Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Super excited for today's episode. You know, what did Joseph Smith believe about the Trinity and when did he believe it? What did Joseph Smith write about the Trinity and when did he write it? That is going to be my brief attempt at the summary of what today's episode about is about. Today we are super excited to have with us in the house both Carol Burrell or otherwise known as NuanceHoe as my co host, my monthly co host with these episodes of John Larsen.

Carah Burrell [00:00:34] Hi, John. Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:00:35] It's good to have you.

Carah Burrell [00:00:37] Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:00:38] And of course, the guest of the hour, the expert of the hour is the one, the only John Larsen, former host of Mormon Expression Podcast. Hey, John Larsen.

John Larsen [00:00:49] Hey guys, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:52] It's super good to have you. And we want to welcome our live stream viewing audience, Bob, both on YouTube and on Facebook. Looks like, I think Maven's monitoring the comments today. And we will do our best to incorporate questions and comments from our viewing audience as part of the live stream. We always, of course, welcome donations through the Super Chat or the Stars feature on Facebook. Carah, any, any quick updates from you that you want to share just with what's going on? Any, any opening thoughts or comments?

Carah Burrell [00:01:28] No, I'm, I'm just gonna go, I'm gonna go see this guy John Larsen tomorrow.

John Dehlin [00:01:33] That's okay.

Carah Burrell [00:01:34] Getting on an airplane so we won't be states apart. So that's all that's new with me. I'm just pumped about that.

John Dehlin [00:01:40] That's awesome. Yeah, well, Utah's loss is Oregon's gain.

Carah Burrell [00:01:46] Yeah, we're all migrating, at least for a weekend.

John Dehlin [00:01:50] Oh, hey, my buddy Richard Holdman from Holdman Christmas has thrown in a super chat. Hey, Richard. Richard is one of the early Friends of Mormon Stories podcast. He, he recorded in high quality video and audio many of the first episodes on Mormon Stories before we ever had a studio. Love you, Richard. Shout out to you. Thanks for the super chat.

John Larsen [00:02:11] Yes, love you, Richard. And you need to call me, man. Let me tell you a story about Richard. After Zilfa and I got divorced, we lived in a, we lived in a house together for a year and then came time to sell the house and, and, and get out of the, out of the neighborhood and go on with our lives. And so Zilfa was graduating with her, a master's degree at the time. So we wanted to throw a joint, you know, get out of jail, get out of the Lehigh party. And Richard brought all this high end like audio equipment like Richard when he was a kid. He used to do steak and war dances, that sort of stuff. And so Richard brought all that to my house, and we wired up the entire house. We had cops circling that place all night long. It was a great party. Thanks, Richard. You're the best.

John Dehlin [00:03:01] All right, thanks for that shout out and love you, Richard. Okay. And John Larsen, before we dive into the topic for today's episode, you usually have a few, I don't know, comments or, or news items or reflections on past episodes. So what do you got for us today?

John Larsen [00:03:19] Yeah, yeah. And I encourage, if anybody finds something that I say that is wrong to please post it, send it in. You know, we're only after the truth. I don't have a side. And this is a shout out to the.

John Larsen [00:03:32] The amazing Brian Whitney, a true scholar who caught that? I said 80% of the youth are leaving the church, which is not a correct stat, as far as I know. What I did in my mind is I conflated two things. There was a social study done a few years ago about the church in which they said 80% of membership would go inactive for at least one year. So of all Mormons, 80% of people will be inactive for at least one year. And then just conflating that with the work of especially Jana Reese, who's doing a lot of great things right now. I'm talking about Gen Z and how they're interacting with the church and what's going on.

John Larsen [00:04:10] And so the reports are from many sources that the youth are leaving the church in, in. In droves. But in actuality, sorry, Brian, I don't have the, The. The. The staff, so thanks for that call out.

John Dehlin [00:04:24] All right, well, it's okay.

John Larsen [00:04:26] I have a call out for John Dehlin. I was, I was on YouTube the other day, and I saw a little header that said it was John accusing the church of hiring lawyer or, or the general authorities come from lawyers and businessmen, you said. I want to correct you a little bit. It's actually always corporate lawyers. It's not just any lawyer. It's a corporate lawyer. And it's not just any business person. It is an executive, usually from a. From a Fortune 500 company. So it's worse than what you accused them of. They really model the entire structure of the church off of modern American corporate dealings. And that, that's, that's.

John Dehlin [00:05:06] It's not public defender attorneys, and it's not entrepreneurs or like, you know, nonprofit. Nonprofit executives, you're saying. Got it.

John Larsen [00:05:16] Indeed.

John Dehlin [00:05:17] All right, Super. Super. Thanks to both Brian S. And, And Carrie Bersloth. For the super chats. We just always appreciate the support and we're going to call it out. Okay, John, any other. This has been a crazy week in terms of a couple weeks. In terms of the Associated Press and the sexual abuse case in Arizona and all that sort of stuff, I don't expect you to have some sort of hot take, but it has been a crazy, hard, emotional couple weeks. I can say that it has.

John Larsen [00:05:48] I've, I've not fully up to date. I haven't read the latest church statement. Mostly what I get is out of the newspapers. But yeah, I mean, for people who've been in these circles, this is not new news. The church has been doing this sort of stuff for a long time. It's, it's, it's always interesting when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar on this one and when they get caught lying.

John Larsen [00:06:09] I don't think, I think there's a lot of people. I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but the Church releases its statements for the membership who either reads them or likely has a priesthood authority. Read them for them. So, so it's just like apologetics. They're, they're speaking in completely internal. So I don't think this will have as much of an impact to say Prop 8 did, but we can only hope. And what we're hoping for is not any kind of damage to the Church. It's that these victims that keep getting their story buried in the protection of the Church get their due and that, that we, we crush these systems that allow for men to have way too much sexual power over people they have no business having sexual power over. And to enable abusers in order to protect the church. It just needs to stop.

John Dehlin [00:07:00] I agree. Yeah, I agree. All right, John. Well, you picked a really, a really interesting and important topic today, one that I think is central to the Mormon Church's truth claims. Was really, really happy when you chose it. Do you want to give it an introduction and tell us why you picked it?

What Makes Mormonism Fascinating and Tragic

John Larsen [00:07:21] Sure. I think one of the shames or one of the tragedies of Mormonism is you have this really interesting, fascinating religion that is born in the 19th century. You know, there, there are a few of them that are still left from that, the Great Awakening.

John Larsen [00:07:37] And they speak a lot about war, where Americans, especially on the frontier, where their thought was, where their spirituality was. Those early years of the church are an amazing gold mine of information and they are the founding church fathers actually wrote quite a bit. And I think one of the tragedies of Mormonism is that even people who would fancy themselves Mormon scholars oftentimes don't know or understand because we're not allowed to study it the way it really was because later church authorities have made pronouncements about it. So we get caught into this prism where what we constantly have to be doing is defending the latest decision.

John Larsen [00:08:19] I mean, take something like when Nielsen said, okay, we're not going to use the word Mormon anymore. Completely ridiculous. It's nothing anybody, anybody who hadn't, you know, been bathed in just absolute power for, for 40 years would do, you know, and, and of course I get people me saying, you can't say the word Mormon. And I like that man has no authority over me. He doesn't get to say what I get, what I get to say. So it's, it's these frustrating decisions that are made in these echo chambers that they're in. And it's just, it really is kind of sad when you take the sport that I take where you're beating up the church, because they're really such easy targets.

John Larsen [00:08:57] They shouldn't be. They're powerful, they're rich, they're smart, but they, they, they, they do the worst thing you can do in this life, which is believe your own lies. And so they're, they're vulnerable. So I think looking into what Joseph Smith actually wrote and what he actually believed is really super important whether you're a believer or not.

John Dehlin [00:09:21] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It, it is, it is difficult to see how much money they have. We're talking hundreds of billions. Timothy Kosnoff, an attorney that we interviewed recently, he thinks the church is easily worth a trillion dollars right now in 2022. And once you've got a trillion dollars, you really should have the best lawyers, the best pr, the best marketing, you know, and, and the best support all the way around, I think.

John Larsen [00:09:54] But, you know, well, I, I think they've had a long history of trying to hire the best PR firms. The, the problem fundamentally is the church is wrong and it's not true, and it's obviously not true. So there's only so much spin you can do on that, you know, like, like you can hire the best firm in the world, but, you know, trying to preserve a message that you're the truth seekers and you're the righteous ones. You know, if you're going to lean into lies, you have to do it the way like Donald Trump does. You have to just go full bore in that. Since the church half asses it, they just find themselves exposed all the time.

John Dehlin [00:10:31] Yeah. And, and I think Jesus said it best. It's, it's hard to serve two masters. You know, I was, I was texting with a dear friend just today who was very disappointed about the lies the church is clearly telling about this sexual abuse case in Arizona. And it's really hard to try and simultaneously do everything you can to protect the church's financial interests and to defeat a lawsuit that, that is, you know, all about victims being sexually abused in a cover up. It's hard to do all of that and simultaneously try and make all your members believe and the public believe that you're all about protecting victims and helping victims. How do you do both? It's almost like the two things are in competition. How do you do both? They're almost.

John Larsen [00:11:19] Well, the, the church is in good company. You know, you have the Catholic Church doing the same stuff, so. Yeah, I, I don't know. It's, it's like we pointed out the beginning, the corporate lawyers and the executives, the, the idea that you can get what grapefruit juice from an apple is, is a really strange one. And that's what they're trying to do all the time. I mean, you really have to love the American system to say, you know what, we're going to form a religion that is based on revelation and compassion and the teachings of Jesus, and we're going to pick the leaders out of the ranks of American corporate culture.

John Larsen [00:11:53] I, I, you get exactly what, what you have. I, I can't understand the connection there. That there is no, there's not even. Just like I, I keyed up at the beginning of the podcast. Not even. Are we shopping for people who understand the basics of Mormon theology.

John Larsen [00:12:09] There hasn't been a theologian in the quorum of the 12 since Packer died. And, and these guys don't understand Mormonism any more than you all do. You're, you guys are just as school, you're more, you're here listening. You understand Mormon theology better than the guys running the church.

John Dehlin [00:12:26] Yeah. All right, well, where should we dive in, John?

John Larsen [00:12:30] Well, I want to know. I'm always, I'm always pounding on the church. I want to beat up on Christians a little bit because I've had to do some research on this and on

Carah Burrell [00:12:38] how nothing makes sense.

John Larsen [00:12:40] No, well, what, what, what I want to beat up on them is they're always calling out everybody else's heresy. Like, like, you know, we're going to go through Trinity, the Trinity versus modalism here in a minute. And as I read all These articles, you know, I, before I do podcasts, I fact check everything I go through and I say, okay, did I get this right? Did I get this right?

