Introducing the Episode and Guest

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin with goatee. It is November 21, 2023, and we are super excited to have back on Mormon Stories podcast the John Larsen and the Care Barel or NuanceHoe. It is another John Larsen Carah Barrel Mormon Stories episode.

John Larsen [00:00:25] How do we know you got the goatee in the black hat? How do we know that you're the actual John de Lynn and not the evil twin?

John Dehlin [00:00:31] Well, I mean, the theme today is Satan, right? The theme is Lucifer. So I'm just in character. I'm in character.

John Larsen [00:00:39] Yeah. Well, I think there's a lot of people who agree with that.

John Dehlin [00:00:44] We'd like to welcome everyone who's joining us. We do have people joining us on the live streams. Mostly we're just grateful for our donors who make monthly donations through MormonStories.org that make all this possible. This is the Mormon Expression series for those of you who are joining us for the first time. John Larsen used to run a very popular Mormon themed podcast called Mormon Expression and then after hiatus, we resurrected his archive and we brought John back. He does tries to do a monthly episode when Carah joins us when she can. But you can also find the Mormon Expression library on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

John Dehlin [00:01:26] But it's an amazing 300 plus catalog of episodes. And of course, if you want to donate, you know, we pay John and Carah from the donations directly to this to this series. And so if you want to see John and Carah continue, we are always having people drop off their donations. Please go to mormonstories.org mormonexpression Become a monthly donor to the John Larsen series and we'll keep creating this great content. I'll say, John and Carah, that I consistently hear that this is some people, this is the only thing they tune into when they tune into Mormon Stories is to hear John Larsen.

John Larsen [00:02:05] That's probably the rowdiest thing on your. On your program. Oh, yeah, I'm guessing I don't know

Carah Burrell [00:02:11] the rowdiest thing since the goatee.

John Dehlin [00:02:18] All right, people are saying that our voices aren't as loud as they should be. I'm turning myself up a little bit, but hopefully it's going to sound a little bit better. All right. And yeah, anyone who wants to subscribe, we're live.

John Larsen [00:02:34] Live. Sorry, John, we haven't been live in a while. Hi, everybody out there.

John Dehlin [00:02:39] Yeah, we're live.

Carah Burrell [00:02:41] Imagine my delight when I go over to the other tab and I go, oh, there's a bunch of people here. We haven't filmed live in so long. Hey, everybod.

John Dehlin [00:02:49] Yeah, we're doing it. We're doing it live, we're doing it real. And yeah. So welcome you guys. All right. So John, do you have any. I guess. Carah, do you want to introduce yourself really quick and. And tell people about your show?

Carah Burrell [00:03:03] Hi, I am female Satan Incarnate. No carabarell. I have YouTube channel NuanceHoe. I used to co host and produce over at Mormon Stories with John Dehlin and I run my own nonprofit now, the Nuance Hug Foundation. So make sure you subscribe to my channel. Talking about Tim Ballard stuff a lot lately as well. So I'm just excited to be here and talk with it's NuanceHoe and the JD and the. And the Johnny Duo I think is what we're calling ourselves. Make sure you're just tuned in for all of this goodness here and the other places. So let's get into it. Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:03:38] John, you. You like to point people to your site as well, is that right?

John Larsen [00:03:43] Yeah. If you want to, you can go to john larson.org to see what we're doing. We're working feverishly to get the farm website up. We're hoping to have it up the next couple weeks, but yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:59] Okay. Well, any announcements, John Larsen, that you want to make before we jump into our regularly scheduled program?

John Larsen [00:04:08] I don't think I do. It's been a little while since we. This got delayed a few weeks, so it's been a little while since we did the last one. So I don't remember any particular feedback or issues we need to address. Oh, well, now that I. Now that I say that there I did make a mistake in the one where I kept identifying the one individual by wrong name, but no one seems to pick it up, so I think we're fine.

John Dehlin [00:04:32] Okay, well, what's the topic for today?

John Larsen [00:04:37] Well, John, I wanted to do a. To deal with the devil in Mormon theology and I started digging into it and we are going to have a special treat for people who care about things like the doctrine of the devil.

John Larsen [00:04:53] We're going to be doing a three part episode because this is big and it covers a lot of stuff. So I think we're doing it again in two weeks and again in two weeks after that. Tonight we're going to cover the ancient devil, the Devil in the creation myth, and in the Pearl of great price. And then we're going to deal with the historic devil the next time, which is the Devil in the Book of Mormon and the new Testament. And then we're going to deal with the modern devil, which is the devil in the first vision, Joseph Smith's encounters with the devil, and modern doctrine on the devil. So they can look forward to that.

John Dehlin [00:05:32] So. So we want people to pull out their scriptures, right? Because we're going to be reading some scriptures tonight.

John Larsen [00:05:37] We are going to be diving into the scriptures. So if you want to be fully prepared, you can pull out your Hebrew Bible and your. And your regular Bible and your King James Bible and your pearl. Great price. Otherwise, we'll read it. We'll read it for you.

John Dehlin [00:05:53] Okay. All right. We'll take it away, John.

Why the Devil Makes People Uncomfortable

John Larsen [00:05:57] All right. Well, you know, it's funny thinking about this topic is I guarantee you there's a lot of people who feel uncomfortable right now, even people who don't believe in. In. In God. Some people, a lot of people retain a fear of the devil and a fear of hell and those sort of things even after they lose their belief.

John Larsen [00:06:19] And there are. I guarantee there's going to be people who won't listen to this at all because of that. Now, the only reason I bring that up is it speaks to the stickiness and the retaining power of these beliefs, of how they influence people and their lives. I think I've mentioned before I'm a fan of horror movies, but not for the reasons that most people are. I'm a fan of horror movies because I love their theological implications. I always like to pick them apart to try to figure out what the writer and director are trying to say about the universe and about God. And, you know, it's amazing how often, for example, horror movies, which tend to be about the devil or his minions or, you know, stuff like that, are hardline sort of Catholic theology.

John Larsen [00:07:05] You know, the sluts die early and it's only the saint who wins. And that's just a taste of how the devil and the teachings about the devil and the philosophy about evil and the devil just permeate all sorts of aspects of our culture that don't necessarily get permeated by the belief in angels and God and deity. I mean, let's be honest, God is not that interesting of a character, except for the questions of evil we're going to talk about. But the devil, now that's an interesting character.

John Larsen [00:07:44] And likewise, it's amazing how much of Mormon theology in particular pivots around the devil. That's why this ended up being so. So big. I think it's not talked about nearly enough of how important the teachings and belief about the devil were to Joseph Smith as he shaped his theology. So we're gonna take a tour through the seven levels of hell.

John Dehlin [00:08:10] All right, I'm excited. Let's do it.

Monotheism, Polytheism, and the Problem of Evil

John Larsen [00:08:14] All right, so we kind of have to start out with the classic problem of evil, which has been framed out and argued about by philosophers for a long, long time. The ancient world didn't really have this problem. You know, I was always taught, both in school and theologically and just culturally, that there is a progression from, like, animism to polytheism to monotheism, as if there's an evolution. The monotheism is somehow more logical or makes more sense or is more evolved than polytheism. It's. It's really not. In fact, polytheism is much better at explaining the schizophrenic nature of God, because if God is not a God, but multiple, multiple deities that have different drives and desires and interests in humankind, you have a much more explanatory power in your theology.

John Larsen [00:09:11] We in the. In the modern west can be really sort of full of hubris in dismissing, I don't know, the Nordic gods or the Greek gods or the Egyptian gods or the Hindu gods, and, you know, just on its face, thinking because they have multiple gods, that somehow that. That makes them inferior. But there is a lot of explanatory power there.

John Dehlin [00:09:34] So what's animism?

John Larsen [00:09:36] For those who don't know, animism is really the belief that spirits or spirituality inhabit nature, so trees and animals, and nature itself is deity or something like. And it's interesting because you hear me hesitating as I talk about it, because I'm using, you know, monotheistic terms that we've crafted that can be kind of disparaging to these other beliefs. But it is a non personified God. God exists in nature or part and parcel, or is nature as opposed to being a separate being distinct from nature?

John Dehlin [00:10:19] Okay, love it.

John Larsen [00:10:21] All right, so the problem of evil. The problem of evil is. Is really. I'm going to frame it this way, and then I'll tell you what the. Because I think my framing is superior than everyone else's. Ben. The question is, is God the author of evil or is he subjected to it? Did God create it, or does God have to respond to it? Does it exist outside of God? And the classic construction of this problem of evil is, is God an omniscient, benevolent, omnipotent being?

John Larsen [00:10:59] And if so, you know, that's assumed. If so, why does evil exist? Because if he's omnipotent, then he has the power to create a universe where evil doesn't exist. If he's omniscient, he knows how. And if he's omnibulent, benevolent, as they oftentimes say, if he's good, ultimately he's all good, then why would he want evil to exist? Why does God allow evil to be in the world? And Christian philosophers and Western philosophy have been scratching their head at this problem. The solutions are known as the theodicy.

John Larsen [00:11:35] And they all leave most of us wanting in the explanations. You know, I think you have the Catholics who've been dealing with this problem a lot longer than everyone else, they always talk about the mysteries of God. They're just, they just. They've given up on some of these questions. It's a mystery, God's mystery.

John Larsen [00:11:55] But it is a big problem to explain why, especially when we start talking about free agency or free will for our Mormon audience or our non Mormon audience. Mormons don't really talk about free will like everyone else. They talk about free agency, but they're pretty much the same thing.

John Larsen [00:12:18] Why is evil here? Because it seems to be mucking up our free agency, agency, our free will. And so what does God have to do with this? So I want to frame this question up early, and then we're going to return to it after we kind of go through Smith's writings on the devil. Thoughts, you two.

John Dehlin [00:12:44] Carrie, you think you jump in as well. But my immediate question is, you know, you might be able to argue that Satan or some sort of temptation is what allows free will. In other words, if we didn't have Satan tempting us, then we wouldn't have the ability to choose good and evil. And I know we're not talking about Mormonism today, but I can't help but think of the war in heaven.

John Larsen [00:13:10] Oh, yeah, we're talking about Mormonism, John. No, no, you're. You're exactly right. And that. And we're gonna go. I'm glad you brought that up. We're gonna go to into that point in more detail next week when we get into Alma. But that is the construction that Joseph Smith offers in the Book of Mormon, that unless you're subjected to temptation, you'll do nothing. This is. Human beings are unable to act, which itself is a big fucking can of worms that we're going to talk about more in two weeks. But go on with your bad self, John.

