently in Colorado, where we meet, there are three families that meet together. We are a part of a larger fellowship that is comprised of families from Utah and Colorado, basically. And we Google chat with one another and hold a church service.

John Dehlin [01:24:25] How often?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:24:27] So we will meet in our fellowships weekly, but that Google chat will take place maybe once or twice a month where we'll meet up and have someone prepare a lesson. Yeah. And so in that fellowship, I think there are nine families.

John Dehlin [01:24:42] Okay, why both the Google fellowship and the smaller in person fellowship?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:24:50] When it first started, it stemmed from an idea that Denver shared in one of his talks. He basically said, hey, if you've been kicked out of your church and you still want to keep the commandment to pay tithing, then why don't you band together with other believers and try paying tithing together? See what you can learn, see what you can accomplish. There were some of us who

John Dehlin [01:25:12] were

Matthew Lohmeier [01:25:13] still active in the church, some who were not in the church anymore. At the beginning, as far as our fellowship goes, there were three families. There was my wife and I and two other families in Utah that decided, let's try this. Let's experiment and let's see if we can band together. Because we loved those families and we knew them, we trusted them. Let's band together into a little fellowship of three families, and let's start to practice what we've just learned. Namely, let's gather tithes together and let's try and care for the poor. And so we did, and it was really successful. And after a short amount of time, one of the families and the three of us decided, hey, there's this other family that we know and we really love, and they don't have a fellowship. Let's invite them to participate in our fellowship. And that turned into four families and then to five families. And in the end, you had families living in both Colorado and in Utah at the time. And so we were meeting up via Google Chat. But as it's grown, we've got a big enough group to gather together in Colorado and a big enough group that can gather together in Utah.

John Dehlin [01:26:18] Got it.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:26:19] And I'm guessing many other fellowships started about that same time in the same way. 2013, 2014, you started to have people band together and pay tithing with one another.

John Dehlin [01:26:31] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. thank you very much.

Part 4 of 4 · Ep. 842

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Why, number one, why would the restoration need a restoration? So God tells Joseph Smith to set up a church. So he sets up a church, right? Yep. There's all that Daniel 2 prophecy about the stone rolling forth, cut out from the mountain without hands that will consume all nations. You know, you don't get the sense that Joseph felt like, hey, members of Nauvoo, what's going to happen is I'm going to die and then the church is going to go to Salt Lake and totally fall into apostasy and then some guy named Denver is going to get called to restart the church. Like that's not what the sense you get from Joseph's writings, you get the sense that he was going to start the church and and the church was going to ultimately usher in the millennium. So why does the restoration need a restoration? And then is there any scriptural support for what's happened recently? Is it foretold that Denver Is Denver written about in the Scriptures? Is it foretold that a Denver figure would be needed in the version of the Gospel that Joseph Smith laid out?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:01:58] Right. Great question. If not, we are all in big trouble who are part of this movement? But in fact, Joseph's aim seemed to me to be the establishment of Zion. And in fact, if you read, you know, I don't remember what book it was in, but even Elder McConkie had written why it is that the Saints didn't accomplish Zion while Joseph was on the earth. And it had to do with their lusts and their jealousies and their pride and their love of money. And I'm paraphrasing there. And as I began to be acquainted over the years with statements like that, I mean, Denver snuffer aside, I was aware of the fact that something had changed between the days of Joseph Smith and at least post 1900s Mormonism, where polygamy had been abandoned. Now we're changing the way in which we ordain people to the priesthood in Hebrew J. Grant's day. And as I'm looking at all the sacrament has changed temple ordinances continue to change. I'm aware of these things that are taking place, and I'm thinking, are we gaining light and moving closer to what Joseph had envisioned in Zion, or are we moving further away from what Joseph was teaching about, as in the establishment of Zion? And the conclusion that I had come to, and this was before I was married, was that, no, we are not gaining light and truth. We are abandoning true principles. We are changing our doctrine, we are changing the ordinances as a church, and we are headed on a path of that, at the rate it's going, it seems will absolutely never accomplish Zion. And so then when Denver starts teaching about Zion, it becomes clear to me that not only did Joseph and the early saints not accomplish the ultimate aim, which was Zion, but that after four generations, it was perfect wisdom in the Lord that he would then call a prophet or send a servant with the calling to establish Zion with any who would hearken to that message and repent of their unbelief or their incorrect understandings of the Gospel and begin to pursue that path again. So why does there need to be a restoration to the restoration? It's because the restoration that was originally given had begun to fall into disrepair. It's the vision of the two buildings. When one building is completely propped up by the original and everyone is losing sight of that original, God sends someone to point back to the original and say, here's what I was trying to accomplish. I'm inviting you now to try and move the work forward again. That's my understanding.

John Dehlin [00:04:57] Is it possible in your mind that Denver could go astray and that another prophet could be needed? Is there any indication one way or the other that this could keep happening? Is there ever a point where we can sort of say, okay, this is the final prophet before, you know, I

Matthew Lohmeier [00:05:13] think when all is said and done and the Lord comes again and there are people dwelling on the earth in the millennium, that group of people will be able to look back and say, these were the last people, these were the last prophets. But, yeah, until that happens, I don't know if you can say that. But I will say that it's entirely possible that Denver or any person who's in a position of trust with God can abandon truth, fall into darkness, go astray. And I think Denver himself has taught that about himself. He said there's nothing he fears more than his inability to do what he's been asked to by God and to screw things up. So I think that's entirely possible. I think what's more likely, however, is that the people who have been called to the work are more likely to fail.

John Dehlin [00:06:05] What about, you know, there's the scripture of the one mighty and strong in the Doctrine and Covenants. Do people who are part of the movement view Denver as the one mighty and strong? Is that someone else? There's also this idea of the end Time Servant, which I had not unheard of until there was discussion of Robert Norman and I don't know if you know who that is.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:06:27] Robert Normans.

John Dehlin [00:06:28] Yeah. So is Denver Snuffer the end Time servant? Is he the one mighty and strong? Do you guys even apply those scriptures to Denver Snuffer in the movement?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:06:39] So I don't know what others in the movement might think about that one mighty and strong and who that might be. I think that some people might guess. I know that Denver has taught publicly that these might be close to his words. How do you not know that Christ isn't the one mighty and strong to set his house in order? I think that this people as a whole are generally reluctant to try and predict outcomes. But we're simply trying to take what we've understood about what our current obligation is and move forward. Latter Day Servant I'll tell you my belief. Denver is a Latter Day Servant. What does that mean? I believe that he's been sent by God to perform a work on the earth. And a part of that work is what we've seen already happen, where he's preaching the gospel, he's bearing witness that he's met Christ. He is cast out of the LDS Church for that belief. I think that was an important part of his mission. There is a small band of people willing to believe that message and repent and receive a covenant which we'll talk about. And that is a part of what he has been asked to come here and do. My personal belief is that a future part of what he has been asked to do is to continue to teach the gospel to a people who are willing to receive it so that they can assist in the fulfillment of the prophecies and the establishment of the New Jerusalem and ultimately have Zion on the earth. I think that's part of his calling, but that's my belief. I'm guessing there are others who I fellowship with who have a similar belief.

John Dehlin [00:08:33] Does it ever bug you that, you know, I can remember as a kid in high school taking the dividing the number of Mormons in the world by the number of people in the world. And it's a small number. It's a small percentage. It's less than 1/2 of 1% if

Matthew Lohmeier [00:08:50] we're the only true church and God is only saving those, is that what you're getting at? I mean, this idea that how fair is that? How exclusive is that how.

John Dehlin [00:08:59] Yeah, it's one thing to be less than one half of 1%, which would be 16 million divided by 6 billion. But your movement is like 1,000 or 5,000 or, you know, no more than 10 or 20,000. I'm guessing that's a lot less than 16 million. So. Yeah. How do you think about God having this plan that's so restricted to so few people, yet it's his one true plan on the earth? It was tough to believe with the LDS Church. Now to think that it's the snuffer movement, it's these 1,000 people that have it right.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:09:38] South Park.