John Larsen [00:13:01] And I read the materials of my, my opposition because why would I want to read what like ex Mormons have to say about the Trinity? I want to see what Trinitarians have to say about the Trinity. So, so, but they're always calling each other names in their, you know, they're always like, this is unorthodox, this is a heresy, blah, blah, blah, you know, for, for being the standard of truth. Religious guys, you know, they're always accusing every other religious person of lying. You don't have to ask an atheist about to get a native opinion of religion. Just ask two religious people.

John Larsen [00:13:36] Just make sure there are two different religions and between those two people, they will cover every single religion and hate every one of them. Okay, enough.

Carah Burrell [00:13:48] All from the same book. All pulling their info from the same book.

Understanding the Trinity, Modalism, and the Godhead

John Larsen [00:13:53] Okay, so let's, let's jump right in and talk about what immormonism we like to call the Godhead. And I think that word really came about, I don't know, I'm just guessing to avoid the word the, The Trinity. Now the, the. The classic Catholic doctrine of the Trinity which is adopted by not just Catholics, but many, many different faiths. And I, I will caveat that saying. I am not a theologian. I'm not expert in this stuff. And this stuff gets really super nuanced. So if you read the comments down there in about three days, you'll find somebody who says John Larsen doesn't know what Christianity is about.

John Larsen [00:14:31] They won't put what I don't know, they'll just say that. But they're, they're right. I don't fully understand all this stuff. So, so the, the doctrine of the Christian Trinity is best explained by this. There is a God substance and all three members of the Trinity are God. They're one God. They all have Godness about them. But for a classic Trinitarian belief, they are co. Equal. They are co. Eternal and they're co. Substantial, substantial divine persons. So they have always existed. They will always exist. They are equal and together they function as the, the. As the overseer of this world. So for a Catholic, Jesus is not God.

John Larsen [00:15:25] But God and Jesus have. Take part in this. They call it. I'm really bad at Latin. Homo, homo Oecian is, is the word H o m o o u S I o n and it's, it's, it's the essence of what they are, that defines them as being God, of being that, that, that, that Father to us all. Okay, so that's, that's the, the Trinity. You guys have anything to add to that?

John Dehlin [00:15:55] Carah?

Carah Burrell [00:15:56] Oh, just. It never makes any sense. The, you know, there's a God that sent himself down to fulfill a law that he created for himself. Nothing ever makes sense. But continue. I'm sure you'll get to that. About how that's, that is not even really in the Old Testament, is it? Like, I think all of this Trinitarian stuff, this all had to kind of be extrapolated from the Old Testament and New Testament without even the foundational texts to pull from. It's kind of all just was made up after.

John Larsen [00:16:28] The Old Testament is monotheistic, right? It doesn't, it doesn't have this at all. So like Judaism and the other religions of the Book and Islam don't have a concept of, of, of, of multiple Godness. So that's something that came about in. Is it Nicaea or Trent? I don't remember which, which council, when they, when they fully adopted this, this, this way of belief. And as I was pointed out, sorry, the names just scrolled up. It is, you're right, it is Greek, not Latin. Okay, so, so that's the Trinity. The, the next heresy that the Trinitarians would describe is called modalism.

John Larsen [00:17:06] And so when you go out and read about modalism, you'll find a lot of people just like condemning it. But modalism is the way I would say that most Christians interpret God. So in modalism you have God who functions in different modes at different times. So in, in modalism you had God up in heaven in the Old Testament and then took mercy on humanity and descended himself, took on an earthly vessel in the person of Jesus Christ.

John Larsen [00:17:38] And then when Jesus Christ completes his mission or whatever, he returns to being God. God is defined as a mode as opposed to a, a distinct entity. So for modalists like the, the Holy Ghost really is not. They, they don't talk about it very much because it's just a, a avenue I would interpret of the way God communicates with us. It's, it's a metaphor.

John Larsen [00:18:11] So I think for most American Christians, especially evangelicals, they are definitely a modalist. But it's, it's difficult because modern American Christianity is stripping all of its doctrines. You know, if you, 200 years ago you, you would found the churches on different corners arguing about nuances like the Trinity versus modalism. And they just don't do that anymore. It's arguing about whether or not Jesus has, you know, three guns or eight guns is really where they're at right now.

Carah Burrell [00:18:43] What gun did Jesus buy? Like, those bracelets are available on street corners now.

John Larsen [00:18:47] Right, so we've got the, the trinitarian view and the modalist view. Then it's, it's probably a good time to talk about the, the Mormon view. So the, the Mormon view, you know, the first thing you have to say is which one? So there were there, what we have is between 1830 and 1844, we have Joseph Smith's evolving theology. And that's the rest of this hour. We're going to be going through that. And then after Joseph Smith's death, you have the Quorum of the twelve and Brigham Young, you know, controlling the doctrinal decisions until Brigham Young's death in 1877. So prior to 1877, the Mormon view was the Adam God doctrine, which basically the best way to understand it, and it's still, it's still kind of there in modern theology, is that you, you have the Trinity where you have these two gods that exist co immortal with one another.

John Larsen [00:19:42] You have the mode where God can switch and be what God wants to be. And then the best way to understand Mormon theology on the Godhead is that these are all offices, these are all positions. So God would be like the CEO of Pfizer, that, that when the CEO of Pfizer dies, there'll be another CEO of Pfizer, that we always have a CEO of Pfizer. So with Adam, God that was very explicit, you had these roles that, you know, Adam was, was, was, was at one time and, and I'm a little rusty, but you have, you have the office of Adam and you have the office of the Christ and you have the office of the Elohim.

John Larsen [00:20:22] And when this Elohim is done, then the Christ will become the Elohim and the Adam becomes the. I, I don't know. And then we every, everyone moves through these different, these different roles. So that's still a lightweight way of talking about the Godhead today in, in Mormonism, because the Holy Ghost in Mormonism and Jesus Christ are seen as offspring of God, so they're not co. Eternal with God. There was a point at which neither of those beings existed and then God birthed them in a spiritual birth. And, and God and the Holy Ghost were born. And the general belief about the Holy Ghost is that the Holy Ghost will be the last one to get a body.

John Larsen [00:21:02] Because once you get a body, you can't do. Do certain things, but you're still omnipotent. I. It, again, it all doesn't quite make sense to me. But, but that's, that's one of the differences. So the one thing I want to point out here is Mormons are always bashing on the Trinity. But the trinitarian view and the Mormon view is actually not that much different because the two key things where Mormons, where they stumble with Christians all the time is that they will never call the Sun God. Now, a Catholic would say God the Son, Jesus Christ, and Mormons would never say that. They would say Jesus Christ the Son of God. But. But their distinction of those two beings is two separate people, two separate entities. More matches a trinitarian view than a modalist view.

John Dehlin [00:21:56] How is that? Why is that?

John Larsen [00:22:00] Well, in a modalist view, Jesus is God, right? So if you go talk to a, A evangelical, you know, if they're praying to God and you say, well, which one? God the Father or Jesus? They'll just scratch their head at you because that, the Jesus is, is God in the mode of Jesus, they're. They're the same person, basically. And for both the Catholics and the trinitarian view and the Mormons, they're. They're distinct entities. They're distinct God, Gods, just Mormons. Mormons would have them becoming gods. You know, by and by, can we

Carah Burrell [00:22:32] vote on which one we think makes more sense? Because I remember that was part of my testimony is I always thought that the, the modality of the Mormon version always made more sense, that there was God and he had an only begotten son who came to die, as opposed to God sending himself in the mode of Savior. That never. That didn't make sense. And I was like, if that's the mainstream interpretation of what the Bible's trying to say here, I'm gonna go with the Mormon one. That makes way more sense to me.

John Larsen [00:22:55] Well, if we're gonna vote, then we need to put another candidate in here. We need Hinduism, where we have God, Brahma the, the Creator, then, then Vishnu the Sustainer and Shiva the Destroyer, which makes more sense to me than a single God. Because in monotheism, you're always trying to explain why God is schizophrenic. When you have a polytheistic religion, it makes perfect sense, you know, because the gods have their own biases.

John Larsen [00:23:23] And we still have that view in monotheism, but it's always, God is biased towards us. We're the chosen. We're Saturday's warriors, we are the white and delight some people. We are the ones that God picked. So, so in. If you have a polytheistic religion, you can say, well, those guys over there have a temple to Apollo and, and over here we have a temple to Athena. But, you know, they can have Apollo, we can have Athena, and it's, it's a much more cooperative religion. They always talk about that. Even, even, even anthropologists who know better have this Western bias of talking about the progression from using animism to polytheism to monotheism.

John Larsen [00:24:04] There is no progression there. Monotheism is in no way theologically or philosophically superior to polytheism. That is people pushing their own bullshit on, on others. And again, I think it has a much more explanatory power.

John Dehlin [00:24:20] Yeah, as I think about it, I, I feel like I had a really confusing upbringing as it relates to all of these teachings of the Trinity or the Godhead. Because on the one hand, in my Mormon upbringing, it's really important that you pray to Heavenly Father and not Jesus.

John Dehlin [00:24:38] And it's really important that one of Joseph's defining doctrinal innovations was that God and Jesus appeared to him, of course, in the 1838 version. And it's really important that we acknowledge that God and Jesus are separate and that God is Jehovah and Jesus, you know, God is Elohim, Jesus is Jehovah. So there's this real emphasis on separateness. But then you would, and we're going to talk about this, but then you read the Book of Mormon or you read the Bible and there's all this language about I, my father, one and if you've seen the Father, you've seen me. And then you have to explain, you have to, you know, you ask church leaders, well, wait a minute.

John Dehlin [00:25:16] It's basically making it sound like they're almost identical. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they're one in purpose. And yeah, they're, they're pretty much the same. They're pretty much identical. They pretty much teach the same thing, but they're super different. And, and don't, don't ever pray to Jesus. Like, if you pray to Jesus, that's a super bad thing. You know what I mean?

Carah Burrell [00:25:34] That's what the great Nabonimal chur does, even though, like, you can barely tail it apart.

John Dehlin [00:25:39] All those evangelicals, they pray to Jesus, they suck.

John Larsen [00:25:42] You know, I like how, you know, since, since Mormons introduced the idea that God and what God does as a corporation, this is one of the Shittiest corporations ever. Like, you know, if you send a return to the wrong department in at Amazon or Walmart, they'll eventually, like, collect them and then send them over to the right department. No, no, no, not this one. We don't care how sincere your prayer is. If you pray to the wrong slot, you're putting your mail in the wrong slot. It just goes nowhere. And as a matter of fact, you're condemned for it. Just really lousy customer service.

