Welcome and Episode Introduction

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your three co hosts today. In the Mormon Stories First Presidency, we have president or prophet Carah Burrell. Hey, Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:00:22] Hello, everyone. I told them that I would be talking like a pilot today because of the headset I'm wearing, and John knew that that's what's going to happen, and that's just what he's going to live with. All right, everyone.

John Dehlin [00:00:33] Welcome, Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:00:33] Thank you. Copilot.

John Dehlin [00:00:35] We have. We have first counselor Gerardo Simano. Hey, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:40] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:40] Is this First Presidency talk triggering to you?

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:43] Maybe a little bit.

Guest [00:00:44] All right.

John Dehlin [00:00:45] And then I'm second counselor today. Welcome. And we are so thrilled to have with us in studio the one, the only, the living legend, Sandra Tanner. Sandra.

Sandra Tanner [00:00:57] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:00:58] Welcome to Mormon Stories. Welcome back. And welcome to Mormon Scoops.

Sandra Tanner [00:01:02] Yes. We just hope that my memory is working today.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] Well, we're. We're always honored to have you here, and we know that we could just put a microphone in front of you and just have you talk.

Sandra Tanner [00:01:13] Well, there's that. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:01:15] And I think we'll be. We'll be fine. We do have. We are. We are live streaming. And so we've got a wonderful studio audience, or I should say livestream audience, joining us over YouTube and Facebook. We welcome you all. Today, the topic for discussion is Mormon polygamy Apologetics with Sandra Tanner. And the way I think it's going to work is me and Gerardo and Carah and Samantha are going to be talking about the kind of the first half of D&C. 132. Doctrine and Covenants. 132.

Gerardo Sumano [00:01:50] I think you said Samantha.

John Dehlin [00:01:51] Did I say Samantha?

Sandra Tanner [00:01:52] Yeah, that's my secret. It's my secret new name.

Carah Burrell [00:01:56] She's a quick one.

John Dehlin [00:01:59] Thank you for the correction, Carah. So me. So, so. Oh, my gosh. Sandra, me, Gerardo, and Carah are going to be talking about the first half of DNC 132. And we are also going to be covering some commentary that we have that we have found on an interesting podcast. And, Gerardo, I'm going to pull this up on the screen, but can you tell us just a little bit about this podcast that we're going to be referring to while I pull it up on the screen?

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:30] Yeah. So this is a podcast run by Hank Smith and John, by the way. And so both of them are BYU professors. I think Hank Smith is full time. John's gonna read the biographies. But basically what they do is they go every week with the Come follow me curriculum of the church And. And then they make episodes inviting guests, usually historians or theologians, LDS people that come and offer their commentary on the scriptures that they're studying that week for the church. Come, follow me.

John Dehlin [00:03:10] Curriculum. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, you know, maybe it makes sense, just really briefly, to read about who these individuals are. We've got Hank Smith. Hank Smith is a favorite, one of Carah's favorites. Is that right,

Carah Burrell [00:03:27] Hank? Call me. We have to have a chat. Hank might be the reason that I got kicked off of TikTok for.

John Dehlin [00:03:34] Anyway, how would you describe Hank Smith, Carah?

Carah Burrell [00:03:40] You know, I'm not allowed to swear. No, just kidding. Hank is a nice guy. Hank is just, you know, he's your regular Mormon kind of propagandist who tells. Gives nice ideas about the church that helps, you know, spoonful sugar, makes the medicine go down kind of guy. And he's, you know, just. You grew up on John, by the Way, like I kind of did growing up. He's like a slightly younger version of John, by the Way, that gives church curriculum to younger people in a more digestible way. He's on Twitter, he's written lots of books, he's all over Instagram, and he makes Mormonism smiley and happy. Yeah, sometimes he says really annoying things on Instagram, and sometimes I make tech talks about it. And then sometimes Mormons try to tell me to take.

Gerardo Sumano [00:04:22] Sometimes he calls BYU students Korhor.

Carah Burrell [00:04:27] Yeah, sometimes he calls, like, gay BYU students Cora Horror. You know, he's everyone. They're just a mixed bag, as my mom likes to say. So that's that Tank Smith, Hank.

John Dehlin [00:04:38] Yeah. And if we read his bio, it says he grew up surrounded by red Cliffs in St. George. He has a master's degree from USU and a PhD from BYU, where he now works as an assistant professor. So he is a BYU professor. He consults companies in distress and he speaks at school assemblies around the country. He's authored books, et cetera. So that's the basic overview of how Hank Smith, and then John, by the Way, is kind of. I don't know, he was kind of a big deal when, when I was at BYU and after. But he basically dominates, dominated and dominates the EFY circuit. He sold a gazillion cassettes and CDs where he tells funny stories and entertains, writes song parodies, etc, and if we look at his bio, John, by the Way, was born and raised in Salt Lake City. He lives in Holiday, by the Way. That's where I live.

Carah Burrell [00:05:34] Get him in here.

John Dehlin [00:05:35] Yeah, we should get it in studio.

Carah Burrell [00:05:37] You probably hear me right now.

John Dehlin [00:05:41] But if. But if we read his bio. He attended University of Utah, graduated from byu. He has a master's degree in religious education, taught the Book of Mormon at BYU in Salt Lake City. All right, so these two gentlemen run this podcast and. And then they've brought on, I guess, a BYU historian. Is that right, Gerardo?

Sandra Tanner [00:06:04] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:06:05] So for the episode that we' going to be discussing today, it's the one where last year they covered doctrine and covenants 132, and then they had Kate Hallbrook as. As a guest on their podcast. Kate is a historian and writer and the managing historian of women's history in the church history department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Gerardo Sumano [00:06:28] She obtained degrees from BYU and Harvard Divinity School. And I re like, I think Kate, I. I've seen her be her. Her commentary before. And probably the one that I remember the most is when she was one of the historians. There were two historians with Elder Cook on the launch of the book Saints that was presented to the youth. And they did this, like, worldwide Fireside, the outdoor one. Right, right. And Kate was there to make like about the book Saints and how important church history is and how important it is to understand the difficult parts of history.

Gerardo Sumano [00:07:13] Recently on Twitter, there was they. Someone posted, I think it was LDS discussions, posted a brief section of Kate kind of making a joke about polygamy that was a little bit disturbing. So I don't know, it was just kind of coincidental that we were planning on doing this episode and this podcast

Carah Burrell [00:07:36] we're going to be talking about just came out a couple weeks ago, right?

Gerardo Sumano [00:07:39] No, it came out last year.

Carah Burrell [00:07:40] Okay. Came out last year. Okay. So here at Mormon Scoops, this is stuff we're hot off the presses, you guys. We like, we grab it and we just, like, wait a couple months and then we absolutely get on it. That's what you can count on Mormon Scoops for.

Why Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 Matters

John Dehlin [00:07:52] But, Gerardo, you felt strongly about this episode, why you kind of brought this to us.

Gerardo Sumano [00:07:57] Yeah, well, it was just a very, you know, like, people like Hank Smith, they. They'll do this kind of stuff. They put them out there, they'll have thousands of views. But then really, I mean, there's so much content out there that we don't. And. And this was brought to my attention, so I was like, oh, this is really interesting.

John Dehlin [00:08:16] What about it? What about it was interesting?

Gerardo Sumano [00:08:19] I mean, there's so many. I mean, Doctrine Comments 132 is kind. It's super controversial because that's the section about Polygamy, the church is. It has a problem right now where, like, a big part of. Of church membership are single members. And then the. The church has this rhetoric of eternal families and. And eternal marriage that can be sometimes hurtful to single people. So there was a lot of commentary about that. So. And then, you know, you have the LGBT stuff, too, that, I mean. Yeah, okay.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] And I. I think it's probably going to be interesting to talk about what they're leaving out of the discussion. Like, this is kind of modeling. Modeling a Sunday school discussion of DNC132. And one of the main values of having Sandra here is she can help us really understand all the stuff that they're conveniently leaving out. Right, Sandra?

Guest 2 [00:09:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:09:15] Yeah. Okay. So what we'll do is we'll dive in and we've chosen maybe seven or eight little excerpts that we're going to play. And then what we're going to be doing is not only. We're going to be doing kind of three things. We're going to be reading through the first half of Doctrine and Covenant Section 132. So pull out your scriptures, everyone. You can read along with us. Sandra says that everyone should have their scriptures out and, and be following along. DNC132. We're going to be. We're going to be responding to their commentary, and then we're going to be filling in the blanks of what they're missing. Does that sound all right? Yeah, yeah.

Guest 3 [00:09:55] Right on.

John Dehlin [00:09:56] Okay, so we're going to prepare for some turbulence.

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:01] I think you're going to start with the clip, though, right? The very first clip.

John Dehlin [00:10:05] Yeah, we'll start. We'll start with the very clip of kind of how they begin. How they begin the podcast, and then we're going to jump right in. Is that okay?

Sandra Tanner [00:10:13] Yeah, but we need to. In lieu of. Along with the first clip, we need to start off by reading the introductory section of 132, not just start with verse one.

John Dehlin [00:10:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Should we start there, Sandra?

Sandra Tanner [00:10:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:28] Okay. Do you want me to read it?

Sandra Tanner [00:10:31] Okay, but you're gonna do the introduction to the 132.

John Dehlin [00:10:35] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:10:35] And then do the clip.

John Dehlin [00:10:37] Well, either way, where would you like to start, Sandra?

Sandra Tanner [00:10:41] Well, start with their clip and then read the introduction.

John Dehlin [00:10:44] Okay. All right, we'll start with their clip. So here we go. Here is kind of the beginning of the discussion on. Follow him of DNC Section 132 with Kate Holborn.

Section 132 Historical Context and Dating

Guest 4 [00:10:56] So, Kate, the first thing I Noticed was the date of section 132 is July of 1843. We are under a year to Joseph Smith's death in June of 1844.

Guest 5 [00:11:08] It's a big deal. So much going on this year. Relief Society has been established and is. Is moving ahead and just. I think Joseph Smith has a. Has a sense. I know he has a sense he's not going to live forever. And just the more he can do, the better. I think he's operating under that kind of a mindset. And then. And then also what we're going to. One of the things that we'll study in this really large and all encompassing section, it is. It's plural marriage. It was really hard on everybody. It was. It was hard on the men who learned about it, the men who began to practice it, the women who learned about it, the women who began to practice.

John Dehlin [00:11:57] All right, so give us your hot takes. They begin by talking about the date and how hard it was on everybody. So, Sandra, how do you want to respond?

Sandra Tanner [00:12:06] Well, somebody. You want me to read the introduction because.

John Dehlin [00:12:10] Yeah, sure.

Sandra Tanner [00:12:11] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:12:12] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:12:13] If I can see this.

John Dehlin [00:12:15] Do you want me to read it?

Sandra Tanner [00:12:16] I just got to get it in the light.

John Dehlin [00:12:18] Okay.

Sandra Tanner [00:12:19] Revelation given through Joseph Smith, the prophet at Nauvoo, Illinois, is recorded July 12, 1843, relating to the new and everlasting covenant, including the eternity of the marriage covenant and the principle of plural marriage. Although the revelation was recorded in 1843, evidence indicates that some of the principles involved in this revelation were known by the prophet as early as 1831. And then it says, See Official Declaration 1. And I'm not sure how he thinks that helps on the official declaration because that's just about giving up polygamy.

Guest 4 [00:13:01] Right?

John Dehlin [00:13:02] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:13:02] Okay. The problem I. What they're talking about, why they have to say that's when the revelation got recorded, not given, is because they know that Joseph's already married more than two dozen women at this point.

John Dehlin [00:13:21] Right.

Sandra Tanner [00:13:21] And so when does he give the. When did he get it? The revelation? Because it's not section 132.

John Dehlin [00:13:29] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:13:30] This is what he records it. Okay. When did he get it then? And you can't answer that. So they try to maneuver it by mentioning that he had obviously had information about this in 1831. Okay. Why do we want to bring up 1831? There's not a section in the Doctrine and Covenants that deals with this time period on marriage.

Sandra Tanner [00:13:57] So I assume that this has to do with a revelation Joseph smith gave in 1831 for the first set of missionaries to go out to evangelize amongst the American Indians and he tells them there to marry the Native American women, which would mean polygamy because these were guys that already were married. They left wives behind to go out to travel down to Independence, Missouri area.

Sandra Tanner [00:14:32] And yet they're leaving wives behind. How would they be taking Indian wives and why would they be taking Indian wives? Well, from my point of view, it was evidently partly to get them onto the river reservation where they could do evangelism. And the lot of people didn't want outsiders coming into the reservation, so it was a means of, of getting them in. But. Okay, so there is the concept, you could say of polygamy in 31.

Gerardo Sumano [00:15:01] But Sandra, I don't know. I hope it's okay that I. Yeah, sure. Here. But from what I remember studying this a few months ago, I remember that there's a problem with that revelation in 1831, because the revelation seems to be racist because the revelation that they, that, that there is like, it says that the reason why they had to come and marry Indians was to. So that their virginity can become white and delights.

Sandra Tanner [00:15:30] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:15:31] So. And it says that they had to have, go and have kids with, you know, more women, Indian women, so that they're kids would have whiter skin. So actually, if you go to fair Mormon, I'm, I'm pretty sure that fair Mormon says that that revelation, we, we can't trust that revelation.

Sandra Tanner [00:15:51] Well, sure. Anything that hurts the Mormon propaganda is we can't trust that source.

Guest 2 [00:15:58] Right.

Sandra Tanner [00:15:59] And so we don't have any

Guest 5 [00:16:03] firm

Sandra Tanner [00:16:03] way of determining what is a reliable source because they could take something written 50 years after the fact and that's valid. And if I take something written 50 years after the fact, it can't be valid.

Gerardo Sumano [00:16:16] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:16:16] So there's no set rule on, on how we determine reliability, but there was a statement made by a guy back at that time period about it. So it's not like we're just talking about late sources. The, the concept was known from an outsider knowing that such a concept was being talked behind the scenes amongst the Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:16:43] Yeah. And if it's okay, I, I want to just highlight what, what we're really talking about here in an overarching way when, when, when Mormons. First of all, Mormons don't like to talk about polygamy.

Sandra Tanner [00:16:54] Right.

John Dehlin [00:16:54] But if they do, then It'll be this DNC132 lesson that'll come around, what, once every four years, is that right?

Gerardo Sumano [00:17:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:01] And then they start with 1843, or they start with Nauvoo polygamy. And so there. There are several problems with what they're leaving out. So they're leaving out, why was Joseph Smith. Why was Joseph Smith receiving revelations about polygamy to Indians? Why were married men and marrying just Indians and not other people? But also why, you know, why do none of us know this? But then it's also compounded, Sandra, tell me if I'm wrong, by the fact that the Book of Commandments and the Doctrine and Covenants. Well, first of all, there's the Book of Mormon. What does the Book of Mormon say about polygamy?

Sandra Tanner [00:17:39] Well, it says that it's an abomination to God. And then the little verse that they want to throw in. Well, unless God commands it. But the trick there is, if God commands it, for what reason? To raise up seed. And so Joseph didn't raise up seed. So I don't know how he even uses that as an excuse.

John Dehlin [00:17:57] And I don't think these missionaries going on the frontier were raising up seed with the Native American women.

Sandra Tanner [00:18:03] Not.

John Dehlin [00:18:04] And why is polygamy being restricted to just this race? It's almost like they're going to be away from home. They're going to need a little bit of comfort. So it's like, you know, okay, well, the Native American women don't really matter. So we'll give them, you know, we'll give them to you as a little bit of a bonus, as a thank you for going off and doing missionary work away from your wives.

Sandra Tanner [00:18:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:24] Does that. Am I wrong there?

Joseph Smith's Early Polygamous Relationships

Sandra Tanner [00:18:27] Well, it could have been part of it.

John Dehlin [00:18:29] But, but, but that's all. But, but, but, but the Book of Mormon's saying, don't do it.

Sandra Tanner [00:18:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:33] And then there's this weird revelation, 1831, that none of us know about. But then tell us what the Book of Commandments and the Doctrine and Covenants say during the same time.

Sandra Tanner [00:18:41] Right. In 1835, Joseph Smith was putting out a new edition of the revelations. In 33, his revelations were printed in a book called Book of commandments. Then in 35, they enlarged it and put more sections in. And when he did that section, he puts in a section, section 101, in the 1835 DNC that says, inasmuch as this Church of Christ has been accused of fornication and polygamy, we declare that one man should have one wife, except in death, when he or his wife could marry again.

Sandra Tanner [00:19:26] And the crazy thing about that is 101 was in every edition of the Doctrine and covenants till 1876. So all through the polygamy period, even out here in Utah, they had a section in the Doctrine and Covenants that condemned polygamy and said they didn't live it, that one man should have one wife.

