The Inconvenient Truth About Joseph Smith (w/ Sandra Tanner)

By anon October 13, 2025

Sandra Tanner discusses how the historical Joseph Smith is often more complicated than the "official" LDS version of events. Who was the REAL Joseph Smith? Why was he characterized by magic practices in his early life? Was Joseph Smith's involvement with magic normal for that time? Was it tied into the origins of the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? In this video, Skyler Hamilton (of the Distinctive Christianity Podcast) sits down with Sandra Tanner to unpack

Source: The Inconvenient Truth About Joseph Smith (w/ Sandra Tanner) Channel: GLM Published: October 13, 2025 | Archived: May 24, 2026

Video: The Inconvenient Truth About Joseph Smith (w/ Sandra Tanner)
Channel: GLM
Published: October 13, 2025
Duration: 1:37:45
Views: 218,568
Category: Nonprofits & Activism
Video ID: 43jrxPVv8nQ

Description

Sandra Tanner discusses how the historical Joseph Smith is often more complicated than the “official” LDS version of events. Who was the REAL Joseph Smith? Why was he characterized by magic practices in his early life? Was Joseph Smith’s involvement with magic normal for that time? Was it tied into the origins of the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

In this video, Skyler Hamilton (of the Distinctive Christianity Podcast) sits down with Sandra Tanner to unpack the origins of Mormonism — from money-digging and glass-looking, to the “First Vision,” to the secret beginnings of plural marriage.

DISTINCTIVE CHRISTIANITY PODCAST: Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/distinctive-christianity/id1662653645 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ZDtr99nSj6hpoOEIGD4Ue

-- SUBSCRIBE: https://youtube.com/GodLovesMormons?sub_confirmation=1 SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY: https://god-loves-mormons-459235.churchcenter.com/giving/to/god-loves-mormons –

Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)

0:00 The Mormons had always said, “Paul’s documents out here in Utah that she gave to these newspapers in the 1870s time frame are an invention. They aren’t true.” Voila. They opened this one package. Uh, and it’s the 1826 period of court documents. And here is the judge’s bill to the county for trying Joseph Smith, the glass looker. their charges to the county for their hearing with Joseph Smith, the glass looker, match the papers that this Miss Pierall saved and the date and the charges, everything matched.

0:43 Wow. So, we know that it’s all authentic. Well, just because some people were into it doesn’t mean that it was ordained of God or was respectable or was honest business. Welcome to the Distinctive Christianity podcast where we do deep dives in Mormon and Christian history, theology, and biography. Uh big one today. We’re going to be discussing the guy, the guy, the uh man, Joseph Smith, and we’re going to talk about some of those founding claims. I have the great honor of not only uh recording from the Gerald and Sandra Tanner Research Library at the Utah Christian Research Center, but to be joined by Sandra Tanner herself. Thank you so much, Sandra.

1:23 What do we know about Joseph Smith’s early life? You know, there’s a standard story most people hear from the missionaries about him being Bible believing and maybe even churchgoing. But, you know, what other evidence uh do we have about his involvement in things like magic and and such? Well, we know that uh as early as 1823, Joseph Smith was involved in um money digging magic using a sear stone and uh evidently already had the idea of uh doing some sort of book, a record of uh some way connected to the American Indians. So you could say that’s kind of the start of of Mormonism.

2:25 But um what he was known for in the community was that uh in the early 1820s he had found a special rock in a well that he determined was a sear stone. and a sear stone was like crystal ball gazing that you could look at this rock and uh get messages from it. Now, this wasn’t an idea that Joseph came up with. This was an established um magical practice with a long history of people claiming to use magic stones or objects of some way to determine uh your future or uh what’s going on in your life or a directive for your life.

3:16 Um find buried treasure, discover minerals in the ground. Um, we know the Smiths were involved with this money digging idea. They also were involved with the idea of water witching which was very popular in the new New England area and I think is still uh popular in the Vermont area where you had a Yshaped stick and you would hold it at the Y part with the pointer out in front of you and you could walk over the your land and determine if water was there or minerals. Uh some people used it in magic practices to find buried treasure.

4:00 And so the Smiths, Joseph and his father were already involved in the in the magic scene in Vermont before they even moved to New York. So the early years of Joseph Smith were spent as a teenager in this magic worldview. And there’s a book called that jo early Mormonism and the magic worldview by Michael Quinn where a Mormon scholar he goes and researches this whole thing of uh how the Smiths were involved in magical practices before the advent of Mormonism.

4:35 So this stone that he finds in this well he claims has magic properties and he would put it in his hat and you could pay him to walk over your property and he would tell you if there was a buried treasure. Now, the reason there were these ideas was back in that day, not everyone had access to a bank. And so many people would hide their money or treasures somewhere on their farm. And uh consequently, if Farmer Brown hid the family treasure and then died and he hadn’t told anyone where it was at, you might hire some guy to walk over the property and see if he could discern where it was buried. There were rumors that Captain Kid of pirate fame had uh come into that area and other pirates and somewhere along the area had buried some of their treasures. So, there were reasons that people were out looking for treasure. It wasn’t just out of the blue. Um this this evidently intrigued Joseph Smith. And so he’s out having people pay him to walk over their property to tell him if there’s buried treasure.