John Dehlin [00:13:39] I was just going to say, in the Mormon theology, and again, we can pause and discuss later, Satan presents himself in the war of heaven as. As presenting a plan the plan is that people don't have the ability to choose. This is from, I think it was called My Turn on Earth and Carolyn Pearson wrote it. I think we've referenced it previously. But Satan says, I'll force everyone to do good and give me all the glory. And then Jesus says, no, I've got a plan. Let people choose right from wrong. And that's what allows free agency. So I guess my, my understanding of Mormon theology is that Satan actually allows the freedom of choice. Carah, I'm wondering if you've got any. Oh, John, did you want to respond

John Larsen [00:14:26] to that or no? No, no, that's great.

John Dehlin [00:14:29] Okay. Carah, anything you want to add?

Carah Burrell [00:14:31] I'll just add that I'm looking forward in this conversation because ideas around free will and the very premise that the church kind of gives to you as a child about how you choose right from wrong, your free agency, just what you're talking about coming down to earth, those are such core concepts to what you assume your spirit is set to do here on earth. And it involves not asking a lot of follow up questions. So I'm looking forward to this discussion because this is like, well, what, what, can we dive more into this? What about this? You know, so I'm just excited to keep going.

Satan's Origins in the Bible

John Dehlin [00:15:04] All right, excellent.

John Larsen [00:15:05] All right, so let's go to the actual Old Testament. And, you know, I was listening to our new speaker of the House talking on a press conference the other day, and he said, if you want to know what I believe, you just have to open the Bible. And I thought, oh my God, this guy's never clearly never read the Bible. And you know, the problem is that a lot of believers in the Bible, including those of us who grew up very religious, never really read it. So it's always really fascinating to go and open it up and see what it says. So first of all, let's talk about the word Satan

Carah Burrell [00:15:45] is.

John Larsen [00:15:47] Satan is basically from a Hebrew term that means to oppose or to be an adversary. It doesn't. And of course, when you hear that, if you think about like, you know, modern Mormon general authority, you'll think about the adversary. They're always talking about the adversary, but the term itself, Satan from Hebrew, and I'm not a Hebrew scholar, so forgive me, but it's just Satan, Armin, is just an adversary or the adversary in context.

John Larsen [00:16:22] So especially in the Torah, which we're going to talk about the first five books, there is no devil. That character does not exist. And in fact, we have three major religions that all trace their lineage back to The Torah.

John Larsen [00:16:42] And they share lots of books of the Bible in common. So I thought, huh, why don't I go and see what they actually believe about the Bible? Because, you know, in Protestant Christianity, which Mormonism drives its roots, we fully inserted the devil right back into the Bible. And we'll talk about when that happened and why it happened a little bit in a couple weeks. But Satan is not there. So I went and looked up, like, what do Jewish people believe about Satan? And in fact, most of them, the scholars and stuff, he doesn't really exist. He has no real entity, especially in the Old Testament or theological Judaism, Classic Judaism doesn't rely on the character of the devil to embody evil.

John Larsen [00:17:37] And then of course, the next group of the book is our Muslim brothers and sisters. So they have a really interesting belief they believe in. The character is called libes, I think is how it's pronounced. I don't speak.

John Larsen [00:17:56] I don't speak Arabic at all, so forgive me. But in Islamic lore, ancient belief, there are three orders of beings that God created. First, God created the angels, and then God created the jinns, which are, you know, and we know that from the parts we borrowed and bastardized as genies, right? They are a being, a magical being, kind of like heroes from Greek, you know, like Hercules or stuff like that. They're not the offspring of angels or gods or anything. They're an order of being that God created. And then God created human beings as his third order. And in the Islamic myth, there was one jinn who was ascended above all the other jinns, and he had ascended up to like the level or skill or understanding of an angel.

John Larsen [00:18:56] And he was this character that really is the Islamic devil. And then when God created human beings out of clay, when God created man out of clay, God said, look at this thing that I've done. I've made this great thing. And he asked for all of his creation, all the angels and all the jinns, to bow down before humanity, not to worship them, but to bow down before God's latest greatest creation. And one jinn, the one who has ascended the most refused.

John Larsen [00:19:29] And that is the origin of the Islamic devil. But what you'll notice in both of these things, I'm talking about there's no devil in the Garden of Eden. There's no character of Satan. There's nothing. There's nothing happening there at all.

John Larsen [00:19:47] Now, to prove my point, I pulled some scriptures. We're going to go to Numbers, chapter 22, verse 22. And this is the famous tale of Balaam's donkey. Because you've probably been taught your whole life that the devil shows up in the Old Testament.

John Dehlin [00:20:03] I was just going to say the serpent talks to Eve.

John Larsen [00:20:06] Right, the serpent talks to Eve. We're going to come back to the serpent. We actually go to the Garden of Eden. But let's cut to the chase. The serpent is a serpent, and it clearly states that in the Bible. It never equates the serpent with being anything else. Now, we're not going to pretend we don't know what we don't know. Then Joseph Smith first in the Bible you have the serpent. And then Joseph Smith wrote he was doing his new translation of the Bible in the book of Moses, and then he said that Satan beguiled the serpent. And then by the time he writes the temple ceremony, he gets rid of the serpent and he puts Satan in there. But these are Smith's doctrinal innovations. This is not supported by the actual Old Testament.

John Dehlin [00:20:52] Got it.

John Larsen [00:20:52] So number 22. 22, Balaam's donkey. And it says, basically God's anger was kindled because he was going and the angel, the Lord took his stand in the road as his adversary. Now he was riding on the donkey and his two servants were with him. The donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand. So the donkey turned off the road and went to the field, and Balaam struck the donkey to turn it back the road. Okay, so what I want to point out here is in that first verse,

John Dehlin [00:21:30] I got King James up.

John Larsen [00:21:31] Just because you've got King James, Balaam ties his ass to a tree and walks 50 miles. Is that sort of thing. Anyway, so he says, and we're talking about 23. And saw the angel Lord standing his way and his sword drawn in his hand.

John Larsen [00:21:46] So God's anger was kindled because he was going and the angel Lord took his stand on the road as his adversary. So what it says in Hebrew basically is as the Satan as interpreted as the devil. I want to show you that this is a verse from the Old Testament using that term Satan. And they just translate it here as adversary. They haven't said Satan is what it actually says in the original Hebrew. And I want to show you that this is is to show how that term is used and not used to refer to anyone in particular. Even though it says the adversary in Hebrew, he was acting as the adversary. Okay, does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:22:31] Yeah. So you can act in an adversarial way, and that's different than being the son of evil. Satan Lucifer himself.

John Larsen [00:22:39] Right, right. And of course, the same thing happens in Job. And if you look at the book of Job, I thought I wrote it down here. I might come to it later in my notes. But it says the same thing, that the sons of God were presenting themselves before God and one of the angels acted as the adversary. But it clearly identifies in Job that the guy that God ends up taking a bet with is the adversary. But he's an angel. He's identified as an angel. So the interpretation by Hebrew scholars is that he's just saying this guy is acting as the adversary or the foil to God. He's questioning God, but it's not suggesting at all that he is an actual entity whose role in the universe is to question, oppose God.

John Dehlin [00:23:30] So, John Larsen, I just want to make sure I'm understanding. So I've got job 16 up, and it says, now, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and. And Satan came also among them. And the Lord said unto Satan, whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down it in it. So what are you saying? This is and isn't saying?

John Larsen [00:23:55] Well, first of all, the sons of. We're using King James here. The sons of God has a particular meaning in the Old Testament. So after God created humanity and they started reproducing, the angels of God looked down on the. The young women, the young humans, and they thought, that's tasty. We need to get ourselves some. So the angels came out of. This is right in your fucking Bible. The angels came out of heaven and they slept with the human women, and they had another race of giants, and those are the sons of whatever that is.

John Larsen [00:24:37] So they're referred to in the Old Testament more than once. And I do believe that Goliath is expected to be a descendant of them, but I'm not certain I'm pulling that out of my memory. So that's where I say all these guys who advocate the Bible, they don't ever actually read what it says in there because it clearly says that the angels came down and had sex with human women and had the sons of God or whatever they're.

John Dehlin [00:25:06] So are you saying that when Job talks about Satan, are you saying the King James Version gets it wrong or that they don't mean what we think they mean when they talk about Satan?

John Larsen [00:25:16] Well, the King James Version, as I've heard some Bible scholars say, is a commentary. So sometimes if they don't like what's being said, they will change the word. And by the time King James was written, it's published in 16, 1611 or whenever it was published, they had gone and mucked up a lot of these things. So in some instances in the Bible, it refers to what is a Hebrew word for a goat demon, a goat headed demon or satyr. Right. And then in King James you'll find oftentimes that's translated as Satan or yeah, usually Satan.

John Larsen [00:25:52] But that's not what the book says. It doesn't say Satan, it says a goat headed demon. And then so the later translators are making a presumption and a huge theological presumption. And you know, let's talk about some of the other names of Satan. This might be informative.

John Larsen [00:26:13] Beelzebub, of course, the God of the Mesopotamians, I think the Mesopotamians was baal. BAAL and what the Beelzebub is a derivation of the God BAAL and flies. It was an insult by the Hebrews calling their neighbor God, the Lord of the flies. Right. And then that name has stuck. And then they just took that name that was their actual God and applied it to this euphemism, which eventually got applied to the devil. Other terms, Mephistopheles doesn't show up until the 15th century in the, the Legend of Faust. We don't know etymologically where that came from. It's nowhere in the Bible. It's, it's so. And let's talk about Lucifer.

John Larsen [00:27:02] Of course, that comes from Isaiah, in Luca, in Isaiah, chapter 14. Let me get to my point in my notes here. Isaiah 14:12, there is. These are of course in Isaiah, you're talking about like songs or poems or stanzas. And that reads, oh, how you are fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of dawn.

John Larsen [00:27:31] And you're looking at King James, I'm looking at other versions. Oh, how you were fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of dawn. How you're cut down to the ground. You who laid the nations low. You said to yourself, I will ascend to heaven. I'll raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon. I will ascend to the top of the clouds. I'll make myself most like the most High. But you are brought down to shoal to the depths of the pit. And this is the first reference to shoal, which is the garbage dump outside of, of Jerusalem.