Sandra Tanner [00:19:49] And so here you have, during Joseph's introduction of this to different people. Right. In their own scriptures, is a section condemning polygamy, which I sure made a few people scratch their head when you start talking to them about it.

Sandra Tanner [00:20:05] But then they don't turn around and remove the section. They can't keep it in through all the time. They're denying that they're even living it. And that becomes a problem too, when you understand that Joseph was having an affair, evidently with a young house girl that was helping with housework in their home, Fanny Alger. And she was in the home from, I think, 33 to 36, something like that. And we don't know how soon after she came into the home that Joseph had an affair with her.

Sandra Tanner [00:20:40] The Mormons can't have it be an affair. So they want to say she was his first plural wife. But there's no church documents anywhere near to Joseph Smith's lifetime that connects Fanny to any kind of marriage or doctrinal position.

Gerardo Sumano [00:20:58] Well, and Elijah and Moses hadn't come to give the power of ceiling. Right?

Sandra Tanner [00:21:03] Right. Yeah, they've got ceiling yet.

Gerardo Sumano [00:21:04] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:21:05] And a lot of people confuse the 36. Is it 36 on the ceiling revelation? No one had the concept of eternal marriage. People getting sealed at that time were just getting sealed up to eternal life.

Gerardo Sumano [00:21:19] Yeah, It's.

Sandra Tanner [00:21:20] It has nothing to do with marriage yet. So one can't say he got the sealing power in 36.

Gerardo Sumano [00:21:26] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:21:26] Because that's not what it was about. But you have the problem of Fanny, who obviously had relations with Joseph, who is an. Oliver Cowdery, one of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon, buddy of Joseph Smith, wrote to his brother Warren about he stood Joseph to the face about his dirty, nasty, filthy affair with Fanny Augur. And that's a direct quote. And so Cowdery didn't see this as a doctrine or a moral position to take.

Sandra Tanner [00:22:05] So you have all these things before you get to section 142, then 132. Then you get into the 40s in Nauvoo and you have Joseph takes his first plural wife In Nauvoo in 1841, Louisa Beaman, a single woman.

Sandra Tanner [00:22:26] And then he takes more in 44 and more in 43. So John C. Bennett, the early Mormon leader And mayor of Nauvoo. At one point, he starts taking advantage of this underground doctrine of polygamy and starts marrying women on his own.

Sandra Tanner [00:22:43] Gets Joseph all mad around. What year Was this in 41? 42 time period. In 42, Bennett comes out with an expose on Joseph Smith, talking about his background, polygamy teachings. And we know that Bennett knew who Joseph was, having wives or concubines, whatever you want to word it, because he gives the names of the. Some of the women. And when he gives the names, he'll give the initial of the woman, like L for Louisa and B for Beeman. And so there'll be several women mentioned where you just have their first initials. But we can go back now using church records to figure out who the women are. We can plug the names back in. Which shows that Bennett knew what Joseph was doing.

Gerardo Sumano [00:23:34] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:23:34] Now, he may have taken off on his own, but he was part of the inner circle, and that's how he knew who the different wives were. All this is going on before he ever gets section 132. But Emma doesn't know about all this stuff. Joseph tries to convert her to it, and he's not getting anywhere with it, and she's rebuffing him. They're having arguments about it. We know that from William Clayton's diary. And so I lost my thought. He has to try some way to convince Emma. And he's complaining one day, talking to his buddies, that Emma won't accept this. And his brother Hiram, who's the eternal optimist.

Gerardo Sumano [00:24:22] Evidently this comes from Hiram's journal or this part of the story. Oh, it's fine.

Sandra Tanner [00:24:31] No, Clay, William Clayton, I think, tells us. Okay, that I get my thoughts here. Hyrum says to Joseph, if you'll just write that revelation down, I can take it to Emma and I'm sure I can convert her.

Gerardo Sumano [00:24:49] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:24:50] And he goes off and does that, and then he comes back and tells Joseph, I never received such a severe talking to in my life because Emma just really evidently chewed his ear off about that one. She didn't want any part of that. And so then Joseph is recorded as saying, I told you, you don't know Emma like I do. So that's why we have section 132, is because Joseph was trying to convince Emma his leaders already were involved in polygamy. It was. Emma should have known about it. I mean, Bennett published his book in 42, and everybody, the gossip in town, had to be all about whether this was true. So it's not a Shock to her. She just wouldn't accept it. So that's how we get the Revelation, as Joseph takes the copy of the Revelation to her and she won't have anything to do with it.

John Dehlin [00:25:48] Yeah. And there's this verse in DNC132, verse 8, which really jumps out at me. You know, Jesus says, behold, mine house is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and not a house of confusion. And so there's two. There's two really big problems here. One is just informed consent. Every single Mormon and every single Mormon investigator should know that Joseph Smith was sending missionaries to take on indigenous polygamous wives in 1831, before the sealing power and before the revelation ever was received.

Guest 6 [00:26:22] Right.

John Dehlin [00:26:23] Then he's got an affair with Fanny Oliver by 1835 that even his first counselor in the first presidency or his co president, Oliver Cowdery, didn't know about. Then later comes the sealing power, which is required for any eternal marriage. And then polygamous wives start popping up, potentially as early as 1838 or 1839, but certainly by 1841, he's taking on dozens of wives without Emma's knowledge. And the whole time, both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants Book of Commandments are condemning, and Joseph Smith is denying this to everyone who ever makes accusations. Accusations. And again, I say at this point,

Gerardo Sumano [00:27:05] it was called doctrine covenants, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:09] And again, you know, it says, I say the Lord God, this is not a house of confusion. I can't think of anything more confusing than all that context. So there's the problem of confusion, and then there's the problem of lack of informed consent. And, and is it, you know, Carah, tell me if you think I'm. I'm overstretching it here. Is it egregious that. That Mormons are not made aware of all these facts, you know, when they're making temple covenants and getting temple married and. And, you know, going on missions without this information.

Guest 3 [00:27:45] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:27:45] And especially the way that it feels like it does. It feels like a lie through omission, because I could listen to a podcast like the one that we're reviewing today that just sounds like a Sunday school. And I could think that I'm informed that I know what just as polygamy was. But if you don't share the entire truth, I would feel completely lied to, whether I was investigator or somebody who's just raised in the church without knowing all of this. And that's why so many people do feel blindsided when they discover this information at 30 years old or whatever, and

John Dehlin [00:28:13] you have to assume that Hank Smith and John, by the way, and Kate Holbrooke. Is that her name?

Gerardo Sumano [00:28:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:18] That they know this stuff.

Sandra Tanner [00:28:19] Oh, yes. They've read all these sources, so they're

John Dehlin [00:28:22] choosing both them and the curriculum. The church curriculum department is literally choosing to omit all this history and context.

Sandra Tanner [00:28:29] They're blacking out all of the story around this.

John Dehlin [00:28:32] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:28:33] But people also need to keep in mind this wasn't published. This was underground. This was kept from everybody. The church did not print section 132 in the Doctrine of Covenants till 1876. That and that Revelation 101 that talked about they didn't believe in polygamy or practice it. That was in the Doctrine of covenants until 76, and then it was taken out for them to put in section 132 on polygamy. So if you're living a block or two down the street from Joseph, you wouldn't have read this revelation. No one would have seen it except those that Joseph would approached about polygamy. We don't even know that he showed the revelation to the girls he was approaching. As far as we know, he just personally talked to them to appeal to them for marriage.

John Dehlin [00:29:26] And the final point, we just have to, we can't emphasize it enough. He's receiving this revelation after having already married or being sealed to like 22 women.

Sandra Tanner [00:29:36] Right?

John Dehlin [00:29:36] Correct.

Sandra Tanner [00:29:37] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:29:37] And without. With hiding it from Emma and lying to her about it.

Sandra Tanner [00:29:40] Right.

John Dehlin [00:29:40] There's. That makes zero sense that he's already 22 wives in lying to Emma and she doesn't know. Yeah, right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:29:48] Yeah. I, There was a point that Sandra brought up that I, I, I had, I had understood before that when, when Joseph received the power of sealing by Moses and Elijah, the ceiling was understood to mean what it was not marriage. Right?

Sandra Tanner [00:30:05] No, a sealing up for eternal life.

Gerardo Sumano [00:30:07] Right. So people were being sealed to.

Sandra Tanner [00:30:10] You already had the ceiling for eternal life. So what's the point of 132?

Gerardo Sumano [00:30:14] I mean, right.

Sandra Tanner [00:30:15] You're getting the added bonus here besides eternal life.

Gerardo Sumano [00:30:19] Right. So it sounds like four, five, six, seven, seven years later, Joseph starts grabbing that idea of ceiling and starts merging it with his with marriage. Marriage and then pulling to justify his polygamy stuff.

Sandra Tanner [00:30:32] Right? Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:30:33] Yeah, that's pretty interesting.

John Dehlin [00:30:34] Carah's got some super chats to read.

Carah Burrell [00:30:37] So if you guys are tuning in live, if you want to donate to the podcast, great way to do that is to click the dollar sign at the bottom and on YouTube. On YouTube and we can highlight a comment and direct them to Sandra. But I'm going to read a couple of them real quick. But also we're going to make this the end. So we will give the Streamyard link at the very end that people can start calling in and you can ask Sandra Tanner your questions directly at the end of the program. But for right now, I just wanted to read a quick question Crisco Bike asks is there any evidence of Joseph Smith trying to have an extramarital relationship prior to the Kirkland period, prior to the Costco period, with those low, low prices and with great family goods.

Carah Burrell [00:31:17] You mean Kirtland period is probably what you meant there, Christian bro. So Sandra, do you have anything to say to that? If there's evidence that Joseph Smith was having extramarital relationships prior prior to Kirtland.

Sandra Tanner [00:31:28] Kirtland probably not evidence in the sense that a Mormon would accept it because I think it comes from outside sources. But there are things that indicate Joseph had some affairs. Whether you want to turn they consider the problem whether you make a marriages or not because there's no ceiling power given yet.

Sandra Tanner [00:31:51] But there are claims of affairs with women in even as before the church was started. I think in, I think in George Smith's book Nauvoo Polygamy, I think he talks about the rumors about associations with other women than Emma before the church started and also into the 1830s before Fanny.

Sandra Tanner [00:32:22] There is the question of the 1832 feathering, tar and feathering of him and Sidney Rigdon, of whether he had been. The phrase is too familiar with Nancy Miranda Johnson and Mormons want to say that that didn't have to do with her. It was just the persecution of him and Hyrum. Not Rigdon, Sidney Rigdon.

John Dehlin [00:32:55] But they wanted to castrate him, right?

Sandra Tanner [00:32:57] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:32:57] Why would you want to castrate somebody?

Carah Burrell [00:32:59] And that's in like the, the, the Joseph Smith prophet of the Restoration movie. Like that story is used as like a propaganda tool of like look, the persecution. But they leave out all of the context of.

Sandra Tanner [00:33:11] Well, yeah, well, the, the thing is, okay, they're mad at the Mormons and they drag Rigden and Joseph out of their beds in the middle of night and take them out to tar and feather them. However, they bring a doctor along but they want him to castrate Joseph Smith. But nothing is said about castrating Richton. So if you're going to tar and feather them both, why wouldn't you castrate them both? But they're only after Joseph for that because it was Some felt that he had been putting the moves on Nancy Miranda Johnson, who he does later marry in plural marriage.

John Dehlin [00:33:51] Yeah. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:33:53] And. And the apologetic answer to that is that the. The documents that talk about the castration cannot be trusted. Is that right? Is that.

Sandra Tanner [00:34:02] Well, sure. Nothing that the bank struggles look bad can be trusted.

Carah Burrell [00:34:06] Apologetic answer for everything. Interested? Do you mind if I ask you one other question? Yeah. Sarah asked, what do we know about abortion in Nauvoo, Sarah Pratt was said to have seen an instrument in Bennett's pocket. Any more information that you have, we could probably talk about that for a long time, but we know that there was some. Some talk of abortion. In your opinion, do you feel like abortion was going on in the navu period?

William Clayton, Secrecy, and Plural Marriage Origins

Sandra Tanner [00:34:30] Well, if we're making Bennett the one that's doing them, you have just a short period of him being a nice guy in the setup. So, I mean, he writes his book against Joseph in 42. So if he's helping Joseph with abortions, I assume it has to be before that date, which would limit it to, you know, just a couple of girls, maybe. Now, Joseph may have done abortion somehow without Bennett.

Sandra Tanner [00:35:01] Obviously, if they knew how to do it from Bennett, they could have tried their own method to do it. You have the factor of. Some of those girls were so young that we don't know that they would be of an age to be able to have children yet.

Sandra Tanner [00:35:16] We don't know how often he slept with all these women. When you start looking at how fast he accrues them, we don't know how much time he spent with each one. Like in 43, I think there's around 20 some marriages or something that year. That.

John Dehlin [00:35:36] That's two a month.

Sandra Tanner [00:35:38] Yeah. You're just really sailing through the women here. So I don't know how many times he engaged with each of these women.

John Dehlin [00:35:45] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:35:46] They could have even put children out for adoption. They could have had a lot of

Gerardo Sumano [00:35:52] the first women he was marrying, a lot of them were already married to other men.

Sandra Tanner [00:35:56] 12 women at Louisa Beeman. 1 in 41, she was single. But after that, I think you get 12 women that are already married with husbands.

Guest 2 [00:36:06] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:36:07] And there's no justification in the revelation for marrying married women.

John Dehlin [00:36:13] Yeah, yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:36:14] Totally don't think Kate Holbrooke told us that one in this.

John Dehlin [00:36:18] Yeah. This is important stuff. So the only other thing I. So is that. Is that all the background we wanted to cover before we jump into the revelation?

Sandra Tanner [00:36:26] Well, let me check the only true paper.

John Dehlin [00:36:29] I will just say while you're looking. Oh, Go ahead, Sandra.

Sandra Tanner [00:36:33] Okay. Also, polygamy was illegal in Illinois. So not only were they doing all this behind the scenes so Emma wouldn't know, they also had to hide it because it was illegal. They would have been arrested on charges of bigamy. And I have a photo of the actual legal document that gives you the wording for that, so there's no question they would have been arrested for it in Illinois.

John Dehlin [00:37:04] Yeah. And again, Joseph Smith's own Articles of Faith claim that we believe in honoring, obeying, and sustaining the law. So that's a. That's a. And again, God's not a God of confusion, so that doesn't make sense with exceptions.

Guest 6 [00:37:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:17] This is so much just marrying other men's wives. How confusing is that? Again, God's not a God of confusion, but he's marrying, you know, women who are married to other men. Makes no sense.

Sandra Tanner [00:37:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:26] Okay. I. I also just want to take exception, just from this clip that we heard of Kate Holbrooke. She's bemoaning the. How hard, you know, she. They. So what? They. Okay, so, Sandra, they don't want to give any of that historical context. Okay? But they do want to make. When they're introducing polygamy as if it started in 1843, they do want to make, really, one important point, and that's how hard it was, even on the men. Now, can you tell me why Kate Holbrooke thinks it's so important to say, okay, polygamy was hard on the women, but, man, it was hard on the men, too. Why? Why? Can you help me with that?

Sandra Tanner [00:38:06] Well, I can give you one example of.

John Dehlin [00:38:08] You can tell us if you have ideas on that, too.

Sandra Tanner [00:38:12] Is Wilfred. Not Wilfred? William Clayton? In William Clayton's diary, he jotted down notes, different days about Joseph teaching him polygamy. And his mother and his wife's sister, maybe two sisters, are all in the same home together. And he decides he wants to marry. I think her name's Margaret, the second sister. And so he gets permission for Joseph to marry Margaret. The only problem is Margaret has the love of her life out on a mission. And when he comes back, he finds that Margaret is married to William Clayton.

Sandra Tanner [00:39:04] And so she. But she's pregnant, and she would like to go back to this other guy. And so William goes to Joseph and he says, we're all miserable. It's just terrible. Everyone's crying. This guy that loves her would take her anyways. And she's crying, and no one's happy. And I'm crying because no one's happy and so can I get divorced from her?

Sandra Tanner [00:39:33] Oh, no. Joseph tells him, once you have married in this new and everlasting covenant, that you're sealed, and so that can't be undone. Of course, when they get to Utah, then women can leave their husbands anytime they want, evidently. But for Clayton, he tells this heart wrenching story, and it was. He would have given her up if Joseph would have said he could do that. But since he has to stay married to her, her and her boyfriend and Clayton are all miserable, but she's pregnant. So that you can see right there that they were sleeping with their plural wives.

Sandra Tanner [00:40:14] But the problem is Clayton's afraid that someone's going to call him out for having adultery with his sister. And so he asked Joseph, what should I do if somebody brings this up and charges me? And Joseph tells him, well, I'll have to put you out for a while, but after a while I can bring you back in and set you right back up again.