5:50 But this becomes the beginning of Mormonism because people that uh supported him and agreed with this practice were his first converts into his new faith. So people say, well, how could Joseph Smith get could get people to believe in him? Well, they already were believing in his claim that this rock gave him special message. Now, we get up to a few years later in 1826, and a farmer from uh down in the Pennsylvania area hears of Joseph’s fame from a brother that lived in the Palmyra, New York area. And he comes up, Mr. stole. He comes up to the Palmra area and hires Joseph Smith to come down to his area and look for a lost silver mine that he had heard about some way.

6:54 Now, the Mormons will admit in their writings of the history that he did go work for this Mr. Stole. Uh but they don’t want to make it that he was hired because of his ability to see in the stone. They want to paint the picture. He was hired uh to come help dig. But no, he’s there specifically because of the stone. And most Mormon historians wouldn’t con contest that area. So you have him uh doing this work for Mr. Stole. Mr. Stole’s nephews become worried that Joseph Smith’s um ripping them off and that he’s given them a con game on finding a treasure.

7:37 They never do find a treasure, but the nephews are evidently involved in getting a lawsuit against Joseph for fraud. And so Joseph Smith is tried on a misdemeanor as Joseph Smith the glass looker. Now the glass looker charge would be equivalent to saying he was like traveling gypsies using crystal balls to tell your fortune. And so it comes under the vagrancy law of no visible means of support. You’re just coming to the community getting people to pay you money for for something that you can’t produce or come through with of whatever your promise was. So it was seen as fraud when you were claiming these magic powers.

8:22 So, at this hearing, Joseph Smith, um, says he’s not guilty. His plea is, uh, I really have a stone. It really works. I really can get messages from it, but I don’t use it now because it hurts my eyes. And so, I’m done with that part, you know, because he has to show that it’s not a fraud, right? He has to claim, I really have the gift in order to evade the charge of fraud. I really have a stone. It really works, but I’m not using it now because it hurts my eyes. Okay. So, Mr. Stall is called as a witness. And Mr. Stole says, “Oh, I know he really has the gift.” Because he told us if we dug down, we got to a certain point, we would find a feather. And if we dug further past the feather, we would hit this place where the treasure was.

9:16 And when we were digging, we found the feather and we kept digging and we hit a hard place and uh uh for one reason or another the treasure was sinking away or something and we weren’t able to retrieve the treasure, but we found the feather. So therefore, I know he has this gift. Well, from an outside point of view, I look at that and I think well, how hard is it for you to just pull a feather out of your pocket and stick it in the dirt? Oh, look at that.

9:44 Here’s the feather. Uh, but I think some people have observed that if you really had a feather in an old dig from couple hundred years ago, would it still be in pristine condition when you pulled it out of the dirt? Anyways, Mr. Stole was converted that he really had this gift. Well, the problem for Joseph Smith and for Mormonism today on the Book of Mormon is that it’s that same stone that he’s going to use to uh translate his gold plates that he later claims he finds. So he switches the story from I am a glassooker being able to find buried treasures for you to I am a prophet here in revelator who has a a stone that God has blessed that I can find buried records of God in the ground and this stone will allow me to translate it. So it’s the same scenario. He’s just shifted what the story is. And so the beginnings of Mormonism is steeped in magic. It’s steeped in the occult. They were going out at midnight drawing magic circles, doing incantations.

11:00 Uh there’s the claim of them uh sacrificing uh a sheep. And I think somebody even mentions a dog where you would ma you’d go out like at midnight or something and have a magic circle and uh the Smiths owned magic parchment and sort a dagger and stuff that the church I think conceds today. Uh they don’t like talk about it but anyways the church the Mormons have the artifacts from Joseph Smith’s early money digging and magic.

11:35 So they have to someway smooth over that to make it sound acceptable to people today that oh no he wasn’t he wasn’t like gypsies with crystal Paul. No this is a prophet of God using a god orained stone. But they have to ignore the magic part and just emphasize the stone that he used to translate the plates. All of which looks like the beginning of Mormonism has a very sketchy beginning that it looks like it starts as a deliberate way of conning people uh for him to tell them where treasures are buried. And as far as we know, no one ever claimed to find a treasure. The church admits he was doing this treasure digging, but no one can produce a witness that’ll say, “Yeah, we found it.” Yeah.

12:29 So, it it makes the whole beginning look a little sketchy. Absolutely. So, there’s this attempt to either um at least they used to do the it’s in spite of he gave that up. He repented of it and then to try to distinguish what was occurring with the Book of Mormon uh and Moroni being the spirit of the treasure or Nephi. um from the magical practices happening around the family uh or to compartmentalize it. There are other ways of doing it. Do you remember when they published the picture of the sear stone?

13:01 Oh yes, that was an amazing thing. Uh I don’t remember what year that was. Is that about 15 years ago? I’m not sure. 10 11 years ago. Yeah, 10 years ago maybe. Yes. Uh we knew that they had the stone. Um Grant Palmer uh Mormon fellow that’s now dead, but uh he wrote a book um insiders view insiders view of Mormon origins. And he tells in there because he was a uh in the church educational system, but he tells in his book that he saw some of the sear stones up at the church office building. Wow.