John Larsen [00:28:08] So there is this area outside of Jerusalem where they would burn trash. And it was of course J Just like every dump heap, it was, you know, put outside not the best land, and there was, you know, constantly smoke and burning and fire.

John Larsen [00:28:22] So it was, it was used originally as a metaphor for just like a bad place, this pit of shoal. But the, the idea of hell as a place that we have today in modern Christianity really came from the Greeks and the Romans.

John Larsen [00:28:40] Hades really more or less shaped our full understanding of hell. Well, in part, it keeps getting embellished and changed. But hell is not really biblical, and the devil really doesn't exist in the Old Testament is our takeaway.

John Dehlin [00:28:58] Maybe. The only thing I'll just add, John Larsen, is I want to refer people to, if they want to learn more about the Old Testament. I want to recommend the work of Dan McClellan. He's got a great TikTok channel. He's got a podcast. We have interviewed him on Mormon stories. But he, I'm sure he does courses on, on whether or not the devil or Satan or Lucifer even exists really in the Old Testament. But it just makes sense if the King James Version was written what, five, six, seven hundred years ago, you know, and, and mainstream Christianity has moved on and created new versions of the Bible like the NIV because, you know, the translation is 5, 6, 700 years old, it would make sense that the King James Version would be problematic.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] And of course it would make sense that the LDS Church would hold on to it just because that's what Joseph used. But the fact that the King and the Mormon Church even teaches, ironically John Larsen, that, that the Articles of Faith says that the Bible is true as far as it is translated correctly. So it's even sort of foundational Mormon doctrine to distrust the Bible, specifically the King James translation. Am I wrong?

John Larsen [00:30:19] You're exactly right. And I think that speaks to one of the ways we know for a fact that Mormonism is not a valid or true religion. The Joseph Smith said that. And since then we have found tons of manuscripts and we had them already, so. And we can date them from a whole bunch of different ways that we can date them. So we know what the Bible said pretty much.

John Larsen [00:30:40] There's a gap for the first couple of centuries, which doesn't help the Mormons case at all either. But you know, we can find manuscripts from the third century, from the fourth century, at least partials. And then so we can see the changes that were made. The King James Version is really a commentary. They took two other versions and I'm not prepared to tell talk about that today. And they did commentary on it and they Would. They would fix things and change things. They would change gender of things. The reason the Mormons will not actually investigate their own article of faith, because what they should be saying is, oh, my God.

John Larsen [00:31:13] Well, look, we've got all these transcripts. Let's get a Mormon translation of the Bible. Let's get a bunch of Hebrew scholars and Greek scholars, and let's write one. And it's been done over and over and over again. I'm reading you from transcripts that are done by the very best scholars to try to match what the transcripts actually said in the language. But Joseph Smith used the King James Version, and he used problems in the King James Version to build his theology. If you actually get a true translation of the Bible and you read it very carefully, it will deconstruct Mormonism, because Joseph Smith is inserting theological innovation from the 16th century, from the 12th century, from the 19th century into ancient Mesoamerica.

John Larsen [00:31:54] And that all just falls apart as soon as you actually read the text as it's actually written. So when you go read the topical guide in the Scriptures, like I have been doing the last couple days, you'll find cross references to words that are mistranslations. So they're drawing together points that were never made by the original transcripts, the best that we can tell. And of course, the Old Testament disappears into the fog of history.

John Larsen [00:32:18] The oldest, the scholars believe kind of the oldest versions of the Bible we have are from not long before the Babylonian captivity. So we're having 600 BC, 800 BC and these things that are supposedly dated back, you know, 4,000 years, there's just nothing. There's no archaeological evidence, there's no evidence that any of these things match that time frame at all.

John Dehlin [00:32:42] Question, Claire.

Carah Burrell [00:32:44] Yeah, so when Joseph Smith is talking about a restoration of all things, and that's where we get the ideas about hands, handmaids in the Bible and polygamy. And so much of what I was taught as a Mormon had to do with a restoration of all things. But why we know that Joseph Smith's is so much of his theology was evolving in a remix of Protestant Christianity. But wouldn't it be the smartest thing for Joseph Smith to do just to restore, like, the ideas from, like, the Torah and just traditional Jewish thought that has a more nuanced perspective of heaven and hell, like we were talking about?

Carah Burrell [00:33:18] That's this. All this stuff has kind of been added later. And I just get this feeling that Mormons really pride themselves on that. Joseph Smith reformed the ideas about heaven and hell that were so brutal that it's not as like, you know, you're not being thrown into a pit of fire. You get to have these three levels of heaven. And we kind of pride ourselves on that when if it was really a restoration, it should look a lot more like that, you know, world to come that, that Jews talk about. That's kind of just like this nuanced world where you're just closer to God or you have like a, a period in which your, your soul goes through a transformation.

Carah Burrell [00:33:52] But Joseph Smith, he wanted to kind of like pick up all of the different things that he liked instead of actually restoring what you would actually read in the Torah. So.

John Larsen [00:34:01] Well, your very comment shows how mind bending Mormonism is because you just said unironically that Mormons don't believe in hell. But in two weeks when we go through the Book of Mormon again, I don't know of any modern or any ancient scripture that is as in love with the idea of torment and hell as the Book of Mormon. Mormons believe in a horror movie hell more so than anybody else. Doctrinally. You can say that the evangelicals do, but, but it's not necessarily scriptorial, it's not necessarily from the book, but for Mormons it absolutely is. If the Book of Mormon is the most accurate book that's ever been written on the face of the world, you have to believe in a literal, tormenting, burning hell that is eternal. And the fact that you, who's really schooled in Mormonism, still make that, you're still giving a party line.

Carah Burrell [00:35:00] I know, because I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I couldn't find a hundred Mormons to come in this room right now and like, give me a missionary lesson and tell me, tell me about your Mormon hell. That they would ever pull out the Book of Mormon and be like, well, there's going to be all this burning and torment. They would tell me about the three levels of heaven. They tell me about spirit, prison, spirit, paradise and missionary work. And I think it's just in the Mormon's mind of how they, how they actually practice their religion that they don't read those Book of Mormon scriptures. But of course you're right.

Carah Burrell [00:35:27] They, those are, all those punishment verses are totally in there. It's just, you know, when you show up as a Mormon, you don't think of your God that way. You don't want to think of your God. You're like, no, he's so nice. He, Joseph Smith, he restored the church and one of the Ways you know it's true is because he had this better idea of how to do hell. But that's. Yeah, totally in conflict with the book that he restored.

Joseph Smith's Restoration and the Devil

John Larsen [00:35:44] Yeah, yeah, you hit it exactly on the head there. He. The restoration. Part of the restoration is the, is the golden plates which were, which wars tens of thousands of people died over and, and were mounted. Hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands. And this poor SAP had to carry this 350 pound thing around the New World and bury it where it sat for over a thousand years to be dug up and chased and, and, and all, all this stuff that happened to Joseph Smith to restore the truth.

John Larsen [00:36:20] But there's no Melchizedek priest in that book. There's no temple marriage, there's no eternal life. There's no, there's no three kingdoms of glory. There's Protestant hellfire and damnation. And my whole point is Mormonism is not a theology, it's a mind.

John Larsen [00:36:37] Because people can't even articulate what their own religion is. Their minds are so tied up in knots that they can't even unpack what they're saying. And we've all done it. Carah, I don't mean to pick on you, but it lasts for years, years and years and years after people leave the church that they still are falling to these traps, these lies, this double speak of believing two simultaneously conflicting things and just switching back and forth between one versus the other. I've spent my life trying to study Mormonism and I'll tell you, there ain't no there there. It's really a study in psychology because there is no Mormon doctrine. It doesn't exist.

John Dehlin [00:37:20] Yep, let's keep going with your Old Testament stuff, John.

John Larsen [00:37:24] Let's keep rolling. So you brought up the serpent. I thought it's useful to highlight that. So what it says in the Old Testament is now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made.

John Dehlin [00:37:38] Are we in a genesis now?

John Larsen [00:37:40] We're just still using the, the, the language. I'm still okay finishing up the case that Satan doesn't exist in, in the Old Testament. And, and, and so for more Mormons, they identify Satan with the serpent, but it clearly says in the book that it's a wild animal. Right. It makes, it makes the comparison that the, the, that the serpent, the snake was more crafty than any of the other animals. So there's, there's no real way to force in Satan in that, other than you start saying it's completely metaphor in such a way that the book is not even stating the truth. And then once you get into that, everything goes, which is how you get guys like Tim Ballard and Joseph Smith, and I guess.

John Dehlin [00:38:22] I guess a Mormon might say, well, when they talk about a serpent, it's a metaphor. And it's okay to have a metaphor. There can still be a Satan, even if they refer to. To Satan as a snake or a serpent. Metaphorically.

John Larsen [00:38:34] Right, of course. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:36] Okay.

John Larsen [00:38:36] Yeah, that's exactly. They're gonna. They're gonna. They're just gonna say. And they're just gonna switch back and forth every time you try to pin them down and say, what do you believe? Oh, that's. That's a metaphor. Oh, that's symbology. Oh, that's just a misunderstanding of man. Oh, they. They. They're just. There is no truth anywhere in there. There's nothing. There's nothing to. To grab onto, you know?

John Dehlin [00:38:56] Yeah. Okay.

Joseph Smith's Prequel to the Garden of Eden

John Larsen [00:38:58] All right, so we're gonna get to the. I'm gonna do these kind of in chronological order. Joseph Smith actually writes a prequel to the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden is what starts the whole thing off. It's the. It's the origin myth, you know, and almost every culture that I'm aware of has one of these, you know, you know, the mother wolf births two twins or whatever, and that's what humanity comes from. Or Pandora opens her box or whatever. Every religion has this myth about where people came from, but that's not good enough for Smith. And what he's doing is he is riffing on Revelations, chapter 12, verse 3 through 10. So if you want a scripture chase now, now's your time. I'm of course not going to read you the King James Version.

John Dehlin [00:39:49] Did you say Revelations?

John Larsen [00:39:51] The Book of Revelation, chapter 12.

John Dehlin [00:39:52] We're going to New Testament.

John Larsen [00:39:54] We're going to New Testament because we're talking about Joseph Smith's theological innovation of the war in heaven.

John Dehlin [00:39:59] Okay. Chapter What?