John Dehlin [00:09:40] Yeah. Everybody else has got it wrong. Do you think about stuff like that? And if so, how do you work that through?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:09:44] I don't think about that anymore. So the section 76 of the doctrine and Covenants has the vision that Joseph receives about the three degrees of glory. It's an expansion upon what the Christian world at large was believing about a heaven and a hell. Mormons are quick to point out that Christians don't have the full view of the afterlife or the pre earth life, and they just believe in a simple heaven and a hell. And while the simple heaven and a hell model do show up in Mormon theology, it seems to be a temporary spirit world. And then there's even more. There's these three degrees of glory. Joseph Smith said, I could reveal a hundred times more about what I saw in the vision of the three degrees of glory if God was to permit it and if the Saints were willing to receive it. I think that, and this is Neal A. Maxwell talking and coming, speaking from the dead, that we do ourselves a disservice when we draw circles on a whiteboard and talk about pre earth life, earth life, telestial, terrestrial, celestial, outer darkness. And Mormons have just as much of a myopia as the Christian world does. We point fingers and say they have an incorrect view or an incomplete view. So does Mormonism. God's eternal plan of salvation, of redemption for his children on this earth and on many earths is so much more broad and expansive than what we are teaching in a Mormon church building. And it's actually so much more expansive than what we have in Latter Day Saint scripture. So it's my belief that through the eons of time, these intelligences who have come to this world to learn and grow find themselves in all manner of circumstances, whether they be Buddhist or Muslim or heathen, you name it.

John Dehlin [00:11:42] Did you point at me when you said heathen?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:11:44] Heathen? I did, didn't I? These people, people of various walks of life come to this earth under various circumstances and then they leave this world. And in aggregate, my belief is that all of these spirits leave this place having learned crucial lessons about eternal life, whether they knew about Christ in this world or not, that will be important for them on their eternal journey to become like their maker. And it doesn't mean that they're all going to be saved out of this world. In fact, Christian theology teaches that many will be damned. But the fairness of God is not manifest in the immediate outcome of the choices of people in this life only. But rather the fairness and justice and mercy of God is manifest throughout the eons of creation, where his children get continual opportunities for progression to learn and grow, to be finally placed in circumstances time after time that will enable them to act on the light and truth that they have received so that ultimately you hope you can be placed in a position where you can have faith in Christ, be believing, become like he is through repentance and faith and grace so that you can be exalted. There are very few people on this earth. And I heard you ask the question to Kirk and Karen Strong about you're focusing on the second comforter thing and on seeing the face of God. The people who actually finally believe in that doctrine is this much, but you're saying it's essential to salvation. Well, it is an obligation of true disciples of Christ to seek for that. Most people in this life don't even know about Christ yet. We teach that it's a requirement to believe in Christ and repent of your sins and be baptized and all this kind of thing to be saved. So God's plan is much more expansive than what is going on in this movement. What is going on in the Mormon Church? What is going on on this earth? In love, perfect love and kindness and mercy, he will continue to lead his children along so that they can develop and grow and become like Him. That's my belief. And for me, with that worldview, I am perfectly content to allow the Buddhists or the Muslims, I'm willing to preach to them, but I'm content to allow them to pursue their journey if that's what they choose, knowing that they are learning important lessons, living by the light if they so choose, that they have been given, that will enable them to continue in advancement towards God. Now there are unfortunately, people we won't get into this, but who make decisions in this life that stifle their advancement. And a scriptural example might be Judas. If you want to crucify Christ, then you've made an election that will not only damn you, it will probably, at least for some time, impact your ability to progress in light and truth. So that's how I view the fairness of God in his working with his children through this much more expansive than Denver Snefer movement. LDS Church

Core Doctrines Distinct from Mainstream Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:15:09] what would you say are some of the most crucial principles or doctrines or teachings of this movement that separated from the modern LDS Church or the Christian churches? What are the central things you would want to talk about?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:15:26] Good central first, and it's not different from the LDS Church, but is faith in Christ and repenting and being baptized by authority that is central and that's the doctrine of Christ. What might separate this movement from the LDS Church? There isn't a bunch of new doctrine per se within this movement that was just completely foreign to the LDS Church. In fact, I found this movement so delightful because I had learned from writings of leaders of the church like Joseph smith or Bruce McConkie or Joseph filling Smith how to properly understand the Gospel. I'll tell you what the church doesn't agree with is that Denver Schnefer is a prophet or that he's been sent by God to teach a message. What the LDS Church doesn't focus on is moving forward towards establishing the New Jerusalem or Zion. If you bring up the word Zion in a typical LDS ward, they might even have a bank or a company come to mind before they have something from the scriptures come to mind. And that's not an attack on them as members of the church as much as it is an evidence of the fact that those who claim to be apostles have absolutely no clue about what's happening with Zion in my view. So you can claim you're a prophet all day long, but God's prophecies foretell a latter day New Jerusalem and Zion Joseph was seeking after it. The current church leaders are not at least publicly and they're not teaching their people about it. And there's this guy who claims he was sent by God who is teaching about it. And there's a group of people who are following in that vein or in that movement believing that he's telling the truth. That's probably the biggest divergence from the LDS Church and its teachings now. But a lot of other stuff is similar. We don't currently practice baptism for the dead or things like that, that the LDS Church does. I think that's a true principle and I think it will be practiced in the future. But right now we don't have a place to do that.

John Dehlin [00:17:38] So it isn't as if you drew a line in the chronology and said things Joseph taught before this point, we accept, but things he taught afterwards, we. Joseph Smith. So you believe in everything Joseph taught up until his death, is that right?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:17:57] Yeah. In as much as I understand what Joseph was teaching, I think I'm compelled to believe that he was preaching true ideas. I'm racking my brain thinking through some things. But, yeah, for you, is it possible

John Dehlin [00:18:13] that Joseph went astray or towards the end kind of lies?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:18:17] I don't believe that he did.

John Dehlin [00:18:18] Okay, okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:18:21] I'm familiar, however, with arguments that he did. I don't agree with those arguments, and I'm convinced that he was faithful to the end and that he sealed his mission or his life with his own blood.

John Dehlin [00:18:37] One of the things that Kirk and Karen mentioned was that Denver basically drew a line in the sand and said any ordinance performed in the LDS Church after a certain time period is no longer legitimate. That's a pretty bold thing to do because there are millions of people performing these ordinances every year. When was that date and what was said exactly?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:19:00] If you'll look at his 10th talk that he gives, which is in Phoenix, I should mention something about this too, by the way.

John Dehlin [00:19:07] Please.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:19:08] It's in that talk that he makes that statement. And so I don't want to misquote it, but it's clear in there that because he had accomplished what he had been asked to do and because he had been excommunicated from the church by the leaders of the church at basically every level in some form or fashion because they were all involved, that the church had ended the authority claims of the church and that he was willing now to move his work forward outside of the church. So that's where that comes from. And that was, I guess, when he finishes his 10th. I always get my 2013 and 14 dates mixed up. But I think since I wrote my letter, and I'm guessing he finished his talks in the fall of 2013, and then he's excommunicated, I think, right before he gives those talks. So it's either 2013 or 14. What was your question? You're talking about 10th talk ending the authority claims. Yeah, Phoenix. Okay. So I went to that Phoenix talk, and there have been signs or evidences in my view, all along the way. For me as a believer that what is happening is God's work. One of those signs, and it's one of many, was that in the days leading up to the 10th lecture, I was told by the Spirit of the Lord that as a result of the culmination of the lectures, I would be asked to be rebaptized by Denver as a token of my belief in the message that he had proclaimed and that he was sent as a servant to teach those words. And that ended up being the case. And in the 10th talk, that's in fact what he made clear, is that those who believed what was taught would be rebaptized. The day before the talk, Phoenix, Arizona flooded. Terrible rains. Interstates were closed, and it was underwater. The day of the talk, it was great weather. And the day after the talk, Phoenix, Arizona flooded, and there were interstates closed and flooded with water. No one in the world knew anything about what was going on. But for those that believed and saw what was going on, that was an evidence from God that the message of baptism, which my servant has just preached and invited you to participate in, I have caused some signs on the earth on the front end and on the back end of that talk by flooding this desert and making it buried underwater. That that's an authoritative invitation and you should accept it. I didn't need that sign to act on the invitation, but it was a good confirmation to me, and there have been many of those. Another one was I went to the Ephraim Talk. And in the Ephraim Talk, I think that's the talk at which he spoke about Christ and Karen and Kirk mentioned that one. And I went to bed in my hotel room that night, and the thought came, there is going to be an earthquake tonight as evidence from God that his servant has just spoken the truth about Christ. And I woke up the next morning and my head pops off my pillow. And the thought came into my mind, check the news. This stuff, this sounds kooky, but this is my experience. I'm not looking for. I'm not looking for these things. The thoughts were planted into my mind by the Spirit. And I look in the news and it says, ephraim, Utah earthquake last night at such and such a time. And it was small one. And so things like that had continued to occur that convinced me that I was, and I was kindly being given evidences from the Lord that this was his work. But, yeah, tenth Talk is where they can find information about that claim that the authority of the church had ended.