13:42 So, which was before the church ever did the photos, but he tells in his book about, “Yeah, I saw some of those stones up in the church historian’s office.” So, we knew that they were still there. The church had them all this time, but they did finally, the Mormon church did finally actually put out photos of the uh chocolatecoled one. And I think they have uh a couple others in the vault that we haven’t got pictures of or at least if the pictures are out there, they haven’t been labeled as Joseph Smith because there were a few other early Mormons that had stones as well.

14:17 Uh John Whitmer and Hyram Page. Um I don’t remember who else but there were others that used magic stones as well. Right. And just the minimizing it until finally one day like this is the one he used for the Book of Mormon. Um, and you know, there’s not an equivalent picture at the same time of a German thumbum with, you know, the the glasses. What in terms of sources, a lot of people will come in and say, “Well, all that stuff we get from quote unquote hostile or anti- Mormon sources.” So, how how do we historically go in and trust uh the occult origins of of Mormonism?

15:00 Well, the Mormon church published the photos of the stone, right? Right. I mean, it’s hard to get around that one. That kind of validates the whole story, right? And and I remember when they denied it. I mean, I remember that feeling of being at church having Quinn’s book and Brody’s book and you bring it up and it’s denied, right? To then just see it published online. I mean, that was it. There was It’s surreal, right?

15:27 It’s surreal. But the Mormon church has been on notice about this all along because David Whitmer, one of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon, wrote a pamphlet and addressed all believers in Christ in about 1887. And so his dying testimony is that Joseph’s a fallen prophet. And uh he believed the Book of Mormon. He tells how Joseph translated the plates. And he said Joseph would sit there with a hat and put a stone in the hat and God would make this divine light shine where he could read the text off of the stone to make the account of the Book of Mormon that he’d read off to the scribe. So the the Mormon church has always known that was how the early people described the process. the Mormon church just quit talking about it. And so in time, everyone just forgot it. And so, uh, unless you had heard of David Whitmer’s pamphlet, you wouldn’t have necessarily read anything about Joseph using a stone

16:31 in a hat. But, uh, David Whitmer’s pamphlet wasn’t that readily available when we first started studying, uh, Mormonism. Someone gave us a copy of David Whitmer’s pamphlet. And so in our early research, we knew that scenario of the stone in the hat. We hadn’t thought through all the implications of it, but but we were aware of David Whitmer’s claim. Uh and so the so the church leaders have no excuse today for hiding it all these years. They try to paint it today like, well, all this new research has come out, so now we know these things. No, they should have always known it. All my life, the LDS church has pointed to David Whitmer as a witness to the Book of Mormon, who never denied his testimony to the Book of Mormon.

17:24 How do they know he never denied his testimony to the Book of Mormon? It’s because he said that in this 1887 pamphlet, right? And the 1887 pamphlet tells the translation process. So the church leaders have no excuse for not knowing the original story. And yet I grew up with the being told all my life. Joseph Smith dug up the angel showed him where the plates were and they got them out of the ground. With the plates were these divinely preserved spectacles which they describe as being bigger than regular spectacles. Uh and because I guess supposed to be a big nephite or something. Anyways, they got these big spectacles that he looked through to translate.

18:10 Well, yeah, supposedly he found these spectacles with the plates that they’re divinely preserved for thousands of years. However, he finds the sear stone works easier. So, a rock in his pocket he can carry around at any time. It’s a lot easier in big spectacles. So, uh, the church has always known this scenario. They just were not telling us that part. They were just, it’s like a wrinkle in time. Well, we’ll just pass over that magic part of our history and just keep going. And you don’t have to know about that little dip. Only all through Mormon history, we have these little dips where, well, we don’t talk about that part, you know, put that in the bottom shelf. put that in the bottom shelf, you know, and so it looks like this steady line of their development and actual fact there’s a lot of dips in the road on the way to the end.

19:06 This 1826 Banebridge trial, just as an example, how how did we how do we know that happened? Well, there were um there were early statements by people about this trial, but no one had any documentation on it. It was just later reminiscences about it. And I think Brody mentions it briefly in uh the first edition of her book. and um our friend and minister Wesley Walters, Presbyterian minister in Illinois, was uh had got involved in studying Mormon history and he would spend his summers going up to New York trying to look for the early sources on Mormonism. He had read Fon Brody. He knew of some of the uh neighbors statements that had been printed uh in Ed’s Mormonism unveiled in 1834 or so 83 1833.

20:14 Um so in Edy How’s book you have statements about the money digging stuff. Wes wanted to find out what records are still in New York in old dusty archives that no one’s ever looked for that might support some of these later statements by people. And so he would spend all his spare time going up to New York to go through whatever archives he could find. He and a friend named Fred Paurell. Um he and Fred went to the New York Palmyra area looking for the early court documents that they had read people’s making reference to them but no documentation. Well then the uh records of the early court cases from Joseph Smith’s time had been moved out of whatever original holding place they were in. As time went by, they became just archival material.