Sandra Tanner [00:40:36] So the whole thing is just a big fiasco. And Joseph is proposing this crazy idea. I got you into this. You got the girl pregnant. You can't let her go to the guy she really loves. You're just gonna have to tough it out. And if you get called on it, you'll be excommunicated for a while and then you'll be set back up. I mean, it's.

Gerardo Sumano [00:40:58] Which could be, could, could be. That story could tell us a lot about what probably could have happened with John C. Bennett. Yeah, but John C. Bennett just didn't want to, you know, be okay with him being kicked out.

Sandra Tanner [00:41:13] Yeah. Bring it back later.

Gerardo Sumano [00:41:15] Yeah. Sacrificial lamb.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] Carah, just from like a woman's perspective or a feminist perspective, when you're kicking off, you know, a system of, of clear inequality where one man can have up to 50 wives and the wife has to share her husband with 49 other women. And you start off, you set it up, contextualizing this to learners by saying, yeah, it was kind of hard on the women, but it was also really hard on the men. Do you see any problems with that?

Carah Burrell [00:41:46] They just have to, like, split their time between their good priesthood duties. And they just have. So they think of their home teaching that they have to do and just all the houses that they have to split their time and money. Just really difficult for them to schedule sex on each night for so many different women. Do they even have, like.

John Dehlin [00:42:02] The men were just exhausted. There was just so much sex that it was so hard on the men because they were exhausted. Like, no, but also. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Carah Burrell [00:42:10] I just have more dark jokes if you want me to keep going. And also, have you ever had to get the woman that you got pregnant, like an abortion gift that gets expensive, so one after another, it's difficult on the men. Would we think of the men?

John Dehlin [00:42:22] Yeah. Like, I was just. I was joking with Gerardo. This is a really kind of a dark example, but it's just, like, to say that slavery was hard on the slaves, but it was also really hard on the slave masters because the slave masters had to feed the slaves and close the slaves.

Carah Burrell [00:42:37] Who wants to be an administrator?

John Dehlin [00:42:39] And, like, sometimes the slaves would run away, and sometimes they had to go catch the slaves. Like, is it. Isn't there a problem.

Gerardo Sumano [00:42:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:47] With framing this as being hard on the men?

Gerardo Sumano [00:42:50] Well, especially when it's being. They're the ones calling the shots. Right. Like, they're the ones setting up the rules. They're the ones saying who can marry who they can.

John Dehlin [00:43:00] Back then, women couldn't even own property in many cases.

Gerardo Sumano [00:43:03] Yeah.

Guest 6 [00:43:03] They.

John Dehlin [00:43:04] You know, if they divorce their husbands, they got no rights.

Carah Burrell [00:43:07] Like, I will play devil's advocate for Kate for a second, though. Men are still human beings, and I can understand there are some people that did not want to practice polygamy, and maybe they felt like they had to because that's what they were, you know, convinced is the only way, and that's what they had to do. And they genuinely felt like they were hurting their beloved, you know, first wife by doing a practice. But then I assume, you know, once you get into it, you're like, hey, rock and roll.

John Dehlin [00:43:32] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:43:32] Like, well, I think that Brigham Young claimed that he had a real big problem, wished he was dead, couldn't stand the thought of going into this now. And that may have been true because in the sense that his first wife died and he remarried to my great, great grandma, Marianne angel, who was a very good mother and took care of Brigham's two little girls he had before he married her. And by all accounts, as far as I know, Marianne was a very loving mother. So he may have truly felt bad about hurting her feelings. But when he talks about, you know, he wanted death, I think, really, I mean, if you had that deeper feeling about it, do you really go ahead and marry 55 women?

John Dehlin [00:44:29] Exactly. And you're a descendant of Brigham Young. You're a blood descendant of Brigham Young, Is that right?

Sandra Tanner [00:44:34] Yes. I'm not squealing on someone else's family. This is mine.

Carah Burrell [00:44:38] You know, what if I were to win the lottery or something. I would for a second be like, this is too much of a burden. I don't even know how to spend this much money, But I'd get used to it. Yeah, I learned. I'd learn how to spend it.

John Dehlin [00:44:48] Yeah. It's just so much money. I don't know what to do with it. What a pain. All right, well, anyway, I thought that was a weird framing, so let's go ahead and just. Okay, so the very next clip is talking about D and about section 132, verse 1. So let's go ahead and read it. Carah, do you want to read verse one of DNC 132?

Reading and Analyzing Section 132

Carah Burrell [00:45:14] Yes, Sister Burrell is how I like to be asked to read scriptures in this context. Verse one.

John Dehlin [00:45:20] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:45:21] Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you, my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand what wherein I the Lord justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and also Moses, David, and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines.

John Dehlin [00:45:47] So let's go ahead and hear what comments they make about. About verse one, and then Sandra will have you respond. Is that all right?

Sandra Tanner [00:45:54] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:45:54] Okay, here we go.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:45:57] So the. The first several. I think it's four verses of this section, do suggest plural marriage. In verse one, we read, and Jesus Christ is speaking. I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David, and Solomon, my servants as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines. And.

Video Clip 1 [00:46:22] And behold, and lo, I am the Lord, that God and will answer thee as touching this matter. Joseph Smith had asked about their plural wives. And this isn't a surprise because this was a restorationist endeavor. They were working to restore not just the gospel that Jesus Christ established on the earth, but, you know, the Abrahamic covenant was very important to them. So they were looking to restore the whole history of the church of God and human relationships with.

Video Clip 1 [00:46:53] With God. So. So it's not surprising that this practice came up. And if I had been editing this section, I would have moved this down, because then we leave plural marriage and we start to talk about something else for a long time for what, 30 verses or so. And so I would have thought, well, I should just take this down and put the. Put it down where we get back to this topic. But I think what it does for us to have these verses at the beginning is it gives us context of what question, what important questions started this conversation and to have that context Then when we think about how the Savior answers, makes the Savior's approach to answering it really.

John Dehlin [00:47:36] Okay. So, Sandra, so aside from bemoaning how hard polygamy was on the men, now they want to say that a huge chunk of DNC132 actually isn't even about plural marriage. It's about this new and everlasting covenant that really is about the gospel of Jesus Christ, not about polygamy. So what do you think about that framing? Why are they doing it and what's your reaction to it?

Sandra Tanner [00:47:59] Well, yeah, they want to put the best foot forward. And so it should have started out just talking about one man, one wife, and then we could have snuck in polygamy later on. But the whole point of the revelation was to convince Emma to accept polygamy. So I see why it's right at the start.

Gerardo Sumano [00:48:20] Right.

John Dehlin [00:48:22] God did write this after all. That's Jesus talking, verse one.

Sandra Tanner [00:48:26] It's, you know, how the Lord justifies this? So obviously this is pitched to Emma. God justifies these men in taking plural wives. So why do you have a problem with it? And notice it says as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines. I mean, right off the bat, it's called a doctrine, not a practice. And what are we going to do with concubines? So if we're restoring this everlasting principle, where do concubines fit in into this? And what does it mean? What are they doing?

Gerardo Sumano [00:49:04] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:49:06] So what do you think?

John Dehlin [00:49:07] So what do you think about this framing that that new and everlasting covenant is not plural marriage. It's. It's the. Basically the gospel of Jesus Christ and the desire to seal all humans together in one eternal ceiling. It feels like a reframe. I don't know.

Sandra Tanner [00:49:22] Right. Well, you look at all the church leaders statements up until the time of the manifesto and even some after, they all taught polygamy and eternal marriage as the same thing. The eternal covenant included regular marriage, but it was for plural marriage. And the church leaders all, for dozens of years, gave sermons saying that you had to practice polygamy if you wanted full exaltation.

John Dehlin [00:49:50] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:49:51] So they would have understood that the new and everlasting COVENANT that Doctrine Covenants 132 talks about, that means polygamy.

Sandra Tanner [00:50:00] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:50:01] So it's not because Kate is telling us that new everlasting covenant that means the restoration of the Abrahamic covenant of. But.

Sandra Tanner [00:50:14] Well, yeah, she. But she wants to narrow the definition down to one man, one wife, and make plural Marriage an appendage to that. When it's the whole deal, it starts out with that being the subject.

Guest 2 [00:50:27] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:50:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:29] I want to also read verses 3 and 4. Therefore, prepare thy heart to receive and obey the instructions which I'm about to give you. Do they talk about this in a clip a little bit later?

Gerardo Sumano [00:50:42] I don't think we put that in.

John Dehlin [00:50:43] Okay. He's basically saying, all right, prepare your heart. Emma, I'm about to share with you something a little bit difficult for all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same. For behold, I reveal unto you a new and everlasting covenant. That sounds all good, but then it says, and if you abide not that covenant, then ye are. Then are ye damned, for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter my glory.

Gerardo Sumano [00:51:09] I think there's a clip about that.

John Dehlin [00:51:11] Yeah, that's what I meant. So, yeah. So. So, like, the church wants to talk about the new and everlasting covenant. Like, it's some happy join all families together sort of thing. But if you read right there in verse four, you're damned if you're not part of it. Isn't that. Is that a little. You're crazy. You're cringing.

Emma Smith's Ultimatum and the Threat of Destruction

Carah Burrell [00:51:30] Yeah, I'm cringing. Like, it starts off with prepare your heart. And what I imagine is Emma, him telling her to sit down and make sure there's nothing breakable around that she can throw at him. That's basically what I'm reading there. There's also a threat, and there's this huge threat there. Not just to. To Emma, obviously, but anyone who doesn't allow in this really painstaking, like, divisive, kind of disgusting practice that, hey, if you're into it, that's fine. Like, I don't judge or anything, but when we're talking about you have to do it to receive your exaltation. And it's completely, like, coerced up the wall, though. It's gross. It's painful.

John Dehlin [00:52:04] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:52:05] Well, and then the part of. I assume a Mormon would take first four to try to parse out the polygamy part out of that. That it's just about marriage. But it follows right on the heels of the opening verses about plural marriage. So it has to relate four has to relate to one through three. And so what? Emma's going to get damned for if she doesn't accept polygamy.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:28] Because. Because when the revelation was given, there was no verses. It was not separated into it.

Sandra Tanner [00:52:33] Yes. It just wrote right into it.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:35] Yeah. So you can't you can't say, oh, four is not about polygamy, but three is. And, and the, you know, like, you have to think about it as a run on thing.

Sandra Tanner [00:52:46] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:47] And then take it in context.

Sandra Tanner [00:52:48] And all through this revelation are the words damned. So you go through this and you'll find it pops up in verse 6, verse 14, verse 26, 41, 52, 54, 57, 63 and 64.

John Dehlin [00:53:08] So, yeah, that's a lot of damning.

Sandra Tanner [00:53:11] Yeah, about nine times here. If you reject this stuff, you're going to be damned. And I've had Mormons say to me, oh, that just means damned like a stream, you'll be stopped and you won't be able to progress further. But isn't spelled like dam in a river, it's spelled like damning you outside of God's presence.

John Dehlin [00:53:31] Yeah, that's referred.

Gerardo Sumano [00:53:32] Well, and I think, I think we're going to talk about it later, but when it comes to Emma, it says that she's going to be not just damned, but destroyed.

Sandra Tanner [00:53:38] Yes, that word pops up too.

Carah Burrell [00:53:40] Yeah, destroyed like a river, you know, like rivers get destroyed. So makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:53:47] Yeah. So if we go to the next slide, it talks about again, this damning because it comes up also in verse six. Is that right?

Sandra Tanner [00:53:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:55] So let's go ahead and, and play the next clip.

Guest 5 [00:53:59] So when we talk about marriage, it's a part. It's the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. But the new and everlasting covenant itself is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Guest [00:54:09] It's all of it.

Guest 5 [00:54:11] It's the whole thing. And so, so we go right into that

Sandra Tanner [00:54:18] verse 6.

Guest 5 [00:54:19] All sudden, Jesus Christ is talking about it as pertaining to the new and everlasting covenant. It was instituted for the fullness of my glory. And he that receiveth a fullness thereof must and shall abide the law, or he shall be damned, saith the Lord God.

John Dehlin [00:54:33] Yeah, and I just want to be really clear here. He, this, this appears to me like the behavior of a coercive, abusive individual. Basically saying you all perceive me to be a prophet. Emma, you're my spouse, but I, I am a prophet of the Lord. And I'm going to pull my prophet card and threaten you with damnation unless you let me have the two dozen wives I've already sealed myself to, and you need to let me have the one or two dozen more that I want to seal myself to once I threaten you into submission.

Guest 6 [00:55:08] Right.

John Dehlin [00:55:08] Is that fair? Is that not fair? Have I overstated that?

Carah Burrell [00:55:11] I want any, like, LDS apologist to tell me exactly. Exactly what you just said. Put yourself in Joseph's position where people perceive you as a prophet, and you've already married all this women and you.

John Dehlin [00:55:20] And you were lying about it.

Carah Burrell [00:55:21] And you need to tell your wife. You need to break the news about what's going on, because everything shiz is about to hit the fan, and you need to play prophet now. All right, what are you going to say? What is God needing you to say? Would it say anything other than DNC132? Honestly, it has, like, the exact language you would expect in the situation. Am I wrong? Like, that's what I feel.

Gerardo Sumano [00:55:41] That's uninteresting. Yeah. That's interesting.

John Dehlin [00:55:44] Yeah. Like, this is Jesus, right?

Sandra Tanner [00:55:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:47] And Jesus is saying all this stuff is so important that you're going to be damned if you don't do it. But Jesus didn't have the courtesy to give the revelation first and to get Emma's permission first. It's like, first the Native American women in 31, then Fanny Alger, then the sealing power, then 20 plus women, then Emma's mad, and now Jesus is saying, you're going to get damned. Like, and God's not a God of confusion.

Gerardo Sumano [00:56:13] And the fact that it's not included. Like, the general Mormon membership doesn't know about this revelation until decades later.

John Dehlin [00:56:21] And the. While the Book of Mormon and doctrine covenants are condemning it. Right, Right.

Sandra Tanner [00:56:25] Absolutely. Yeah. Well, one of the questions that came to my mind on looking at this also was, well, if all this was so important, why didn't Jesus restore it? I mean, they. They're restoring. Restoring the new and everlasting covenant. Well, when was it given other than they want to make it back in the time of Genesis, but in Jesus time, he's not. Is restoring that.

John Dehlin [00:56:46] So check this out. When I was at byu, my. My roommate, Russ Watterson had a BYU professor named Margaret Pope. Does that name mean anything to you? Sandra?

Sandra Tanner [00:56:55] I can't remember.

John Dehlin [00:56:56] She's Bruce Armaconkie's sister.

Sandra Tanner [00:56:58] Oh, okay.

John Dehlin [00:56:59] And she taught religion at byu and she taught that Jesus had multiple plural wives and that. And that Jesus did that. The Bakonki family believes not only that Jesus had multiple wives, but that Joseph Smith was a descendant, a blood descendant, of one of Jesus's plural wives. Have you ever heard stuff like that?

Guest 2 [00:57:24] Yes.

Sandra Tanner [00:57:24] And the reason the McConkie family would believe that is because Brigham Young and all the church leaders up till the manifesto taught that. Orson Pratt's got several writings in his books about God and Jesus being married. And Brigham has statements about them being married.

Sandra Tanner [00:57:45] So. But that's all after they finally come out publicly about polygamy in 1852. Before that, they were covering it up even from their own members. But in 52, they finally least came out and admitted it to people. But so from their sermons from 52 on through the turn of the century, practically, you can find the new and everlasting covenant was polygamy, and you had to live it or be damned, stopped up whatever way you want to define it.

Sandra Tanner [00:58:18] So the whole thing just gets such a confusing background of all of this because it's got all these equivalencies, these appendages to the story that the average person never hears or knows about. So if you said to somebody Brigham Young taught that God was married and Jesus was married, they probably say, oh, you're just a big liar. But the McConkey family could have given you the reference on all that, I'm sure.

John Dehlin [00:58:49] And what did Jesus say about marriage in heaven, by the way?

Sandra Tanner [00:58:52] Well, and Book of Matthew, Jesus says they neither marry nor are given in marriage. Of course, you bring that up to a Mormon and they say, oh, well, those Sadducees just didn't get married in the temple, so of course they won't have anyone in there hereafter. But they have to always interject a further unknown source to get what they want the Scriptures to say, because there's certainly nothing in the New Testament that would suggest plural marriage to anyone, especially not as a doctrine.

Guest 6 [00:59:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:25] You think if Jesus in. In 18:43 is going to use the word damned like 10 times in one section to talk about how important plural marriage is, maybe he would have mentioned that when he was actually alive once, at least one time. And then again, if you're going to mention damned like 10 times because it's like the most important thing, then why did they abandon it by, I don't know, 1905 or whenever they abandoned it? And why aren't we practicing it now? Are we all damned?