John Dehlin [00:22:56] Okay. And that's a pretty bold thing, right? I mean, if we look at the ramifications of that. You're saying any baptism that happens in Mormonism is illegitimate after 2014, right? Converts 8 year old kids. Some would even say that's. I'm not saying you're being offensive, but that's kind of. Some people could feel offended by that.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:23:20] I'll tell you what's offensive is not letting children be baptized because their parents are gay.

John Dehlin [00:23:24] You don't like that?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:23:26] I'm just saying if it is a bold claim that yeah, authority claims of the church are ended, but it's more bold to say you will be punished for your own sins and not Adam's transgression. And yet we've got a new policy, FYI, because we're too afraid that you're going to meddle in the church because of your family. I mean, you're holding children accountable for the decisions of their parents. If you don't agree with the decisions of their parents, you're imposing that upon the children until they leave the house. Basically. I think that's unfair. But I wanted to read a scripture about this idea of authority claims being ended. And it comes from Section 84 of the Doctrine and Covenants and it mentions. John the baptist. And. There's problems with going between the LDS edition of the Scriptures and new scriptures that don't have verses and paragraphs. And then you remember where things are at. For he was baptized, okay? The lesser priesthood continued. Which priesthood holdeth the keys of the ministering of angels in the preparatory gospel. This is referring to ancient Israel. Moses is attempting to get them to come up the mount, see the face of God, and they are unwilling to accept a higher law. And God continues with them a lesser law. Which gospel of repentance? Which gospel is the gospel of repentance and of baptism and the remission of sins and the law of carnal commandments, which the Lord in his wrath caused to continue with the house of Aaron among the children of Israel until John, whom God raised up being filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb. For he was baptized while he was yet in his childhood, and was ordained by the angel of God at the time he was eight days old unto this power to overthrow the kingdom of the Jews, and to make straight the way of the Lord before the face of his people, to prepare them for the coming of the Lord in whose hand is given all power. As I read that, I think it's reminiscent of what Denver has claimed in his 10th talk has taken place like John the Baptist being authorized by God and having Been ordained by an angel at 8 days old. To do what? To overthrow the kingdom of the Jews. All it took was John showing up with authority from God and starting to baptize people and the entire kingdom of the Jews was thrown to the dust according to scripture. And all it took in the latter day case was a servant like John, a Denver snuffer, coming with a message authorized by God, preaching it, declaring repentance and being rejected by who were the Lord's covenant people, The Mormon Church. For him to then proclaim that he's ended all claims to authority for the Mormon Church, him being God, not Denver. So I believe that it's similar. I believe it's not only possible there's historical precedent for that kind of thing happening and that it in fact has happened again as a result of Denver's teachings.

John Dehlin [00:26:57] Okay, so you've talked about Zion, you've talked about ordinances and authority. What are some of the other core teachings? I definitely want to get to the covenant. Do you want to talk about what that is?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:27:10] Sure, yeah. Let's see. We've got some time, so maybe we get into the covenant. This is fundamentally different and divergent from what this group of people was doing in the LDS Church several years ago. They're now on a different path with a different group and a different movement.

John Dehlin [00:27:28] Who?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:27:29] This movement of the Snefer movement. What that group of people, this group of people was doing several years ago that is now fundamentally changed and replaced with this, this covenant that's been given. And it is, it is an indication to those who believe in the movement that God in fact is doing something new and his hand is moving again with those who are willing to be believing in what's been taught by Denver. And so we can get into the covenant if you want.

John Dehlin [00:28:01] Yeah, let's do it. I mean, that's an important thing, right?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:28:04] Is that one of the most important things? That's probably the most important thing that's taken place recently. Let's talk about it. There was a recent conference in Boise and this thing is, I think 11 or 12 pages. I'm not going to summarize it, but. Okay, I'll summarize it by reading two verses of scripture. That'll be good. And it's in Third Nephi.

John Dehlin [00:28:27] So

Matthew Lohmeier [00:28:30] at the end of the book of Third Nephi, and this ties back into your question. You asked, are there scriptures that corroborate the things that are taking place? And I think that they do. And in 3 Nephi, chapter 30, Nephi says something about the Latter Day audience, the Gentiles who are the Latter Day Saints who are reading this book, he says to them, hearken O ye Gentiles, and hear the words of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, which he hath commanded me, Nephi, that I should speak concerning you. For behold, he commandeth me that I should write saying so. Here's Nephi saying, hey, I've seen you guys just like Mormon did, just like Moroni did. And he says, here's the words that the Lord gave to me to say concerning you. Turn all ye Gentiles from your wicked ways and repent of your evil doings, of your lyings and deceivings, and of your whoredoms, and of your secret abominations and your idolatries, and of your murders and your priestcrafts and your envyings and your strifes, and from all your wickedness and abominations and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may receive a remission of your sins and be filled with the Holy Ghost. In other words, so that you may be numbered with my people who are of the House of Israel. With that in mind, Denver had taught in the past couple of years that it might be the opportunity of this people who have been rebaptized and who are believing as we are to ultimately receive another or a new covenant from God that would make this group of Gentiles believing Gentiles, the covenant people of God. And as a result of that covenant, this people would then be numbered with the House of Israel. And so Denver offers a prayer and you look on that Restoration Archives website, it's called Prayer for Covenant that he claims he received by revelation. And in that lengthy prayer for covenant that he offers, I'll summarize, but he basically asks God to forgive us who are believing in his latter day work and in the message of the fulness of the Gospel and of the Restoration. He asked God to forgive us for treating lightly the Book of Mormon, for having come under condemnation, for treating lightly the Book of Mormon in 1832, which condemnation had never been removed. He asks God to forgive us for our lyings, our deceivings, our envyings, our lust, etc. The reasons for which the Saints earlier on had failed at establishing Zion and for all of the afflictions common to the Gentiles that Nephi had just described. And he basically prays for that forgiveness and prays for God to give this people a covenant. What follows then is an answer to that prayer called Answer and Covenant is how it's been titled. And that's what I've got with me. There is an answer that's given where the Lord in a thus saith the Lord manner, gives the revelation to the people that, yes, that condemnation has been lifted. And I will offer you a covenant. That's the premise. And so when we gather in this meeting up in Boise, I guess it was several months back now, this prayer for covenant was read. The answer in covenant was read as we're talking 20 pages plus of reading. And at the end of the reading of the answer, then Denver reads the following. And I'll just summarize by reading this part. He says, there are four questions I will read. Please remain seated until the four questions have all been read. If after you hear all four questions, you can answer yes to all four, then you will be asked to stand and say yes to accept the covenant. And this was shared publicly online at least days, if not weeks before we all showed up out there. So people showed up knowing what they were getting into. And the questions were, first, do you believe all the words of the Lord which have been read to you this day, the prayer for covenant, the answer in Covenant in particular, and know them to be true, and from the Lord Jesus Christ who has condescended to provide them to you? And do you covenant with him to cease to do evil and to seek to continually do good? That's the first question. The second question, do you have faith in these things and receive the Scriptures approved by the Lord? And I'll break here to say, as a part of the prayer for covenant, Denver asked specifically about the Scripture project that was underway and said, do you accept the Scriptures that we have put together? And in the answer to covenant, the Lord, and I'm paraphrasing, said that he did accept accept the Scriptures that we have compiled and that he would be willing to accept them even though there were still some discrepancies and errors in them. And so that's where this question comes in. And do you receive the Scriptures approved by the Lord as a standard to govern you in your daily walk in life, to accept the obligations established by the Book of Mormon as a covenant, and to use the Scriptures to correct yourselves and to guide your words, thoughts and deeds? That's question number two. Question number three is, do you agree to assist all others who covenant to likewise accept the standard to govern their lives, to keep the Lord's will to succor those who stand in need to lighten the burdens of your brothers and sisters whenever you are able and to help care for the poor among you? And fourth, and do you covenant to seek to become of one heart with those who seek the Lord to establish his righteousness? Which really, that last question gets at the idea of Zion.