21:20 And lo and behold, they’d ended up in the basement of the jail in Norwich, New York. And so it’s a different town even. And so you have this uh basement of this old dusty jail with stacks of uh court records in bundles all around in the basement of this damp old jail where they had just been put and stored and forgot about. Well, Wes and Fred spent days going through bundles trying to find stuff that would be back to the Joseph Smith time frame.

22:04 Wow. And voila, they opened this one package. Uh, and it’s the 1826 period of court documents. And here is the judge’s bill to the county for trying Joseph Smith, the glass looker. It’s just amazing. The document was uh damp and so when you see photos of the document now uh the right hand side of the document is uh stained dark and that’s because that’s where it’s wet. It’s a wonder the whole thing didn’t disintegrate, right?

22:42 Uh but so the documents were taken out of there. They were preserved. Um, I had uh certified letters from the county clerk uh certifying that the photos that we have of the documents are authentic, but they’re in my materials I just donated to the University of Utah. They aren’t cataloged yet, so you can’t go see them yet, but eventually it’ll it’ll be archived. Uh but it’s a wonder that Wes was able to find them when he did because of the dampness in the basement and the condition of those documents.

23:20 We’re sure that the next year if Wes had gone back a year later and found them, they probably would have just fallen apart in his hand because it was that damp in in the basement. But it wasn’t just uh uh the judges Albert Neely nei charges to the county were $268 I think for uh presiding over this. Then we also have constable Dang bill to the county for arresting Joseph Smith and holding him as a prisoner for a couple of days and um and a minimus to take him. I don’t remember what all it says on the documents, but Wes found the actual documents of the bill to the county. Now, that’s not the transcript of what happened in the hearing, but it proves the hearing happened.

24:18 Now, uh, a young woman by the name of Emily Perisol, uh, who became a Christian missionary and came out here to Utah in 1870s, something in that time frame. She was a niece, I believe, of Judge Neely, and she cut out of his dockup book the papers that discuss the actual hearing itself, and she brought them with her to Utah. These documents ended up getting printed in a couple of different newspapers at the time.

25:02 And the Mormons had always said Piol’s documents out here in Utah that she gave to these newspapers in the 1870s time frame are an invention. They aren’t true. They they um we don’t know where to fit them in history. They’re just junk, you know. Well, when Wes found these P papers for uh Judge Neely and Constable Dang, their charges to the county for their hearing with Joseph Smith, the glass looker, match the papers that this Miss Pierol saved and brought West with her. She had told in there about the charges and the date and the charges, everything matched.

25:50 Wow. So, we know that it’s all authentic. Anyways, in the papers that she had brought out, uh it has all of this um discussion of him uh owning up to yes, I use a stone and a hat, but I have a real power and all this stuff. So, the Mormon church today concedes all that, but they have to say, well, Joseph was just a teenager. his curiosity. It was a common thing of the day. A lot of people were into this.

26:21 Blah blah blah. Well, just because some people were into it doesn’t mean that it was ordained of God or was respectable or was an honest business, right? And it was illegal for a reason, right? Because yes, there were people conning people in the neighborhood, right? You know, there’s this and and even Quinn seems to do this a little bit, try to domesticate it so much to normalize it, right?

26:45 um which that’s that’s a helpful angle at points. Yeah. But then you know this attempt to make it completely um alien also you could take that too far because there were people doing this and there was prominent beliefs but I think yeah it kind of is beside the point. The point is if this is God’s prophet of the restoration and the claims have been his purity and I and I mean purity.

27:11 Yes. that he’s always been morally upstanding and you know like a lamb led to the slaughter. How do you handle uh evidence like this? Um, and the fact that these happen, I remember the statement, was it Hugh Nibbi that that said, “If true, you know, dismissing this trial, uh, this would be some of the most condemning evidence against the prophet, you know, and then we have evidence now.” I mean, and we did have evidence, but I mean, now it’s just undeniable things to to Yes. So, so all the church can say is it doesn’t matter.

27:46 They used to say, “No, that never happened.” That’s exactly. So we proved it happened. Oh well that doesn’t really matter then now it’s a preparatory priesthood. Yeah. Right. So it just in some is there any way to truly separate the magic from LDS scripture? Well no because you have him using the same rock that he uses for treasure digging to translate the Book of Mormon. It’s the same claim. It’s the same power. uh the same process and so I don’t see how you separate the two and even the vision experiences when you look at the witnesses uh it’s hard to not look at their statements and say I think you guys we’re being sold a bill of goods just like on find and bury treasure that you get these this charismatic leader that gets these guys all primed that uh this divine spirit has guided him to these plates and uh he’s been translating them. Now you have to remember the the plates were not visible on the table.

28:58 The Mormon picture portrayals in all their books in the past have shown the plates on the table. If the plates were really on the table, why would you have to take the three main witnesses, Martin Harris, David Whitmer, and Oliver Cry? Why would you have to take the three of them out into the woods to pray for a divine manifestation to see the plates if they were on the table the whole time he’s translating, right?