John Larsen [00:40:01] Revelations, chapter 12, verses 3 through 10.

John Dehlin [00:40:04] All right, go ahead.

John Larsen [00:40:07] Okay. And one of the reasons I'm reading this to you is I want to again point out things that you've been told your whole life that the scriptures don't actually say. Okay. Chapter three. Then another portent appeared in heaven. A great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven diadems or crowns on his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to earth. All right, let's stop and review. So this dragon appears in. In. In heaven, great big red dragon, has seven heads, ten horns, and wearing seven crowns. And the first thing it does, it takes its tail and it takes one third the stars out of heaven and threw them down to earth. Okay, right there. Verse 4. And his tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them down to earth.

John Dehlin [00:41:06] Lights are coming on for me, John. Keep going.

John Larsen [00:41:08] Okay, then. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. And she gave birth to a son, a male child who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne.

John Larsen [00:41:28] And the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God so that there she could be nourished for 1,260, 60 days. Okay, okay. Now we should pause here. And I should first say two things. When I used to get bored in church, I would read the Book of Revelation. I have read the Book of Revelation cover to cover at least 200 times. And I will say this after having read it over and over and over again. This is the fever dream of somebody who's barely got a grip on sanity. This whole book. Don't try to make too much sense of this. It's cuckoo bonkers.

John Dehlin [00:42:07] Can I just say, and I'm just going to quote Dan McClellan, because he knows more about the Old Testament than all of us. He told me that the Book of Revelations was literally not written for our day. He said that it was written for the people that were alive right at the time Jesus died or shortly thereafter. It wasn't even meant for us.

John Larsen [00:42:27] How would you. If I said, John, in 785 years, they're going to be kind of a plague and there's going to be an unrighteous king and he's going to kill a lot of people. How would you even write something for that? You would be like, what the fuck, John? Like that happens all the time. Like, why would I write that? For people who are 782 years ago,

John Dehlin [00:42:50] there's going to be an earthquake that year somewhere. There's going to be a plague or a famine somewhere. And there's going to be some wars and rumors of wars. Right?

John Larsen [00:42:59] You know what's great about Revelation? Or this is not great, it's terrible. The revelations about the modern time, both in traditional Christianity, throughout the Middle Ages, today in Mormonism, we talked with the Reed Smoot hearings that the individual, that the church. A lot of the brethren saw Reed Smoot as the fulfillment of the White Horse prophecy. But then what happens with the prophecy is you can have fulfillment, which tells you your religion is right and true and validates everything about you. And then a generation later, it just resets. Just hits the reset button. There's no way to get rid of a revelation. It just keeps resetting and resetting and resetting and resetting.

John Larsen [00:43:37] But this was a big influence on Smith, this passage, which is why we're reading it. Okay, so I should give you a little bit of what the scholars say. This stuff is in the New Testament and during the time. Oftentimes the woman that is referred to is a metaphor for either nature or the church.

John Larsen [00:44:00] The church is oftentimes in the New Testament referred to as the bride. And it's a really. For our cultural understanding, it's kind of a strained belief, the idea that the church is this bride and then she births Jesus Christ or the Messiah. But that's kind of what this is. This is referring to, or that's what scholars believe this part is. But let's go on to verse seven really quickly, John.

John Dehlin [00:44:27] I'm in a bet that if we were to read church history, I'm in a bet that when Joseph Smith came up with his a third of the host of heaven were cast out, that he was reading this part of Revelations where it says the third part of the stars of heaven, and he used his interpretation. Now, you may be talking about that later, but it goes on to talk about war in heaven right there in seven, and Michael and angels and the dragon. And then it talks about cast out later. Am I stealing your thunder? Is that where you were going with this?

John Larsen [00:45:00] That's exactly where we're going. You got it?

John Dehlin [00:45:02] Okay. All right, I'll shut up. Keep going, John.

The War in Heaven in Mormon Scripture

John Larsen [00:45:04] Okay, so let's talk about the sequence of this story.

John Dehlin [00:45:07] Okay.

John Larsen [00:45:08] Dragon shows up in heaven, grabs a third of the stars in heaven and casts them down to earth. Then the bride, the woman, flees heaven and she gives birth to a son who is to rule all the nations. Right.

John Larsen [00:45:24] There's a sequence to this story. And then war breaks out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels is what it says, fought back. So Joseph Smith conflated the verse like you're saying in verse two, with the verse in verse seven. But sequentially, that is not what happens.

John Larsen [00:45:50] The dragon first cast the stars out of heaven, then that happens before the war in heaven even happens. There's nothing in this passage equating stars with people. Nor does the Bible ever, ever, ever equate people with angels. Those are Two separate beings. And it says clearly there, the war in heaven was fought between Michael and his angels and the dragon and his angels. And if you get involved in any kind of Christian theology, that's always what they talk about. They never talk about the minions of the devil, the demons being anything other than hell's angels.

John Dehlin [00:46:30] Right. Yeah, I had no idea. I'm just reading 9 John, if it's okay.

John Larsen [00:46:36] Yeah, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:46:37] I've been, you know, we've been talking a lot about this Tim Ballard garbage and this Jody Hildebrandt garbage and the visions of glory garbage that's really sweeping prepper end times, sort of magamormonism. And there's this idea that there are evil spirits all around us that are trying to crack into our skulls and make us do evil things.

John Dehlin [00:47:01] And this, of course, comes from Joseph Smith's teachings that the third of the hosts of heaven that were wicked, God's a third of God and heavenly mothers. I say plural spirit children, you know, they all were cast out and came to earth to tempt us.

John Dehlin [00:47:16] This is exactly where Joseph Smith got it from. He read these versions where it literally says, devil which deceived the whole world, was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him. This is exactly where Joseph Smith got it from. It's just like Carah said. It's just. It's fan fiction, right?

Carah Burrell [00:47:36] Bible fan fiction.

John Dehlin [00:47:37] Bible fan fiction.

John Larsen [00:47:38] Right. And this, of course, is fan fiction itself. The Book of Revelation.

John Dehlin [00:47:42] Right.

John Larsen [00:47:43] On other Bible script, you know, and it's. It's so. It's just this building. And wherever you find passages, you know, like Melchizedek or Peleg or where there's these people that are mentioned that there's not really any story behind, then Joseph grabs on them. Well, Peleg, that's proof that the continents were all together and were divided before Noah and Melchizedek. Well, that's this great priesthood. So that's the way fan fiction always works. It finds a gap in the narrative and then tries to fill it in with, with. With his story. And, but, but, but, but again, you know, we're. We're talking about in, in. In the passage I'm reading, which is a translation of the original Greek, it doesn't say the devil. The passage that you're reading that Joseph Smith read says the devil. So that, you know, again, Joseph Smith is showing that he was using a mistranslation in order to derive his theology.

John Dehlin [00:48:43] So, I mean, you're. Go ahead, Carah, go ahead.

Carah Burrell [00:48:46] I was gonna say that was My point from earlier that like, if he's gonna have a restoration, it should have, yes, a closer translation and it should have more of that nuanced language about an adversary and not something that is so personified. But Joseph Smith, like you're saying with this remixing that he's doing a non personified God or. Yeah, a multitude of gods doesn't fit within the context that he's trying to preach to at the time. And I also wanted to ask, I'm, I'm stupid. Is there any other places in general, like Mormon, sorry, in general Christian tradition that talk about a war in heaven besides this kind of idea here? Like did Joseph Smith lift it from other places as well or is it just here?

John Larsen [00:49:29] Oh, the belief in a war in heaven that, that, that Satan is a fallen angel is, is, is common among Western Christianity. I don't know about like Eastern Orthodox or whatever, but yeah, that's held commonly through Catholicism and all of Protestant belief. So Joseph's not the only one to interpret these scriptures and others from different places and kind of come up with this narrative of the fallen angel. But the idea of the, that we were all in a pre existence and that one third of us chose to follow Satan and that's, that's a theological innovation as far as I'm aware. Somebody else might have been teaching it and Joseph smipped it off somebody else, but that's not commonly held in Protestant belief.

Carah Burrell [00:50:14] Got it.

John Dehlin [00:50:14] And John, I'm just gonna restate because I'm just putting together what you're telling us. It's sort of like Joseph Smith makes a bad interpretation from a poor translation, from an inaccurate translation of a bad book in the New Testament, which is again a poor and a bad interpretation of what's being read from the Old Testament, which is probably taken from Babylonian or other ancient civilizations and fan fictioned into sort of the Israel or Hebrew text. So it's just like error upon error upon error upon error upon error upon error. And so when you, when you think about, and I'm not trying to be unfair, but when you think about the hymn like How Firm a Foundation, that's, that's not a super firm foundation to be literally basing your plan of salvation on. Right.

John Larsen [00:51:14] What a, what a succinct wrap up of all of theology, John.

John Dehlin [00:51:17] Yes.

John Larsen [00:51:18] Yeah, that's how it works is we just keep retelling these stories and you know, there's nothing wrong with myth. There's a lot of, there's a lot of core human truth to be found in Myth, it's when you start believing it literally. Or worse, you start using it to extort tens of billions of dollars from people and to put yourself in power and use it to promote your own sexual proclivities and to kill people and to imprison people and to shame people and to steal their money. That's the problem. I don't really have a problem. People believing weird things about like dragons and stars. It's the extortion that gets me.

John Dehlin [00:51:57] Got it. Okay, I'm getting it now. Thanks, John.

John Larsen [00:52:01] Okay, so that is the scripture that Joseph uses to begin talking about the war in heaven. And let's go to now. Abraham, chapter three, verse 27.

John Dehlin [00:52:15] This is Joseph Smith Book of Abraham.

John Larsen [00:52:17] This is Joseph Smith. So the book of the Pearl of Great. The so called pearl of great Price. Joseph Smith never created a book called the Pearl of Great Price. That was kind of an after construction. And it has a couple of parts. One, he had received the. He had bought the mummies. And there were papyrus funerary scripts that they lay down behind the head and some scrolls, common, very common, done over and over again that Joseph Smith translated into this pile of shit that they call Abraham.

John Larsen [00:52:48] And then there is the book of Moses which came about from his retranslation of the Bible. The Reorganized church or the community of Christ holds the copyright on the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible. And you can actually buy a copy from them. It has good provenance. We know it's the right one, it's real. There's nothing about it. And you can get it from them. It's just the Mormons don't talk about it very much. There's a few references in the, in the like footnotes of the, of the scriptures to it. And then this section of Moses which ironically Joseph Smith translated this without any aid as best we can tell.