John Dehlin [00:34:22] Zion, yeah.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:34:23] Because this people. Now, whether you believe this is a revelation from God or you do not believe it, you've got a group of people on the earth now in the hundreds or thousands who are making a covenant, in their view, with God to be seeking to become of one heart with those who seek the Lord to establish his righteousness. And what that meant to all of us gathered to make the covenant was that we were going to seek to become a Zion people among these other things. And then he says, if you agree, please stand where you are located, either here or in remote locations to be recognized and numbered by God and his angels. All those standing, please confirm you are willing to accept this covenant by saying yes. And I was there and I planned to participate. And a large congregation of adults and some youth stand up. And there was a resounding yes. And that it was in the Egyptian Theater in Boise, Idaho, because that was the forum that we were able to acquire. And so for me, that was very important. And for me, for years I've looked for this. I didn't know exactly that that's what I was looking for, but now I knew that I had found something that was precious and it was a covenant with God. The condemnation that was that the Lord revealed was a part of the light treatment of the Book of Mormon to the early Saints. That to me, I felt like we had been willing to covenant with God to accept the Book of Mormon as a standard by which we would conduct our lives, and that he was willing to forgive us for the light treatment of the Book of Mormon. That's the way in which people in this movement entered into the covenant. And so people stand and say, yes, they agree to those things. And then there was some instruction that was also given as a part of this answer from the Lord to those who had entered into the covenant. And that instruction read as now hear the words of the Lord to those who receive this covenant. This all you who have turned from your wicked ways and repented of your evil doings, and of lying and deceiving and of all whoredoms. And you'll recognize this language from 3rd Nephi, chapter 30. And of secret abominations, idolatries, murders, priestcrafts, envying and strife, and from all wickedness and abominations, and have come unto me and been baptized in my name and have received a remission of your sins and received the Holy Ghost, are now numbered with my people who are of the house of Israel. I say to you, and then a few of the instructions that come are, teach your children to honor me. Seek to recover the lost sheep remnant of this land and of Israel, and no longer forsake them. Bring them unto me and teach them of my ways, to walk in them. And I, the Lord your God, will be with you and will never forsake you. And I will lead you in the path which will bring peace to you in the troubling season now fast approaching. I will raise you up and protect you, abide with you and gather you in due time, a promise of gathering. And this shall be a land of promise to you as your inheritance from me. The Book of Mormon prophesies that the Gentiles will be swept away from this land. And the covenant promise to those who had entered in was that you will maintain a residency on this land when the judgments come upon the land. And so those who have entered into the covenant believe that they've inherited the land as a promise, the earth will yield her increase, and you will flourish upon the mountains and upon the hills, and the wicked will not come against you because of the fear of the Lord will be with you. I will visit my house, which the remnant of my people shall build, and I will dwell therein to be among you. And no one need say, know ye the Lord, for you all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. I will teach you things that have been hidden from the foundation of the world, and your understanding will reach unto heaven, and you shall be called the children of the Most High God. And I will preserve you against the harvest. And then the last two paragraphs. And the angels sent to harvest the world will gather the wicked into bundles to be burned, but will pass over you as my peculiar treasure. But if you do not honor me nor seek to recover my people, this gets back at your question about is it possible that this work could fail? The Lord says, but if you do not honor me, nor seek to recover my people Israel, nor teach your children to honor me, nor care for the poor among you, nor help lighten one another's burdens, then you have no promise from me. And I will raise up other people who will honor and serve me and give unto them this land, and if they repent, I will abide with them. The time is now far spent, therefore labor with me. Jacob 5Language. The Lord's servants laboring with him for the last time in the vineyard. Therefore labor with me, and do not forsake my covenant to perform it. Study my words and let them be for a standard for your faith. And I will add thereto many treasures which I understand to be Scripture. Love one another and you will be mine. And I will preserve you and raise you up and abide with you forever. Amen. So that's the instruction, then, that is given to those who have entered into the covenant and to me. I view that as a fulfillment of scriptural prophecy, not only because 3rd Nephi 30 had talked about forsake your ways and come unto me and be numbered with the house of Israel, but because I think I see throughout the entire Book of Mormon evidence of the fact that not only will the Gentile Church go astray, but that then there will be some few Gentiles who are willing to repent, become the humble followers of Christ, receive a covenant which it talks about in three Nephi 16, 20, 21, and in chapter 21 it mentions a servant, and it mentions a covenant whereby these Gentiles might be numbered with the house of Israel. And I think that what we've entered into and participated in personal view, is a fulfillment of those Scriptures that we see in 3 Nephi.

The Covenant and Zion Community

John Dehlin [00:40:29] So to summarize that covenant, you're promising to be, as best as you can, a people of one heart and one mind, to seek after righteousness, to dedicate yourselves to these things. And God or Christ in response is promising to establish Zion on the earth in a temple and teach the people further light knowledge.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:40:59] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:40:59] What am I missing from the covenant?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:41:01] It is that basic. It really is. And the language that you read and the questions, for instance, that the folks were asked to say yes to isn't some new. I mean, it's very common. It sounds like baptismal covenants almost in some of the parts of the questions. But because we believe, I believe it was authoritatively offered. It wasn't something that Kirk or Karen Strong or Matt Lohmeier or Sarah Lohmeier was able to go and pray and plead with the Lord and get an answer, and then authoritatively offer a covenant that would be binding on earth and in heaven to a group of people. I think that you had to have a certain special calling and be sent by God to do it. And so it came through Denver. And one of the questions in the covenant there was that, do you believe that the Lord condescended to provide these words to you? If you can say yes to that and these other questions, then you can Enter in. And I was able to heartily say, yes, I believe that they came through an authorized servant and that he had the right to administer that covenant.

John Dehlin [00:42:08] So how did that feel, to enter into that covenant?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:42:11] I thought it felt great. Being rebaptized in your adult life feels great because you're a cognizant, thinking man. And to be able to commit in humility to God, to live that way, felt great. To be able to enter into a covenant that I believed came from God was wonderful. You didn't ask for this, but I'm going to share it anyway. Another sign or signs of authenticity that came as a result of that meeting and that covenant. For the entire weekend of that conference, there were tremors and earthquakes all throughout Idaho and they numbered in the hundreds Nonstop for like 48 hours. There was constantly a rumbling of the earth. We shared with a family member that afterward who then said, yeah, that's because Satan smiles when this kind of wickedness takes place upon the earth, basically. But I take the contrary view. I think that the earth trembled for joy. And there's. If you look in the Joseph Smith translation of Genesis chapter nine, you read about ancient Enoch and God establishing a covenant with Enoch pertaining to the latter day Zion. And it mentions in there that the earth trembled with joy. And to me, what we saw take place was for those that believe, not for anyone else, but for those that believe. One more sign of authenticity and an evidence to us that God was pleased with what was taking place on the earth. And in fact, when the foundations of the new Jerusalem are laid, I think the earth yet again will manifest both its joy and that will be good news for the righteous and bad news for the earth at large.

John Dehlin [00:44:08] Before I start maybe asking questions about sort of concerns people have or questions, any other sort of fundamental teachings or doctrines or practices that you want to mention? We've already mentioned the Scripture project from the last interview. Now, we've talked about the covenant, we've talked about the temple being built. Do you have a sense for where that might be? Are there people wondering where it might be and excited about it?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:44:37] I know it will be in north or South America. I believe it will be probably in the Rocky Mountains, and I have no idea where it will be.

John Dehlin [00:44:50] Any idea how soon the gathering place might be selected?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:44:55] I have no idea. Some days a part of me really hopes it would be soon, and other days a part of me really hopes it won't be soon. And I just don't know.

John Dehlin [00:45:04] So is the idea that he's going to designate A time and a place. And at that point everyone's got to move.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:45:12] That's not my understanding of how it will work. One of the reasons I think, I don't think it's some far out future, I've got to probably pass away and wait for my kids to grow up to be adult age kind of a thing. I think the people who have just stood and entered into a covenant will have the blessing of participating in that work. I think that it's clear in Matthew 24 and in other places in the doctrine and Covenants that talk about the signs of the last days, that when the signs pertaining to that last generation, when the signs pertaining to the second coming begin to be manifested, they will all unfold in a single generation. And that generation will be standing when all of these things end up happening. So I believe in fact that some of those signs have already begun to be given. I believe those signs have appeared both in the heavens and on the earth. And I believe this covenant is one of those signs. I believe that the abandonment of the LDS Church as God's authorized medium through which the Gospel is being administered is a sign that the times of the Gentiles have come to an end. And now that you've got a rejected LDS church and a small accepted group of remnant believing Gentiles who fit the description of the Book of Mormon as having repented and been numbered with the House of Israel. And now we've been instructed by the Lord in the covenant to go and seek to reclaim the lost sheep remnant of Israel. All these things are starting to take place in which will be the fulfillment of the prophecies of Scripture that will lead to the second Coming. And so I think I will see in my day the foundations laid for a temple in a land of Zion. I believe I will get to participate in that if Sarah and I are faithful and the Lord allows us to participate. But I think that I don't know how soon that will be.