29:28 The very fact he has to take him into the woods to pray to see them tells you they didn’t exist or they would all he has to do is lift the cover off of them. They’re sitting, you know, they’re sitting in the room somewhere and uh because the the witnesses say that uh that they’re covered or hidden somewhere, the church today has to show it as being the plates being opened on the table.

29:59 But that’s not what the witnesses said, right? Their statements are that they have they aren’t seeing the plates while he translates. Joseph’s just talking to his scribe. He has to take him in the woods for a heavenly vision. And even then, the heavenly vision doesn’t work at first because he takes the three out to the woods. We’re going to pray to get a vision uh where the angel’s going to show us the plates and nothing happens.

30:25 And Martin Harris says, “Huh, I must be the doubting Thomas. Uh, I better step back from this because I guess I’m holding you guys up.” He leaves and supposedly then David and Oliver say, “Oh yeah, they had a vision. They saw it and all.” And so then Joseph goes to find Martin Harris. Well, the other two have seen the vision. So what about you? And then Joseph tells us that he and Martin prayed. So this is separate than the other two. He and Martin pray. And finally Martin supposedly says, “Oh, it is enough. Mine eyes have beheld.” Joseph is telling that story. Martin didn’t tell that story. We don’t have a firsthand account from Martin at that time. Now, later here in Utah, he gives statements about seeing the plates, but it’s always in a vision context.

31:19 It’s not physical, right? Spiritual eyes. It’s spiritual eyes. So, I don’t think that there was anything to show them. Joseph may have made up some sort of mock pieces of metal that he could keep in a bag that you could feel and there was something of weight in there. It felt like metal. Um, but they aren’t seeing it physically. Wow. The spring of 1820. So, another founding claim is the revival context in the spring of 1820 where Joseph Smith in vision sees the father and the son.

31:58 What’s wrong with that dating? Let’s start there. And and how did we find out? Okay, this goes back to our friend uh Pastor Walters. Yeah, a hero of mine as a fellow Presbyterian here. Yes. So, he’s the hero. He is well we all were studying first vision because uh well Fon Brody had brought up that there was missing information about the first vision account that there there were things about Joseph’s early life that aren’t clear and she questioned this early aspect of his life and so Gerald and I had we started her court courtship all on first vision problems and uh true love true love. And then and then we met Wes uh when we still believed the Book of Mormon when we were half out of Mormonism. And uh so we were aware of Wes’s research and uh again Wes’s trips to New York.

33:01 So he’s out there trying to figure out, okay, you can’t prove whether or not Joseph saw some sort of visionary person. However, you can test what he describes as the physical events around it that can be tested. Joseph Smith says in 1820 due to the great turmoil of religious revival in his neighborhood that was so strong that uh people were fighting over the ministers were fighting over who were going to get all the converts and there was all this turmoil going on.

33:41 some saying here, some are saying there, you know, and so Joseph goes out in the woods to pray which church he should join. So that’s the way Joseph frames it. Okay, you can’t prove whether or not he saw God, but you could prove whether or not there was a revival in the neighborhood to the extent that the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterians specifically there, those are the ones that are named all were involved in a great revival where there would have been enough converts that people would have been fighting over what church they were going to. So Wes goes back to search the early church records in New York. And being a minister, he knew how to go about trying to find old church records. Yeah.

34:27 And he runs down these different churches records because they aren’t stored in the little church where they first happened. They all get torn turned into some senate or someplace, some storage house. So he’s out looking for all of those. In his research, he realizes, wait a minute, there there isn’t a revival in 1820. Like Joseph Smith’s describing, the churches in 1820 only show modest convers uh membership growth. That would be a normal congregation’s growth. Nothing that would indicate this momentous thing where all the ministers are fighting over the converts. that revival that claim fits the 1823 24 25 through that period there’s a revival in the area that does fit that where you have um I don’t know a couple hundred people that join these different churches this is obviously an astounding revival that’s happening in the area there’s nothing like this in 1820 now the Mormons will point to oh yes but there were there were revivals in 1817 or 18 or whatever.

35:40 Not like this one. And they’re the wrong they’re too early. Yeah. Joseph Smith was just a kid. I mean, to move it back to an earlier time period makes it even less believable that Joseph would have been this troubled over what church to join because he’s only 14 in 1820 and you’re going to move it back to when he’s 11. You know, it just doesn’t doesn’t make sense. So, but what people describe of the revival because there’s statements by uh Joseph’s family about this revival event, but it’s later. Yeah.

36:16 And so, you have Joseph Smith’s brother Alvin dies in 1823 and uh the revival happens after this. It’s after Alvin’s death that the family is concerned about religion. the revival happens. That’s when Joseph’s mother and sister and brother join the Presbyterian Church. And we know they joined because they later got dropped from the roles. And so, uh, the whole thing fits historically to an 1824 time period, not 1820.

36:59 And the problem is the Mormons can’t just say, “Oh, we’ll just move all the dates up then. It happened in 24.” It’s after the time that the angel comes and tells them about the plates. That’s supposed to happen 1823. Uh you can’t have all of this happening after he’s already been given told about the plates. It’s it it screws up the whole time frame of the story. And uh because once he uh gets the plates, he has to wait four years before he can get them to translate them. So you can’t just move everything up. You run out of years before the printing date.