John Dehlin [00:26:16] Yeah, yeah. So it's not a surprise, but the church is trying to kind of have it both ways, right?

John Larsen [00:26:22] Oh, what, the Mormon Church? All right, so let's talk about Smith and the arc of Smith's progress. We did a full podcast, I think, last year here, maybe, maybe we can get a link to it where we talk just about the first. The first. First vision. And so we have a lot of things that Joseph Smith and others wrote during that time. And. And you can read those books and you can see what's in them and what's not in them. It takes a careful reading, but you can do it. So let's talk about kind of the arc of what we have. The Book of Mormon and some early doctrine Covenants was published in 18 Book of Commandments.

Early Mormon Theology and Modalist Descriptions

John Dehlin [00:27:09] John, you muted. Sorry.

John Larsen [00:27:10] Oh, okay, sorry. The first Book of Mormon was published in 1830. And then we follow that by the. With the Book of Commandments, the first edition in 1833, then lectures on faith. Faith was 1835. And then, then we have. In by 1837, we have the redo of the Book of Mormon. The second edition of the Book of Mormon occurred in 1837, where Smith himself oversaw some of the changes that. That or all the changes ostensibly that were made between those two versions. So it's this. It's this time period that we're really aiming at, at what happened to Joseph smith theologically in 1830 and 1837. By 1844, we have the King Fallet Discourse, where the new doctrine of the.

John Larsen [00:28:01] The Godhead is completely laid out. And if you want the source material of what Joseph Smith doctrine, I would recommend everybody read it. It's not that long. You can find it on the Internet if you want. If you consider yourself to be even the least bit of a scholar in Mormonism, you have to have read the king Fault Discourse, 1844. And I believe there's an old Mormon expression episode where we. We dive into that. If we didn't, we need to do one.

John Larsen [00:28:28] Okay, so that's. That's sort of the arc for For Smith. All right, so by. I, I mentioned the, the Lectures on faith. So by 1835, we have in lecture 5.2, Joseph Smith saying this, there are two personages which constitute the great matchless, governing and supreme power over all things. They are the Father and the Son. The Father being a personage of spirit, glory and power, the Son who is in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle, made or fashioned like unto man, possessing the same mind with the Father, which mind is the Holy Spirit that bears record of the Father and Son. And these three are one.

John Larsen [00:29:10] Or in other words, these three constitute the greatness, matchless, governing and supreme power over all things, by whom all things were created and made, that were created made. And these three constitute the Godhead and are one. To me, that is a clear modalist description. You've got, you've got united in purpose here and, and, but you've got making distinction that Jesus is a personage of tabernacle and the Father a personage of spirit. So by this time, we do not have. Joseph has not developed the idea that God himself has a body and was once human like the rest of us. That that idea has not crept into his thinking yet.

John Dehlin [00:29:53] Okay, and that's, that's. By what point?

John Larsen [00:29:56] That's 1835. That was published in Lectures on Faith, which was part of. Which is canonized for a long time. It was part of the Doctrine Covenants until, I don't know, 1906 or something like that, when they pulled it out.

John Dehlin [00:30:08] Yeah, and this is something we, we also just covered with Mike on, on LDS discussions, the LDS discussion series is that. And I'm sure we're going to talk about this more today, but from 18, I don't know, 1820 to 1835, Joseph Smith believed, like everybody else, that God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost were one. And that's reflected very clearly in the Book of Mormon and in the Lectures on Faith and in his 1832 First Vision account, which, again, I'm guessing we're going to talk about all that.

John Larsen [00:30:41] Yeah, yeah, we're gonna go through them. There's a couple of words we have to unpack first. And the first one is the word Messiah and the word Christ. Christ is the Greek representation of the anointed one. It means to be an anointed. And Messiah is the Hebrew version of that same word and the term Messiah itself. Now, this is where things get really, really tricky. You have all these different translations of the Bible. And I, I kind of had went down this rabbit hole for a little bit. There are versions of the Bible that have the word Messiah on all over in them in the New Testament.

The Name Jesus and Its Absence in the Book of Mormon

John Larsen [00:31:25] But from my understanding, and I'm, I'm begging somebody to, to correct me, there is only one instance in the original Greek where the word Messiah is used everywhere else. It's Christo. It's, it's, it's the, it's the anointed one. And that is in John 4:25. And the passage says, the woman said, I know the Messiah called Christ is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us. I went and looked up in the Greek. So in, in the Greek that it was written in, the Messiah is a transliteration of the Hebrew.

John Larsen [00:31:59] So, so this is the, the one instance in the New Testament I know of where the word Messiah was used. Normally the word Christ is used, but modern translators will free form translate Christ from the Greek to Messiah sometimes. So it can get really confusing as to what words are being used. The term the anointed one or, or to be anointed.

John Larsen [00:32:22] I don't think the term anointed one appears anywhere in the Old Testament except in the book of Daniel. That term only appears in, in Daniel 9, 25, 26. But to talk of somebody being anointed happens all the time in, in the Old Testament. Some Old Testament scholars believe that the Hebrews sort of believed in the divinity of, of the, the Hebrew king, which is not strange. I mean, that, that, that belief creeps up over and over and over again. So there's some argument as to how much the Hebrews thought the king was divine, but they definitely thought there was a process of being anointed with oil that was part of the, of the ceremony, the ritual anointing of a king.

John Larsen [00:33:06] And that's where the term comes from, the, the anointed one. But that, that terminology really took off post. Jesus Christ. So when you're reading these books, those two terms are really important because the term Christ meaning like Jesus Christ wasn't invented until the time of Christ thereabouts.

John Larsen [00:33:33] So there's, there's not really any way in like 600 BC you can talk about Jesus Christ, because first of all, it's Greek and it wouldn't mean anything to you. But, and, and, and, and we'll go through those a little bit, a little bit more.

John Larsen [00:33:53] Okay. Does that, does that make sense? I don't, I don't, I don't want to lose anybody. I'm just setting up the, the. We've got the term Christ and we've got the term Messiah. They are synonyms. And it just happens to be which, which language they, they were, they were translated to which one they were used. The, the, the modern distinction between the two, where you can find Mormons who would say, I know that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. That is not an ancient construction. That, that, that, that's a more modern construction. All right, there's another one.

John Dehlin [00:34:26] Would that be repetitive to say Jesus Christ is the Messiah?

John Larsen [00:34:30] It would have been at the time, because like in, in Greek, there would have only been one word unless they borrowed the word from, from Hebrew. So, so where you can, you could say the word Christ and the word Messiah are both been incorporated into the English language. But the, the term Messiah really wasn't incorporated into Greek at the time of Christ. That came later.

John Larsen [00:34:55] Okay, there's another one. Jesus Christ, his name, his name is actually Joshua. So, so what if you were, if you were reading the, the book and you didn't have any of the influence from the last 2,000 years, what you would read is Joshua the anointed One. Joshua the anointed One. Joshua the anointed one. And Joshua is a fairly common name.

John Larsen [00:35:21] So, so, you know, and you'd have Joshua of Nazareth, Joshua of Nazareth, the anointed one is what the New Testament says. So when we say things like Jesus Christ, that's a modern construction. Go ahead.

Carah Burrell [00:35:37] When people are walking around saying Joshua, were they saying Joshua or are they saying Yeshua? Which doesn't matter.

John Larsen [00:35:43] Well, I'm, I'm giving the anglicized pronunciation, so I'm for sure.

Carah Burrell [00:35:49] Okay, just so that we know that it's that version of that name. Angus.

John Larsen [00:35:52] Yeah, right. I. You can find it, you know, phonetically. The, the Greek was written phonetically, so you can see exactly what the pronunciation is. It's not lost. I just don't have it.

Carah Burrell [00:36:03] Okay, continue.

John Larsen [00:36:05] Okay, so the question is, well then why does the term Jesus even appear in the Book of Mormon at all? Shouldn't it be Joshua? Like why, why would somebody in 600 B.C. like, like what if you were gonna have a descendant 4, 000 years for 400 years from now whose name was David and he went by David his whole life, but then a thousand years after that, they started calling him, I don't know, dude, bro, royal, would you refer to him as dude, dude, bro, royal, or would you refer to him as David? It doesn't make any sense to refer to him as Jesus. Why does the term Joshua not show up in the Book of Mormon? Because the only way you'd have access to that would be to have access to modern times, which would of course make it, you know, not historical.

John Dehlin [00:37:02] So you're saying, oh, go ahead, Carah. And then I'll say something.

Carah Burrell [00:37:05] I was being John Dehlin, I was literally going to say. So what you're saying is it's almost like an anachronism to even say.

John Larsen [00:37:14] And so the question comes well, well maybe, maybe the Book of Mormon never uses the word Joshua. So the they, he was just, this was a loose translation. And whenever he saw the ancient reformed Egyptian characters that were spelling out Joshua, he just wrote it as Jesus. Except for Mormon chapter two, verse six. And it says, and we marched forth and came to the land of Joshua, which was in the borders west by the sea. So that means that in the Book of Mormon times, they of necessity could tell the difference between Jesus, the Greek version of Jesus's name, and Joshua, the Hebrew version of Jesus name. I defy anybody to explain to me how that is.

John Dehlin [00:37:57] Wow, I've never heard this and I've never thought about this before.

Carah Burrell [00:38:01] Yeah, because we talk about anachronisms all the time down to like the very, you know, deutero, Isaiah, what, what access the people that were supposedly these Asian prophets writing on these golden plates that Joseph Smith would have been translating from and like, why is his mother Mary being born of a virgin? How did they know these things all down from every detail? But that's true. I've never heard it down to just even the basis of what they're calling him doesn't sound like it adds up. It's, it goes in the, in the anachronism shelf.

John Larsen [00:38:30] Right. So we have a double layered anachronism. The term Christ. If the, the, the, the Book of Mormon people were, were Jewish. That's what the story said. They, they left Israel in 600 B.C. right. And they had no encounter whatsoever with Christianity or with the Greeks. Alexander didn't invade for another 200 years. Right. So, so why are they saying Jesus Christ at all? That that's not something that would be linguistically even available to them to say.

Carah Burrell [00:39:06] And I guess what is the, what is the spin on that? That when Joseph was looking at the rock in the hat, it just showed up as Jesus Christ because that's what our modern brains would understand as the Savior. Whereas they were saying maybe back those agent prophets were talking about Yeshua, like what are, what's the apology?

John Larsen [00:39:25] What is their spin? Their response is that the Book of Mormon was written for our day and that Joseph was inspired to Put it in language that we could understand. And. And so it wasn't written for the Mesoamericans, it was written for. But now our day is. Is it written for people in 2022 or for people in 1835? Because those are two different peoples at this point.