John Larsen [00:53:24] He didn't put his hat in his head in a hat. He didn't have any Urim and Thummim. He didn't have flaming angels or whatever. He just wrote it. So that's the book of Moses. We'll be getting there in a minute. But so this comes from the book of Abraham. From this is supposedly written by his own hand, Abraham directly on these scrolls that ended up in Cincinnati, Ohio. Okay, Abraham 3, 27. And the Lord said, whom shall I send? And one answered like unto the Son of man, here I am, send me. And another answered and said, here I am, send me. And the Lord said, I will send the first.

John Larsen [00:54:04] And the second was angry and kept not his first estate. And at that day many followed after him. So what this is saying is that God had birthed as many. God's harem of wives had birthed as many spirit children. The billions and billions. I would reference everybody to go back and listen to our Plan of salvation podcast.

Carah Burrell [00:54:31] Put it on the tv, pop some popcorn. It's a good time.

John Larsen [00:54:35] Yeah. So the billions and billions and billions we are all sitting around and then God's got a plan. And God needs in his plan a redeemer. And according to the book of Abraham, he says, who shall I send?

John Larsen [00:54:51] And one like unto the Son of man. This is unclear what what the son of men are. What I was referring to earlier, the giants. So this is where Joseph Smith is. Miss, miss. He's, he's discombobulating terms. So I have no idea what the he means here. And he says one like on the Son of Man, here I am send me. But, but he does mean the devil, the Lucifer.

John Larsen [00:55:18] Now let's pause a minute and talk about the term Lucifer. I was giving you the names of the, of the, of the devil. Lucifer comes from Isaiah the. And it means the morning star. And the morning star is of course, Venus for all you astronomically inclined. Venus has this particular thing that it does and that's that it shows up in the evening and it shows up in the morning, and unlike the stars and then it disappears. Like it doesn't traverse the sky like others do.

John Larsen [00:55:59] So the morning star is this a backhanded reference to this astrological event that comes and then goes. So I don't know what the full meaning because I can't climb into the heads of the ancients, the Bronze Age folks here. But when they call the morning star Lucifer, that's what they're referring to as a reference to that star.

John Larsen [00:56:24] Joseph Smith in his doctrine says Lucifer is the actual name, the spirit name he goes through in the temple and says their beings have actual spirit name. So Elohim, which of course elo El is God in Hebrew, hem is a plural, so the gods.

John Larsen [00:56:44] But Joseph Smith says Elohim is his name. And Joseph Smith identifies the Archangel Michael. And of course there is no designation of Michael anywhere in the New Testament. That is a Catholic creation. Later, Joseph Smith identifies Michael as Adam. And Joseph Smith of course takes the sacred name of God, JHWH or whatever sometimes pronounces pronounce it. So we're not 100% sure. And Joseph Smith says that's the sacred name of Jesus.

John Larsen [00:57:19] So what he has also done is said the sacred name of the devil is Lucifer. But this all falls apart. I mean, it's. It just shows you how Joseph Smith just. Magpies shit together, and people just eat it up.

John Dehlin [00:57:34] Okay.

John Larsen [00:57:35] Taking a drink of water.

John Dehlin [00:57:38] John, you're a little salty today, man. Well, is this firing you up?

John Larsen [00:57:44] No, you know, because I'm using. I'm using bad language. I think that. I think that this stuff that I've been going through, I've been doing a deep dive into this doctrine just really shows how ridiculous the doctrine is. It doesn't bear the respect that we give it. And I still think we should give it a certain amount of respect. I do. I approach it as I would hope that scholars approach things. I'm not saying I'm a scholar. I give it scholarly weight. I try to understand what it says and what Joseph Smith is saying. I'm trying to construct a theology, which I think, in a way, I respect this more than Joseph did because I think he was just trying to manipulate people. So I think that's coming out this. This frustration with this whole mess.

John Dehlin [00:58:44] Well, the truth is, like you said, the plan of salvation is what's used to. To sort of make people feel guilty and shameful for their behavior. And you need a story. A story is very compelling and very captivating. So I do think it's fitting, you know, that it raises some hackles for you.

John Larsen [00:59:03] Yeah, yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:59:04] I'm the one who's called possessed by Satan the most by my. So I have to give these bookends back, too. If anyone wants help me replace them. They're my props right now. So Joseph's just joined the podcast.

John Larsen [00:59:16] So anyway, well, it's good to have the. The old gods there with you. All right. And the Lord said, I will send the first. And the second was angry and kept not his first estate. And at that day, many followed after him. So we've got Lucifer and Jesus both standing up before saying, send me. And in the book of Abraham, it's kind of arbitrary.

Two Plans, Agency, and Satan's Fall

John Larsen [00:59:41] So you've got two plans that are put forth. The one plan is that everyone will be saved. Right. And the other plan is that the plan we have. So we're all there, 10 billion, 100 billion of us. And Lucifer says, okay, they've got to go down and get bodies. According to your theology, they got to go get bodies, and I'm going to make sure they all get saved and they all return home. That's what you want, right? You want all your children to return home.

John Larsen [01:00:19] And Christ's plan, which is actually God's plan, right, let's be clear, is the dumpster fire of the world that we have, right? That there will be everything that's ever happened in India, everything that's ever happened in Africa, everything that's ever happened in Asia, everything that's happened in Europe, all the wars, all the blood, all the destruction, all the genocide, all the starvation, all the disease, all of the deceit, all of the lies, all of the rape, all of the pillaging, all of the, everything that's God's plan.

John Larsen [01:00:58] Just, just, just to be clear, what Satan was rebelling against, he was rebelling against all the shit that we've been watching for the last 10,000 years. That's what he was saying, that this plan doesn't seem well reasoned there, dear Father. That's what Satan was saying in this myth. And for that he was cast down, right?

John Dehlin [01:01:20] Well, not just him, but a third of the third of God's children. I remember having this thought as a Mormon teenager, just like, what a crappy parent. Not only do a third of his kids get, get, you know, cast out into eternal damnation, but he does it to him, right? Like they make one bad decision very early on in their career and they're, they're damned for eternity. That's kind of a sucky, sucky, dad.

John Larsen [01:01:51] So yeah, yeah, agreed. So we're sitting there, according to Joseph Smith's theology, a third of us are gone, wiped out, sent down to this planet that we know we're going to be going to in just a hot minute. And Satan is sent down and he's given some, some dominance. Let's dig into that a little bit. What the gifts that God gave Satan gave Lucifer because we can presume that we were all kind of equal. A book of Abraham says some were more learned than others, some were more intellectual and smart and chosen than others. But it doesn't talk about us being in different states of being.

John Larsen [01:02:31] We were all this premortal intelligence that needed to come down to this planet estate, in the words of Mormon theology. So we all needed that. And the devil never received his second estate. He has his first estate, right? And I want you to all pin that in your heads for a minute because we're going to come back to that. So the first thing that God does after banishing all these guys down to the planet is they're like, woo, glad that's over. Let's start sending you guys down. I just wonder in this myth, like what everybody was thinking, like, we're doing what now? We're going Where?

John Larsen [01:03:10] And those guys are going to do what to us? So the first thing he does, he puts Adam in the Garden of Eden. And then he realizes Adam is lonely, and he creates Eve for Adam to keep Adam company.

John Larsen [01:03:25] And then, then the devil comes in, of course. Right. All right, let's read. Before we get there, let's read a little bit into Moses, because this is, this is where we pick up Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible.

John Larsen [01:03:43] So Moses, chapter four, verse one. And I the Lord God spake unto Moses, saying that Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine only begotten is the same same which was from the beginning. I am. Send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind. That one soul shall not be lost. And surely I will do it. Wherefore give me thine honor. But behold my beloved son, which is my beloved and chosen from the beginning, said unto me, father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever. Now, let's stop here. We're near the end times, right?

John Dehlin [01:04:19] Latter Day Saints Church Jesus Christ. Latter Day Saints.

John Larsen [01:04:21] What does Jesus Christ promise God? Elohim. It's right there in verse 2.

John Dehlin [01:04:33] Thy will be done, and glory be to thee forever.

John Larsen [01:04:36] The glory be thine, not mine. That's what Jesus said. Jesus is not going to receive the glory. The Mormon Church has been pivoting its position. Who do we worship? Jc we worship Jesus Christ.

John Dehlin [01:04:51] The big J dog, right?

John Larsen [01:04:54] But Jesus, Jesus Christ, according to Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ promise to God the Father was that the glory would be Elohim's. Outside of Mormonism, nobody even knows the Elohim exists. Right. For most of Christendom, Jesus Christ is God.

Carah Burrell [01:05:14] Is that where the whole, you know, they're, they're all one in purpose. So it's like the, the Trinity accolade goes to Jesus Christ. But you know, you have the Christus statue, but it's really like you're worshiping an incarnation of the purpose of Heavenly Father Elohim in Jesus Christ. But that's how I would have said if I was Mormon.

John Larsen [01:05:37] I don't know. This is Joseph Smith stuff. But to me, like the promise not fulfilled.

John Dehlin [01:05:42] Like most of the world, we shouldn't be worshiping Jesus.

John Larsen [01:05:46] We shouldn't be worshiping Jesus at all. And this is the Mormonism I was raised with. I was raised with the Mormonism that having a cross was satanic because you're not worshiping God, you're worshiping Jesus, which you shouldn't be doing according to verse two.

John Larsen [01:06:04] Okay, verse three, wherefore because that Satan rebelled against me and sought to destroy the agency of man which I, the Lord God had given him. So God is saying that Satan is seeking to destroy the agency of humankind. Right? That's what God is saying is Satan's purpose right here, which I got given. And also that I should give unto him my own power. By the power of my own only begotten. I caused that he should be cast down. Now let's take my only begotten. What is he talking about? Because at this phase in our existence, there are a hundred billion of us. We're all begotten.

John Larsen [01:06:43] God does not have an only begotten. Why would he even use that language? Why would he use that language with Moses? Moses wouldn't know what he's talking about, right? Jesus Christ hasn't been born. What does it mean, only begotten?