37:36 But we know that the uh revival is that later time period. 1820 doesn’t fit. And even the apologists have to work to try to get either the re revival to a broader section of the state and argue, well, it didn’t just mean his neighborhood. It meant the whole, you know, half of New York to get enough people in commotion going on. But why would Joseph be troubled about what church to join? Why would this these ministers clamoring for converts bother him to this point that he would go out and pray? What church to join? That all points to something happening in his neighborhood, not 20 miles away.

38:26 Right. And even uh in some of those statements by the Smith family, we we have even specific names, right, of ministers. Yes. That also match the 182425 time frame and not the 1820 time frame, right? I think George Lane, yeah, may have been one. Others that are also sources that um match a revival, just not in 1820. Yeah. Wrong year. Right. So, and and you you went into the stakes. And once again, just to emphasize, underscore for the listener and uh this is going to be a theme throughout this uh your husband, you Wes Walters, this work is hard work. Yes. It’s messy work.

39:06 It takes time and effort. and using up your vacation time and all sorts of things, right? And and I think, you know, it’s it’s easy. I mean, we are benefiting from all these decades of work that that y’all have put in into this and and just we owe a debt of gratitude uh in in finding these original documents, putting these pieces together, comparing sources over time. Um, and so this this to me I I wonder I it it is interesting this recent restoration proclamation by Nelson. You can tell he’s trying to harmonize the accounts and I want to go to the differing accounts here uh by by combining the 1838. I’m looking which church to join with the earlier 1832 uh that’s a little more uh salvation centered. Um but he is doubling down.

39:57 They have doubled down on the spring of 1820. And I think you already hit why. It’s because the first vision would actually be Moroni. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. And that’s what they don’t want. That that brings the magic stuff. Yes. They have to have some kind of an encounter with God before the angel shows up to tell them about the Book of Mormon plates. And I think that’s why he came up part of the reason he came up with the idea of an earlier vision is I’m assuming that Christians around him were saying you mean just bam out of the blue some angel shows up and tells you about a hidden record of God.

40:35 When did you become a Christian? When did you give your life to Christ? Surely you had some encounter with God before this angel shows up about these plates. Yeah, I should have had a better start to the story. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I remember now. I’m glad you asked that because yes in in 1820 actually I had seen the father and son and so that’s how God got started. So it’s it fits when you look at how people tell of when they talk to the Smiths and what Smith told them at different time periods.

41:06 It’s obvious that he started telling people at first about the plates and about this Indian record and and about this angel. Then he comes up with an earlier story. Y that oh well yeah before that happened uh I had had this vision and I don’t think he was telling people at that early time period that it was the father and son we know that he wrote an account in 1832 uh Mormonism starts in 1830 that’s when he prints the Book of Mormon 1832 in his private papers he writes an account of his early life where he says that u he went out in the was to pray to know if his sins were forgiven if a divine being did exist. Was he accepted of him? Is he forgiven of his sins? And the Lord appears to him and says his sins are forgiven. There’s nothing in this about this restoration movement. This is this is just a standard conversion story that many people would have been talking about at the time. uh you have many

42:12 ministers uh and early Christians in the same time period of Joseph Smith saying that they had some sort of vision of Christ or God uh or both um at the time they pray for forgiveness of sins. So his this story he comes up with in 1832 in his private papers is no different than many other similar accounts of people claiming experiences outside of Mormonism in the Christian community.

42:39 They went out in the woods to pray for forgiveness of sins and God appeared and told them their sins were forgiven. So it just sound like everybody else’s. So now he has a conversion story to tell you. Oh well yeah the angel came but before that I had a conversion experience like you’re asking me about. But then as the years go by, he thinks he needs a more grandiose story for the start of it. So in 38, he starts writing his history again, this time for publication. And now he’s going to have the story.

43:09 Oh, that uh he already knew all the churches were wrong. Well, no, the first account in 32 says he already knew all the churches were wrong when he goes out to pray. And he’s not asking what church to join. He just wants to know if his sins are forgiven. In 38 he writes he didn’t know what the situation was of the churches. And it’s at that time that God told him they’re all wrong. Don’t join any of them. So the message has changed from the first time he writes the story down. It’s now changed. So now God’s telling him all the churches are wrong.

43:47 Don’t join any of them. And the father and son appear in this. Although he doesn’t say father and son. And he just says that the two beings in brightness and glory appeared and one pointed the other and said um that this my son hear him or whatever. And the Mormons will use that to prove that Joseph Smith was saying he saw God and Jesus as two separate people standing next to each other. Uh but we know from historical research that Joseph Smith was not in 1838 he was not telling the public that the father and son are physical beings like they know today. In one of his um scripture books in 1835 they had lectures in there for the brethren. And one of the lectures uh lecture five I can’t remember uh says that the father is a being of spirit and the son’s a being of tabernacle.