Sandra Tanner [00:59:52] Yeah, well, we've had it revealed to us. And it says if you've had it revealed to you and you don't live it, you're damned.

Gerardo Sumano [00:59:59] Oh, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:00] Why. Why mention all this damning when the majority of Mormons who are going to be born.

Gerardo Sumano [01:00:04] Well, I think what they're gonna say. What they're gonna say is that. What they're gonna say is that whenever it's talking about damming is talking about one, one man, one women. And Kate just said on the clip that you Split. You just played that. Polygamy is just part of that, but it's not all of it.

Sandra Tanner [01:00:22] Yeah, but Jesus statement. It wasn't about polygamy. It was about.

Gerardo Sumano [01:00:27] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:00:27] Any marriage. Yeah, there's no given in marriage.

John Dehlin [01:00:30] Yeah, that.

Sandra Tanner [01:00:31] So.

John Dehlin [01:00:31] Yeah, they.

Sandra Tanner [01:00:33] They don't even have Jesus talking about, you should be married.

Gerardo Sumano [01:00:37] Yeah, exactly.

Power, Priesthood, and Celestial Marriage Requirements

John Dehlin [01:00:40] All right, so it goes on. I think it's worth reading a few of these verses that they don't. That they skip over. And I just. If each of you want to hear this verse, I'll read it, and then I want to hear what you think. You read between the lines and tell me what Joseph is probably saying. So verse 7. Verily I say unto you that the conditions of this law are these. All covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, connections, associations, or expectations that are not made and entered into and sealed by the holy Spirit of promise of him who is anointed both as well, for time and all eternity.

John Dehlin [01:01:14] And that promise. Wait, sorry. And that, too, most holy, by revelation and commandment, through the medium of mine anointed, whom I have appointed on the earth to hold this power. And I appointed unto my servant Joseph to hold this power in the last days. And there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of the priesthood are conferred are of no efficacy, virtue, or force in and after the resurrection from the dead. For all contracts that are not made unto this end have an end when men are dead. That's a pretty intense verse.

Sandra Tanner [01:01:54] Well, it has a lot of stuff in it.

John Dehlin [01:01:56] Carah, what are you thinking about that?

Carah Burrell [01:01:57] I think Joseph Smith, you know, he's writing only so many, few scriptures of what Jesus had. The really important things to get across for this dispensation before Jesus, before Joseph was about to die, like, you know, months later after this, and he wants everyone to know, single people, you guys are screwed. It's only the married people who get married in this religion that keep their spouses in the next one. And obviously, there's an implications that he probably didn't even think about with LGBTQ people. But, yeah, like, that's what was really important, was saying that this sealing power is the shiz and everyone needs to get with it or else next life. Nothing.

John Dehlin [01:02:33] Okay. All right, Gerardo, what. What are your reactions to that verse? Anything else you want to add?

Gerardo Sumano [01:02:37] Well, I just keep thinking that this revelation was not known by the general membership until what year? 1870?

Sandra Tanner [01:02:45] Well, Orson Pratt spilled the beans about believing polygamy in 1852. In conference. But it. The section wasn't put in the DNC until 1876.

Gerardo Sumano [01:02:57] Yeah. So. So all these things that it's talking about, you know, ceiling and if you don't get sealed here, like, people didn't know about it. Like, the church was restored. The sealing power was already on the earth. But no one knew if they didn't have this revelation that their marriages were not counting.

Carah Burrell [01:03:17] You know, they should be running to the temple. Should be like, new revelation. Everybody.

John Dehlin [01:03:21] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:03:22] Skip over to the temple and get sealed immediately.

John Dehlin [01:03:24] I think we'll do that. When a Mormon looks at DNC132, they think, oh, well, Joseph must have received this revelation and then told every. Put it in the times and seasons and just told everybody, as soon as you. Hey, here, you hear you. Extra, extra, new revelation. And then by 1844, all members know about it. And, Sandra, you're saying that's not what happened?

Sandra Tanner [01:03:43] No, they. No one in Nauvoo that wasn't in the know would have known about this as it was behind the scenes. They didn't want to get arrested for it. But to me, the part that stood out in this section is Joseph Smith's power trip.

John Dehlin [01:03:59] Yes.

Sandra Tanner [01:03:59] That only one man gets to do this. Only one man gets to give the okay to somebody. Me. Okay. They talk in the video about this, but I don't know if we had a sound clip on it, but they talk about. Of course, in our day, there are more than one that have the authority to seal because every temple's got a guy in it with the authority to seal.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:24] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:04:25] So. But in Joseph's day, man, he was not sharing the power with anybody.

Guest 6 [01:04:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:30] Because he's basically saying, I get to decide who marries who.

Sandra Tanner [01:04:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:34] Decide who gets to take plural wives or not. And this leads to the abuses.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:39] That Warren Jeffs kind of does in the FLDS Church of, like, taking people's wives away, assigning people's wives or daughters to other men. Like, isn't that where this all comes from?

Sandra Tanner [01:04:48] Right, right. Just follow the prophet.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:52] What were you gonna say?

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:53] Well, it's. It's very explicit what it says. It says, and there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred.

John Dehlin [01:05:05] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:05:05] That's a weird time to be speaking as a man.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:07] Right, right. Well, so. So if. If there's a lot of people today with those keys, it doesn't make sense. It says that there's never.

John Dehlin [01:05:16] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:16] Never but one on earth.

John Dehlin [01:05:18] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:05:19] I suppose a Mormon Would just say, well, the one that has it today is.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:24] Can give it away, the Nelson.

Sandra Tanner [01:05:26] And he authorizes all these mission presidents to have the power to do it in their temples. But that's not what Jose was saying.

John Dehlin [01:05:33] Yeah, yeah. It just feels like a power grab.

Sandra Tanner [01:05:35] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:05:36] And. And yeah, it's a problem.

Carah Burrell [01:05:39] I'm just having a great moment pretending this is a literal, like Sunday school and like a Mormon church and we're all like, Joseph's on a power trip. Wouldn't that just be kind of fun, just having like a flashback moment here? This would be a very fun, entertaining Sunday school.

Sandra Tanner [01:05:52] Yes. Well, that's like when my mom, way back in the dark ages, was going to Sunday school school and she was asking questions. I don't know that they were studying this section, but as things went along, she kept asking questions like, we're sitting around talking and finally some guy jumps up and stands in front of my mom and shakes his finger at her and says, oh my gosh. Only an adulterous nation seeks after a sign. And so my mom didn't feel welcome anymore and kind of just dropping out at that point.

Carah Burrell [01:06:24] I used to say that all the time, even when I was faithful. Just raised my hand. I'd be like, only an adulterous nation seeks after a sign. That was like my favorite thing to say. All right, we back into the clips now.

John Dehlin [01:06:34] So I got it. Verse 8 again. Behold mine house is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and not a house of confusion. That's just. It's almost a. It's almost like a farce.

Carah Burrell [01:06:44] It's like an lol, like heart Jesus. Like, because you're talking about like an omnipotent God, something that a God who knows everything. And it's just that all knowing, all loving, all seeing God. Apparently not. Or he's joking because. Like that. Why. Why write that if you know that one day Warren Jeffs is going to take this and run with it and do some atrocities to children like that. This. This is not clarified enough to be given to your people yet. Like, Jesus, hold back a little bit or give it. Give everything you want to say, because this is going to be really misinterpreted and hurt a lot of people. Ye, we're laughing. But like, holy schnikes, has plug me done a lot of harm to a lot of people? Like, no.

John Dehlin [01:07:27] Yeah. And again, Sandra, you said that this revelation wasn't made available to the public until when? To the. To the church. Until when?

Gerardo Sumano [01:07:33] 1876?

Sandra Tanner [01:07:35] Well, it was printed in the Doctrine and covenants in 1876. They pro. They may have had it printed in other publications in Utah before that time, but it wasn't Scripture.

John Dehlin [01:07:48] Yeah. So Jesus is giving probably the most revelation he's ever going to give. He gives it in 1843. He's not the author of confusion. He's a person of order. And yet the members aren't actually going to be made aware of this revelation for another 30. What? 30. Probably another 30 years.

Sandra Tanner [01:08:07] Well, and Pratt spilled the beans in 1852. Yeah, 1852, but still wasn't published that at that time. But that's when it was announced in conference. And if you got the conference report, you could have read about it there. But we know that in 1850, John Taylor Fossil went to France and when on a mission trip. And when he's there, he has this debate with this minister who brings up Bennett's accusations of polygamy.

Sandra Tanner [01:08:40] And so to counter that in this public debate in France, Taylor gets up and holds up his 1835 Doctrine of Covenants that says. And he reads it to them. Inasmuch as this church has been accused of the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that one man has one wife and one wife, one husband, except in the case of death when neither can marry again. Well, Now Taylor has 12 wives back home. He absolutely knows he's lying. But see, to get the converts from England to come over to America, they know they've got to hide this from them.

Sandra Tanner [01:09:17] And so it's a cover for them to keep the section 101 that was in the 1835 DNC. To keep that section denouncing polygamy in the DNC until 1876 means that all the non Mormons will be deceived by the Doctrine and Covenants into what they think is the official teaching of the church.

Gerardo Sumano [01:09:41] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:09:42] When through that whole period, that's not the law the Mormons were working by.

John Dehlin [01:09:46] And that's when this, this kind of really severe accusation of sex trafficking often is invoked, because we even had a commenter make this point that if missionaries are going to the UK or England, they're looking for probably poorer, lower socioeconomic status young women, which was William Law's accusation, the Nautilus Expositor, by the way, that we were going to sending our missionaries to England, converting these young girls, denying that polygamy was being practiced. They'd get shipped back here on a promise of coming to Zion to meet God's prophet. They're penniless and alone when they arrive in Nauvoo, and then immediately they're scooped up by, you know, the. The. The people in Joseph Smith's inner circle. They're arguing over who gets the cutest young, you know, British babes. They come into town, and then immediately they're. They're. They're kind of coerced into plural marriages after converting when being told that it was just a monogamous church.

Sandra Tanner [01:10:44] No.

John Dehlin [01:10:44] Some say that's sex trafficking. Is that. Is that overreaching?

Sandra Tanner [01:10:49] Well, I think if you were the father, you wouldn't think that was overreaching.

John Dehlin [01:10:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's pretty. That's pretty dark stuff. Okay, couple. Let's just read through a little bit more of these verses here. Verse 9. Will I accept an offering of an offering, saith the Lord, that is not made in my name, or will I receive at your hand that which I have not appointed and will I appoint unto you, saith the Lord, except it be by law, even as I and my Father ordained unto you before the world was, and then 12 again.

John Dehlin [01:11:24] I am the Lord thy God, and I give unto you this commandment that no man shall come unto the Father but by me or by my word, which is my law, saith the Lord. And everything that is in the world, whether it be ordained of men by thrones or principalities or powers or things of name, whatsoever they may be that are not by me or by my word, saith the Lord, shall be thrown down and shall not remain after men are dead, neither in nor after the resurrection, saith the Lord your God. What? What? What's Joseph trying to say here, Sandra?

Sandra Tanner [01:11:57] Well, just that you guys all better shape up and do this. It's the only law from God that this is the way it is. And you, you have no say in this. God has commanded this. And like the other verses, you're going to be destroyed if you don't follow this.

John Dehlin [01:12:11] Yeah. 14 says, for whatsoever things remain are by me, and whatsoever things are not by me shall be shaken and destroyed. There it is again. All right, so we go to verse 15 where he starts talking about marriage. Carah, do you want to read verse 15 really quick? Is that all right?

Carah Burrell [01:12:28] Yep. Therefore, if a man marry him a wife in the world, and he marry her not by me, nor by my word, and he covenant with her so long he is in the world, and she with him, their covenant and marriage are not of force when they are dead and when they are out of the world. Therefore they are not bound by any law when they are out of the world.

John Dehlin [01:12:55] So Sandra, what's he saying? What's, what's.

Sandra Tanner [01:12:57] You're going to be single forever because you didn't do it. Right.

John Dehlin [01:13:02] You missed your chance that all non Mormon marriages are dissolved.

Sandra Tanner [01:13:07] Right.

John Dehlin [01:13:07] In. In the afterlife. Is that right?

Sandra Tanner [01:13:09] Right. And I think he probably was using that to convince people that the marriages they had now were of none effect.

John Dehlin [01:13:16] Right. Okay.

Sandra Tanner [01:13:17] It'd be an easy thing to try to how to convince a girl that this was okay. Even though you're married to Sam down here, your marriage really has no effect because you aren't really married to him.

John Dehlin [01:13:27] That's a good point.

Sandra Tanner [01:13:28] You haven't, you haven't come into the new and everlasting covenant.

John Dehlin [01:13:31] It's an illegitimate marriage. Only marriages I approve are legit.

Gerardo Sumano [01:13:34] Oh yeah. Because he's saying he has to approve it.

John Dehlin [01:13:37] Yep. And everything else is in valid.

Gerardo Sumano [01:13:39] So it's not just what it's done with his power, but that also implies that he has to be approved by Joseph.

John Dehlin [01:13:45] Yep. Yeah. Okay. Carah, go ahead and read the next verse.

Carah Burrell [01:13:50] 16.

John Dehlin [01:13:50] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:13:52] Therefore when they are out of the world, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are appointed angels in heaven. Which angels are ministering servants to minister for those who are worthy of. Of a far more and an exceeding and an eternal weight of glory.

Single People, Administering Angels, and the Afterlife

John Dehlin [01:14:09] And before we hit that, I want to hear you guys harad. I want to hear your opinion about that single people being administering angels. But I just want to reiterate. Mormons like to tell the Christian world that we there are brothers and sisters and that we, you know, we don't look down on them. Remember, remember how the reaction of Brad Cox was we don't look down on other religions.

Carah Burrell [01:14:30] I love that.

John Dehlin [01:14:31] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:14:32] New like Brangelina name you call them Brad Cox.

John Dehlin [01:14:34] But this is a really important part of Mormonism because we're creating scarcity here.

Gerardo Sumano [01:14:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:39] You know, if you ask a Christian, are you going to use you tell me Sandra, do you think you're going to be with Gerald in the afterlife? Are you going to be out?

Sandra Tanner [01:14:45] Yes, I believe I'll be with him, but not in the sense of married life like we have today. I don't know what heaven's going to be like. But the New Testament does not mention the marriage relationship in heaven. But it says we're the children of God, brothers, sisters in Christ. So that says to me, I will know all my brothers and sisters and, and my associations, my friendships, my loved ones. Christians aren't saying that we'll all be in heaven living on different parts of different planets and not be with anyone

Gerardo Sumano [01:15:22] we know and sad and single and.

Sandra Tanner [01:15:24] Yeah, no, it says because the Mormons

Gerardo Sumano [01:15:26] tried to paint a. A heave. Christians believe in a sad heaven with no family associations.

Sandra Tanner [01:15:33] I. I view heaven to be more like having a Mormon family reunion.

Guest 2 [01:15:38] Right.

Sandra Tanner [01:15:39] Of everybody you know and love is with you.

John Dehlin [01:15:43] And that's what I think is so dastardly about this verse because it's where Mormonism begins to. To manufacture a scarcity saying, you're not going to be with your family in the afterlife. Your marriages are dissolved, Your families are dissolved.

Guest 3 [01:15:57] The.

John Dehlin [01:15:58] Maybe you won't even see your loved ones again, your children, your spouse, unless you join Mormonism and get married in the temple. And we are the only ones with authority. So. But, you know. So Christians would think I'm just going to be with my family, but no, not anymore. And that this becomes the linchpin because Mormons want to say families are the most important thing. What we care about most is families. But what we're really doing is trying to strike fear in the hearts of everybody who isn't Mormon, saying, unless you join us, pay us 10% of your income and dedicate your life to us, you'll never see your spouse or children again. Am I wrong?

Sandra Tanner [01:16:34] Oh, that. Besides that, most Mormons haven't gone through the temple to be sealed to anyone.

Gerardo Sumano [01:16:41] Right.

Sandra Tanner [01:16:42] So what happens to all these people that died without Mormons that died without being sealed to their non Mormon husband, For instance, of course they'll say if he wanted the truth, he could join during the millennium or something. But they're making their own separations of everyone, even of the Mormons. The revelation makes. Well, it talks here about the appointed angels. 17. These angels did not abide my law. So that's all the failure Mormons that didn't keep it together. They got married in the temple, but they didn't live the law the whole life. They're going to be a servant because they didn't do everything they were supposed to.

Gerardo Sumano [01:17:29] Yeah. Can you. Do you want to go to the last slide? Do you mind?