John Dehlin [01:06:56] Now, if I'm thinking of like Bruce Armaconki, Joseph Fielding Smith, Mormon doctrine. There's only one being ever that God literally used his physical member to impregnate a human being. So that Jesus that was born of Mary through the, you know, the great and powerful. What is it? The condescension of God or whatever it is like Jesus was the product of actual. Some say copulation, others say rape of the mortal. Physical God impregnating, sorry, the immortal but physical God, the father Elohim, having celestial sex with Mary and creating Jesus as an offspring. That's the only. That's the only interpretation as a Mormon I would know of for the only begotten. Because Jesus is the only one that's created as a product of sex between God and another mortal.

John Larsen [01:08:02] That was, that was definitely Brigham Young's teaching. Brigham Young taught that specific explicitly. It's implied in Joseph Smith. But let's, let's pull this apart a little bit. God is a mortal being and becomes exalted wife or wives also become exalted. They pass their second estate and move on to exaltation. They copulate with their resurrected physical bodies and they come up with beings with the first estate. But in order to actually create the body of the second estate, God has to have incestuous sex with an offspring of his first estate spirits and the man Adam that he created from clay. Just doesn't make any sense. Do you guys see this? Like this? None of this makes sense.

John Dehlin [01:09:00] I just had an episode and John Larsen, I don't know if you can do any, do anything about this. Your video is coming through a little choppy. I don't know if there's anything you can, Windows you can shut down or services you can shut off. I just wanted to let you know that. And I'll give you a little bit of time if there's anything you want to do and just say this. We just, we just recently discussed or learned about the Kingston clan on, on the podcast. We had, we had an amazing former former member of the Kingstons come on, Amanda Ray. And she talked about how incest was baked into the Kingston theology, the Mormon polygamous sect, the Kingstons.

John Dehlin [01:09:44] And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I was revolted and all of our viewers and listeners were revolted that a Mormon based theology would have incest as part of its doctrine. And now I'm just kind of stunned to realize that probably one of the greatest acts in all of Christianity, which is either the Immaculate conception or the condescension of God in Mormonism, where Mary becomes great with child is literally an incestuous act. There's no other way to describe it in Mormon theology. So incest is not only baked into the Kingston offshoot of Mormonism, it's baked into core original Mormon doctrine and theology. I'd never put that together.

John Larsen [01:10:35] Well, yes, and let's. The regular Christians don't have the belief in the pre existence so that it doesn't have the same bite. But yeah, incest comes up over and over again in the Old Testament and it's, it's honored. Right. So we could go through all the instances, but that's probably discussion for another day.

John Dehlin [01:10:54] That's good. It's good to know.

John Larsen [01:10:56] Okay. All right, so let's see. He sought to destroy the agency of man which I, Lord God had given him. And also that I should give unto him my own power by a power of my own God. And I caused. He should be cast down. And he became Satan. Yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men and to lead them captive at his will. Even as many as would not hearken unto my voice.

John Larsen [01:11:19] And now the serpent was more subtle than any beast. The field which I, Lord God made and Satan put into his heart, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We've already talked about that. But I want to focus in on the first four here. So God is upset here that Satan says, or Lucifer, I should say, Lucifer says, let's save everybody, let's take everybody, all the spirits that you've created, that they might have joy. And what we're going to do is we're going to not let them watch rated R movies and we're going to tell them they can't date till they're 16. And we're going to tell them they need to get married in the temple and we're going to cut off any path where they might fall away from you, dear God.

John Larsen [01:11:56] And this angers God to such extent that he turns Lucifer, who at this point has said no lies, right? He just says, let, let me save them all and then I'll have the glory. That. That might be a dick thing to say, but it's not a lie.

John Larsen [01:12:15] And, and father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men and to lead them captive at his will. Why did God give this right and authority to Satan? Why did he make him the father of all lies?

John Larsen [01:12:38] Now I want to skip down, let's scroll down to verse 11 to show you again the problems in these verses. We just, we just.

John Dehlin [01:12:47] No, I just want to say I, I just, I'm reflecting on what you just said. Yeah. It says, and now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which I, the Lord God had made. Where does it say that God created Satan, created Lucifer. I mean, where else would it have we have come from? He had to have been God's, God's creation, right?

John Larsen [01:13:07] Who's Satan?

John Dehlin [01:13:08] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:13:08] Lucifer. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:09] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:13:10] Well, what? Yes, yes, yes. But we're Edward to get there in just a second.

John Dehlin [01:13:14] Okay? Okay. Okay, Keep going.

John Larsen [01:13:15] Okay.

Carah Burrell [01:13:16] Subtle though. Like being subtle is a crime. More subtle than any beast I've ever made.

John Larsen [01:13:22] And I like the translation to being crafty a little bit better. Sneaky, sneaky snake. Okay. Verse 11. And then for God doth know that in that day, this is what, this is what Satan says. Okay. Satan says, God says, don't eat of any of the tree of knowledge of good and evil because the day you eat of it, you will die. That's what God tells Adam and Eve, right?

John Dehlin [01:13:48] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:13:49] Now Satan comes and says, you shall not surely die, but you shall be as the gods knowing good and evil. Right?

John Dehlin [01:13:57] Which is true.

Carah Burrell [01:13:58] Then a cloak comes into the screen.

John Larsen [01:14:00] Who lied?

John Dehlin [01:14:04] God.

John Larsen [01:14:05] God lied.

John Dehlin [01:14:06] God lied.

John Larsen [01:14:06] The father of all lies tells a truth and matter of fact, it says right here in the scriptures that he did. 11. For God doth know that in the day you eat thereof that your eyes shall be open and ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil. Right? So let me, let me be clear what this scripture says. Until Eve eats of this fruit, she does not know the difference between good and evil, right? That's what the book Says, Are you guys with me?

John Dehlin [01:14:34] Correct. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:14:35] I love this. Yeah.

John Larsen [01:14:36] Let's read verse 12. Do you want to read that first sentence, John?

John Dehlin [01:14:43] Go ahead, Carah.

Carah Burrell [01:14:44] I'll do the Womanly 1. Verse 12. And when the woman saw that the tree was good.

John Larsen [01:14:50] Wait, wait, wait. She what?

Carah Burrell [01:14:52] She saw that it was good.

John Dehlin [01:14:55] What?

John Larsen [01:14:55] What?

John Dehlin [01:14:56] What?

John Larsen [01:14:57] How would she possibly see that it's good? It tells us in the verse right before that that she doesn't know what good is.

Carah Burrell [01:15:07] Her eyes were open the second that she tried it.

John Larsen [01:15:10] But that's. She tries it because she sees that it's good.

Carah Burrell [01:15:15] She sees that it's good to go forward with this temptation.

John Larsen [01:15:19] She doesn't know what good. She doesn't know the difference between good and evil. She hasn't partaken of the fruit, and yet she.

John Dehlin [01:15:26] And yet she knows that the fruit is good.

Satan's Motives and Role in Mormon Theology

John Larsen [01:15:30] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:15:30] Yeah, yeah, that's. That's contradicting. It's pretty contradicting.

John Larsen [01:15:34] And then she says it's pleasant to the eyes. Pleasant is a form of goodliness, tree to be desired, you know, to make her wise.

John Dehlin [01:15:42] She should know that.

Carah Burrell [01:15:43] She should know that because then it says, then she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and. And also gave it to her husband.

John Dehlin [01:15:50] She's omniscient before she's partaken of the fruit, which.

John Larsen [01:15:54] So. So now who's lying here? They didn't die. Adam and Eve did not die. According to the book of the Genesis, Adam lived like 962 or something like that. So he had a long life. And they did. It made them. It made them wise.

John Dehlin [01:16:17] Yeah, their eyes opened, they realized they were naked, etc. Put the aprons on. Yeah, they didn't die. They super didn't die.

John Larsen [01:16:24] Verse 28. And I the Lord God said unto mine only begotten, Behold, the man has become as one of us to know good and evil. And now lest he put forth his hand and partake also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, God fully acknowledges his own lie to Adam and Eve and acknowledges that what Satan through the snake told Adam and Eve was absolutely the truth.

John Larsen [01:16:51] Now the, the other about this is that is. Is that this was God's intent the whole time. God always intended Lucifer to, to. To do this. And when he. And he sent him down to be the father of lies, even though he's not lying, as a matter of fact, Lucifer hardly ever lies in the scriptures.

John Larsen [01:17:17] So what do we know about. Let's. Let's take the stuff that, that, that gets added in the temple. Okay? First of all, there is no serpent in the temple. Just Lucifer comes strolling into the garden and starts talking to the, to the, the naked kids there.

John Larsen [01:17:33] And, and what does, what does, what is he asked? Lucifer is asked, what is that apron that you have on? And the answer is, what do you guys remember?

John Dehlin [01:17:46] Is it emblem of my powers and priesthoods or something like that?

John Larsen [01:17:50] It is an emblem of my power and priest hoods. So Satan having only achieved his first estate as sent to this earth and he is wearing priestly robes that are emblematic of the power that he has. Right. And then Peter, James and John come down after he gives the fruit to Adam and Eve. And Peter, yes, that Peter asks Lucifer, what have you done here? And what's Satan's reply?

Carah Burrell [01:18:24] I'm doing what has been done in other worlds.

John Dehlin [01:18:26] That which is done in other worlds.

John Larsen [01:18:28] That which has been done in other worlds.

John Dehlin [01:18:31] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:18:32] So we know. What do we know about Satan at this point? What do we know about Lucifer? One, he has priesthood and power. Two, he has seen this whole thing play out at least twice the twice before in Satan's existence. He has watched humanity come down, watched another poor SAP be recruited as the father of lies and become the devil and watch this whole thing play out.

John Larsen [01:19:02] Why does Satan do this? It makes zero sense. Why would he be cast out of heaven and called the father of lies? And then his one first role is to actually tell the truth and persuade Adam and Eve to do the one thing that they had to do in the garden of Eden because God set them up to fail. Right? They would live forever in the garden in a state of innocence, never knowing good from evil. Unless they partook of the fruit. When they partook of the fruit, they'd be cast out and introduce mortality into the world, which was God's plan. Right? That's what Jesus.

John Larsen [01:19:35] That we'd all come down to mortality and have bodies. God set the whole system up so it wouldn't actually happen unless Satan came down, which he cast down to kick the whole thing off. But Satan knew that would happen because he'd seen it happen at least twice.

John Larsen [01:19:52] And he retains his priesthoods. He retains his, his godly powers. Right? Priesthood is the power of God. So what's going on here? For real?