John Dehlin [00:47:25] Is it public knowledge how much money has been raised for the temple so far?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:47:31] No, I don't think. No, it's not public knowledge and I don't know how much that is. I know that there were different avenues that were established for donating funds to the temple, which was the idea of, I think Karen talked about, but several women and. I know that there are little amounts of money that have been given to temple, those various mediums, and certainly not enough money to ever purchase land or build a temple at this point. But then again, no commandment has been given to do either one of those things. This was an initial effort, a preparatory effort to show that we were willing to start sacrificing to prepare.

John Dehlin [00:48:18] One of the patterns with false prophets is that they start taking money from their followers and sleeping with their women. Have there. You know, I hear that Denver doesn't take money, doesn't accept money, and I've heard no reports of any inappropriate sexual activity so far. So first, about the money. Does Denver receive money from his followers?

Finances, Polygyny, Scripture, and LGBT Questions

Matthew Lohmeier [00:48:43] Great questions, and you're absolutely right about that being prevalent or problematic. And no, he does not. He is both publicly said that he will not receive money or accept any money or donations for his teaching. And he, I know, has funded his travels and the venues that have been selected for the various places he's spoken at the Mormon Corridor. And I think the same thing has taken place in these three talks to the Christian world. And so as far as I understand it, he pays his own way, won't accept donations.

John Dehlin [00:49:23] What about for other things that aren't teaching? Is that it?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:49:27] He works full time as an attorney still and pays for his standard of living, whatever that is, but he's not

John Dehlin [00:49:34] getting paid to run the church or to, I mean, there's no church but to run the movement. Or it's, you know, for sort of people who are trying to use language that isn't fully up front. They would say, well, he's not getting paid for his teaching, but maybe he could get paid for, is administering or whatever. Is he getting paid for anything that you're aware of?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:49:54] Yeah, you know, I was going to answer and say, not that I'm aware of. And that's true enough, but I'll be so bold as to say he is not because I think I know him well enough to say that he is not.

John Dehlin [00:50:05] Do you get the sense, you know, not only with Joseph Smith and the rumors of polygamy, but I was just. When Malcolm X was following the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, what caused him to split from the Nation of Islam was that Elijah Muhammad was caught sleeping with other women in the movement. Is there any reports or indication that Denver Snuffer is sleeping with anyone other than his wife?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:50:29] Absolutely not. No.

John Dehlin [00:50:30] Would that be a problem for you?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:50:32] It would be a big problem.

John Dehlin [00:50:33] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:50:34] Yeah. That would, in my view, constitute adultery.

John Dehlin [00:50:37] Okay. Okay. We've, we've talked a lot about, we talked with Kirk and Karen about things like polygamy. We don't need to belabor the point that the movement sort of rejects the idea that Joseph Smith ever practiced polygamy. Is that fair? To say.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:50:56] I think by and large that's probably fair to say, but I can't speak for everyone, and I'm guessing there are those that are convinced rather that he probably did. I think that's probably true, too.

John Dehlin [00:51:07] What's your view?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:51:09] My view at this time is that he probably was not a polygamist. And if I had heard myself say that five years ago, I would have thought I was absolutely nuts. Because I've got a section on my bookshelf that's about yea big that's full of books about Mormon polygamy. And I've read through a lot of it. And for years I was interested enough in early Mormonism, fundamentalist Mormonism, Joseph's polygamy, that I looked into it extensively in Sacred Loneliness by Todd Compton and others. I was absolutely convinced that Joseph had practiced polygamy, and now I am absolutely not sure that he did. And the two best sources, I've read hundreds of pages about polygamy, and in 80 pages, I think you can get just as good of a counter argument to the polygamy piece as exists anywhere. And one is Denver's plural marriage talk that he gave. And I think Kirk and Karen mentioned this, but they also accidentally attribute Denver's authorship to an anonymously written paper called Joseph Smith's Monogamy. There is an anonymously written paper, Joseph Smith's Monogamy, and there's Denver's Plural marriage Talk. And both of those talks together, which form probably about 80 pages, I think are the best counter argument for polygamy that exists.

John Dehlin [00:52:27] So I'll share it right now in the Facebook feed. No, go ahead, keep talking.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:52:34] And what it comes down to is contemporary evidence. And so if you're willing to consider all of the post martyrdom, the affidavits, etcetera, and things that were produced, you've got a good case to make for Joseph practicing polygamy. But depending on what evidence you're weighing and how you want to weigh it in the context, I think there's just as good of a case to make that he didn't and that he was being honest in his public statements when he said not only that it was wrong, he was pursuing people in church courts and excommunicating them for the very practice. And so that's my present view on that.

John Dehlin [00:53:21] So that means Brigham Young, what that

Matthew Lohmeier [00:53:24] means to me, that I guess I shouldn't attribute motives to Brigham, but I will say that he surely had, in my view, a different practice of I think, let me back up and Say that Joseph Smith was sealed to many women. I understand that Denver addresses that in his plural marriage talk. So I've got a different view about what was going on in those ceilings.

John Dehlin [00:53:56] Do you guys practice law of adoption?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:53:58] No. Okay. But I understand the practice, I think, from what exists of the historical record as it was practiced in the early church. So I guess simple answer is no. But what Joseph is doing and being sealed to many women seems to me to be mixed with. At the same time, you've got Latter Day Saint apostles on missions to teach the Cochranites, who are polygamists. You've got, in my view, some of the 12 secretly practicing polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:54:37] John Bennett is in sin, you would say.

Matthew Lohmeier [00:54:40] I would say in an unauthorized. I don't think Joseph necessarily knew about their practice. John Bennett is called out. He's excommunicated. He's publicly. It's announced that he's publicly shamed as a result of his practice. But I think that that practice that John Bennett had of spiritual wifery was more closely aligned with what Brigham Young and the other leaders of the church then continue to do after Joseph's death. But because they claim keys, they're able to practice whatever form of polygamy they see as. I mean, they're raising up seed, they're moving to the west, they're having lots of children. I don't remember the specifics, and I'm gonna. So don't quote me on these numbers, although I'm on a public record. While Joseph is alive, Brigham Young has probably four wives. It seems to me that he does not have children with his plural wives while Joseph is alive. If you look at the dates of the births of his children and trace them back nine or 10 months, the moment Joseph is dead, he begins to have children with his wives. And in that next year, he takes 10 or 11 additional wives. And the next year after that, he takes nine or 10 or 11 more additional wives. And then the year after that, he takes nine or ten. I mean, what is happening with Brigham, in my view, is very different than what Joseph is doing. But I understand the arguments for Joseph's practice of polygamy. I mean, I get it. I've read them all. I'm just presently not convinced that what we see happen with Brigham Young is the same thing that Joseph was teaching or doing.

John Dehlin [00:56:19] So are you comfortable saying Brigham Young was sinning or erring, that he was falling into apostasy?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:56:26] Even as a prophet, Brigham Young may very well have believed. He may very well not have intentionally lived a practice that he knew was contrary to what Joseph was doing. I'm willing to grant that. But he was willing to say of Parley P. Pratt, in essence, that he deserved what he got in his martyrdom because he was stealing another man's wife. And in the same manner, Brigham Young was living the same type of lifestyle, but was willing to justify that lifestyle with the claim of keys. And so to me, it seems that by Brigham Young's own standard, if keys don't authorize you to justify the practice of adultery, then by Brigham Young's standard, he's living the same type of lifestyle that Barley Pratt was, namely, adultery. But I am willing to grant, however, that he believed it was a divine law. He taught that clearly for over 30 years. All of the saints then are practicing polygamy who are part of that westward movement. And I think that probably just about all of them believe that it was God's divine will and it came from Joseph. And, I mean, it's amazing what your mind can do after just 10 or 15 years as you repaint. As you repaint history and you look back and you think, yeah, I remember that. Well, what you remember isn't. So I've had that experience. Anyone who's honest with themselves realizes, and having a wife or a husband helps you realize that sometimes you just remember things incorrectly. One good example of this, and maybe we can get into it for a minute. The transfiguration of Brigham Young. You've got people 30 years after the fact, Orson Hyde, in particular, bearing testimony in general conference at how marvelous an experience it was for them to witness with their eyes the transfiguration of Brigham Young. But Orson Hyde wasn't at the meeting on August 8th in 1844. He was out of country. But his recollection is that he participated in that. Wilford Woodruff is talking about how powerful an experience it was, and yet the day of, he's not writing anything about it in his journal. So it shows what just a few years, a few years go by, what that can do to someone's memory, especially if the memories then prop up their understanding of their current. Of the properness of their current trajectory or path, the rightness of their cause. Memory is a little bit faulty.

John Dehlin [00:59:05] So is that not the church falling into apostasy?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:59:09] Yeah, yeah. To me. To me, when you are losing light, that is apostasy. That is how you describe apostasy.