44:48 And so it shows that in 1835 what they’re teaching the elders is that the father doesn’t have a physical form. But by 38 he’s starting to think in terms of oh yeah I think those guys must be separate beings. So the father and son both appeared to me. But it still isn’t until in the 1840s that Joseph Smith starts getting really clear on trying to separate the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit from each other as separate deities. Mormonism has a developing view of God.

45:21 It goes from one God in the Book of Mormon to multiple gods by the time you get to Nauvoo in the 1840s. Y and so people ask me about, you know, how can you get around the first vision? I said, well, which first vision are we talking about? And he saw the father and the son. Well, which version of that? Is it the father who’s a spirit or the father who’s a physical being? Because the story changes.

45:48 Yeah. You and Gerald were, if I’m not mistaken, if not the first, some of the first to point out these different accounts. Correct. Right. Right. And you were bringing this to the attention of even say Elder Lrand Richards if I’m not mistaken. Right. Yes. Is that we? Yes. We had um Yes. In the 195960 time period when we just had got married and were researching trying to figure out whether we believe Mormonism anymore.

46:18 Yeah. We had been studying on first vision and I when I decided to leave Mormonism in 1960. I sent a letter out to all the general authorities and everyone in my ward saying that I was leaving and one of the things I mentioned in my letter was that there were problems with the first vision that uh our research had shown that the early accounts of the first vision uh seemed to just be talking about angels and uh it wasn’t emphasized. No one seems to be emphasizing this father-son narrative which Lrand Richard’s apostle wrote and challenged us that uh his greatgrandfather had written in his daily journal that Joseph Smith had personally told him that he saw the father and the son in this vision. And so we uh questioned Lrand Richards on whether that could be so. Uh, we wanted to see the journal that had that statement in it because it didn’t fit what we had found in our research so far. So, we go up to the Grand Richard’s

47:25 office. He takes us over to the genealological library to see the microfilm. And when he puts the microfilm on, he turns to this certain page of this his great-grandfather’s diary that’s on film and gets to the page and shows Gerald, here it is. And Gerald says, “Well, it sounds past tense as though Joseph Smith’s dead, not like a daily diary that you came home that night and wrote an entry in. It sounds past tense.” And Gerald wanted to be able to turn them film back to see the earlier dates to verify when he wrote this down. And the grand wouldn’t let him look back at the earlier pages. And uh he and Gerald had kind of an argument uh over this whole thing. Well, later I went back to the church historians, well, the genealological library to see the film and at first they told me it was out for repairs several times until finally months went by and I went up again and finally uh because I already had the call number for the film and just turned it in without having to look it up in the card catalog or anything, I

48:36 just turned in the number. The lady said, “Well, how did you have that number?” And I said, “Well, I copied it down when I was here months ago and did research, but I need to check the dates.” So, she thought I was approved and she got out the film for me. And then I find out, no, it’s the guy’s memoirs here in Utah in the 1880s. So, it does nothing to prove that at the during Joseph Smith’s lifetime that he was making it clear to people it was a father and son. And this supposedly was an entry in that’s really getting in the weeds in we love it 1841 I believe is when he’s supposed to make this entry that Joseph told him father’s son.

49:20 So this is before the time of his King Flet sermon where he gets Joseph Smith goes more detailed into the father and son being separate beings and God progressing to godhood and stuff. So in 1841 uh that’s why we knew it it there was something wrong with it because in 1841 we just couldn’t imagine that anyone is writing down Joseph to Smith told him he’d seen the father and son. It didn’t fit with anything we’ found in our research. People that made reference to the first vision usually were saying it was angels or something or some kind of vision but not making this kind of physical distinction on God.

50:00 Right? And we turned out we were right. It was the guy’s memoirs. Exactly. No, I remember one of the first times it struck me was a sermon, I believe, by John Taylor in which he’s emphasizing the angel. Yeah. He doesn’t even name him. He’s like when when this work was begun with the coming of the angel, you know, like no, that’s not doesn’t even sound like 1838. Yeah. So when when we were preparing for this, you had mentioned that one of the last things to I guess dominoes to fall for you was the Book of Mormon itself.

50:35 And um I definitely want to get into some of the the issues I want to point out and this will of course be in the show notes. If this was the only book you and your husband did, I mean that would be incredible. And yet uh of course we put people what book it was. It is Joseph Smith’s plagiarism of the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Um, and you even include some confessional language that comes from, you know, later later confession.

51:01 The Westminster confession. Exactly. Somehow ancient Native Americans were debating clauses from the Westminster Confession of Faith. But I this this is an incredible work. But do you want to say anything to the audience in terms of why the Book of Mormon uh was so hard to give up for you? Well, if you’re well, okay, as two young people trying to figure out if Mormonism is true when we’ve had people bring problems to us, either it’s true at the start or it’s not true. You can’t have the base be false and Joseph Smith later be the true prophet of the true church. So, we felt, all right, what’s the first thing of Mormonism? That’s the Book of Mormon.