John Dehlin [01:20:05] Yeah, I remember, I remember asking my seminary teachers in high school, isn't Satan an essential plan? Isn't. Isn't Satan an essential part of the plan of salvation? Because if Satan wasn't, first of all, God created him. Second of all, God put him there. Third of all, God's like hanging out with him in Job and like joking with him and doing little challenges with Job and his family and killing his family and killing his. His. You know, why would God be abiding Satan? But most importantly, if the whole purpose of our existence is to choose good from evil and to return, Satan's playing a critical role in providing us with the doubt and the temptation. So we. Satan's almost supposed to be like fourth in the Godhead. He's just playing a bit of an antithesis role to allow us to be tested. So why is he getting punished for this?

John Larsen [01:21:07] Why is he doing it at all?

John Dehlin [01:21:09] Yeah, well, I have an answer to that.

Carah Burrell [01:21:12] I got an answer. I got the Mormon right here.

John Dehlin [01:21:14] Okay.

Carah Burrell [01:21:15] The, the Mormon answer is the. So he can get as many souls to get on his side before like the final battle of Jesus Christ just because he wants to. He's just a curious guy. He wants to see how many souls he can take down to hell with him. And that makes him happy for a short time. Is that right?

John Dehlin [01:21:29] That's good. Nice buzz.

Carah Burrell [01:21:31] Thanks.

John Dehlin [01:21:31] And John Larsen, I don't want to steal your thunder, but I'm going to take a page out of Stephen Hasson's or Luna Lindsay Corbin's book on, on. On High Demand Religions or cults. One of the main tactics of cults is blame reversal. If this world is a. I'll just follow your lead and swear. If this world, if this life is a shithole, if babies get cancer and children can be assaulted and people die for. For unknown reasons and there's all this unfairness and everyone's screwing up all the time. According to God's laws, there's got to be someone to blame. And it's not Satan, by the way, it's us.

John Dehlin [01:22:12] But you need some. It can't be God that's making us do bad things or that's tempting us to do bad things, even though there are probably scriptures where God is tempting his children to do bad things. But anyway, Satan is the one that facilitates the blame direction or the shame game back to us for any mistake that we make. That's. That's Satan's role. It's to facilitate blame reversal so that we all feel like crap and feel like we need the church and the bishop and to pay 10% of our income and give our lives and our reputation to the church. That's what I think it's about.

John Larsen [01:22:52] Yeah. Satan is constantly just fills the role of whatever they need him to fill. When you try to connect the dots as we're going to keep doing through the next two episodes. You'll find that there's not a character there. He just appears when he's needed to appear, and then he disappears.

John Dehlin [01:23:09] It's like a variable. It's like X in an algebra equation. Fill Satan with whatever you need him to do at the time.

John Larsen [01:23:16] Okay, so there's one last passage, and then we can return to the problem of evil and kind of explore a little bit deeper these questions we're asking. Joseph Smith puts one other interesting thing here in Moses, chapter one, verses nine through 24. We're not going to read all the verses, I promise you. Moses 1, 9, 24. And this is one of those things where Mormons are oftentimes at a big disadvantage when it comes to engaging the Christian world at large. And this one dawned on me when I was studying this, because even though I've been studying this stuff for years and years and years, it really hadn't occurred to me what's going on here.

John Larsen [01:23:50] Now, in this passage, Joseph Smith is rewriting Genesis, right? He's retranslating the Bible. And if you recall, Moses ascends Mount Sinai and he prays for guidance. And God appears to Moses in the form or in the shape of a burning bush.

John Larsen [01:24:16] So right after that, picking up verse nine. And none of this is in the Bible, by the way. And this is what I'm talking about is Mormons think that there's this whole interaction between Moses and the devil. And to go back to where we started on this whole podcast, there isn't. Moses never mentions the devil. Moses has no reference at all to the devil.

John Larsen [01:24:38] So verse 9. And the presence of God withdrew from Moses, and his glory was not upon Moses, and more was left unto himself. And he fell into the earth. And it came to pass. It was for the space of many hours before Moses did a grin receives natural strength, like unto man. And he said in himself. Now for this cause and no man is nothing, which thing I've never supposed. And it's full of all sort of twiddle like this, just as nonsense information.

John Larsen [01:25:03] Okay, but let's go down. And he goes on about this sort of stuff. And it came to pass when Moses had said these words, verse 12. Behold, Satan came tempting him, saying, moses, son of man, worship me. And it came to pass that Moses looked upon Satan and said, who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God. I am the similitude of his only begotten. Again, I don't know how Moses would know that. And where is thy glory? That I should worship thee. Oh, and parenthetically, let's say according to modern Mormon doctrine, he. He's not even talking to God, Moses, he's talking to Jehovah.

John Larsen [01:25:38] He's actually talking to Jesus Christ, right? And it came to pass, Moses looked around saying, who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God. For behold, I could not look upon God except his glory should come upon me. And I were transfigured before him. But I can look upon thee in the natural man, is it not so? Surely. Blessed be the name of God. Get thee hence. Satan. Verse 16.

John Larsen [01:25:58] He throws Satan out. So Satan, let's go. This guy, right? He was one of the noble ones in the pre existence. He gets sent down to earth and put as the father of all lies, right? He has priesthoods signified by his apron and he has witnessed this whole narrative play out. He knows everything that's going to happen.

John Larsen [01:26:26] He's got his minions, he's got third, the host of heaven, and he's sitting here watching. And Moses sees God in all of his glory. Lucifer knows that. Lucifer knows God. Lucifer has talked to God directly, right? Why would he do this? Why would he appear? Why would he walk up and say, I'm God, you know, like he knows that Moses literally just saw God in all of his glory.

John Larsen [01:26:56] Like this is one of those satanic dumbasseries. Like it makes no sense whatsoever. And it doesn't add anything to the narrative, but it does do one thing. It does foreshadow what Joseph Smith is going to say about the devil when he talks about the first vision. So in my interpretation of this scripture, it doesn't build Satan's character any at all. It helps make him look even stupider. But it does bolster the claims that Joseph Smith made in the first vision in 1830, which we're going to get to in a future episode here.

John Larsen [01:27:33] All right, so I just want to point out that this whole thing was Joseph Smith's ancient incarnations of the devil. And this is. This is one of them. And there we go.

John Dehlin [01:27:43] Okay.

Mormon Theodicy and God's Complicity in Evil

John Larsen [01:27:44] All right, so the theodicy, is God the author of evil or is he subjected to it? And I would think that it's clear from these passages and maybe we have to knit them together a little bit, that Smith's theodicy, meaning Smith's solution to the problem of evil, is to place evil outside of God.

John Larsen [01:28:08] Lucifer was doing that which was done in other worlds. God is not the author of evil. In Mormon theology, evil predates and pre exists God that the devil engaged in his action by observing actions of others that were pre existent.

John Larsen [01:28:32] In Mormon theology, evil is as real as God, Evil is as eternal as God. And if we give like the numbers from the pre existence for dummies, evil is stronger and bigger and more populous than God. And because this has been happening over and over again, good never overcomes evil. We came here to get free will and the priesthood, but somebody already gave it to Lucifer. He has free will, he can act on his own, he can tempt people. So he has magical powers, he has priesthoods, he has everything that we hope to get from the second estate, but he never had the second estate.

John Larsen [01:29:16] And of course in Mormon theology he'll be bound and then loosed for a thousand years and then bound. But by that time there'll be more Lucifers coming along that the ultimate result of God and God's plan is to just keep spewing out more and more and more evil.

John Larsen [01:29:35] It's like eternally tipping the scales and creating more evil in the world in order to. What, what was God's motivation? Glory worship. He wants to have the glory. God doesn't care that Lucifer and his minions are evil and are destroying this world. God doesn't care that most of us will be led away, will, will be taken over in sin, will be abused and we will go on to abuse. We will, we will do all that thing. God doesn't care because God cares about one thing. He wants to be worshiped.

John Larsen [01:30:13] That's the theology of Smith. I find it disturbing, which goes to your question of why am I a little bit agitated? Because this is some pretty raw crazy stuff as far as I'm concerned.

John Dehlin [01:30:25] So can I, can we play devil's advocate? Oh, no pun intended. Can we play devil's advocate?

John Larsen [01:30:30] Please? Please.

John Dehlin [01:30:32] So okay, I'm putting on my Mormon hat for a second. I'm thinking no God cares. But like maybe God's not all powerful.

John Larsen [01:30:41] So clearly not.

John Dehlin [01:30:42] Well, I mean on the one hand God created Satan, but then maybe Satan had some intelligence or pre intelligence that influenced his decisions. But at the end of the day, either God allows Satan to do what he does, he could defeat Satan, but he, but he doesn't because he needs Satan to play that role. Or God just doesn't have the power to defeat Satan.

John Dehlin [01:31:10] And, and so he's not all powerful. Yeah, he's not. Well there's, there's big G God and little G God, right? Big G God would be all powerful God. Little, little G God would be like, well he's all powerful compared to Us, but he can't kill himself. Like, I remember having these thoughts again in seminary. If God were all powerful, he could kill himself, but he can't kill himself, so he's not all powerful. If God were all powerful, he could be evil, but he can't be evil, or else the scripture tells he'd cease to be God. And, and so he's not all powerful.

Carah Burrell [01:31:47] Yeah, that idea of, like, could God make a stone so heavy that he could not lift it? Or could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he could not eat it? But I, I do think, like, my deconstruction after Mormonism, after I. I discovered that the truth claims were not true and I still was a Christian, it was that contradiction between omni benevolence and ob. You know, God being all powerful and stuff where it felt like they all canceled each other out because what I was worshiping was supposed to be this God that is all of those things, but those all can't coexist at the same time. And then my brain went poof. And that God doesn't exist.

John Dehlin [01:32:25] Well, John, react to our. React to our. Our of devil's. Devil's advocacy.

John Larsen [01:32:31] I think you're great theologians. I mean, it could be any of these things, or maybe. Maybe this is all just made up. Maybe there isn't a God and there isn't a devil. And, and, and we evolved and we're up and we have problems and we're good and we. We seek after beauty and, and we're all these things. There is no God and devil. It's inside both of us. We're both good and evil human beings.

John Dehlin [01:32:58] Maybe we're all monkeys. Is that what you're saying?

John Larsen [01:33:00] Yeah, yeah. No, I, I think. I think that like I said in the beginning, this is foundational to Mormonism. The devil is.