John Dehlin [01:17:34] Oh, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Set it up. I gotta. I gotta get there.

Gerardo Sumano [01:17:37] So the one before. Okay, yeah. If you want to play that, just play it and then we'll talk about it. Because it's about what we're talking.

John Dehlin [01:17:44] Okay, here we go.

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 [01:17:47] Because of it, President Ballard recently gave that talk and acknowledged the. This huge group of our church, a large part of our church, the single adult, you know, and which is another. This can be a painful topic for Them too.

Video Clip 2 [01:18:02] Over half of the members of Relief Society are unmarried. So. So it. That. That might be people who were married and. And are now widowed, you know, but. But at this moment, over half of the members of Relief Society are. Are unmarried.

Video Clip 2 [01:18:20] Yeah.

Video Clip 2 [01:18:21] And Kate, wouldn't you say the Lord is interested not just in this life, but the next? And that's really a big part of this section is. Yes, in this life, it's. It can be very difficult. And your choices, other people's choices, the fall, all of this can be very difficult. But he's. He's talking about an ideal in the next life which is going to be available to everyone.

Gerardo Sumano [01:18:46] Yeah. So

Guest [01:18:49] for every.

Gerardo Sumano [01:18:50] Anyone that has paid attention probably has realized that the Church has found itself in a big problem in the. In. In the last couple decades. And that is the problem that Kate and Hank Smith are pointing out, which is that a lot of the members in the church are single. And so having a doctrine that said that promises exaltation only to those that are married is. Is a big problem because a lot of these single people may never get married, and a lot of them die without ever getting married. With. We have in the Relief Society presidency today at least one single woman that I'm aware of in the general Relief Society presidency.

Gerardo Sumano [01:19:34] So for anyone that has paid attention, you'll notice that the Church has been changing, changing its narrative and softening it to make it sound like single people are now. Are still going to receive exaltation in the next life. Somehow, we don't know how, but. And then there's this phrase that always comes up that because of the atonement, any injustice is going to be made just. And so. So in the next life, they're gonna, you know, have that opportunity to get married. And a lot of. A lot of the messy things about marriage that we don't understand in this life, they're going to be fixed on in the next life.

Gerardo Sumano [01:20:13] But an Elder Ballard has explicitly talked about this recently. But this verses, like Sandra is pointing out, are very, very clear about anyone that doesn't enter into marriage in this life.

John Dehlin [01:20:26] In this life.

Gerardo Sumano [01:20:27] In this life. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:28] Should we read the ve.

Guest 2 [01:20:29] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:20:29] So it's 16 and 17, and it says, therefore when they are out of the world, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are appointed angels in heaven, which angels are ministering servants. So they're servants to minister for those who are worthy of a far more and exceeding and an internal weight of glory.

Gerardo Sumano [01:20:56] For these angels did not abide by my law, therefore they cannot be Enlarged, but remain separately and singly without exaltation in their saved condition to all eternity and from henceforth. And not gods, but are angels of God forever and ever. So it is very, very clear. So although the church might want to start painting a different narrative that single people and, you know, you can include their LGBT people, because the church is now encouraging celibacy as a. As a fix for LGBT people.

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:34] You know, now the church is trying to say, oh, well, you might still receive exaltation next life. We don't. We don't need to worry too much about that. But the verses are very explicit.

John Dehlin [01:21:44] Yeah. Like, this is Jesus talking.

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:46] Yeah.

Guest 6 [01:21:46] Right.

John Dehlin [01:21:46] And Jesus says things like, when they are out of the world, which means after they're dead. What else does that mean? They neither marry nor are given in marriage. So it's basically saying, once you're dead, that's it. No more marriage. Is that right? Did I read that right?

Sandra Tanner [01:22:02] Yeah. One of the problems, one of the ways they have, in my life, tried to get around this stuff is by saying we shouldn't worry about this because during the millennium, God's gonna make it possible for everybody to find somebody that. That was faithful, that has the qualifications for eternal life, but they aren't married to someone. So during the millennium, the good Mormon man that never found a bride finds this good Mormon woman who never found a guy, and they can then be sealed.

John Dehlin [01:22:39] How does that make sense? When you die, your spirit goes where?

Sandra Tanner [01:22:42] To paradise.

John Dehlin [01:22:44] Where is that? Is that on this earth or is that somewhere else?

Guest [01:22:46] It's in.

Sandra Tanner [01:22:47] Well, so I don't know.

Gerardo Sumano [01:22:49] I think Brigham Young said that it's in this world.

Carah Burrell [01:22:51] My mom told me above our earth, that it's a spiritual dimension.

Gerardo Sumano [01:22:55] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:22:56] Within this earthly world.

Gerardo Sumano [01:22:58] That's what most Mormon theology books will say. But. But the thing is, they have a problem because the. The. The scripture in the Bible is. Jesus is saying that after. He says after the resurrection, they're not given.

Sandra Tanner [01:23:14] Yeah.

Guest 6 [01:23:15] What.

Gerardo Sumano [01:23:15] What is.

Sandra Tanner [01:23:16] They're neither married nor given in marriage.

Guest 5 [01:23:18] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:23:18] And he.

Guest 5 [01:23:19] So.

Marriage After the Resurrection and Polygamy's Implications

Gerardo Sumano [01:23:19] So Jesus says after the resurrection. So although Mormons want to say that in the millennium, they'll have the opportunity. The millennium. They would have had to be resurrected to be in the millennium. So, so how. How do you go around what Jesus said, that once you're resurrected, there's no marriage after resurrection.

Sandra Tanner [01:23:40] Okay.

Carah Burrell [01:23:41] Who's gonna call you out of the grave?

Sandra Tanner [01:23:43] Well, the problem.

Carah Burrell [01:23:44] My temple name. If there's no temple name to be given, you know, that ceremony never happened.

Sandra Tanner [01:23:49] Well, if you say that these People can get paired up during the millennium. This all is dependent on whether they were faithful during life so that they could be seen to qualify to be in the line for being patched up with someone else. Because that's the way they would have told me was that to the single women of the church, you know, if you stay faithful and do everything in your power, it's not. God won't hold you back just because you didn't find a good guy.

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:25] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:24:26] If you keep all the rules, then you'll have a chance in the millennium to be sealed to a faithful Mormon guy that wasn't able to find a wife. But all of this brings up the question of what are the percentages in the millennium of good women, good Mormon women to good Mormon men. And since there's almost always been more women in Sunday school than men, it makes you kind of wonder what the percentages are here. What are your odds of finding a good Mormon guy that doesn't already have a couple other women? I mean, if there's more women than men qualified for this.

Gerardo Sumano [01:25:07] So then there's polygamy. Yeah. So there's that problem, too.

Sandra Tanner [01:25:11] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:25:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:12] I also, I also just. I'm wondering about this God. Is this a God I really want to worship? Because this God is saying, you got this one life and you either find your eternal companion or you're going to be a servant to the married people.

John Dehlin [01:25:28] Not just for, you know, a couple months or a year like this. This scripture was clearly, clearly written during slavery time. Yeah, because they're talking about servants. Yeah, servants. Like, is that the way heaven is structured, where the people that happen to join the right church and who happened to find their eternal companion and happen to get plural married by the right prophet who happened to live in Ohio or Illinois, they get to rule and reign as gods on the earth. Everybody else is their slave.

John Dehlin [01:26:04] Not just for like a year, which would be horrendous, or a hundred years, which would be egregious. Literally, it says for eternity, forever and ever. Forever and ever. They are slaves to the married people. What God, what type of God is this?

Sandra Tanner [01:26:24] I don't think most Mormons have thought through that. Just because they got married in the temple doesn't mean they are on their way to exaltation to be one of these gods. Because it says you have to be faithful for your whole lifetime. And what about. I mean, my family was. I can't think of very many of. On the Brigham Young side of the family, not very many of them stayed faithful their whole Life. And on my dad's side that were all good Mormons, they may have cut that one. Okay. But there's so many in every ward that are inactive. I mean, most of the church is inactive.

Gerardo Sumano [01:27:07] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:27:08] And so that. That's all the servants lined up right there.

Gerardo Sumano [01:27:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:27:12] Carrie, were you gonna say something?

Carah Burrell [01:27:13] I was just gonna say any single person at like a Mormon family reunion is already a slave to the married people because they dump all the nieces and nephews on you and you just have to babysit them.

Gerardo Sumano [01:27:23] And I remember. And I remember, like, growing up, there were other always jokes about this. Right. Like, I don't know if there were, like, in my family reunions, like, there was always jokes about, you know, the single people are going to be the ministering angels to those who of us who have been able to get married.

Sandra Tanner [01:27:42] Yeah. Oh, well, I have to tell you a story about Gerald's family. His mom, who was active Mormon when Gerald was a teenager, but his father wasn't. But Helen became inactive and I mean, she went some, but she was married in the temple or anything like that. And so her neighbor Shirley was just sweetest lady in the world. And she said to Helen one day, I just want you to know, Helen, that when we get up to the celestial kingdom, I'm going to ask that you can be my servant because you won't have the eternal marriage ceiling. So. But I'm going to put a word in for you that I want you to be my servant. And, oh, Gerald's mom was telling me this story and she says, I had a hard time keeping a straight face through this. You know what? Thanks.

John Dehlin [01:28:39] Carah, will you read verse 19 for us? And then we're going to play another. Another.

Carah Burrell [01:28:44] Yeah, just real quick. I just want to do a quick shout out to the super Chats Wanted to thank Carla. She said, thanks for your incredible content. And then Brett said, Sandra is amazing. I hope to meet her someday. Also love that you added Karen. Gerardo. Thanks for the super chats, guys.

Guest 3 [01:28:59] Okay.

Guest 5 [01:29:00] All right.

Carah Burrell [01:29:01] Sorry, what?

John Dehlin [01:29:01] Verse 19.

Carah Burrell [01:29:04] Oh, the year they're the age I got married.

Guest 2 [01:29:07] Good one.

Guest 5 [01:29:09] Personal.

Carah Burrell [01:29:11] And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife, by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of promise, by him who is anointed, unto whom I have anointed this power and the keys of this priesthood, and it shall be said unto them, yea, shall come, ye shall come forth in the first resurrection. And if it Be after the first resurrection in the next resurrection, and shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities and powers, dominions, all heights and depths. Then shall it be written in the Lamb's book of life. Should I keep going?

John Dehlin [01:29:56] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:29:57] That he shall commit no murder wherein to shed innocent blood. Very important. And if ye abide in my covenant and commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood, it shall be done unto them in all things whatsoever my servant hath put upon them in time and through all eternity, and shall be of full force when they are out of the world, and when they shall pass by the angels and the gods which are set there to their exaltation and glory in all things as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fullness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.

John Dehlin [01:30:41] All right, that's kind of cool. That's a mouthful. Sandra, what do you think he's saying here? I've got a couple opinions, but what's your reaction to that?

Sandra Tanner [01:30:49] Well, I don't know about all the meandering, but this is typical Joseph Smith. He just goes on and on with such a long sentence that you lose him along the way. And you think, okay, I guess that's true. You know, because you didn't follow it. It's kind of like reading Hugh Nibbly, you know, what do you say? Okay, the.

John Dehlin [01:31:12] I mean, no murder. Yeah. Like, I. So what I'm reading is like, hey, do all these things you're gonna get. You're gonna become a God. You're gonna become all powerful if you do all these things I say, unless you murder. Now, why in the world is he dropping murder twice in the middle of this entire super long verse about becoming

Carah Burrell [01:31:33] a God butcher's knife behind her back.

John Dehlin [01:31:35] That could be.

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:36] And it will come up again on 26.

Guest 2 [01:31:38] But.

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:38] But we have a clip for them.

Sandra Tanner [01:31:40] Well, it makes you think that maybe there were accusations of murder against him that he's trying to say he didn't. He did. Well, he's okay because he never committed murder.

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:52] So innocent blood. Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:31:55] So he's got it made. He's going to the top. And when you get to the top, what do you get? A continuation of the seats forever. So what does that mean? It means you're going to have 20 billion spirit babies. This Mormons today are trying to say, oh, no, we don't believe that you're going to have all these kids and run a world by yourself.

Sandra Tanner [01:32:16] Well, what do they think you're going to do with this continuation of the seeds forever. They defined seeds as having more children. I'm not ready to sign up for children. Enough spirit babies for one world only to start having spirit babies for the next world. Because God does this time after time. You see it in the temple ritual where he's. And in what, the book of Moses, I think, where God says, worlds without number have I created without number. So that's the glorious future of the Mormon, is you get to have 20 billion kids every world and forever.

Gerardo Sumano [01:32:57] Yeah. Rodney Meldrum told us yesterday that he believed that it happens in the same way. The same way humans today produce babies. He believes that's the same way they will produce them in heaven.

Sandra Tanner [01:33:13] I'm not signing up.

Gerardo Sumano [01:33:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:33:18] Interestingly, he admitted that his wife isn't supportive of polygamy, but he's okay with it.

Gerardo Sumano [01:33:22] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:33:23] Yeah. Well, then he had. He's gonna have to get some more wives in the millennium, I think.

John Dehlin [01:33:29] Yeah. Well, I, I wondered a little bit about this and the second anointing because it almost feels like it's starting to talk. It's setting up this language of you being guaranteed an exaltation. And aren't, aren't when you get the second anointing, when it, when a, when a devout Mormon couple gets their second anointing, aren't they told they've made it to the celestial kingdom to become gods unless they murder.

Sandra Tanner [01:33:54] Yes.

Gerardo Sumano [01:33:54] Innocent blood.

Sandra Tanner [01:33:56] Yeah, I think Joseph was.

Gerardo Sumano [01:33:58] Yeah. Because, because there's a distinction like, because I, I, I've heard before apologists, I think it was Joseph Feeling Smith saying that no one is innocent so you can kill anyone because no one is innocent except Jesus and maybe people under 8 years old.

John Dehlin [01:34:13] But it's such a weird exception. They don't mention rape. So apparently rape is not going to keep you there, keep you from going there. Yeah, rape's okay. Assault, lying, fraud, embezzlement, pedophilia. None of those things are going to be problems. It's only the murder.

Gerardo Sumano [01:34:31] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:34:32] Which is why when you have the Mountain Meadow massacre in Utah in 1857, that they didn't kill the young children and they didn't tried. They were trying to avoid anyone that was 8 or older because they were so afraid of taking innocent blood.

Gerardo Sumano [01:34:54] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:34:55] See, so that's why they had to leave all these 17 children alive, so they wouldn't have committed the unpardonable sin.

John Dehlin [01:35:03] Yeah, but part of the problem is in Mormon theology, you've got first Nephi, where Nephi is, feels the feelings of the Holy Ghost telling him that he can chop off Laban's head. And so, like, if as long as you get a feeling that a Holy Ghost has inspired you to murder somebody, Mormon gives you. Mormonism gives you the exception to murder whoever you want. And then there. It's not innocent because God told you you could murder him. Is that, Is that not what I mean? That's what the Lafferty brothers thought.

Sandra Tanner [01:35:29] Absolutely right. Right. And it also tells you Joseph Smith never saw anyone get their head cut off because he had known there would been blood all over the place. And you couldn't have taken Laban's clothes off and put them on.

John Dehlin [01:35:42] It would have been drenched. Yeah, yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:35:45] And can I just add, this is a really good question. Mormon movements asked what happened to those 17 children? Sandra, do you want to say what

Sandra Tanner [01:35:51] happened to those kids? Yes. Well, the benevolent Mormons. So after they were through killing everybody, they went and rounded up those 17 terrified children, took them to a Mormon home, and they kept the children in different Mormon homes for the next year while the government investigated this whole thing. And then finally, the children were sent back to their aunts, grandparents, whoever they could figure out who belonged to who. But then the Mormons had the nerve, or Brigham Young, to bill the United States government for the care of these children for the last year. And these little kids later gave statements that they could remember seeing women in town wearing their mother's clothing. You know, just so many sad, horrific stories of all of that.

John Dehlin [01:36:49] Yeah. When Jesus has so few sections that he wants to reveal to humankind, it's so weird that this is one of the them.

Sandra Tanner [01:36:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:36:58] Isn't it?

Sandra Tanner [01:36:59] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:36:59] All right, let's go ahead.

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:00] And, and you know, the, the fact that the church is most important or the, the doctrine that they'll emphasize the most is eternal families. And this is the only. One of the only sections.

Sandra Tanner [01:37:16] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:17] Or that. Or pieces of scripture that talks about it, and it's telling all this weird stuff about murder and people being damned.

John Dehlin [01:37:27] Yeah. So, yeah, it's so weird. All right, well, they, they, they actually, you know, Sandra, you wanted us to go ahead and play this clip about them talking about murder. So let's go ahead and. And play the clip.