Carah Burrell [00:39:50] It was written for their day and no other when LGBTQ issues were not relevant.

John Dehlin [00:39:56] It was actually written for the Native Americans on the frontier in 1830, if I. If I read correctly. Right.

Carah Burrell [00:40:04] For them or for the people slaughtering them?

John Dehlin [00:40:08] All right, for the Native Americans, it says that.

John Larsen [00:40:12] So let's start getting into what. What. And. And that Messiah and Jesus stuff will come up a little bit more. But let's. Let's start talking about what Joseph Smith wrote. So in 1830, we have this. For after that, it was truly manifest under Smith. This is from E.B. howe, by the way, who wrote the first anti Mormon book. And. Yeah, 1834. E.B.

Joseph Smith's First Vision and Early Accounts

John Dehlin [00:40:38] house or historical or anti Mormon? Which one? Both.

John Larsen [00:40:44] Go read. Go read the book. He's not wrong about the. He's got the same complaints about the church that we have now. Yeah, all right.

John Dehlin [00:40:52] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:40:53] I mean, you have to take it for what it is.

John Dehlin [00:40:54] It is.

John Larsen [00:40:55] It is somebody who is part of the church or whatever, who is a detractor, writing a book all at John de Lynn.

John Dehlin [00:41:01] Right.

John Larsen [00:41:02] So

John Dehlin [00:41:05] give me great honor, sir.

John Larsen [00:41:07] All right. So. For after that, it truly was manifest unto Smith that he had received remission of his sins and he was entangled again in the vanities of the world. But after truly repenting, God visited him by a holy angel and gave on him power by the means with. With which before prepared that he should translate a book. So you have God appearing to him. 1832. This is from letter book one. The Lord heard my cry in the wilderness. And while in the attitude of calling upon the lord in the 16th year of my age, a pillar of fire light above the brightness, the sun at noon day came down from above and rested upon me.

John Larsen [00:41:43] And I was filled with the spirit of God. And the Lord opened the heavens unto me. And I saw the Lord, he spake unto me, saying, Joseph, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee. Go thy way, walk in my statutes and keep my commandments. Behold, I'm the Lord of glory. I was crucified for the world that all those who believe on my name may have eternal life. The world lieth in sin. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So clearly in this account you have one God identified as God visiting Joseph Smith, who is also identified as Jesus Christ.

John Larsen [00:42:15] Okay. 1835. And this is from. I don't, I didn't write down the source on this one. On November 9, 1835, Smith dictated an account of the first vision in his diary after telling it to a stranger who had visited his home earlier the day.

John Larsen [00:42:34] Wasn't that stranger something, Something like Josephus the Jew, or. It was, it was like this. Weird. Anyway, that's the story for another day. Let's see. Smith said that when.

John Dehlin [00:42:49] Pull it up right now.

John Larsen [00:42:51] Smith said that when perplexed about religious matters, he had gone to a grove to pray, but this tongue seems swollen, his mouth. And that he had been interrupted twice by the sound of someone walking behind him. Finally, as he prayed, he said his tongue was loosened. He saw a pillar of fire which an unidentified personage appeared. Then another unidentified personage told Smith his sins were forgiving and testified unto Smith that Jesus Christ is the son of God and interlinear. And then text note. And I saw many angels in this vision.

John Larsen [00:43:18] One of the reasons I, I promoted this one here is because it starts showing Joseph Smith moving off of identifying the first vision as Jesus Christ visiting to him. And here he doesn't even identify it as God at all. He identifies it as, as some personage.

John Larsen [00:43:37] Yeah, well, he said one and then another one. And, and there's other, there's other contemporary accounts by people who are in the church who said he was identified by Nephi or Nephi or Moroni. It's, it's just, it's just all over the map.

John Larsen [00:43:51] And then of course, the 1838 edition, which is basically synonymous with the one that you all know. So two personages. So we can really see in the accounts of the first vision, the, the development. And this has always, always, always been my gripe. I, I, we did an old Mormon expression episode. We went through all of these. We did the Mormon stories. 1. Hell, I'm sure you've had 10 episodes on this topic. But the apologists like to say, well, if you take them all together and mix them, and then Joseph Smith is pointing out different aspects. That's true, but the, the salient point is they show a clear distinction in time.

John Larsen [00:44:29] Like before 1835, before 1838. He doesn't identify two separate gods because we'll see in the Book of Mormon he doesn't believe in two separate gods at this point. That becomes later. And of course, you know, to, to, to give a hint to the end. This is still one of the chief theological problems in, in Mormonism because they so insist that the very first thing that, that Joseph learned was this new Godhead post trinitarian view that there were two separate personages, God and, and, and Jesus and of which Joseph Smith lies and says. Which is something I never contemplated even though he had written about it before then.

John Larsen [00:45:15] That's why we can call it a straight apply. Okay, so let's talk about the changes in the Book of Mormon. And the Book of Mormon is interesting not just for the changes that occurred between 1830 and 1837. We also have another one. The first one we're going to talk about was changed in 1964. Four actually. But also there's a whole bunch of stuff that they didn't change. So these two things are, are very important. As a matter of fact, the, the changes all occur really at the beginning of the book. I think there's four of them or, or five changes where it looked like Joseph Smith was going and fixing the doctrine in, in 1837 to, to reflect the separate personages view. And. But then he realized it was too daunting of a task and kind of question quit. That's, that's the, that's the prevailing.

Changes to the Book of Mormon Text Over Time

Carah Burrell [00:46:04] Even he can't read it. He's like this is absolutely a snooze vest.

John Larsen [00:46:09] Even Joseph Smith couldn't make out a second Nephi. You are absolutely right, Carah

Carah Burrell [00:46:15] Chloroform in print.

John Larsen [00:46:17] Okay, so first Nephi chapter 13, verse 40. If you want to look it up in your, in your scriptures, see in the first edition these last records, skipping ahead shall make known to all kindreds, tongues and people that the Lamb of God is the Eternal Father and the Savior.

John Larsen [00:46:41] That's pretty unambiguous. The. When you say the Eternal Father and the Lamb of God and the Savior are the same being, you're, you're, you're approaching a modalist view. Which. So, so the thesis here to make sure I'm clear is that Joseph probably was never really a Trinitarian because common believers don't necessarily follow the complexity of that argument. He was most likely a modalist and he was until he replaced it with a separate beings doctrine. And so here you, you, you, you clearly see that God is the Savior is the lamb of God.

John Larsen [00:47:22] 8:1964 Just to put a pin in it, shall make known to all kindreds, tongues of people. The Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father and the Savior. That's First Nephi 1340. Okay, all right, so First Nephi 1118 in the 1830 edition it says behold the Virgin which thou seest is the mother of God after the manner of the flesh.

John Larsen [00:47:51] And then in the modern editions, they inserted, starting in 1837, they inserted son of God. So behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God after the manner of the flesh. And you can see that sentence is, is much more clunky. It's, it's very much more likely that his original intent was the first sentence because it's kind of a strained grammatical construction.

John Dehlin [00:48:15] And we have to always remember that, you know, the, the historical evidence supports what we call a tight translation, where Joseph Smith's looking at the seer stone. He's allegedly got the plates, you know, you know, he's channeling the plates into the seer stone, and the seer stone's telling him, character by character, exactly what the words are. And the scribe is confirming it, reading it back. And then the stone doesn't let Joseph Smith continue until it confirms what the scribe writes down. And so in that tight translation sort of paradigm, there's, there's no allowance for words being left out. Right.

John Larsen [00:48:55] Right. And of course, I will give hat tip to Gerald and Sarah Sandra Tanner. They have collected the 3,900 and whatever changes that have taken place in the Book of Mormon, you can look it up out there and, and, and read every one of them. They've done absolutely thorough work. And if you think they're liars, prove it. Okay, 11:21. Yeah, go ahead, Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:49:17] I just wanted to add when I was going through my faith crisis, and this happens to so many people when they go look to different apologetics, when you hear things that are supposed to make you feel better inside, like, all the changes to the Book of Mormon were just minor grammatical errors. And you're like, okay, that'll, that'll be okay until I go find, like, the Tanners.

Carah Burrell [00:49:37] Like, what, what's, what's actually the evidence, though. Should I look into this? And you really do look into it, and you're like, oh, so that was a bold face lie. They just will lie to you. Mormon apologetics will straight up lie to you and say that it wasn't doctrinal, you don't need to worry about it, sweep it under the rug. But it's people who have done that hardcore research and work that it's clear as day that for every new edition of the Book of Mormon, things that were never supposed to change, that were supposed to be like, like JD Was saying, you know, taken off a stone and directly translated from these ancient prophets have absolutely been changed.

Carah Burrell [00:50:08] It really Calls into question everything. And then there's quotes from Joseph Smith that say, I have always declared God to be distinct personages and distinct personages from the Father, Holy Ghost, so on like that. And then you have Joseph Smith knowingly, like you were saying, JL is what we're going with. That's the names I've got for you guys. You know, knowingly going in and changing them and then later saying in his journals and stuff that I've always. What are you talking about? Like I've always said that they were all the same. It's the same kind of lies, the same kind of things about I only have one wife.

Carah Burrell [00:50:39] And you're starting to be like, I don't know exactly who I can trust anymore. And that's like the, the one of the basic cracks of my faith crisis was I can't turn to anything because everything from the very prophet I'm supposed to believe in, that's the foundations of this restoration is making things more confusing. When I thought this church was supposed to make, have a restoration to make, to clear up things, to make things less confusing. And now I'm just in a bigger web of lies.

John Larsen [00:51:06] So yeah, the, the real paradox, or one of the paradoxes of Mormonism is you've got only three theories that can explain Joseph Smith. One, he was lying some of the time, which then, then the burn of evidence goes to say, well then when wasn't he lying? Once you establish that somebody's a liar, then, then their, their word is not good anymore. So we were, we rely on Joseph for so many things to say, well, if he was lying about some of them, then why can we believe any of them? So that's the problem. First theory, more that Joseph's a liar. The second one is he was just well intended, but he got confused by his own thoughts.

John Larsen [00:51:45] And then that of course leads the question, then what is a prophet anyway? If Joseph Smith is the same single most important person, save Jesus Christ only, and the guy can't tell his weird perverted thoughts about 14 year olds from what God is saying to him, why should we listen to this cat at all?

John Larsen [00:52:03] Or there's the third possibility, which is God was lying to Joseph Smith. And that's probably the most viable if you want to believe in Mormonism that God intentionally was deceiving Joseph Smith so he'd look bad later. But that speaks volumes as to what God is. And should we even be worshiping that?

Carah Burrell [00:52:21] Right? All right, God, should we even be worshiping that? Son of a. Put that on a Bumper sticker.