John Dehlin [01:33:14] Yeah. And like a lot of our. A lot of our never. Mormon viewers and listeners don't understand that in the Mormon temple ceremony, which is the pinnacle Mormon, you know, rite or ritual, it's the endowment and then the temple marriage, that literally is the. Is peak Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:33:35] It's. It's all about this movie that you watch that starts out with God and Elohim and Jehovah, and they create the earth in seven days, and then they create the garden, and then Adam and Eve show up as characters and Lucifer shows up in characters. And this is all theology taught as the foundation for then what the church presents as the law of consecration, the law of the gospel, the law of tithing, the law of obedience, the Law of sacrifice. And then you do all the handshakes and you learn your name and you do the tokens and you, you make these covenants and then you get to pass through the veil to go to the celestial room. Like this is everything, right?

John Larsen [01:34:15] Yeah, this is, this is the pinnacle of Mormonism. Well, this, and then the, the, the second anointing, of course, but you know, then, then you get to have your wife wash your feet with her hair. And that's really something to look forward to, I guess.

John Dehlin [01:34:27] I don't know.

John Larsen [01:34:29] They, they lost me by that point. Yeah, the, that Joseph Smith really relies on the, on the devil and he does from the first vision on. And, and you know, he even says some revelations are from the devil. He says flat out, you know, and then he goes on, there's, you know, doctrine covenants we'll get in this next episode, but there's only 138 revelations. They restored the gospel, right? Then we only have these handful of revelations. One goes on and on about how to tell if you're talking to what kind of spirit by shaking their hand, you know, like really valuable stuff like that. Like, and I know I've said it a million times, but if God really loved us, there would have been revelation, doctrine covenants, 14, boil your water, you know, that sort of thing.

John Larsen [01:35:16] But it's not there. We get to learn how to shake hands with spirits. No, I think that, I think for me, theologically, you know, especially in the beginning here, the devil is just a coil who shows up to do God's dirty work.

John Larsen [01:35:31] And I don't know how you can erase the complicity of God in all of this, because either God is not powerful and he's posing to be just in order to get worshiped. Geez, what a douche. Or he is powerful. And you know, I always think about that when you talk to my Catholic friends who start talking on about like all the demons, the distorted, twisted demons who spend, you know, like Dante's Inferno, like, being that all it does is delight in, you know, raping you and pulling your limbs off and all that kind of stuff. That being was created by God, that God authors hell.

John Larsen [01:36:09] Otherwise you have to say the devil has creative power, which Christians are not willing to say. So that means you have to go back and say every terrible thing you ever imagine in hell was created by God gleefully on his computer, however he did it, you know, and this one will have big horns in a 14 inch cock, whatever, you know, I don't what, you know, that was all coming

John Dehlin [01:36:31] From God, John Larsen.

Carah Burrell [01:36:33] Well, there are ideas from this thing right here hounding you for eternity.

John Dehlin [01:36:39] Jumped the shark. We just jumped the shark, Carol.

John Larsen [01:36:42] No, wait, wait. Medieval transcripts of the Bible, Art in the. Art in the, in the cathedrals always depicts demons with a giant member. I am just being true to my Christian roots, John.

John Dehlin [01:36:57] Carol, what do you think about John Larsen's treatise on Satan, Lucifer, Son of the Morning, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles? What do you think?

Carah Burrell [01:37:08] Yeah, I think that's all kind of part of what happened with my deconstruction out of Mormonism and then out of Christianity generally is trying to hold on to something. We all want to have some, some sure foundation of why we're here, where we're going, that kind of eternal pursuit and just kind of realizing that once you ask follow up questions, it all kinds of fall, it all kinds of falls apart. And that's what we're talking about here. Is Satan having to be an integral piece of this puzzle created by God, and who is this God then I that I worship? Who am I actually praying to?

Carah Burrell [01:37:42] I think that comes in a lot when you're deconstructing Mormonism is that at first you're like, God, I, I want you to answer my prayers. I heard that you'll be there for me. And then suddenly realizing more of the character of God, of being like, who are you? Who am I talking to? Take the curtain behind and it's actually God and Satan in one, kind of pulling you in both directions, logic pulling you in another. But I think it's ultimately for everyone's benefit, Mormons included, to really study what this character of God is that we're talking about. So it's like you can continue to be Mormon and worship and get all of these good things out of your religious system, but it's the dogma and tying it so strongly, like we've talked about with doomsday cults or anybody who takes this type of theology too seriously when it is such a. What was the word you used, John Larsen? Something fuckery.

John Larsen [01:38:32] Twitter.

John Dehlin [01:38:33] Twiddle.

John Larsen [01:38:33] Fuckery.

Carah Burrell [01:38:34] Yeah, everyone in the chat's like using that. Yeah. When, when it's, it's, it's that dogma. When people just take these ideas too seriously, but they haven't truly investigated them for themselves, they haven't asked the follow up questions. And then people are like, you know, penalized when you do ask follow up questions of like, I don't know how I can worship this God, because it just doesn't seem like A good God, a coherent God that I can actually get the answers to my questions from. And that's kind of where that. That tear in your deconstructing heart goes. And people feel really betrayed that they don't even know who they're praying to anymore. And it's like that. The journey of life begins now, folks.

John Dehlin [01:39:13] Thanks, Carah.

John Larsen [01:39:14] Well, just a subtle reminder. This is just part one. We're just getting rolling. The devil, devil is all through the Book of Mormon, through the New Testament, and then into the modern world. So we got more to. More to cover of the most interesting character in all of Mormonism and Christendom,

John Dehlin [01:39:32] John Larsen, we've missed you. So it's really. It's really good to have you back. And Carah, we've missed you. Gosh darn it.

John Larsen [01:39:38] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:39] You've been gone even longer than John Larsen, so cut that out.

Carah Burrell [01:39:43] I know I'll be in this chair 24 7. Now that Tim Ballard has even more news out right now, I will not leave this chair.

Donor Thanks and Closing Remarks

John Dehlin [01:39:52] Really quick, we want to thank Robin Nomea for her super chat. Anson Jones, you know, these super chats help pay for this program. Thanks, Waldo. Also, most importantly, I want to thank all the donors who donate to the Mormon Expression Project.

John Dehlin [01:40:08] If you guys want to see John and Carah continue to come on the podcast once a month, what you need to do is you need to go to mormonstories.org mormonexpression click on the donate button there. Become a monthly donor, and I'm gonna type that right now in the chat window. And once you do, once you become a monthly donor, that just enables us to keep commissioning more and more episodes from John and Carah. So for everyone who already is a donor to Mormon Stories or Mormon Expression Project, thank you to those who aren't. If you love, if you tune in for Karen, John, if you love their stuff, please support us.

John Dehlin [01:40:54] We lose donors every month. People fall on financial hard times, they lose interest, they move on, which we actually think is probably a good thing overall. So we just always need new folks who are finding value in what we do to join us. So please do that. I also am going to give a shout out to Carah's amazing channel. You can go to YouTube/nuanceho and you can check out some really good work that Carah's doing. You can also venmo her or Dropbox her some funds. Carah deserves your support.

John Dehlin [01:41:30] Yeah, her podcast is really loved by many, many people. Thanks. Thanks. Songs of Our Town as well. And then, Joe Larsen, sometimes you point people to your Website to support your. Your garden work, Right?

John Larsen [01:41:47] My farm. Yeah. And I. I have. But I'll. I'll. I'll say if you. If you want to support me and the farm, you can sit on your hands a little bit. We're going to be launching a GoFundMe to build a new hoop house to be able to open our farm, our farmers market stand here. So more information to come up on a coming episode. But let me just say I've been really super generous. People have helped fund the operation out here, and we have really enjoyed it, and we're kind of getting ready to gear up to the next level on the farm, and I hope to be able to share stuff with. With y' all and maybe have y' all come visit. Carah's come and visit.

Carah Burrell [01:42:29] I love your farm.

John Larsen [01:42:31] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:42:32] Makes me so happy. You do such cool work on and off screen. John Larsen, you're the best.

John Larsen [01:42:39] I always got to keep my ADHD engaged.

John Dehlin [01:42:43] One last reminder. Richard writes, Satan, smash the like button. Will you please do like this episode? Please do subscribe to the Mormon stories podcast, Facebook, YouTube channel, Facebook channel, Tick Tock, Instagram, all of it. Also, while you're at it, subscribe to. To NuanceHoe YouTube channel as well, and Instagram and Tick Tock. Because the algorithms, you know, do good things for us when people subscribe and. And everything. Carrie, you're. You're. Are you making out with Joseph Smith there, Carah? Is that what you're doing?

Carah Burrell [01:43:20] No. He only had one wife, his wife, Emma. He loved her so much. And we're just friends.

John Dehlin [01:43:25] You're just cuddling. You're. You're spooning Joseph Smith.

Carah Burrell [01:43:29] Yeah, just. We talk about the guy so much, he should make an appearance.

John Dehlin [01:43:33] All right. All right. Well, thanks, Carah. Thanks, John. John, you'll be back in two weeks, is that right?

John Larsen [01:43:39] In two weeks we're picking up the next one?

Carah Burrell [01:43:41] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:43:42] All right, that's just. That might be more Satan than I can handle, John Larsen.

John Larsen [01:43:45] Oh, the next. The next episode gets. Gets really fun.

John Dehlin [01:43:49] So are you gonna have more F bombs than this episode or less?

John Larsen [01:43:52] I don't know. What do you want? Should we get Paul the swear jar? They. They usually donations go up whenever I curse.

John Dehlin [01:43:59] We're going to have Carah drink a shot of vodka every time John uses the F bomb and see how that goes throughout the episode.

Carah Burrell [01:44:06] I'll try to grow out my facial hair to match your guys's by that time, too.

John Dehlin [01:44:11] All right. All right. Thanks, Carah. Thanks, John. And thanks, everyone again for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Podcast. We love you guys. We appreciate the support. We've loved the comments in the chat. Please feel free to email us@mormonstoriesgmail.com if you have feedback. You can also email John larson@john larson.org and we we love your comments, we love your support, and we have a lot of other good stuff coming up to close out this year and coming into the next year. So please stay tuned for all the good Mormon Stories goodness that's coming out soon. Please be kind to each other, be good to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Also, thanks to Maven and Julia and Gerardo and our board for all they do to make all this possible. Thanks everybody. You guys take care of.

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.