Celestial Marriage, Godhood, and the Second Anointing

Guest 5 [01:37:41] Then we, we get to the people who have what you were just describing, verse 19. The, the celestial. The truly celestial marriage. If a man. So it's again, monogamous marriage. If a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and it is sealed by the Holy Spirit and performed by one with authority. And they don't shed innocent blood. So I think that's really interesting that Is the deal breaker.

John Dehlin [01:38:08] That's the deal breaker. That's it. Just don't. Don't murder and you'll be a God.

Sandra Tanner [01:38:13] Yes. And what a.

John Dehlin [01:38:17] It's kind of a low bar. Yeah, a little bit of a low bar.

Sandra Tanner [01:38:20] As long as I don't kill someone, you know. Hey, I can. I think I can make this.

John Dehlin [01:38:25] Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. This is something that came out in the past few years. It seems like the church is trying to walk back that Mormons believe that. That they'll become God someday. And of course, this is in reaction to the God Makers movie and book that really embarrassed the church for a long time. And then you've got like Gordon B. Hinckley telling some reporter, I don't know that we. You know, I don't know that we. That's a couplet. I don't know that we, you know, emphasize it. I don't know that we teach it.

Sandra Tanner [01:38:53] Yeah, we tell them what the couplet is.

John Dehlin [01:38:55] Go ahead.

Sandra Tanner [01:38:56] As man is God once was. As God is, man may become. Okay, so we all have the possibility to go on and have our own world and populate it with our seed, because that's what Heavenly Father did.

John Dehlin [01:39:15] Right. But what's. What I think is deceptive is modern apologists try and say, well, that was just some speech that Joseph gave later in his life, and it's been misinterpreted. And so this idea of becoming gods, we don't really know much about it. Well, let's read verse 20. All right.

Sandra Tanner [01:39:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:34] Carah, do you want to read verse 20 and just kind of go slow like the first four, five words? Go ahead.

Carah Burrell [01:39:41] Verse 20 says, Then shall they be gods.

John Dehlin [01:39:46] Did you stutter?

Carah Burrell [01:39:48] I don't think so. So it says, then shall they be gods, comma, because they have no end. Therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue, Then shall they. Then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Sounds kind of like a God.

John Dehlin [01:40:10] And they say it again. And they say it again.

Carah Burrell [01:40:12] Then shall they be gods, because they have all power and the angels. And the angels are subject unto them. So sounds like a God.

Guest 2 [01:40:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:21] How can.

Carah Burrell [01:40:22] Definitionally a God.

John Dehlin [01:40:23] And this isn't just a couplet. This isn't just something that Joseph said in a speech. It's right here in DNC 132.

Guest 2 [01:40:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:31] Verse 20. Am I wrong? Am I misinterpreting that?

Sandra Tanner [01:40:34] That's what it says in my copy.

Carah Burrell [01:40:37] But when Joseph wrote that, he didn't know that it was going to be kind of weird in 200 years and people weren't going to like it as much.

Sandra Tanner [01:40:44] So, oops. Well, that's why we have prophets, because they know how to back off from these different things.

Carah Burrell [01:40:55] I don't know that we teach it. I don't know, we emphasize it. I just know that it's in our canonized scriptures.

John Dehlin [01:41:00] Yeah, and apologists are being disingenuous when they leave that verse out. All right, the next thing I want to just highlight really quickly. It seems like the message nowadays is if you're single, it's okay. You'll be fine in the afterlife, you'll find a spouse. If you're gay, it's okay. God will un gay you in the afterlife and then you'll have a spouse. Right. If you're not a Mormon, if you're the gazillion billions of other people who never met Joseph Smith or never got sealed, didn't get married in a temple, and didn't live faithfully, it's okay. Heavenly Father's gonna be fair and all is going to be made right in the afterlife. Is that true? Let's read verse. Let's see. Let's read verse 22. Gerardo, will you read verse 22 and let's just see if all is going to be made right for everyone in the end.

Gerardo Sumano [01:41:50] Oh, wow. So it's. So we're adding. Because we already covered it on 16 and 17.

Guest 6 [01:41:55] But.

Gerardo Sumano [01:41:55] But I. I guess God has more things to say about it. For say for straight is the gate and narrow the way that latest onto the exaltation and continuation of the lives. And few there be that find it. Because you receive me not in the world, neither do ye know me.

John Dehlin [01:42:18] Do you understand? Do you understand what I'm saying here? The Church wants non Mormons to think we're not excluding them. The Church wants single people and divorced people to feel like heaven's going to be okay because they don't want every. They don't want a sad heaven. But doesn't verse 22 say heaven is going to be sad for most of the people because they're going to be servants to the married people, that the majority of the vast majority of God's children. Sandra, tell me if I'm reading this wrong. Does. Does verse 22 not say that the vast majority of God's children are going to be servants to the married gods? To the polygamously married gods? Is that not what it says?

Sandra Tanner [01:42:56] Well, it says and few there be that find it.

John Dehlin [01:43:00] So who is less than Half, right?

Sandra Tanner [01:43:02] By definition, yes.

Guest 6 [01:43:03] Don't you think?

John Dehlin [01:43:04] Carah is few. Less than half.

Carah Burrell [01:43:06] Yeah. I mean, when you say the, like, narrow is the way usually that that's meant in terms of, like, get us down the covenant path. There's gonna be a lot of temptations. Like the great and spacious building. That's usually how I think in Mormons term that. You know what I mean? That. That narrow path language now. But that's not what he's saying. It's like, if you don't pair up now, then you're fudged in the next life. And like.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:27] Yeah, well, and it's talking about exaltation, too. You're right.

John Dehlin [01:43:31] So 23, 22, 20.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:34] Yeah, it says that the gate and the way it's narrow. The gate is narrow for exaltation. Not many people will find their way to exaltation.

John Dehlin [01:43:45] So if the church is being honest, they should just tell everybody, hey, this is the plan of salvation. But most of you aren't going to ever be able to really benefit from it.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:54] Like the Jehovah Witnesses, they're very explicit with that teaching about the 144,000.

John Dehlin [01:43:59] Yeah. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:44:00] Okay, so then what about the teaching that I know in this podcast episode, then Hank will say, like. But it's. My students are always asking me, what about all the single people? What about everyone else who doesn't get married? And that's why this proxy work that we do in temples is so important, that the we're, you know, we're the true church. We're doing all right because we have all this proxy work and that everything will be okay in the afterlife. But he just seems to completely, like, obfuscate the point that, like, proxy work for who? If you're. You can't marry people in the temple. You can't pair people in the temple.

Sandra Tanner [01:44:29] Right.

Carah Burrell [01:44:29] So, like, what is he talking about?

John Dehlin [01:44:31] It literally doesn't matter because you can take any group of people. Women, men, single people, married people, Mormons, non Mormons. It says right here in 22, few there are going to be that get exaltation. So it doesn't matter what group you pick. Most people are screwed. According to Mormon scripture, most people are sol. That's a. That's a military term. You know what that term means,

Guest 6 [01:44:59] Sandra?

John Dehlin [01:44:59] No.

Carah Burrell [01:45:00] Sol. Yeah, Sad. Out of luck.

John Dehlin [01:45:02] Kind of. That's kind of. That's. Yeah, the first word.

Carah Burrell [01:45:05] Out of luck.

John Dehlin [01:45:07] She's shiz out of luck. Sol is a military term. Anyway. Do I have that, Sandra? Do you want to correct me on that?

Sandra Tanner [01:45:14] No, that's looks pretty exclusionary here. And. And even if you took the idea of baptism for the dead as a possibility, everybody's going to sign up when the missionaries come at their door in paradise or spirit prison, wherever they're at and they're.

Sandra Tanner [01:45:38] The numbers won't work out. You can't give all the women their own husband because they won't all be worthy. And so it's going to make a number imbalance for the whole thing. And I don't know if any of them ever stopped to think how long this would take. I mean, if we're talking real time, which I assume they mean that because they do temple work today in real time. So I would think that in paradise they must be doing real time stuff.

Sandra Tanner [01:46:09] So how do we get all these billions and billions of people through the line for baptism and then marriage? Because they got to do both. It's not just one. You got to baptize them all and marry them all.

John Dehlin [01:46:24] But why, if you were going to actually, like, why are we doing a thousand years of millennial work of ordinances for all these people who aren't going to be obtaining exaltation because only few actually obtain it? Is it just dead works for no purpose?

Guest 6 [01:46:42] Kind of.

John Dehlin [01:46:43] Why don't we just do this? Why don't we just do the few works for the few people that are going to be exalted because the rest of us are going to be serving them.

Guest 2 [01:46:50] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:46:50] So in put in technical terms, if somebody in a Mormon temple today does an ordinance, let's say they do an endowment ceremony for a deceased person and that person was never married, the most that person, even if they accepted that ordinance in the next life, the most that person could ever be is a servant or angel in the next life.

John Dehlin [01:47:08] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:47:09] There's no possibility for them to have the highest degree of glory.

Gerardo Sumano [01:47:12] According to this. No. According to the modern church, maybe. Right.

John Dehlin [01:47:16] Yeah. But. But what this says is half of all temple ordinance work done is a waste of time.

Gerardo Sumano [01:47:21] More than half.

John Dehlin [01:47:22] More than half. The overwhelming majority of all the temple work done now and in the millennium is going to be a waste of time because few are going to be exalted.

Gerardo Sumano [01:47:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:47:32] Yeah. It's ridiculous. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:47:34] Kind of ruining that song because I keep thinking in my head like that, if you don't know me by now, you will never, ever know me. You know that song?

John Dehlin [01:47:43] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:47:43] That's why I'm like God singing that. But like, in a really cool way.

John Dehlin [01:47:46] Sadistic God.

Carah Burrell [01:47:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:47:48] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:47:48] Kind of ruined that song just now for me.

John Dehlin [01:47:49] And if, and if, if 24 didn't make the point. 25 makes it very clear. Broad is the gate and wide the way that leadeth to the deaths. And many there are that go in thereat because they receive me not, neither do they abide in my law. So basically Jesus is throwing it down. The vast majority are going to face death and non exaltation in the afterlife. All right, let's go ahead and play the, the, the little clip for the podcast.

Guest [01:48:22] Yeah, that verse 24 is just right out of the book of John. It's like the great intercessory prayer in John 17. But I love that in John it says, this is life eternal. This one says eternal lives and makes eternal life even plural in an interesting way, which is fascinating. And that God is not so transcendent that it's impossible to know him, but we can know Him. That's eternal life, to know the only wise and true God.

John Dehlin [01:48:56] So, Sandra, that's a feature, right? Lives instead of life. He's one up the Bible.

Sandra Tanner [01:49:01] Yes. Well, he's changing the whole meaning of the verse. I mean, when you read that in the Bible, it's not about pairing up in marriage and having billions of children. It's a, a Mormon idea stuck on top of the Bible that has no basis in the original text. And so there are several places in this where they change. You know, this is eternal lives. And then make it plural, meaning eternal children. Yeah, but there's nothing in this New Testament about this goal of having children forever, right?

Gerardo Sumano [01:49:45] You would think it would. Yeah. Again, I think we're beating up.

John Dehlin [01:49:49] Okay, all right, well, they go on in, in 26. They go on. And I'm not going to read the whole verse.

Guest 4 [01:49:56] Verse.

John Dehlin [01:49:56] But they go on to just talk about. Again, if you get married by the Holy Spirit of promise and, and you don't murder then. And you don't shed innocent blood, then you'll come forth in the morning of the first resurrection, which I was promised in my patriarchal blessing, by the way, and then they'll be exalted. And then they end. But they shall.

Gerardo Sumano [01:50:16] Kind of a contradiction with verse 19, because verse 19 says and. And if it be after the first resurrection, in the next resurrection, and then, but then on 26 it says that it's, it's going to be on the first resurrection. So which is. Is it the first or the second?

Guest 5 [01:50:35] But.

John Dehlin [01:50:36] And then it ends and says, but they shall be destroyed in the flesh, but they shall be destroyed in the flesh and shall be delivered unto the buffetings. Of Satan. Unto the day of redemption, saith the Lord God. Let's go ahead and play the next clip, which is the podcasters addressing this point.

Guest [01:50:58] Yeah, that verse 24.

John Dehlin [01:51:01] Okay, here it is.

▶ Video Clip 3

Video Clip 3 [01:51:02] Okay. And I think maybe it comes up a little bit later here, but let's. Let's make sure to mention that no one is. Is sealed to someone they don't want to be sealed to. I've actually had that concern from people before. I don't want to be sealed to this. This person. And that. That's not part of. I don't think that's what the Lord is saying here. Like, even though this person hurt you, you're still sealed to them. I think he's just talking about the power of the ceiling to withstand, you know, the buffetings of Satan and even, you know, what you talked about there with. With people's destroying their own lives. The. The covenant can withstand that. But no one's going to force into these things.

Video Clip 3 [01:51:42] Absolutely not. Because agency is. The atonement, is one of the bedrock, one of the foundations of the way the restored gospel of Jesus Christ works. And so is agency.

Video Clip 3 [01:51:52] Agency.

Video Clip 3 [01:51:53] From the beginning, from before we came to Earth, agency was a.

Video Clip 3 [01:51:56] Was a.

Video Clip 3 [01:51:57] Was a foundational principle. And life doesn't work without agency. We don't accomplish our purpose and the next. And agency will continue in the next life. There's. I have no doubt that it continues in the next.

Video Clip 3 [01:52:11] That is the one note that I had that I wanted to make sure. I said, agency is an eternal principle, and you don't have to worry about being forced into something you don't like. Agency is an eternal principle. So glad we covered it.

John Dehlin [01:52:26] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. DNC132 is the perfect place to be talking about agency and not being forced into anything. Right, DNA. Agency is the perfect place. Right?

Agency, Emma, and the Next Life

Carah Burrell [01:52:39] Carah, I have one note. Agency.

Sandra Tanner [01:52:42] Really?

Carah Burrell [01:52:42] John, by the way, by the way, we have a member of the LGBTQ community right here in front of us, Herodo, who's married to a man. Herodo, do you have any agency when it came to who you are attracted to? How much agency do you have in the next life?

John Dehlin [01:52:56] How much agency was Joseph giving Emma?

Carah Burrell [01:52:58] Yeah, come on. Agency.

John Dehlin [01:53:01] When Emma's presented with. With, you know, do you want to be, you know, have. Is it okay if I have 30 or 40 other wives? Emma, how much agency was Emma given? Sandra Tanner?

Sandra Tanner [01:53:12] Well, she had a lot because she could choose to be destroyed.

Carah Burrell [01:53:18] You know, the, like the big war in heaven and like, God's plan and he unveiled it to all his children. And he one day was gonna be like, by the way, I'm gonna make sure that you guys know that you're also going to be destroyed if you don't do the things that I like to do. Hey, I thought that was Satan's plan. No, it's actually my plan.

John Dehlin [01:53:33] Yeah, it's like, it's like, hey, kids, you can obey me. You have, you have the choice to obey me or not. And if you don't obey me, I'm gonna beat the crap out of you.

Gerardo Sumano [01:53:40] Right.

John Dehlin [01:53:41] Like, is that a choice in my

Carah Burrell [01:53:42] house or a house that's on fire? Take a pick.

Sandra Tanner [01:53:45] Well, the part of the agency they're discussing here is that they talk about people saying to them, well, what if I don't want to be stay with that husband I was sealed to? And then they're assuring him, well, there's agency, you don't have to stay with someone you don't want to stay to. Then what's the whole point of ceiling if you can later say, okay, I'm done, 2000 years is enough, Yeah, I want out. You know, but they're saying that God, they want to soothe everyone to make it sound like good news. Oh, well, you get sealed to this guy, you later can't stand him.

Sandra Tanner [01:54:29] God's not going to be cruel and make you stay with that person. And I'm thinking, well, okay, if both parties went into this assuming they were, this marriage was going to stay together so they could have exaltation. When one person leaves, it affects the other person as well because it takes the couple to have exaltation. You don't say, well, I don't want to be married anymore. And you can't be exalted singly.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:58] Right.

Sandra Tanner [01:54:58] So the agency, well, yeah, agency, do you want life or do you want to be destroyed? You know, but it leaves the faithful Mormon with a problem. They have to then find a mate that they can go to the temple with to get that exaltation. Which is why we see so many couples after one leaves the church, they end up divorcing. The Mormon will turn around and have to look for someone to marry. But if the guy is say 30 and his wife leaves the church or the other way around, the girl's 30 and her husband leaves the church, then they have a problem in looking around for a new mate because that person has to be willing to join the team.

Gerardo Sumano [01:55:46] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:55:47] As a second class marriage partner.

Guest 6 [01:55:50] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:55:51] Well, and there's also, I mean there's there, there's the Threat that Emma's going to be destroyed later on. Right. So that calls agency into question.