John Larsen [00:52:29] I would love to meet God's mother. I'm sure she's a hoot on a. On a Saturday night. She would just chain smoke and tell you great stories. Okay, first, Nephi 11:21. And the angel said unto me, behold the Lamb of God. Yea, even the Eternal Father and the same thing. And behold the Lamb of God. Yeah, even the Son of the Eternal Father.

John Larsen [00:52:52] And let's see. 11:32. And I saw. Let's see. The everlasting God was the judge of the world. And I saw. And bear record. And it was changed to the Son of the Everlasting God was the judge of the world, and I saw him bear record.

John Larsen [00:53:08] So those give you a great example. I think there's maybe one more. There's not very many of them, but those are the key changes that happened where Joseph was inserting that Son of God thing to kind of get himself out of. Out of a dilemma. But it actually doesn't, because the Book of Mormon is consistent through the whole book. So let's talk about things that weren't changed in the Book of Mormon. One of the key ones is in Mosiah 15, verses 1 through 3 or 1 through 5. I'll read that to you. And now Abinadi said unto them, I would that you should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men and shall redeem his people.

John Larsen [00:53:47] And because he dwelleth in the flesh, he shall be called the Son of God. And having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son. The Father because he was conceived by the power of God and the Son, because the flesh thus becoming the Father and the Son.

John Larsen [00:54:02] I have heard seminary teachers and other people try to explain. Explain these verses. And it is acrobatics, you know, because that, that passage just simply does not square with the Mormon theology on God.

John Dehlin [00:54:17] Yeah, yeah. And I'm remembering the temple ceremony that I went through, which was pre 1990, and they're almost mocking the, you know, if we all remember the priest or the pastor figure in the temple ceremony, and he talks about a God that's without parts or passions.

John Larsen [00:54:35] You know, John, did you get to sing the hymn? Did you go to the temple when they still sing the hymn, or is the hymn gone?

John Dehlin [00:54:42] I didn't get the hymn.

John Larsen [00:54:43] So the pastor. The pastor. And he was still there in 1890. So. Yes, let's give a little context. This is. This is great stuff. If you've been through the temple, then the devil shows up. But in the old temple, ceremony pre 18 or 1990. Then he brought in his servant. Sorry, he brought in his servant, which was. And they actually had him wear a priest collar. They were that brazen. So in. In the temple. And it was. It was absolutely mocking the other Christians.

John Dehlin [00:55:15] It's mocking other faiths.

John Larsen [00:55:17] Right. And he would. He would actually lead the congregation in a hymn. And we have the words to it. I was trying to figure out the music. I found an old timer one time and there was. There's a hymn in the Scottish. Right. Of. Of. Of the Masonic Temple ceremony. And I tried to plink out that tune to the old timer to say if that was the tune. And she was like, maybe. I don't know. Could be. So that's open research for anybody. What hymn did they sing? But then I've heard other people say, oh, we sang this hymn from the hymn book. So anybody who's. Who's old. Because I'm old, so you have to be older than me. I went through in 1991, so I just barely missed it. If you can tell me what hymn they were singing, I'd love to hear it. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:56:03] I'm not sure about that. But what I will say is when the priest sort of describes the. The Godhead, it makes it sound jumbly and amoeba. You know, amoeba, like. And it's done in a mocking way where all the Mormons can kind of feel self satisfied that we know that God and Jesus are separate individuals and souls and spirits. Right?

John Larsen [00:56:27] Yep. Yeah, agreed.

Carah Burrell [00:56:29] I would love a great satire of that where it's just reading from the Book of Mormon, the trinitarian view, and watching all the Mormons just mock the pastor, talking about, like this jumbly version. And it's like, gotcha. This is from your own scriptures.

John Larsen [00:56:43] Yeah, well, I. I have long threatened. We have the recorded 1877 temple ceremony. I have long threatened to put on a stage production of that in Salt Lake City. And you know what? I will throw down. I will do it. But, and I'm not exaggerating here, it would probably take about $25,000 to get off the ground. If someone wants to form and gather $25,000 to do this, then we can stage the original temple ceremony one night, viewing only.

John Dehlin [00:57:11] Carah. Carah has to be Eve because there's literally no other female part. So, John, are you Satan? Are you?

John Larsen [00:57:17] No, I want. I want real actors.

John Dehlin [00:57:19] Are you God? Are you Jehovah? Michael?

John Larsen [00:57:26] Which. Which apostle is that? Never says anything but just nods knowingly. I want to be that guy.

John Dehlin [00:57:31] John, it's Peter James. Is it James?

Carah Burrell [00:57:34] James?

John Larsen [00:57:34] I don't know. You don't get to see him. But I don't know. All right.

John Dehlin [00:57:39] You're going to be Elohim.

Carah Burrell [00:57:41] Yeah. And millennials. Millennials. This is just for millennials. You guys won't get this joke, but I want all of Peter, James, and John to be the top. That rapper guys from Teen Witch with like this. And they're okay. You guys know what I'm talking about. I'm gonna put that in the stage production. You guys will look it up later. People who grew up on Disney Channel understand what I'm talking about. No, but John Larsen, I'm gonna steal that. That quip when everyone pisses me off, I'm gonna say, I will threaten a stage production. You just give me $25,000 and I will. I don't care what it's about, church, anyone. You cut me off on the freeway, I will threaten you with a straight stage production.

John Larsen [00:58:13] I love it. I'm in.

Carah Burrell [00:58:14] Anyway, I'll.

John Larsen [00:58:15] I'll donate $10 to the cause. All right.

John Dehlin [00:58:19] Maven's vibing with your. With your jokes, Maven.

John Larsen [00:58:23] All right. Ether, chapter 3, verse 14. I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son that is in your scriptures today. Let's see. And then prior to the incarnation of Eternal Father is used almost exclusively of Jesus. So those are some of the ones we talked about before.

John Larsen [00:58:46] That also appears in Mosiah 16:15 and Alma 11:38. The ones from First Nephi were, of course, fixed. So those are some examples. If you want to do a deep dive, you can probably find a few more. But. But it's. It's pretty clear that the modern view of God is not in the Book of Mormon. Now, this is outside of scope here, and I'm not prepared, but the most fascinating thing about the Book of Mormon is that you have prophets who suggest that it is the book containing the fullness of the everlasting gospel and that it's so important for who Mormons are. But the only thing that is important is that it exists and that people believe that it.

John Larsen [00:59:25] It marks Joseph Smith as a prophet. Because Mormonism is not in the Book of Mormon. Like temple work, the plan of salvation, the kingdoms of glory, the Melchizedek priesthood, ceiling as an ordinance. None of that is in the Book of Mormon. If you were to find the Book of Mormon, remember that old church movie where some priest in Italy found, like, a copy of the Book of Mormon that conveniently had the front?

John Dehlin [00:59:54] How rare a Possession, it was called,

John Larsen [00:59:56] and that he never read the index or, or any other part of the book to figure out what, what book it was. But, you know, like, you, you might find some interesting quips about Christianity, but you sure as hell wouldn't reproduce Mormonism from the book.

John Larsen [01:00:11] Okay, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about the apologist response. It's always important to acknowledge what they would say. First of all, they would say that the changes made in 1837 were made by the prophet, so they are under the same prophetic dispensation. This is very similar to Trump's argument that any document that he takes away is declassified because he was the president. It's just sort of saying, well, anything a prophet says is right, even if it's wrong. And, but, you know, I gave you one of the examples that was changed in, in 1964. Nobody signed that one. I, I don't know who, who did that one.

John Larsen [01:00:50] But they would say that these changes were made by the, the prophets. And the second thing that they say all the time, and actually, Carah, you hinted at this or, or addressed this a few minutes ago, which they will claim a statistical game. They will say, look, there were 4, 000 changes made it to the Book of Mormon. And the vast majority are just grammatical. There's just a, you know, 99.9% of the changes are just spelling and grammar, which is right. The first edition of the Book of Mormon is atrocious when it comes to spelling and grammar. It is just terrible. It, it reads like it was written by a backwoodsman.

John Larsen [01:01:26] And so they're right on that front, but they're bearing a key truth. It's like saying, you know, if somebody, you know, accused a fella of raping a woman and he said, yeah, but I have encountered 5,000 women in the last year and I, I, I didn't rape 99.99% of them. That doesn't excuse anything. The fact that, that Joseph made key doctrinal changes in this book that was supposed to come as John, you pointed out through this tight translation theory and to be the most accurate book that has ever been written on. Do I have to. I bring that up every single podcast, every single, every single time I bring up that it's the most accurate book, right.

John Larsen [01:02:07] And, and all this stuff, you know, that it was this stone cut out and it was preserved. It was hauled around the new world and buried in this, on this hill and preserved for thousands of years. Tens of thousands of people died to get this book to Us and, and it needed major revision seven years later, it. It just kind of doesn't hold up for me.

John Dehlin [01:02:29] Yeah. And again, when you add to it the tight translation that the rock is telling him, letter, character for character, word for word, it makes no sense that it would need any revisions at all.

John Larsen [01:02:41] It makes no sense.

John Dehlin [01:02:42] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:02:43] God has imperfect people to work with, said someone once.

John Larsen [01:02:47] So I've been dealing with. And, and you know, here, here's our, our kind of, our final argument here. We've been dealing a lot with these paradoxes. I point out the church has. Here's the big, the big trap that the church is in, that this whole thing is kind of a setup for first of all, if you're going to restore things. But very buried in the word restoration is that this formally was a certain way and it got lost in the apostasy because of the devil. And now we are restoring that. That implies inerrancy.

John Larsen [01:03:25] That if you're restoring means you're doing it correctly. Like, like if, if I had a, like a, I don't know, a 1967 Super Sport Camaro, right? And it would been sitting in my backyard and I'm like, john, I restored the thing and I come driving up in a Toyota Corolla. You're not going to believe that that's a restoration of my Camaro because it's not the same thing. I'm, I'm lying to you if I use the word restore. I found something, I put it back where it was pristine.

John Larsen [01:04:03] So Mormonism requires an inerrancy because if, if we allow church authorities to make mistakes in the interest of doing the right thing, if we say, you know what, they might teach the wrong thing or they might say the wrong thing, but it comes from the intent of their heart. And Jesus looks at the. The intent of their heart. If that's true, then the Catholic Church could have never fallen into apostasy. Unless you believe that every single Greek and Assyrian and every single person in the church, whenever it fell into apostasy, and James Talmage says it's between 200 and 300 AD that you'd have to say that every single person in the church was corrupt.

John Larsen [01:04:48] Because if you allow for just. It doesn't have to be absolutely accurate. It can be the inclination of our heart, then why are not all congregations who seek after the truth, the true church, which is kind of what most people would believe. And anyway, but the church stuck its flag in this point.