John Dehlin [00:59:19] So the introduction of polygamy into the church was a move towards apostasy for the church?

Matthew Lohmeier [00:59:24] Yeah, I don't think that was Helpful. There's a reason that isn't the introduction of apostasy into the Church. The lack of revelation and connection with God is the introduction of apostasy in any age of the world. The moment a servant of God is not present receiving the oracles of God on the earth and the kingdom of God is on the earth, the moment that is gone and the oracles are gone, in that moment, apostasy begins to set in. It doesn't mean that those people don't still have the blessings of the priesthood, the blessings of the knowledge that they gleaned when the oracles were given to them. But you just give it one generation or two generations or three generations. With every passing generation, more and more blindness will set in. And so four generations later, where we find ourselves today, no one has any recollection of who Joseph Smith was, but they read stories about him. No one has any recollection of who David O. McKay was. Unless they're old, they read stories about these things. Right. And so now I'm going to teach my children, if I'm an active member of the church, what happened way back when in church history. I mean, it might as well be the New testament. It happened 2,000 years ago, it happened 200 years ago. It's all ancient history to our children. And so, yeah, that is in this world, things tend to atrophy and decay, and that is apostasy.

John Dehlin [01:00:45] Okay, as far as Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham historicity, you know, I didn't get the sense that Kirk and Karen, the sense that they gave me was they've had their witness. They know that Denver's a true prophet. They know that Joseph Smith is a prophet. So the evidence wasn't as important to them, frankly. Is that kind of where you come from as well? Or do you feel like you've carefully reviewed the evidence of Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham historicity and have concluded that in fact, they are historical?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:01:24] Yeah, I have carefully reviewed evidence, and I'd say about Kirk and Karen, I don't know that they haven't. When at some point in your life you're able to come to grips with whatever the issue is and you're able to solve the problem and check it off and say, okay, I solved. I'm not so concerned about this Book of Abraham. I solved the problem. If that happened five years ago, the last thing you're going to do is keep a ready argument on your tongue about how it is you prove that there's some historicity in the Book of Abraham. So, like them, this isn't something I've recently thought about at all, but in the last couple of decades, those are things that I thought about quite a bit. And when the CES letter is available, I think about that stuff and I think, hey, that's a pretty good argument. What about this Kinderhook plates thing? I'm not familiar with that one. And so dig into it. There's got to be either Joseph Smith's story is a hoax as a whole, or he's telling the truth. And so there's got to be some way to come to an understanding of what happened in this episode of history. And so for me, always with this anchor in the back of my mind of I had this problem prayer back in the 1990s about Joseph, that always helped, and the fact that I had been reading the Book of Mormon constantly, those things were kind of an anchor to my soul. And so when I see arguments come up that were kind of recycled arguments of the anti Mormon crowd, I started with the premise that there's got to be a good explanation for this. And I'll admit some don't have excellent explanations, but some have better explanations, and some, you have to suppose, for instance, that we potentially don't have the entirety of the papyri scrolls that Joseph had available to him when he produced a book of Abraham.

John Dehlin [01:03:13] So the missing fragments.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:03:14] Missing fragments. So we've got portions of fragments. There's other. I mean, he had three or four scrolls that were very, very long. And so as you confront these various issues with Book of Mormon historicity or Book of Abraham, blacks in priesthood, polygamy, whatever the issue is, if you start with the premise that, as I believe John Maclay did, I've never heard this before, and I've been lied to and deceived, and this is scary, and this is heading nowhere good real quick. And then you allow that to snowball into something that becomes so big that you can't handle it. He was crushed, absolutely crushed by it. But if you've slowly been inoculated or encountered these things over time, I think that there are good answers, whether I've got them on the tip of my tongue now or not, there are good answers or less good answers for just about all of these issues that you encounter. And let me share this, I'm guessing, so you bring up a CES letter, for instance, the things that are keeping LDS Church leaders up at night or the historians department as they work through the Joseph Smith Papers project is not what shows up in the CES letter. Because that stuff's been around so long that they kind of have figured out some ways to help appease people, or there's fair Mormon or there's, you know, you name it. What keeps them up is that there's this guy who people are actually believing as a prophet, who's got an alternative narrative of church history that completely crushes the traditional narrative of church history and not only explains all of the gaps in the fabric of church history that they've been exposed to over time, now it all makes sense. And, oh, by the way, I can see all of this in scripture. I'm looking at my Book of Mormon and Holy Smokes. What this guy is saying perfectly describes what's happened in Mormon history with a falling away and a church and apostasy. And I don't have to lose my testimony of the Gospel because there's a different way to view Mormon history and I don't have to view the traditional narrative. And I think, frankly, if I was in a leadership position in the LDS Church, I'd be more concerned about an overarching narrative that actually describes things quite well versus minute instances of seeming discrepancies with the Book of Mormon record. Or, I mean, because people ignore that stuff, what you can't unhear is a new narrative.

John Dehlin [01:05:43] So the horses in the Book of Mormon, you explain how.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:05:47] Yeah, I think there are good people trying to explain that. And I think, hey, great efforts, whether it's Rod Meldrum and his heartland model and others who think that there's starting to be some archaeological evidences or they explain away why there's no bones, I think that there are good people trying to explain this stuff.

John Dehlin [01:06:04] You don't have an explanation yourself, which is fine.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:06:07] You know, I've got guesses and opinions that may or may not even be helpful to a listener. But because of the continual witness that comes from the pages of the Book of Mormon, even if there was no evidence that horses ever existed on this land, and horses as we currently define them, big horses that pull carts and all that kind of thing. Even if there wasn't, it doesn't mean that tomorrow there won't be. And so it's easy for me to look at little things like that and say, that absolutely has no bearing on my ability to continue to absorb the message that's in the book. So, anyway. Yeah, go ahead.

John Dehlin [01:06:53] Okay. Yeah. And that's a similar answer. It's basically the spiritual sustenance and nurturing that you get from being a part of these beliefs in the movement kind of trump Everything. Is that fair to say?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:07:08] Yeah. The witness that you obtain, I think the greatest evidence of the Book of Abraham or of the Book of Mormon is the message itself. I really do. Now, any additional archaeological evidences in favor of or what have you, those are all nice things. But it is that spiritual witness that comes the book of Moses, the Book of Abraham are just marvelous. In fact, I don't know if we have any scripture that compares. It is just fantastic. And the mysteries of God that are explained in there and the doctrines of salvation, the ascent back to God's presence. The book of Moses is beautiful. And Joseph produces this by looking at the book of Genesis in 1830 at age 24. Just fantastic. Nothing like it. So that's my view. So, yeah, maybe a cop out.

John Dehlin [01:08:04] But also, oh, it's called belief.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:08:06] It's called belief, no cop out. And it's not a direct answer to the, those, those small questions. But like I said, I think that there are people can google this stuff and they can find answers if they really want to take the time to

John Dehlin [01:08:20] stainless steel and DNA.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:08:23] There are arguments on both sides of the equation on both of these things. And I'm not saying there aren't good arguments against. There are good arguments on both sides of the equation, but there aren't arguments that would break the back of the camel and. Cause there's not going to be proof generated that now the Book of Mormon is false based on some of these arguments. So for someone that has a witness that it is true, none of those things really matter to them that much, I don't think. Even though to some people apparently I think they do matter a whole great deal.

John Dehlin [01:09:00] So you look at like the FLDS Church and Colorado City and you know, Warren Jeffs or you learn about Jim Jones or you learn about, you know, cult leaders throughout time, you know, all the members sincerely believed in their leaders and prayed and had spiritual witnesses. I saw an amazing documentary called Holy Hell where a bunch of, you know, semi Christian, semi Buddhist people started following their leader and he deceived them. And there's just so many examples historically of people like you sincerely devoted to a leader and he turns out to be corrupt. How do you know you're following the right leader versus you're fooled like so many other people have been fooled over time.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:09:57] One benefit that I've got is that I'm absolutely adamant in following Christ. Now I'm not, I don't know about any of those other folks and what their ultimate drive was, but if Denver Snuffer decided that he would begin to preach some message or to take some actions that would lead people away from Christ or that would somehow stop, step in between of the people and their Lord. That would be one sure sign that I'm not interested in being a part of what he's doing, but because for me, not only is there no harm in what he is currently teaching, but it is an enabling force catapulting people into greater discipleship where they are seeking for further light and knowledge, which they learned they needed to seek for all the way back in their temple endowment years and years ago. And so they've been on a search and now there's this guy that shows up who preaches light and truth. And the moment that light and truth stops to come, or the moment that that relationship between man and God is somehow infringed, that is an evidence to me that that is not a healthy relationship. But as it stands right now, one of the benefits of this particular movement is that Denver Schneffer has tried to step aside and say, I don't lead you, Christ leads you. I am willing to teach you and I'm even willing to do that from a place of insignificance in this movement. And I'm willing to come to your fellowship meetings and I'm willing to allow you to organize how you will. And I will simply relate to you what it is I know about God. And I will allow you to choose how you will worship Him. And there is so much freedom and safety in that course.