Sandra Tanner [01:56:02] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:02] But then there's also the fact when, when, when, when God is talking about the law of Sarah and that Emma gets to choose if Joseph can have more wives. But then there's a verse where it says later on that if Emma doesn't want Joseph to have more wives, then Joseph can do it anyway.

Sandra Tanner [01:56:22] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:22] So there is no agency there at all. Well, there is for Joseph, but not for Emma.

Guest 6 [01:56:28] Right.

Sandra Tanner [01:56:29] Not for Emma.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:29] Right. And, and there she doesn't even have the option of choosing damnation versus non damnation. She just has to. I mean, there's literally no choice. Like Joseph will marry whoever.

Sandra Tanner [01:56:43] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:43] He wants to, even if Emma doesn't approve of it.

Sandra Tanner [01:56:47] Right.

Guest 2 [01:56:47] He's.

Sandra Tanner [01:56:47] He doesn't have to ask the first wife's permission.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:50] Right.

Sandra Tanner [01:56:51] Which is such a funny verse that, okay, you gotta ask your wife to see if she'll give permission, but if she says no, hey, there's a king's ex. And you don't have to just ignore her. Just go out and find your wife.

Gerardo Sumano [01:57:04] Yeah, it's all cool.

John Dehlin [01:57:07] Yeah. I guess that's kind of useless. It's like, yeah, you ask her, but if she says no, you do it anyway.

Sandra Tanner [01:57:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:13] So why even ask her in the first place?

Sandra Tanner [01:57:15] Right.

John Dehlin [01:57:17] So you can make her feel like she gave consent.

Sandra Tanner [01:57:20] Right. So you go to your husband and say, is it okay if I go out and buy a new Mercedes? And he says, no way. Okay, well, you're not bound by that. You just go ahead and go buy it.

John Dehlin [01:57:33] Yeah. And by the way, this is the law of Sarah. We'll talk about this next time. But the law of Sarah is being received by Emma after he had already married 20 plus otherwise.

Gerardo Sumano [01:57:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:47] And then he has two that he, he has two resealed to him, you know, a second time to fool Emma.

Guest 2 [01:57:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:55] Because she didn't know about those two. And he worried, I guess, that she would be particularly disturbed.

Sandra Tanner [01:58:00] You're giving spoiler alert of next week

John Dehlin [01:58:03] spoiler for next time.

Carah Burrell [01:58:04] And I just want to mention, like, this is what we're talking about and this is the difference between a group of like us post Mormon vs like Hank and John, by the way. And Kate, when they're discussing this in one of the podcasts, we don't have a clip of it, but Hank says at one point, like, how's Joseph doing? This is the last few months of his life. Is he doing okay? I just want him to have some good years in There where things aren't so troublesome. He's, like, really worried about Joseph, and it's like, bro, he's fine. He has, like, 20 women that he's sleeping with. Like, don't sit up at night worrying if Joseph is having a hard time. He's doing okay. He's like, mayor of Nauvoo. He's, like, the big man on campus. He's got plenty to deal with. Don't be like, oh, is he having a good Christmas? Get a life.

John Dehlin [01:58:44] He's like, gener of the general of the Navu Legion, appointed king. He's king of the earth with the harem. Why are you laughing, Gerardo? We have a mato laughing this hard. Since his stories, I don't know.

Carah Burrell [01:59:00] I got a pro. I got a bone to pick with Hank Smith ever since he blocked me on Twitter for asking him a question the first day I was on Twitter. And so, Hank, it's just like, bro, what do you care about here? Like, anyway?

John Dehlin [01:59:11] Are you sad? Are you sad for Joseph, Sandra? Are you sad that he was roughing it?

Sandra Tanner [01:59:16] I'm sad for Emma.

Guest 2 [01:59:18] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:59:19] She was so loyal, which makes me question what was wrong with her. But it's. It reminds me when I read about women that are so addicted to their husband that even when he beats them, they can't leave him.

Gerardo Sumano [01:59:40] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:59:40] And Emma seems to me like a. A wife like that. She has some sort of addiction to Joseph, that even when he does all these horrendous betrayals to her, she still stands by him.

John Dehlin [01:59:55] Yeah, it's sad.

Carah Burrell [01:59:57] Carah and I just want to do a quick shout out to Reuben. Thanks for the super chat, and I'm so sorry for the hard week that you had. I'm so sorry to hear about your mom's passing. And we're sending all of our love and support to you, Reuben.

John Dehlin [02:00:08] Love to you, Reuben. All right, well, it's time to kind of start wrapping up, but there. There are a few more verses. Basically, the. The. The remaining verses here for the part we're covering today, kind of 28 through 33. Jesus through Joseph Smith or Joseph Smith, in the name of Jesus. Basically, he starts talking about Abraham and how Abraham received all things. This is kind of the restorationist language that. Well, if Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David and Solomon did it, well, we got to do it now, too. Of course, they're leaving off how many things of the Old Testament, you know, did. Did they not restore? Right, Sandra?

Sandra Tanner [02:00:48] Yeah, like slavery. That's mentioned, too.

John Dehlin [02:00:52] Well, I guess Brigham Young restored that One.

Sandra Tanner [02:00:54] Yeah, he worked on it.

John Dehlin [02:00:57] So Brigham Young took that one on the restoration of slavery. No, but I mean, like, it's selective restoration, is it not?

Sandra Tanner [02:01:03] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:01:04] Like, they're eating. They're eating meek with meat, with milk. They're violating kosher laws. So, you know, they're. Sabbath has changed to Sunday. So it's this weird selective restoration.

Sandra Tanner [02:01:14] Right.

John Dehlin [02:01:15] Of all things. Is that right?

Carah Burrell [02:01:16] And then to be fair, genitals, though, are like.

Gerardo Sumano [02:01:19] To be fair, though, Like, I think. I think Mormons will say that. That those things are from the law of Moses, and Abraham was before Moses. So.

John Dehlin [02:01:30] Okay, all right. I'm persuaded. So, yeah, that. Okay. So thank you, Gerardo. You saw that, though. So it goes on to 30. And I. For me, Sandra, I think Gerardo talked about whether or not you might not like this interpretation. But in verse 30, he says Abraham received promises concerning his seed. So Joseph really cares a lot about seed. And he literally means sperm there and of the fruit of his loins, meaning his posterity, from whose loins ye are, Namely, my servant Joseph. So they're basically saying Joseph is a. Somehow a descendant of Abraham. We now are, you know, archaeologists, anthropologists, aren't sure if Abraham actually ever existed. I'm sure, Sandra, you do believe Abraham existed. But Joseph, via Jesus, is saying that Joseph is literally a descendant of Abraham, which is also weird because weren't Semitic people sort of people of color? Weren't they? I mean, were they white? Were they.

Sandra Tanner [02:02:24] You haven't been reading your Book of Mormon. They're white and delightsome.

John Dehlin [02:02:31] Anyway, it goes on just to say that Abraham and his seed and. And God's chosen posterity. Sandra, I have a hard time not feeling like this is kind of racist, that when God. I mean, God could pick people in China. You know, there were people living in China back, you know, a couple thousand years before Jesus. There were people living in Africa, the cradle of civilization. We know that there were Native Americans here probably 10,000 years before Jesus was ever born. But God's picking this little family tribe in, you know, somewhere in the. In the Holy Land. And he's going to give all of his goodness and his preference and his privilege as the chosen people to this little teeny tribe that comes from Abraham and his seed. Is that a little bit weird?

Sandra Tanner [02:03:19] Well, okay, you start the United States of America. We are all about freedom. You have to start somewhere. And so what did Jefferson do to get appointed to be part of starting this big blessing? And why not Tom Jones down the street or something? You know, so it doesn't bother me in the sense that when God is declaring his planned to mankind, that he starts with somebody and he picked Abraham to start with him.

Guest 4 [02:03:52] But.

Gerardo Sumano [02:03:53] But as a Christian, Sandra, you're not bound to believe, like Mormons are, that Abraham and Abraham's posterity, and even till today, those are the only ones that are going to be saved, and those are the only ones that are going to receive the blessing. I think as a Christian, you're able to have a more open perspective about who can get saved even today.

Sandra Tanner [02:04:17] Well, I think the Mormons have put an interpretation on the Abrahamic covenant and what it means that the Bible doesn't have when it talks about through Abraham, all the people of the world will be blessed.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:28] Right.

Sandra Tanner [02:04:28] It's got nothing to do with marriage or posterity. It just means that the laws of God flowing out will are meant to bless everyone. And so the seed Abraham said we are. Well, you find that in the New Testament. Where was it in Galatians? Do I have that written down? Young in Galatians. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. So it's not about individual peoples. It's about this promise of God's blessing to everyone. Through Abraham's life and his family will flow the blessing to everyone. And from a Christian perspective, I'd see this as foreshadowing Jesus coming.

Gerardo Sumano [02:05:19] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [02:05:20] That the blessing to all people through Abraham's seed is going to. Because Jesus will be from Abraham's seed.

Gerardo Sumano [02:05:26] But that was my point, that you're able to have a more expansive view whether Mormons have to be bound by what doctrine covenant says.

Sandra Tanner [02:05:33] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:05:33] Even to the point where, like Joseph all of the sudden is literally descendant, like bloodline of Abraham.

Sandra Tanner [02:05:40] Yes. Right. Well, from. Yeah, right down from Jesus too.

Gerardo Sumano [02:05:44] Right.

Guest 6 [02:05:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:45] And it's. If you think about the Book of Mormon, like, it's really worried that, like, Native Americans have their origin in, you know, the Israelites, which are the descendants of Abraham, so they're God's chosen people. And Joseph gets really obsessed about the blood of Israel coursing through the veins of the Native Americans. And then, of course, the Book of Mormon is written to them. And then he goes on to this gentile stuff. It just feels like a very racist. Once you start talking about seed and bloodlines and lineage and chosen and unchosen.

Sandra Tanner [02:06:18] Right.

John Dehlin [02:06:18] It, you know, it, it feels like it can become a justification for a lot of the stuff that we heard, you know, when we were. When we're talking about the heartlander model And. And. And the Book of Mormon interpretations. It just feels very racist to me.

Sandra Tanner [02:06:32] Yes, yes.

John Dehlin [02:06:34] Yeah, yeah. I don't know, Herodo, do you see that?

Gerardo Sumano [02:06:36] Yeah, I agree. I agree.

John Dehlin [02:06:38] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [02:06:39] Well, and that's one of the issues the Mormon Church has yesterday yet to really face, is that the Book of Mormon is racist. And I believe it subconsciously, if not overtly, trains a Mormon in thinking in terms of. Of racial superiority, where the fights are the good guys and you'll be white in the resurrection. I was speaking at a church years ago down in Gilbert, Arizona, and the. The issue came up about becoming white and delights them in the hereafter.

Sandra Tanner [02:07:19] And I'd been talking about some of that, and some Mormon guy jumped up. I mean, it was a big group. I don't know. There was 150 people there. And this Mormon guy jumps up and he says, no, that's not what we believe.

Sandra Tanner [02:07:33] We don't believe you're in that stuff about turning white and all that, you know, that you're putting a wrong interpretation on it. And that guy, a Mexican guy on the other side of the room pops up and he says, wait a minute, Bishop, you were out to my house just last month and were telling me all this, that if I'd come into the church and get married in the temple and be faithful, that I could have this to look forward to, that I could become white and delightsome. Kind of shut the meeting down.

Guest 2 [02:08:02] Yeah.

Closing Analysis and Listener Q&A with Sandra Tanner

John Dehlin [02:08:03] Well, this kind of concludes our analysis of the first part of this podcast and the first half of DNC132. Sandra, it's so lovely to have you in Mormon Stories Studios. We want to have you here regularly. We'll have you here as often as you'll come, so thank you for joining us. Can we have you back for part two? Is that okay?

Sandra Tanner [02:08:26] All right.

John Dehlin [02:08:28] And, Gerardo, I'm so grateful that you set this up and made this happen. Thank you.

Gerardo Sumano [02:08:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:08:33] And, Carah, it would just not be as fun and as interesting without you.

Carah Burrell [02:08:37] Thanks.

John Dehlin [02:08:38] Yeah. Did I say Carah? Did I say it right? And Jen. And Jen's over there doing show notes and time codes. Huge shout out to Jen. Again, thanks so much for allowing us to concentrate on the conversation. Oh, and now we're going to do, you know what.

Sandra Tanner [02:08:53] Are you out of time?

John Dehlin [02:08:54] How much time is it? We've got a few minutes for. For a little bit of call in, so we'll just take a couple calls.

Gerardo Sumano [02:08:59] You should say how many already so people know.

John Dehlin [02:09:02] So we're going to take four calls. Is that okay?

Gerardo Sumano [02:09:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:04] Yeah, I apologize. We're just running a little bit short on time today. So what we're going to do is we're going to paste. We're going to paste the code into the chat. And if, let's just say four of our viewers or listeners want to join,

Carah Burrell [02:09:21] we make sure that your mic is on.

John Dehlin [02:09:23] Make sure you enable your mic.

Gerardo Sumano [02:09:25] Let's try to have people that haven't been in Mormon scoops before.

John Dehlin [02:09:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you haven't joined us before, I mean, but it's also fun to have Maven or other sometimes show up as well. It's also fun to have regular callers. But regardless, we. We do want these shows to be calling shows and, And I'm happy to have you guys take over. I just have to. I just have to run home in a few minutes. But we've got about.

Gerardo Sumano [02:09:46] I think it's. It's good too.

John Dehlin [02:09:48] Okay.

Gerardo Sumano [02:09:48] To not make it.

John Dehlin [02:09:49] All right, so we've got. We've got our first person joining us. We've got Josh joining us. He's. He's setting up. Hey, Josh, how's it going?

Guest 6 [02:09:58] Oh, it's going great. John Dillon finally get to talk to you. I had the pleasure of meeting Sandra at the 2017 Sunstone Symposium at the University of Utah, and we were both in line at the Student Union building to eat lunch, to get our lunch and had a really nice conversation with her. And I'll treasure it forever.

John Dehlin [02:10:23] A legend, isn't she?

Guest 6 [02:10:24] She is. And she, you know, I mean, I'm sure she hears this all the time, but, you know, no Internet, no. None of the modern conveniences that we have. Back when she and Gerald started on their journey to leave Mormonism together. And they're like, you know, we're not just gonna save ourselves. We're going to kind of inform everyone. So kind of. She is kind of.

Guest 6 [02:10:48] You know, Sandra, you probably blush when you hear this, but you are like, to me, the prototype of a Christian because you are so humble and so, you know, you just, like, you're not puffed up or you're not. You're kind and you're honest, and I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. And yeah, just also, I just want to say that there was a.

Guest 6 [02:11:18] Something when I, when I was in, like, Sunday school, like back when I was about Mormon, I heard something I wasn't really paying attention to. Lesson. But then the teacher ended his lesson with this phrase that really got my attention. He said, I'm sure that the Lord forgives Emma, for all that she's been through. If I didn't. I wasn't paying attention, so I had no idea what he was talking about. Like, I was like, wait, back up. Like, forgive Emma for what? And I think it's because, like, the church's lessons, they don't tell the whole story, you know? You know, those. The teaching manuals, the teachings of the prophets, they have, like, quotes, but they're in, like, elites and stuff, and they take quotes out of context.

Guest 6 [02:12:02] I just feel like it's really so disingenuous. And, you know, they don't. They don't hide the truth or they. They, like, they hide the truth by burying. Burying it under a mountain of lies. So they can't, like, say that they didn't. So they can. They can claim, well, you know, the truth has always been out there. You know, you're just a lazy learner and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I just find it so dishonest, you know, I don't think that's what a true servant of God would act like. And I just. I'll just let you guys go since I know there's just, like, a few other people waiting, but. John.

John Dehlin [02:12:36] No, thanks, Josh. Thanks for calling. Sandra, do you want to say anything to Josh?

Sandra Tanner [02:12:40] Well, I really appreciate the comments, and after all the times I've been told off, it's nice to have someone say something nice.

Guest 6 [02:12:47] Right? All right.

Sandra Tanner [02:12:50] All right, thank you.

John Dehlin [02:12:51] Thanks so much, Josh. Thanks for calling in. Hope you can join us again another time.

Guest 3 [02:12:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:12:56] All right, we've got. We've got Amanda next. Hey, Amanda. Welcome to Scoops.

Guest 3 [02:13:03] Thanks. I kind of debated calling in, but I. Because I thought I wouldn't get on, but thanks for having me. So I had some thoughts about this just because I've had quite a bit of experience with some interesting things with the ceiling.