John Larsen [01:05:09] It ceases any reason to exist if there isn't an inerrancy in restoration. Right. So, so. But you know, again, if he made some mistakes, then the next logical assumption is it's all mistakes. I have to, in, in my job for the past years, I've had to interview highly technical people, people in IT who have a specific technical skill set.

John Larsen [01:05:40] And oftentimes it's a skill set that I, I know the, the margins of, but I'm not, I'm not expert. I'm hiring people who know things better than I do. And I usually have a question or two or three packed up that if they know the answer to that question, then I know that they, they understand things. And if they don't know the answer to that question, I know that there's problems. And you guys have all heard the, the stories of Van Halen and the, and the brown M M's, right?

The Van Halen Brown M&M Analogy and Textual Evidence

John Dehlin [01:06:07] Oh, I love it. Yeah. Remember the, I don't remember the brown Eminem story. So tell us.

John Larsen [01:06:13] So, so when.

John Dehlin [01:06:15] Carrie, have you heard of Van Halen? Carah, be honest.

Carah Burrell [01:06:19] Yes. John de Lynn.

John Larsen [01:06:21] Carah, do you know the story?

Carah Burrell [01:06:22] Have you heard of Teen Witch, you guys? Yeah, yeah, I do know what you're talking about. So, yeah, I was in the show biz, you know, a little while ago. I understand, you know, celebrities, but this is a good story.

John Larsen [01:06:33] So when you're, when you're putting on a big show, like a big, especially a big stadium show, you know, you're going to bring in an army of roadies and you got basically 24 hours, set up all your lighting, all your sound, all your stage, get everything set up, get the thing sound checked. It's a big job and it entitles a lot of people, especially when you're an A list band like Van Halen was. So they were, they were doing these big stadium shows for 30, 40, 50,000 people. And what you'll get if you're the venue, you'll get this writer of this contract, these paintings, pages and pages and pages that say, we need, you know, 220 volt lines on the west side and east side of the stage.

John Larsen [01:07:07] We need this lighting. It'll, it'll outline everything they need to put on the show. Van Halen. And this is absolutely true. You can look it up. Van Halen had in there that they needed a bowl of M M's in which every color was picked out except the brown M M's.

John Larsen [01:07:23] Now the stage manager finally explained why he did this because it sounded just like he's being a prick. He said, if I went in there and there was a Bowl of brown M M's. I know that they read the writer and that they did the job correctly because they paid attention to details.

John Larsen [01:07:41] But if they, if it wasn't there or they other ones, he said, I knew we had a line check the entire system. We couldn't rely on the fact that they had done things. We needed to go check all the power, all the cables. We needed to do our due diligence.

John Larsen [01:07:54] So, so it becomes a test to see if you really know what you're talking about. So when you're a farmer born in the United States in, on the frontier in the early 19th century, and you are claiming to be the single spokesman for God for the, the modern era, which includes now, so everything post industrialization, and you're included, you're, you're claiming to be the conduit of to God, that you saw God and God talks through you, that God speaks his will, even about who you're gonna.

John Larsen [01:08:26] There somebody was playing a green game. I, I gave you one and I gave you a dirty one too. I used it in the, in the, in the dirty way who they're gonna go for. So, so you've got a huge burden on, on your shoulders. And if you get one thing wrong, we have an obligation to then check every single thing that you've said.

John Larsen [01:08:51] Everything is suspect because you're either lying or you're, or you're mentally unstable. And either one probably gets the same result. So Joseph Smith demands the kind of scrutiny that we put on him. And if you're a regular listener to this show, then, you know, he fails over and over and over and over again. And here's where I'll throw down. The only way you can believe that Joseph Smith is a prophet is if you never analyze anything he says, which is what Mormons actually do. They don't read what Joseph Smith said. They rely on experts and scholars.

John Larsen [01:09:30] So the Book of Mormon is either none of it is wrong, it's all right, including the, the contradictions and, and all that. It has errors but no material consequence. That's the apologist tact. But we've already established that there's things that are fundamental to Mormon doctrine that are wrong in there. You could say some of it is wrong or all of it is wrong. Well, let's just take Occam's razor to this thing. Let's use the law of parsimony. Once one thing is wrong in there, just throw the book out, assume it's all wrong.

John Larsen [01:10:00] And, and you know what? If that's God's system that he's going to give you something that's complicated, convoluted, and doesn't make any sense. And then if you give it any degree of scrutiny, you can find things that are wrong in it.

John Larsen [01:10:13] And then you look at the fruits of it and you find things like cover ups on sexual abuse. If that's God and that's the way God wants to talk to us, why do we want anything to do with them?

John Larsen [01:10:26] Like, like you can't win that, that system because you can't tell who's right. If that's the system, the God's whispering in people's ears, then. Then you've got the problem of those guys who flew those airplanes on September 11th with the whispering the word, the name of God on their lips as they drove into those buildings. By all accounts, they were sincere believers.

John Larsen [01:10:52] But being right matters. Truth matters. Inerrancy matters. If you claim it, and I'm just holding the church to its own standard, to what it holds other people to, and it fails and it fails miserably. And the church is absolutely trapped by this. And the only thing I can hope is that people never pay any attention to it.

Carah Burrell [01:11:18] I love the Brown Eminem analogy for this because, like, that's a perfect, It's a perfect example because there's real world consequences. How many of us have lived Mormonism for like decades of our life and it's just like a roadie who you put all your faith in to, like, you know, everything's fine behind the scenes, everything's taken care of. You just don't need. You hope somebody's doing their job. Isn't a lot of Mormonism like, you hope somebody's doing their job? Somebody else has checked into it. I don't need to read it. Everyone else has done it. And then when you go to go play on the big arena and the big stage, it's just no one sound checked anything.

Carah Burrell [01:11:51] It's just feedback shrieking into people's ears. And you're like, whoa, turn it off. Can you hear that? Like, sound check it. And then everyone around you is like, no, I like this sound. Actually, this is my favorite sound. This is what I came to play. And you're like, this is just sounds of like, shrieking feedback. When you actually go to live your life and you grow up and you recognize that, like, hey, maybe we should love gay people more, or like, hey, this isn't working for me, or this scrupulosity is making me want to kill myself. Like, it's a sound of Shrieking feedback to like an arena stage.

Carah Burrell [01:12:18] And everyone around you, all the roadies are like, no, this is actually the way it's supposed to be. And you're just like, are we taking crazy pills here? But everything that John Larsen said, 100%

John Dehlin [01:12:27] dope and Hondur apparently agrees with you. She says, cara, right on. So beautiful. The way I would, the way I might summarize it is somehow we're supposed to believe that number one, you know, God and Jesus are the two most important beings in, in all of our relative existence.

The Father and Son in Mormon Theology

John Dehlin [01:12:50] You know, they're the creators, the father son combo, the kind of Batman and Robin of all existence. They're literally the co creators of earth and of everything that we see. So on the one hand that's God and Jesus and then also the defining, you know, the defining difference between Mormonism and every other religion is that they don't know God and Jesus like we do. And of course taught that scripture that for this is life eternal to know thee, the only, you know, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent. So in seminary, I'm primed to think what is the, what is the most important theological component that's distinguishing for Mormonism and that's we understand God and Jesus and everybody else doesn't add to that.

John Dehlin [01:13:38] We're supposed to believe that Joseph Smith is able to literally c have a divine experience where he is standing in the presence of the divine. So we're supposed to believe all that. And then we're supposed to believe that when he actually finally writes down his experience with God and Jesus, by the way, 12 years after it allegedly happened, having told nobody before, 12 years after the fact that it actually happened, when he actually writes it down in 1832, that he gets it wrong. And when he publishes the Book of Mormon, translated by the gift of power of God, using a magical seer stone as a divine translator, he gets that wrong and then eight years later he has to correct it.

John Dehlin [01:14:27] You know, this, you know, not to mention the fact that he also included it in the lectures on faith which were included in Mormon scripture until the early 1900s. As I understand it, like this is Keystone cop level ridiculousness when it's supposed to be God's one true church with the restoration that is supposed to be, you know, the crowning achievement of this dispensation of, of heavenly Father. It, it, it is more keystone cops than it is God speaking to prophets for us to benefit from, right?

Carah Burrell [01:15:07] If that first vision, that was a mic drop John de Lynn, like if the first Vision that all the missionaries go out and say, if that's really accurate, why is the first vision contradict all of Joseph Smith's like scriptures that he's apparently getting beamed down from heaven to tell people about the very nature of God? Why is the first vision that we're supposed to be telling people about what he saw contradicting what he later wrote down? And is that not a smoking gun among many?

John Larsen [01:15:32] Well, and the, the, Joseph's story was he found this Book of Mormon that was this ancient knowledge that was being transferred to modern people by God's will. Kind of like the whole purpose, like 6,000 year history. You know, this is a major portion and we don't have that many scriptures and this is one of it. And the very first thing that gets that Joseph sees is something that God never bothered to tell any of those people in that book for nigh unto 2500 years. What, how are those two related? If, if his, if his point is to bring this book up, but the very first thing that happens is God introduces a new doctrine that's not even in the book. Like, like what, what? I, it boggles the mind.

John Dehlin [01:16:29] And I just, I have to throw in here the, the fact that, you know, we somehow we didn't have Joseph's 1832 first vision account for like a hundred and whatever years. And then in the early 1900s, ordained prophets here and revelator Joseph Fielding Smith, son of Joseph F. Smith, grandson of Hyrum Smith, as church historian, stumbles on the 1832 account, reads it, realizes that it contradicts the 1838 version, the founding narrative that the church had been sold for over a hundred years. And what does he do when he finds that 1832 account that says the Lord visited me, Joseph Smith, not God, and Jesus was.

John Dehlin [01:17:13] What does he do? Is this at all some sort of smoking gun? He literally rips the account out of Joseph's journal and hides it for decades until Sandra Tanner, Gerald Tanner and a bunch of researchers that worked with them publicized the fact that this had been ripped out of the account and hidden. And they shame Joseph feeling Smith into like literally masking, taping back in the 1832 original version of the first vision account out of just shame and embarrassment. And if that's not hiding the evidence, and if that doesn't show guilt, the fact that a prophet, seer and revelator and church historian is hiding the account, that's the incriminating evidence. I don't know what is, what else is incriminating evidence than that because he

Carah Burrell [01:18:02] could have prayed about it. He could have been like, I'm going to pray about this, God. What should I do? And God could have told him, like, you know what? Don't rip it out, because that's going to look more incriminating. He obviously didn't do that. He went off exactly what everyone else would do. They know apples and oranges. This doesn't match up, bro. And they rip it out.