John Dehlin [01:11:46] He probably wouldn't say allow you, would he?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:11:48] Allow you to?

John Dehlin [01:11:49] I mean, allow means he's giving you permission.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:11:52] Sure, yeah. I mean, that might be a nuance, that he is intent upon enabling agency and intent upon distributed power and authority, making it clear to the people that I am not your ruler, Christ is your ruler. I am not your leader. Christ is your leader. But I am willing to claim the title of Teacher because He has sent me. And if you will believe what he is teaching and you will repent, then judge the fruits for yourself and see if it doesn't lead you into his presence. And so there are people who believe that it will ultimately lead to that end where they can be redeemed from the fall and the sacrifice fulfilling of prophecy where they established the new Jerusalem.

John Dehlin [01:12:38] For those who are asking whether or not you've stood in the presence of Christ, what do you say about that?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:12:45] I have not.

John Dehlin [01:12:47] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:12:50] But I will say, do you feel disappointed about that?

John Dehlin [01:12:53] Are you still striving for it?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:12:54] Absolutely. Still striving for It. In fact, I've already shared one of two experiences that were important. The one was I'm at the Air Force Academy and I'm going up and praying with great faith. And I'm expecting an answer. And the Lord speaks to me through Scripture saying that if you'll humble yourself, you can receive this blessing. Another experience I had was on my mission in the mtc. I was earnestly praying to God to find out my standing before him because I had a missionary. I had a teacher there at the MTC who was sharing quotes with me from Joseph F. Smith and a few others that said, hey, you have every right to know you're standing before God, just like Jesus did, or just like anyone did, just like Joseph Smith did. And I was so convinced that I wanted to get an answer to that that I began really making it a matter of prayer. And just a couple of weeks went by. And this is the kind of missionary I was. When it was lights out and it was 10:30, even if I got to pee, I'm not getting out of bed because that's breaking the mission rules. And I'm laying in bed and the voice of God says clearly in my mind, I want you to get up and write. And so I go grab a pen and I turn on my lamp and I sit down with a piece of paper. And then he begins to speak to me. And I wrote a one page communication that came to me without breaking sentence after sentence into my mind. And I waited and there was a pause and nothing else came. And so I put down my pencil, I went to bed and I saved it. And it's one of the most important personal revelations I've ever received. And in that revelation, the Lord promised to me that I would obtain this blessing of seeing his face in your mortal life, in this life. And so I share that. Not because it's almost and Denver uses this word, voyeuristic. I'm not trying to share that because it matters in any other way than to say I have not had the experience. But I have had witnesses from God to me where he's promised me that if you pursue this path, you will obtain. And I share that by way of testimony because it's possible. And so even though I can't say that from a experience, I can say it from personal revelation.

John Dehlin [01:15:20] I asked this to the strongs. Are there others in the movement who are known to have had the witness?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:15:25] Who are known to have had the witness? I don't know who have claimed. Some have claimed to have had the witness One man and I were speaking, and he told me he had met Christ. I was unconvinced, to put it bluntly. I haven't seen him much since, and I've heard of others. There's another gentleman who's born that witness publicly online. I think there's a website or something called the second comforter.com or something, and the brother's name is Daniel Rogers. And he claims he's had the witness, and he puts that up on the site. And so as far as I know, he's a part of the movement. And as far as I know, he was telling the truth. And his witness to me seemed credible. And so it seems there are others who.

John Dehlin [01:16:08] Does that give him more status in the movement?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:16:10] No, it gives him the witness.

John Dehlin [01:16:13] Right. Do you have a sense for how many people have been excommunicated for following Denver? If they kept a tally or a total?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:16:23] I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:16:24] Dozens.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:16:25] There have been dozens. At least hundreds. I wouldn't go that far, but there are hundreds that have either been excommunicated or left the church or drifted into inactivity. Okay, I can say.

John Dehlin [01:16:37] And the total number of people in the movement, you would estimate at what?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:16:44] I don't know how you count it,

John Dehlin [01:16:47] but if you had to estimate, I'd say

Matthew Lohmeier [01:16:52] hundreds or thousands. And let's say a few thousand.

John Dehlin [01:16:55] No more than 5,000?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:16:57] No more than that? No. It doesn't mean that thousands more haven't encountered what he's taught or even believed or been interested in. But as far as those who are actively participating in fellowships and who have been voting online for issues pertaining to the scriptures, that number is in the hundreds or low thousands.

John Dehlin [01:17:17] And do you sense that there are a lot of people following the movement who are still active, participatory members of the LDS Church?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:17:24] I think that they're, at this point, few and far between. The majority of the people in the movement aren't active participants in the LDS Church, although there's no reason why they couldn't be unless they've been told not to come back.

John Dehlin [01:17:37] Okay.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:17:38] If that was their choice, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:17:39] Okay. All right. So we're kind of reaching the end, the time where we both have to go. Are there any other really important messages you want to share or that you want to share on behalf of Sarah? Anything you wanted to make sure we talked about before we ended? Any. Any misperceptions that you wanted to clear up? Anything want to give you the final few minutes to kind of COVID the things you want to cover?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:18:09] I don't Think I'll say anything on behalf of my wife. Maybe she'll post a comment or write you a letter or something, but I won't speak on her behalf. As far as misperceptions, I don't think as far as our interview goes, I don't need to clear up any misperceptions. As far as misperceptions about the movement, I think there's plenty and that's okay. I think there's even misperceptions within the movement of those who are participating. And I think that. I think that some understand what is happening very well. I think that others are coming along and trying to understand what is happening, but they believe something as good as something good is happening that they're trying to participate in. So no misperceptions. I need to clean up.

John Dehlin [01:18:59] What about with your in laws questions you wanted to answer for them or make sure they understood if you could say things to them? Is there anything you want to say that you haven't already said?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:19:08] Yeah, I won't say anything additional publicly. I think we've covered quite a bit. Leave it at that.

John Dehlin [01:19:18] All right, so why don't you close by bearing your final testimony?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:19:23] Thank you. I want to read a scripture. That's great. And then I'll comment on that and we'll be done. I was going to read a scripture from section 45 of the Doctrine and Covenants. One of the blessings I've had, as I've been reading for about a decade, what Denver has written, And it's been a sign to me that the Lord has had his hand in it all along, is that occasionally before something was going to happen, before something was going to be taught, before something that was going to be required of me, whether it was baptism or something else, I was given an intimation ahead of time that that thing was coming and the Lord was saying, whispering that you will be required to be rebaptized or you will be whatever. And I remember reading these verses in section 45 of the doctrine and Covenants one day and having the Lord whisper to me that I was seeing the fulfillment of this in my day. And so that's why I want to read it as my final testimony. And so in my view, While this could have dual application and could apply to Joseph Smith, I have reasons for thinking it wasn't fulfilled in his day, but is actually something I'm witnessing today. In 45, it mentions. This is an answer that Christ is giving to his ancient disciples about the last days and what signs would precede the Second Coming. And so he's teaching them about that, and it's a conversation about that. And he says, I'll just pick up in 24. It's as good a place as any, although it's a little out of context. And this I have told you concerning Jerusalem. And when that day shall come shall a remnant be scattered among all nations. But they who have been scattered among all nations shall be gathered again. But they shall remain in their scattered condition until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And in that day, I think in that day, this is verse 26 now of D&C. 45, means in the times of the Gentiles being fulfilled, whatever that might mean. In that day shall be heard of wars and rumors of wars. I know something about that being in my current job too, and I'm seeing it. And the whole earth shall be in commotion, and men's hearts shall fail them. And they shall say that Christ delayeth his coming until the end of the earth. And the love of men shall wax cold, and iniquity shall abound. And when the times of the Gentiles is come in, a light shall break forth among them that sit in darkness. And it shall be the fulness of my gospel. But they receive it not, for they perceive not the light, and they turn their hearts from me because of the precepts of men. And in that generation shall the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And there shall be men standing in that generation that shall not pass away until they shall see an overflowing scourge. For a desolating sickness shall cover the land. But my disciples shall stand in holy places and shall not be moved but among the wicked. Men shall lift up their voices and curse God and die. There's more to that. And there's a parable that follows.