Guest 3 [02:13:26] So I was married at 20 and then got divorced, like, 12, 13 years later. And I was told on a number of occasions that I needed to just leave my ceiling in place because it would affect my children, and that even though I didn't want to be tied to this person anymore in any way because of some controlling issues, that I just needed to keep it in place. So I talked to my bishop about it and my stake president about it. I talked to my uncle about it, who had been a mission. Not mission, he'd been a mission president, but also a temple president. And he pulled me aside at a family thing and said that I needed to keep that ceiling in place because otherwise my children wouldn't have the blessings of the temple, and on and on and on until I had been divorced for four years when I got a text from my ex husband that as divorced, sealed, co parent, that he felt that he should still give me counsel and should.

Guest 3 [02:14:39] I don't know. It was basically that the. We were still tied together at that point. I went to my bishop and said, you have to let me out of this. And so I fought and they said that they would ask the first presidency. And I finally was able to apply for a temple divorce and was granted it finally. But it took years of fighting to do so. And so this.

Guest 3 [02:15:09] This doctrine is so harmful in so many ways. And yeah, I think I'm not the only woman who has had that kind of experience.

John Dehlin [02:15:20] Sandra, you want to respond? Thank you, Amanda, for sharing that.

Sandra Tanner [02:15:24] Yes, this is a problem for many couples when a divorce happens and they tell the woman to leave that ceiling on there until she meets another man that she wants to get sealed to. But you think about it, why then are they saying that it's because you would be sealed to the first husband and your children would follow you and your husband into that marriage. They don't want to come out and say that because they know a lot of divorced women would be really ticked if they found out. Well, yeah, but it's still on the books. You're still sealed to that guy, and that is what it means.

John Dehlin [02:16:03] Yeah. Well, we're so sorry for the hard stuff, Amanda. We hope you're doing well.

Guest 3 [02:16:09] Things have gotten much better. Life is beautiful.

Guest [02:16:11] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:16:12] Well, we're so grateful you'd call in. Thank you so much for joining us, Amanda. All the best to you and yours.

Carah Burrell [02:16:18] Your bangs are banging.

Guest 2 [02:16:20] Hey.

Guest 3 [02:16:20] Thank you. I told my husband it was bangs or Botox, so I got ban.

John Dehlin [02:16:29] All right, thanks, Amanda. You take care.

Guest 3 [02:16:30] Bye.

Guest 6 [02:16:30] Bye.

Guest 3 [02:16:31] You too.

Carah Burrell [02:16:32] It's okay if I just read a super chat really quick?

John Dehlin [02:16:34] Yeah, please.

Carah Burrell [02:16:35] Thanks so much. Janet said. Bless you, Sandra. When I left in the early 80s, your resources helped immensely. I love Mormon stories because it helps so many people, especially with the emotional issues. You all are rock stars.

Sandra Tanner [02:16:48] Yes, thanks.

Carah Burrell [02:16:50] All right.

John Dehlin [02:16:51] Thanks, Janet. Yeah, go ahead and bring on another caller. We've got Sheila. Hey, Sheila. Welcome to Mormon Stories. I'm gonna. Do you want to unmute yourself or. I'll go ahead.

Guest 2 [02:17:06] Hi, how are you?

John Dehlin [02:17:07] Good. You're on with Sandra. You're on with Sandra Tanner.

Guest 2 [02:17:11] Hi, Sandra Tanner. It's lovely to. It's lovely to see you. Meet you. I remember back in the 1960s when I was a young child One of your first books had come out and my father was the bishop at the time and there was such a furore in among the members at the time not to read it, to stay away from it because it was anti Mormon. Anyway, that was a long time ago. So I'm a Scottish person phoning in from Australia.

Sandra Tanner [02:17:40] Wow.

Guest 2 [02:17:41] Yeah. Because this topic. I'm one of the lucky single members of the ward. I'm a almost 61 year old woman who has waited all of her life for these promised blessings. Never realized. I wonder why. Anyway, this topic, when I was teaching in the Relief Society, this was one of the topics that was always, always seemed to be a secret topic that you never discuss.

Guest 2 [02:18:12] Whenever this topic came up, the subject was changed. And I think that it's time for especially this medium to start addressing this topic with church members. We keep hearing about two of our church leaders having more than one wife not living, of course, but that's as far as it goes.

Guest 2 [02:18:35] And every time I raise, I used to raise, or still do raise this topic with female members not being active anymore. They won't talk about it. They refuse to. Oh, we'll just wait about that. We'll just see what happens in the pre. Existence in the.

Guest 2 [02:18:51] When we die. When we die and we go to heaven. Yeah. And it's one of the topics that's never discussed and yet it's the most affecting section in the Doctrine and Covenants for women.

Sandra Tanner [02:19:05] Right.

Guest 2 [02:19:06] And it escapes me why it's never addressed.

Sandra Tanner [02:19:09] Well, I know why it's never addressed because it's not one of the things that converts people. So you have Nelson and Oaks, who both have been sealed to a second wife after the death of their first one. So they're going to be polygamous in heaven. And Mormons don't want to talk about that. They want to say polygamy is a thing of the past. I said, well, it's not in the past for these two.

Guest 2 [02:19:36] Yep. And it's also one of those massive areas that the Brethren cannot address. Right. It's kind of like Covid. They couldn't even address Covid. Yeah. And that, and that's only been around for a couple of years that you'd have thought that these prophets, seers and revelators might have got a bit of a revelation by now for women. It just. Anyway, I'm so glad you're talking about it. And that's, that's really kind of what I wanted to say. Thank goodness somebody's talking about it.

Sandra Tanner [02:20:05] Thank you.

Guest 2 [02:20:06] It's overdue.

Sandra Tanner [02:20:07] Yes.

Guest 2 [02:20:08] And it's nice to call into Mormon Stories podcast. I love it, Listen avidly and I enjoy all of your content. Thank you very much.

Sandra Tanner [02:20:18] Thank you.

Guest 2 [02:20:18] You actually saved me, John de Lynn. I was the state relief society president. My. I'm a fourth generation Scottish Mormon and your program saved me. I went into a deep pit when I read the gospel topic essay on

John Dehlin [02:20:41] race in the priesthood.

Guest 2 [02:20:42] No. Oh, come just Book of Abraham. Brain fart. Yes, that one. I did that. That and that alone sent me off the edge. So I'm so grateful for your content. Thank you so much.

John Dehlin [02:20:57] Well, we, Sheila, are just so grateful that, that we could reach you, that we're providing contents meaningful to you. And Carah is grateful for your accent. Right, Carah?

Carah Burrell [02:21:08] Yeah. Overdue.

Guest 2 [02:21:10] You like it, do you? Ah, no.

Guest 6 [02:21:11] Yeah.

Guest 2 [02:21:12] Well, you almost got it.

Carah Burrell [02:21:14] I have. I'm in the close the region of getting it, but I love it.

Guest 2 [02:21:18] Well, my passing comment for you is to practice this. Are you ready? It's a brobrlich munlich nicht denichten. You should have that recorded. You can go practice it abroad.

John Dehlin [02:21:29] Licht nicht the next weekend.

Guest 2 [02:21:31] It's abrobrecht nicht. It's abrobrecht munlich nicht the nicht weekend.

Carah Burrell [02:21:36] And what language was that?

Guest 2 [02:21:38] That was Scottish with an element of glass regionism in there. But because I'm a Glaswegian by birth, I love it.

Carah Burrell [02:21:48] I love that.

Guest 2 [02:21:49] So thank you very much for your content. And Carah, I have to say, you do bring lightness and joy to the podcast you have. And I'm an old chick. I'm not a young one anymore. And I do enjoy your. Your comments. Thank you so much.

John Dehlin [02:22:04] How about Gerardo? What do you think about Gerardo?

Guest 2 [02:22:06] I love Geraldo. I. It's so important that Geraldo represents the. The part of membership that he does with his husband. Because you sit in the same, the same boat, but at the other end that women do. Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [02:22:26] We have got.

Guest 2 [02:22:26] We have got the polygamous part, you've got the other part that is not mentioned anywhere in scripture except in Mormonism, and that is that. And at the end of the day, it's about love and that's. It doesn't matter who it is. It's about who you love, full stop. But the brethren want to bring in all of these other things to manipulate and control. So get on your mate and I hope you have a good life.

Gerardo Sumano [02:22:56] Thank you. Thanks.

John Dehlin [02:22:58] And Sheila, Jen's giving you a. Jen's giving you amens from her desk.

Carah Burrell [02:23:02] So Studio loves you.

Guest 2 [02:23:06] Oh, good. Well, you know, there's a lot of us around. I'm British by birth, of course, and our experience of Mormonism is completely different to yours. And I find your Mormonism weird in some levels, I really do. Our Mormonism was a very black and white strict, down the line Mormonism when I grew up, there was no to the left or to the right. And my family were ultra orthodox. Actually, my father, I came to Salt Lake when I was in 1980 when he was being trained to be a patriarch. So I've been in your city and it's beautiful city, but I wish I had known now what I didn't know then and wasted my life believing what I now know to be false and blatant lies in many respects.

John Dehlin [02:24:06] So, yeah, and Sheila, that, that is just you. You brought us home because that is literally what this episode about is about. We've got these BYU professors, official church historians that are, that are now having a chance in the modern age to talk about DNC132, to talk about plural marriage and to provide informed consent to the membership. And what do they choose to do? They talk about how hard it was on the men. They talk about how God loves everyone, how most of DNC132 isn't even talking about plural marriage, and how, how expansive God's love is and that everybody's going to be okay in the afterlife. When the actual text of the section that they're trying to actually, actually discuss makes it very clear that most people are going to live in sad heaven in the afterlife.

Guest 2 [02:24:55] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:24:56] They don't even mention any of that stuff.

Guest 2 [02:24:58] Well, yes, but they don't mention. What's the percentage of Mormon membership in the world. Less than 1%, less than 1/2.

John Dehlin [02:25:04] Less than 2%. 2.2%. Less than 0.2%.

Guest 2 [02:25:09] 0.2% of the world's population. That's the only people this could apply to. And of that 0.2%, 98% of them. It doesn't apply to them.

John Dehlin [02:25:20] Yeah, yeah. So it's 99.8%. It doesn't apply.

Guest 2 [02:25:25] You've got the figures. Yeah. It's just ridiculous, isn't it?

Carah Burrell [02:25:29] That's a really ridiculous thing.

John Dehlin [02:25:30] And then you have to, you have to subtract all the Mormons that are like abusers or pedophiles or frauds in their business or, you know, looking at pornography and, you know, just like there's a lot of Mormons that aren't going to be exalted. Right.

Guest 2 [02:25:46] So, so it's 99.9 of a gnat.

John Dehlin [02:25:51] Yeah.

Guest 2 [02:25:52] We'll get to the celestial kingdom.

Guest 3 [02:25:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:25:54] All right. Well, Sheila, thanks so much for joining us. Please join us again. I would love to interview you sometime on Mormon stories. So we'll have to figure out your type.

Guest 2 [02:26:02] Your time difference is a challenge, I have to say. But luckily I got you today. Thank you very much.

John Dehlin [02:26:07] Thanks, Sheila. All right, so we need to go ahead and wrap up. And the good news is this is just part one. So we're gonna have you back Sander for part two. That's where the fire Carah was like. Can we just skip the first half of DNC132 because the second half is the good stuff.

Wrap-Up, Gratitude, and Preview of Part Two

Carah Burrell [02:26:23] Oh, that's just to say this was good, but not as good as it's gonna get with the other stuff to come in part two of what we have to say.

John Dehlin [02:26:31] So we're gonna bring CINDER back in what, another week or two?

Gerardo Sumano [02:26:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:26:34] All right. And. And Sandra, you are a treasure. You're a national treasure.

Sandra Tanner [02:26:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:26:41] Can we have you for at least 20 more years? That's all I ask. 20 more years.

Sandra Tanner [02:26:45] Well, I don't know if I've got as good a jeans as Nelson. I think he's gonna make it. I do have relatives that have made it to 100, so who knows?

Carah Burrell [02:26:55] Well, that's those transhumanists on and figure

John Dehlin [02:26:57] out something exactly how to. How to extend Sandra's life another 50 years. 100 years. Anyway, we love you. We adore you. Thank you.

Sandra Tanner [02:27:05] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:27:05] And we. And how do people support your ministry?

Sandra Tanner [02:27:10] Well, they can go to our site@utlm.org and we have a button there you can go to and make a donation right there. Or you can stop in and see me at the store and hand me five bucks for lunch, you know, so whatever. So please everyone do that.

John Dehlin [02:27:32] So part of how they support you is by buying books from you. You sell all sorts of really good books.

Sandra Tanner [02:27:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:27:38] You've got really good original research. And can they just donate to your organization?

Sandra Tanner [02:27:43] Yes, we're a non profit organization. 501c3 and so yes, if they want to send a donation, they can do it through the website or stopping in to see me.

John Dehlin [02:27:55] Yeah. If you love Sandra Tanner, you're don't just give this cheap verbal Praise. Go to utlm.org right now and throw her some bones and show her how much you appreciate. And Carrie, you've got something you want to show everybody.

Carah Burrell [02:28:08] This is the greatest book that has ever been created.

Sandra Tanner [02:28:11] There we go.

Carah Burrell [02:28:11] I've Heard that's writing Mormonism. Shadow or Reality by Gerald and Sandra Tanner. This is my new bible. Let me tell you that much. You know, they say that like everybody who can write a book, it's like writing a miracle. This book is a miracle that it exists. So everyone should go to Sandra's website and go pick this up. This is one of those important books. It's just like an excite. An encyclopedia of Mormonism of just all of the things we were never taught. Right here.

Gerardo Sumano [02:28:36] It's like the largest letter.

John Dehlin [02:28:38] Yeah, yeah. Before Jeremy Runnels there was.

Gerardo Sumano [02:28:41] Yes.

Sandra Tanner [02:28:41] The forerunner to the CES letter.

Carah Burrell [02:28:44] I prefer that. Yeah, but it's great stuff.

John Dehlin [02:28:48] All right, thanks again, Sandra.

Sandra Tanner [02:28:49] Thanks.

John Dehlin [02:28:49] Thanks. Gerardo. Is it Geraldo? Apparently it's Geraldo.

Gerardo Sumano [02:28:53] Gerardo.

Carah Burrell [02:28:55] Somebody has a great Scottish accent.

John Dehlin [02:28:58] They can call you say whatever the she wants. She sounds so cool. She could say whatever the ship. Sheila, right? Was it Sheila?

Carah Burrell [02:29:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:29:04] Yeah. All right. Thanks everybody. Thanks again, Jen, for doing the show notes in the time codes. Thanks everyone who supports. Thanks to all the people who super chat donated. Your donations pay for Carah. They pay for Gerardo or Geraldo, depending on how you like to say it. They pay for Jen, Brooklyn, Jennifer. And we hope to maybe even donate ourselves a little bit to. To Sandra for her time. So please know that we don't just take your money and like be frivolous with it. We are working hard with your donations to generate this content.

Supporting Mormon Stories and Closing Announcements

John Dehlin [02:29:39] So if you want to join our 1500 or so donors to the Open Stories foundation each year, please become a monthly donor. MormonStories.org click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor. We just given our our website a new backend renovation that's cost us a few thousand bucks. But we're trying to update the website to keep it current and fresh and functional. But we need your support. So please become a monthly donor. 10 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you could afford. Carah, go ahead and make the announcement.

Carah Burrell [02:30:12] I actually don't know it. I was just reminding you to announce for women.

John Dehlin [02:30:15] Thrive for women is April 2. You can go to thrivebeyondreligion.com and register if you want to meet a bunch of cool women, make friends, find community, learn, heal. Learn how to heal and grow. Tiffany Rowe is going to speak. Natasha Hofer is going to speak.

Carah Burrell [02:30:32] Speak.

John Dehlin [02:30:32] Leah Young is going to speak. I don't have a list of all the speakers, but Julietta Viegas is going to host so many cool speakers. Susie Benson is going to be speaking. It's an amazing lineup. Please register for thrive for women April 2nd.

John Dehlin [02:30:47] It's going to be in Orem. And then I think there's going to be a Thrive For Men on April 3rd. And again, there's also Thrive California, April 2nd. Thrive Houston, April 2nd. I'm going to be there in Houston. And there's going to be a lot of other cool Thrive events in the future. Also, if you happen to live in Alpine, well, there's several faith crisis support groups that we've started. Go to mormonstories.org events. I think they're, I don't know, Jen, can they still sign up for the online groups or are they full?

John Dehlin [02:31:20] Okay. We're going to be providing retreats and workshops and support support groups in the coming weeks, months and years. So if you want to see if there's something available to you, including a mixed faith marriage retreat with the Julie, Julie Diazevedo, Hanks and myself, that's going to be in mid July, you can go to mormonstories.org events and check out an event near you. Anyway, thanks everyone. You guys take care. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Truth is a important follow the truth. It will lead you to good places. We'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

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