John Dehlin [01:18:20] What he also could have done is been honest, like the church taught us to be. Like, if I. If I'm 12 and I touch myself, I'm taught I got to go tell the bishop every little detail. Care if you make out with the boy and you're 16, the bishop wants to know exactly what parts of your body got touched.

Carah Burrell [01:18:37] I just thought of a joke.

John Dehlin [01:18:39] What's that?

Carah Burrell [01:18:40] I thought of a joke. I'm going to replace my genitals with the first vision accounts, and so I'm allowed to touch them. I'm going to tell teenagers. I'm going to tell teenagers just do what the prophets did.

John Larsen [01:18:53] I'm going to poke you in the ribs just a tiny bit, John. I want to show how deep indoctrination goes for all of us.

John Dehlin [01:18:58] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:19:00] So you framed out your sexual sin in terms of a man, you touching yourself. And when you talk to Carah about it, you framed it out in terms of a man, a man touching her. I just think the patriarchy is deep.

John Dehlin [01:19:12] Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course Carah wouldn't ever touch another man before her marriage. Right, Carah?

Carah Burrell [01:19:18] I didn't. I was a good girl. I don't even know what we're talking about anymore. All I know is my joke totally slayed because I just thought of my genitals as a journal, and that's just like flipping pages of time. I thought that was kind of a funny image for everyone to go home with.

John Larsen [01:19:31] Okay, I want. I, I. This is. What I'm about to say is, in all sincerity, this really happened to me. So I'm looking at Moroni 10, 3, 5 right now, and I'm going to read it again. And this probably deserves its own podcast, but, oh, well, behold, I would exhort you that when you shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God, that you should read them, that you would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men from the creation of Adam, even down unto the time you should receive these things and ponder in your hearts. And when you shall receive these things, I would exhort you that you would ask God the eternal Father, in the name of Christ, with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost, and by the power of the Holy Ghost, you may know the power, the truth of all things.

John Larsen [01:20:16] Now, there's a few problems in there. Basically, because he tells you if you do it this exact way, like you have to have faith in Christ and you have to have real intent, and you basically have to already assume it's true, then you'll find out that it's true.

John Larsen [01:20:30] When I was coming near the end of my study of the, of the Mormonism, not that I stopped studying, but that it had all fallen to pieces. And it's an uncomfortable place to be, as most of the people listening will know. And it's confusing and it's hard and, and it's like. It's like watching your parents die from a terrible cancer. It's just miserable.

John Larsen [01:20:57] And I knew this, this verse and I. And it was time for me to go out there and, and, and, and ask this. I had done it before because you're told to before my mission, during my mission, and I never really received an answer. And I did the, the Jedi mind trick on myself and said, oh, well, that means because I already know it's true. You see, God doesn't have to tell me it's true because I already know that, because I've already been told that. So I don't, I don't need a manifestation. But this is Moroni's promise. I'm going to give you guys John's promise, and this is absolutely sincere.

John Larsen [01:21:34] I went to God and I prayed and I said to God in my language, because I didn't want an interview mediary. I went in my language, in my heart, sincerely, and I said, God, if you're God and you're up there, well, I'm told that you know everything, which means that you know me.

John Larsen [01:21:57] You knew me before I was formed in the womb. It says in the Bible, you know who I am and you know truth and you know what truth is. So God, I implore you, if you care and you want me to know the truth, please give it to me not in the way that I'm going to dictate to you, but in a way that you as God know that I will receive and understand. If you want me to worship you, if you want me to be your follower, then please give me Moroni's promise.

John Larsen [01:22:31] Tell me, touch me in a way that I will know that it's true. Not in a way that Joseph Smith knows, not the way that Moroni knows, but in a way that I will know. And I know that you know what that is God.

John Larsen [01:22:44] So until I get that, I will be waiting for that to happen. And I'm still waiting for that to happen. Dear listener, in all sincerity, go ask God if any of this stuff is true. But remember that God knows who you are and God knows how to talk to you and God knows how what you would need to hear to believe in him.

John Larsen [01:23:08] So if God wants to tell you in a way that is not confusing, God absolutely can. And if God chooses not to, then that's an answer. Is there a God? I don't think so. But if there is, I'm open to her contacting me at any moment.

John Dehlin [01:23:29] But what if you've known all along, John Larsen?

John Larsen [01:23:33] Well, I, I think the opposite is actually true. I think I, I actually never really believed. And I kept trying and trying and trying and trying harder and trying harder. That, and with my personality that meant I kept studying more, which means that's why I know all this stuff, because I kept trying to make it true.

John Larsen [01:23:52] I don't know all a lot about Mormonism because I hate Mormonism. I know a lot about Mormonism because I loved it and I wanted it to be true and I wanted my family to be validated and I wanted my people to be the right people. And I want to know there was a path and that the world was not ambiguous. But the fact is the world is ambiguous and if there is a God in charge, this is the way that she has made it. And if you've never heard from God, that's her choice. She is a divine being. Right. So, so take the fact that you don't have an answer and as all the answer you need.

John Larsen [01:24:24] If you do not feel absolutely 100 convinced that the book of Mormon is not true, it's likely not true. And if you feel absolutely convinced it is true when we've demonstrated it's not, you're likely confused.

John Dehlin [01:24:39] Beautiful. John I, I like, I like to say it slightly different way. I picked up along the way a Mormon testimony often coincidentally feels a lot like family or social approval. It's what happens when you feel like you've made your parents and your siblings and your grandparents and your community around you. It feels a lot what it feels like when you've made them feel happy or, or you know, like you agree with them or that you affirm what's really important to them.

John Larsen [01:25:14] Yeah, I think you're absolutely Right.

Carah Burrell [01:25:15] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:25:16] Somebody pointed out that I switched. I switched genders on God. Let me explain what I just did that. In, in. In the planet we live on, there is sexual reproduction. There's asexual reproduction. You have sexual reproduction. You have a male and a female, and a female is the thing that actually gives life. Right. So when you're talking about the bastard dick God, it is definitely a he, because only a he who would not have the creative power to create life that would reside in the. In a female would claim that power. When you're talking about the real force that might be out there that could be identified as God, that's definitely a female, because life is a female force. That's just the way the world is.

Carah Burrell [01:26:04] I feel complimented. I didn't. It wasn't directed towards me, but I feel like a life force. So. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:26:11] Beautiful. Thank you, John. All right. Well, what a beautiful episode. John Larsen, thank you for sharing.

Personal Faith, Church Correlation, and Closing Thoughts

Carah Burrell [01:26:21] Amen. Amen.

John Larsen [01:26:22] We've got some great ones coming up. I'm really looking forward to next month where the title is your friend, the church.

John Dehlin [01:26:30] You want to give any sneak peek or do you want to keep. Sure.

John Larsen [01:26:34] As. As different cases are argued before the Supreme Court, there's what's called amicus briefings, where different entities that have power, you have to have money and power to be able to do this, can write to try to argue cases on the side for the. For before the Supreme Court. The Church has a rather active law firm, as we all know, and has filed many of these briefings. It'll be interesting to see what the Church actually cares about. The church is the restored gospel and God's only avenue on this planet. And I've been told that the prophets, seers and revelators, responsible not just for the members, but for the entire planet. The Supreme Court, for at least a part of the planet, is one of the most important organization terming policy and collective morality so we can see what the Church actually cares about. It's all there in print.

John Dehlin [01:27:23] I'm going to guess it's the poor, it's the environment. I'm going to guess it's women, reproductive rights. I'm going to guess it's, you know, marriage equality. I'm going to guess that it's, you know, peace, limiting war, you know, violence, anything that has to do with violence, you know, protecting children, protecting the safety and health of children. In any context, those are my predictions.

Carah Burrell [01:27:54] You're thinking of Jesus.

John Dehlin [01:27:56] Jesus, yeah. Based on Jesus.

Carah Burrell [01:27:58] You're thinking of Jesus's. We're talking about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day.

John Dehlin [01:28:01] I know. That's what I'm saying. I'm just predicting certainly the church is gonna. If it's got to spend that widow's might of tithing on, you know, amicus briefs and on. On expensive legal fees, it's going to be focusing on what Jesus cared about full stop. Right, Larsen. Oh, you're.

John Larsen [01:28:23] Place your bets.

John Dehlin [01:28:24] What's that?

John Larsen [01:28:26] Oh, I am. Oh, no, am I still muted?

Carah Burrell [01:28:28] John Dehlin. Do you remember? I'm sorry. Go, John Larsen.

John Larsen [01:28:32] Oh, I just said place your bets.

Carah Burrell [01:28:35] Speaking of. Place your beds. John de Lynn, do you remember when we walked past at the jazz arena, the curtain McConkey had their own box.

John Dehlin [01:28:42] Yeah, yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:28:42] And we went and took pictures. I was like, that's pretty dope. John de Linde and Carah taking pictures in front of Curtain McConkey, where they choke on the roast beef that child sex abuse pays for. So that's what they care about. They care about slam dunks and three pointers as long as they get to. You have unlimited ice cream from their box at the Vivint home arena.

John Dehlin [01:29:01] Anyway, Carah, thanks for being here today. It was so fun. You and I hung out a little bit yesterday around lunchtime, and it was so fun to see you. And it's so awesome every time you come back on Mormon Stories, you make this podcast beautiful, better whenever you're on it. So thank you.

Carah Burrell [01:29:19] Thanks, John. And I also, I want to forward that compliment to my Mormon mom, who I've been hard on and I've turned over a new leaf. I love her so much. I always have. She's watching my kids right now so that the house is quiet, so they're asleep over at Grandma, so. Mormon grandmas are so wonderful. I have nothing bad to say when. So props to Carol that this all happens. Just want to say that.

John Larsen [01:29:44] Well, and again, Carah's coming out to visit the. The ranch, visit the farm out here in Oregon. So excited she'll be able to return and see what. What she. She says. And we're gonna try to pull out the recorder at some point and. And I'm gonna try to capture her thoughts. You can look for it. What's your channel? NuanceHoe.

Carah Burrell [01:30:03] Mine's NuanceHoe. And John Larsen has his own YouTube channel now, too, that you're just putting up your thoughts on different atheists, various subjects.

John Larsen [01:30:11] Yeah, I just talk about anything that's not Mormonism. I've. I've put three up there so far. I think if you just search for. I don't know. John Larsen.

John Dehlin [01:30:20] And I just want to say, last time you were on Mormon Stories, we were trying to get you like a hundred subscribers, and you're already at 1.46,000 subscribers. John Larsen. That's pretty good.