John Dehlin [01:23:16] And that's not talking about Joseph Smith's restoration. You think that's talking about the remnant.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:23:21] Now, the light that breaks forth among the Gentiles in that passage, which is the fullness of the gospel which the Gentiles reject according to that passage, comes in a day in which certain signs are happening. And when that happens, the times of the Gentiles is fulfilled. And you have to ask yourself the question, was the fullness of the gospel that Joseph Smith brought four generations ago the fulfillment of the prophecy that says that when he preaches to the Gentiles and they reject it, the times of the Gentiles comes to an end? Or was that yet future? And I believe that more likely is that that is our day that a light has broken forth among them that sit in darkness. But they reject it because of the prayer precepts of men. And in that generation, a desolating sickness shall cover the land, and we'll see the fulfillment of all the prophecies in Scripture. So that's my testimony and believe that the path that my wife and I are pursuing is pleasing to God and share that testimony. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

John Dehlin [01:24:36] I don't think anybody's ever ended a Mormon Stories episode saying in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. This is the first. Hey, I have to ask you a couple super quick questions. I'm sorry to ask these at the end. And this is a little bit rapid fire, like with Strong's, but I just want to get you on record because they're issues that people really care about. Being gay or lesbian, lgbt, same sex marriage stuff. Your quick position on that?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:25:01] My position on that is that I'm for traditional marriage. But I know you had asked the Strongs if an LGBT person would be welcome to fellowship with this movement, and the answer is yes. But the teachings of this movement or of Denver in relation to marriage has been traditional. And so whether or not they would choose to fellowship with us is a different question.

John Dehlin [01:25:27] But in your heart, God does not approve of same sex marriage?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:25:31] I think that the purpose of marriage is to. I think that marriage between a man and a woman is in the image of God and that in bringing children to the earth, you perpetuate the generations of men and you bring, you create. I don't think that creation can take place in a same sex marriage and therefore stifles the purposes of God on earth. But it doesn't mean, in my heart, I have hard feelings towards anyone who has that practice or is gay or lgbt, and so they would be welcome to fellowship with us. My belief and our teachings are such that we really support the position of traditional marriage.

John Dehlin [01:26:18] Do you see it as sin? Same sex couples?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:26:21] I.

John Dehlin [01:26:21] Do you see this then?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:26:22] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:26:23] Is God married for you to a woman? Heavenly Father, Heavenly Mother?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:26:27] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:26:28] Heavenly Mother?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:26:29] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:26:30] Is it one wife?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:26:31] As far as I understand it.

John Dehlin [01:26:32] Okay. Okay. The teachings in the Book of Mormon that God turned people's skin dark because of a curse. Do you believe that he did that?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:26:40] I don't know. I really struggled to understand that. And in certain times I thought that that's probably true. And at other times I thought that can't possibly be true because why?

John Dehlin [01:26:53] Because it's racist?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:26:54] No, not necessarily. You know, you've got if you look at the Bible and not just the Book of Mormon, you have a mark placed upon Cain. And I know there's argument about whether or not that was skin color, but as you look at the pearl of great price, it seems pretty clear to me that it has to do with skin color. So yeah, understanding that I can't, I'm not comfortable explaining that. I've never been able to completely wrap my mind around it. I've got guesses that I don't want to. I mean, I don't want to provide guesses, but that's, that's a difficult one.

John Dehlin [01:27:27] But for you it's not. Yes, he cursed them with dark skin. That's not your position.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:27:32] I wouldn't say that he didn't. I'm not sure that he did.

John Dehlin [01:27:35] He was not sure.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:27:35] And in the Book of Mormon it also says that all are welcome to come unto me, black or white, bond or free, male or female. So in the words of the Lord, he's saying all are free to come and partake of salvation. So how skin color might play into that, I don't know that it does, but there have been. Yeah, there are at least several instances in scripture where this seems to be mentioned and I don't think I completely understand it.

John Dehlin [01:28:02] A lot of progressive Mormons feel like women are second class citizens in the LDS Church. What's your view on. It's obvious that Denver's saying that women don't pass or bless the sacrament or baptize people. But then the strong's made it clear that women can do blessings of healing, blessings of comfort with laying on of hands. So if someone were to ask, are women second class citizens in the movement,

Matthew Lohmeier [01:28:27] what would you say asking it that way? I'd obviously say no.

John Dehlin [01:28:30] Right.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:28:33] I think in the Mormon Church they're not second class citizens. Personal opinion, but I can understand the view and I can understand there's this patriarchal culture in the Mormon Church. It's traditional, potentially increasingly progressive. But yeah, so I never had a problem with that. I don't think Sarah had a problem with that. Feelings like that. I understand where they stem from. We were never really persuaded by an ordained women movement, for instance. But yeah, in this movement which I can speak to, men and women equally united in marriage are in the image of God. And that relationship perhaps matters more than any relationship. I wouldn't, you know, I don't think any of the women in the movement would feel like they're second class citizens.

John Dehlin [01:29:30] But do they hold the priesthood?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:29:33] They do not. There is a pretty traditional understanding of priesthood, I would say, in this movement relative to what we were taught in the LDS Church. However, there is an expansive and increased understanding of priesthood that we have come to understand that is scriptural. I think that that is the situation in this fallen world as a result of the fall. I think that a God and goddess, or a king and a queen, as you learn in the the temple endowment itself says if you are faithful, the day will come when certain things will take place. Those certain things pertain to queens and priestesses and to priestess hood or priesthood. And so I don't I see that there's a day coming when there will be inequality in that thing.

John Dehlin [01:30:29] And for any family member that feels like you guys have strayed or fallen, what do you say?

Matthew Lohmeier [01:30:36] Well, I guess I've said it all in this, in the course of this interview, which I'm grateful for, by the way. But I hope that the things that I've shared today, and many of which were actually quite personal, that I haven't shared with my family or Sarah's family before, of course, will help paint a little bit better picture into my heart so that you can understand why we might have pursued a path that we have. And if that helps you to have some sympathy, we don't want sympathy. If it helps you to have kinder feelings and understanding towards why we've chosen the things that we have, then I think that's great. If not, then don't worry about anything I've said and we can talk about it another day.

John Dehlin [01:31:26] But if they're worried about your soul and your salvation, we already lost that

Matthew Lohmeier [01:31:31] at excommunication from their church. And so what I continue to do isn't going to damn me anymore. There's only progress from this point forward. And so I'm hoping that. I'm confident that over time, both of our families will continue to grow in unity and love and respect, even if not as an immediate result of this interview in the next few weeks or months. But I think that there's been good efforts at unity and our families and both of us have very loving, good families who care about that. And so I'm confident that it'll be okay.

Closing Testimony and Farewell

John Dehlin [01:32:08] All right. Well, we want to thank Matt Lohmeier so much and Sarah, because she consented to this interview and to having her name and family be used, want to thank Matt and Sarah for their willingness to come on. We want to thank the Strongs as well and Denver who helped make these things happen. I want to thank everyone who's tuned in today really long interview with a really large audience for a long sustained period of time. We're just really grateful. I just have to say that the church should be shaking in its boots a bit because the whole point of the restoration was ongoing, continuing revelation. And you know, the Doctrine and Covenants has kind of started stopped in the LDS church. And you know, we've got these conference talks and general authorities speaking sort of as bureaucrats, but it seems like the heavens have been closed and are not bursting forth with new light and knowledge and truth. It's like the saints have been asked to feed on milk for over 100 years, for almost two centuries. And when will the meat ever come? And I think what's most compelling about the Denver Snuffer movement is that it's Book of Mormon based, it's scriptures based, it's Joseph Smith based, but it's also alive. It's got continuing revelation, a growing canon and further light knowledge that's making so many people find it compelling. So my, my wish for you guys is that there's no financial scandal, there's no sexual scandal, there's no authority scandal, that you guys will just follow the teachings of Christ and have great Zionic community with love and truth and that this doesn't end the way so many other small movements have ended. So you have my sincere wish of very good things.

Matthew Lohmeier [01:34:12] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [01:34:13] All right, thanks everyone for tuning in to Mormon Stories. Please donate@mormonstories.org if you want to see this sort of programming. Continue. Your donations of 10 or 20 or 100 bucks a month can really make a difference. I want to thank everyone who supports us. Please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you have questions or concerns or ideas or people that you think should be interviewed. Go to MormonStories.org once this interview is posted to make comments. You can also check us out on YouTube, check out our Instagram, our Twitter feed. You can check us out everywhere on social media, but mostly just know we really appreciate the support and hope to do many more cool interviews in the future. So thanks everyone again for joining us. Thanks again, Matt, and we'll see you guys soon again on Mormon Stories. Take care, everybody. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

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