John Larsen [01:30:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been, it's been a little fun. It's, it's hard. It's, it's, it's, it's difficult. It's not, it's not, not easy to do those things. But hopefully there's some. You know, I had this at the top. One of the criticisms that, that I get, I get in the podcast, it was. And I, I was going to talk about this beginning. Um, the, the, the person said, I don't want to be demonized on Dehlin's podcast because I'm just looking for the true history of the church, and, and I don't want to hear you demonizing Maga and the conservatives.

John Larsen [01:31:12] And the answer is, well, there's a huge crossover between the two, and they're absolutely related, which is why I bring them up. And I really don't have any side. I'm just looking at truth. But this podcast gives a place to talk about some of these other things that are interconnected and things that are meaningful to me.

John Larsen [01:31:30] It's a little bit deeper philosophically, and we're trying to get there. I'm trying to garden path you down there so you understand some of the concepts so we can really have some really deeper, more interesting discussions. So hopefully for people who like such things, it'll be interesting.

John Dehlin [01:31:47] Well, Mark Crispin writes the Holy Trinity, Carah, John Larsen, and John de Lynn. So Father, Father, Mother and son. I'll be the Son. How's that? Can be the Father and the mother, and I'll be the Son.

Carah Burrell [01:32:03] I approve.

John Larsen [01:32:06] I am no God.

Carah Burrell [01:32:09] I said, I said to John de Lynn today that be still and know that I am God. And that works. If you're worshiping something else or just yourself, you're just like, I know what's right. I got a good instinct in here. So we are not the Trinity. Your Trinity is in here, everybody. Your intuition, it's all in here. The answers are all in here. Turn this off and go meditate. That's my parting words.

John Larsen [01:32:28] I love it. Yeah, I think we need to deal with the simple stuff first. Like the amazing miracle that we just exist. Let's just contemplate that for a few thousand years, then we can start talking about where it came from.

Wrap-Up, Credits, and Listener Support

John Dehlin [01:32:42] I love it. Before we leave, let me just make sure Everybody please support Carah Carah's Patreon. We'll include a link to it in the show notes that everyone, your, your donations to the Mormon Expression Fund for Mormon Stories is what makes John and Carah possible because we do pay them both for their contributions.

John Dehlin [01:33:08] So Please go to mormonstories.org mormonexpression and become a donor. And we'll make sure Maven includes that in the show notes because we want to just make it easy for, we want that revenue to continue. We've, we've tried to upgrade John's camera, his microphone, his laptop, you know, his lighting. Like, we're doing all we can to help John shine as much as we can, and we're using your contributions to make that possible.

John Dehlin [01:33:38] So please continue to support. If you love the Mormon Expression series with John Larsen, please go to mormonstories.org Mormon expression become a donor. Of course, you can go back into the Spotify library and you can find Mormon Expression podcast that John used to host. And you can go back and listen to what, 300, what, 20 episodes? How many is in there, John?

John Larsen [01:34:00] I think there are 290 or so.

John Dehlin [01:34:03] Okay, well, it's a rich category. It's a rich catalog of content. So please check out the Mormon Expression catalog on Spotify. And yeah, mostly just please spread the word. Please subscribe like us. Share this episode and others with people. Comment when you can. All that helps the algorithms and yeah, and just be kind and loving and good to each other. We need a panelist that's like a, a thoughtful conservative. Would you guys hate that or would you eat that up?

John Larsen [01:34:34] No, I can role play that if

Carah Burrell [01:34:37] you need me to. I can just. What's up, kids? I'm super hip hopping and conservative. Care of three years ago was here. I was that three years ago. Like, I can role play that in a heartbeat.

John Larsen [01:34:49] I used to have a lot of fun talking to conservative scholars. I still read some of my favorite conservative scholars. It's hard because the modern Republican MAGA conservative movement in the United States has really moved away from its intellectual roots. I mean, it's telling that they have no platform. It's not like those people aren't out there, but that's just not what's dominating the main dialogue. So of course we attack the, the things that deserve to be attacked. But I, I, I miss, I wish the conservative intellectuals would come back. And I'm, I'm annoyed at them for going into hiding and not having the courage to speak out when they should have, but I miss you guys.

John Larsen [01:35:29] Let's talk Some more. I'm not as. There's a lot of conservative ideas that I, I find, I mean, meanable that I'm down with. So, but, but this modern neo fascist movement that's going on right now, that's bathed in lies and, and power, that's, that's not anything we, any of us want anything to do with.

John Dehlin [01:35:50] We should do a special episode. Conservatives meet John Larsen and, and nuance. Ho. And we just have, we, we, we host a modern, a respectful dialogue of thoughtful conservative Mormon stories. Listeners that just want to say, hey, John Larsen and Carah Burrell, you guys have been a little bit hard on conservatives and we want to tell you what we think and, and try to come to a better understanding.

Carah Burrell [01:36:14] I would love that. It would be two hours of me going, I totally used to believe that and then I actually put. I had an ego death and I was just like, I just want to know what's true. And then I just researched a ton and I came to an opposite. It would just be me saying that for two hours straight is, I think, save the time.

John Larsen [01:36:31] I like the idea, but it actually wouldn't play out because I would just go for their jugular in four minutes. And then they, because there's, there's things just like we went over with the problem that this movement has the same thing Mormonism has. The, the discrepancies, the lies are blatant and they're easy, they're easy to point out. And so unless they want to distance themselves, that's the first thing. It's like, do you believe this? Do you believe this? Do you believe this? Do you believe this? But you know, then if we can get beyond that, then, then for sure. But you know, if, if they're part of some kind of Christian nationalist neo fascist movement, it ain't going to be pretty. Gonna be blood on the floor.

John Dehlin [01:37:08] All right, well, there's a lot of conservatives that, that, that actually don't like a lot about what's going on.

John Larsen [01:37:15] Yeah, they keep saying that, but, but none of them, none of them have the, the courage to come out and say. Say it.

John Dehlin [01:37:23] Mitt Romney.

John Larsen [01:37:25] Liz Cheney.

Carah Burrell [01:37:26] Yeah, John, did you guys, did you see that post that Bill Real put up today? I reposted it. And it's all about the left, right, authority, intellectual versus practical reasons for leaving the church. And it has a list of all the reasons that people from the, the right are leaving. They have to do with like elite globalism, government worship, informed consent, health, freedom, personal revelation, free agency. And I do think that is a long mission of Mormon stories for a long time to not alienate people who are leaving for those reasons as well. But the reasons that we so often talk about, like John Larsen was saying, they overlap with the very foundations of why, you know, the church isn't true.

Carah Burrell [01:38:00] And so you have to do some. Be intellectually honest to say, if this pattern exists in the church, does it not exist in your own political ideology? And so sometimes people are just leaving the church. It's a very conservative religion, as was I. I was horrified that I was just going to have to go join BLM or something. After I left the church, there was no conservative landing pad for me as I left a very conservative religion. So I do empathize with that problem. I just had to slowly move baby step, baby step towards undoing a lot of the, the, the, the. The untrue things that were pumped in my brain from, you know, riding in the truck with my dad my entire life listening to talk radio. It takes some time to undo.

John Larsen [01:38:43] Yeah, I want to make sure I, I'm. There are. There are some great conservative commentators out there. I think David Brooks is still one who's been true to conservative movement and conservative values. So if we can get past this, whatever it is that's going on right now, then, yeah, I'd love. I'd love to engage and talk to folks.

John Dehlin [01:39:02] All right, well, we'll. We'll ask any of our conservative viewers, the listeners, if they want to have this conversation, reach out to me, and we'll see if we can have it someday. Or maybe it's a bad idea.

John Larsen [01:39:13] We don't have to record it either. We can just do it over beers.

Carah Burrell [01:39:17] I remember the class correctly. I think the last time we invited somebody on that was a conservative, it ended in me quitting. Careful what you asked for, John Dehlin. You know, it'd be a great idea, Carah. Why don't you come back and do the same thing you did before that ended in a mental breakdown for you? Thanks, John. I want to make sure this is all just out in the open.

John Dehlin [01:39:37] Suggestion officially withdrawn. You guys are awesome. John Larsen, we love you. We're glad you're in the saddle. Thanks for. Thanks for all the work you do and the heart and the passion you bring. You're just so loved. And I live every day Mormon Stories podcast host Grateful that John Larsen is in my life and in the life of my viewers and listeners. So thank you, John.

Carah Burrell [01:40:00] He's about to be in my. In my hug range, and that's how excited I am. Not Just in my life, John, you're going to be in my high five hug range, skipping down the road through your farm range in 24 hours. That's how happy I am.

John Larsen [01:40:14] Excited to have you. We're getting the yurt all dressed up and. And I think you'll be happy with it.

Carah Burrell [01:40:19] Yeah, I'd love a dressed up yurt.

John Larsen [01:40:20] You heard.

John Dehlin [01:40:21] You heard my thank you. Right, John?

John Larsen [01:40:23] Yes. Thanks, John. You're. You're great. You're. You're doing the Lord's work. And I. I stand by what I said back on stage in 2014, that, you know, there's. There's people who make their mark on history, and you're one of the few who've actually move the needle. So the. The disillusionment of the church that's happening now is in part due to you. So congratulations. Thank you for being. People who advocate for truth are almost always seen as. As agitators and destructive in their time and. And the work that you're doing. I know, I know you take shots for it and your family takes shots, but it's. It's really super important, and I believe in it.

John Dehlin [01:41:06] Thanks, brother. Love you. It's. It's just great to not be doing it alone. I feel way more supported now than I ever have before. You're a part of that, John. And Carah, you're part of that. You're just so thoughtful, funny, delightful, wise, and a good friend. And so, Carah, thanks for being on this podcast.

Carah Burrell [01:41:24] Thanks for having me. I'm honored. I'm so, so honored to have you guys as long friends. Friends and just general in this podcasting space that anyone cares what I have to say. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's highly inappropriate. Whatever. Thanks for having trust in me. You guys.

John Dehlin [01:41:38] You guys want to drop any more F bombs before we. We end? Are you good?

John Larsen [01:41:42] No, I think. I think three is enough.

John Dehlin [01:41:44] Okay. Does that count as a fourth?

John Larsen [01:41:46] Oh, that's the fourth. Sorry, drinkers, I just throw you over the line. I'm not gonna let you have six, though.

John Dehlin [01:41:53] We'll drink a drive, everybody. All right, thanks, John. Thanks, Carah. Thanks, listeners and viewers. Thanks to Maven for moderating the show notes and the comments. Thanks to Jen Camp for all the work she does. Gerardo, everyone who makes the Open Stories foundation possible. We're getting our TikTok and our shorts game a little bit back up. It's taken us, like, months just to even start to try and do what Carah was able to do in her sleep, but we're grateful to Julia and others who are helping out a little bit with those shorts game. Support us when you can. Check out Tick Tock if you want. We love you guys. Be good to each other and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

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