51:46 Okay, then that’s our litmus test. If the Book of Mormon is true, everything in the rest of Mormonism has to agree with the Book of Mormon. And so at first, uh, from that reasoning that took out Brigham Young and and Joseph Smith’s King Flet sermon and all sorts of stuff when you just make the Book of Mormon your base. Now, it didn’t occur to us as young Mormons that we could have used the Bible as the litmus test, but as young Mormons, we had been trained that the Bible wasn’t that reliable. The Book of Mormon was more reliable than the Bible. Okay, we’re going to use the Book of Mormon as our litmus test. If it doesn’t agree with that, we’re throwing it out.

52:33 Well, of course, that raises the whole question, how sure are you to the are you about the Book of Mormon? Right. Right. And once we had people start challenging us that, you know, like, okay, you’re doubting Mormonism. Why not the Book of Mormon? Why do you still believe it? Oh, well, because it’s this great uh story of the American Indian and how God didn’t forget a whole continent. Well, how do you know it really happened? Hm. And so, uh, Gerald after we got married and we were using the Bible and Book of Mormon for devotions as, uh, because we had, we’d come to faith in Christ. We just hadn’t got rid of the Book of Mormon yet. So, we’re using that as a devotional. And Gerald started and the King James Bible, right?

53:22 We were Yeah. And you come out of Mormonism, you just got a King James Bible. So, we’re reading our King James Bibles with our Book of Mormon. And the more he reads the two, and Gerald had very good memory, and as he’s reading these two different times, he starts to put it together in his mind. Wait a minute. There’s stuff in the Book of Mormon that sounds just like in the Bible. There’s phrases all through here that are King James phrases. It isn’t just that it’s the same thought. It’s King James wording. Now, if God’s going to give the translation of the record on this uh plates, word for word to Joseph Smith, like David Whitmer said, and we really we went by David Whitmer. Whitmer said it was word for word. Okay.

54:14 Would God give the Nephi record to Joseph Smith with King James English? Why wouldn’t it just be in regular English? Why King James? And so the Book of Mormon is all in these and thou of Elizabeth and English, which Joseph gets wrong. You know, he doesn’t speak it because he doesn’t use the tenses right and things. So, uh I think God would have known King, if he was going to do King James, I think God would have been better at it.

54:45 Right. Right. And if he’s reading the words off the stone. Yeah. Right. So anyway, so it all comes out in King James English. And the more Gerald saw this, the more it raised questions. Then he read different Mormon scholars trying to answer Book of Mormon questions. At that time there was a book, a series of books, a new witness for Christ in America by Francis Kirkham. And Kirkham was um a Mormon scholar. And so he was the go-to guy of the 1950s of a scholarly person looking at criticism of the Book of Mormon as a historical record. And so Gerald’s going through Kirkham trying to reconcile all of these things and he’s realizing more and more, wow, there’s stuff in here that doesn’t add up. But the King James was a major factor that made us more open to read critical things on Book of Mormon. And then you start to realize, wait a minute, there’s no map in a Book of Mormon. My Bible has maps. Why doesn’t my Book of Mormon have maps? And it hadn’t really

56:01 occurred to me that, okay, where did the story happen? Well, then you start finding out there’s different views of where the Book of Mormon even happened amongst Mormon scholars. So, and that was true back in the 50s and it’s true in Mormonism today. The maps are a little different of how they want to draw that out, but it’s the same question of trying to figure out where the story could have happened. It doesn’t fit anywhere. Well, then you start finding out the plant life is wrong. They can’t be growing wheat. And we know that because they can uh dig up pottery uh from the dumpy yard of a Indian village or whatever and they can tell what they had for dinner. Somebody burnt the tortillas and threw the whole pot out, you know, and they could see that they weren’t having wheat pancakes.

56:58 They’re having tortillas with corn. And so the Book of Mormon says they’re raising wheat. There no evidence for the American Indians having wheat at at this time frame. The animals in the Book of Mormon are wrong. They’re all animals from the Old World that Joseph Smith assumed that the Book of Mormon people brought with them. Uh the cows and horses and sheep and all these things.

57:23 Chickens. Chickens. Yes. Yes. That that’s a problem. And so you got all these things in the Book of Mormon that what don’t fit historically. And when you get into the field of anacronisms, then how do you explain all that? So the Mormon scholars have to say, well, yes, it says horse, but they didn’t really mean horse. Um, horse would have just been Joseph’s word that he used because he didn’t know what the American Indian word in the Book of Mormon text was. Some kind of beast, a burden animal that they had.

57:59 and and so he just said horse, but God’s given him the translation, right? And the fact that the Book of Mormon does mention kurums and So in the Book of Mormon today, you have supposedly the words that the Indians would have used for two sets of animals that today we don’t know what they are. If you would have that kind of use at that point, then why do we get the word horse? Why didn’t instead of horse, why isn’t there just another word there that we wouldn’t know what it meant or what it went to or would have to guess? So, it’s an inconsistency in the story that because I think Joseph had in his mind probably buffalo and uh elk or something, you know, and the kurums and Uh but horses, he just can say horse because I think Joseph thought it was horse.

58:56 uh but he has them as elephants and all sorts of stuff. So those are things that came into the picture that make us wonder. And then I read MT Lamb, a minister here in Salt Lake. Empty Lamb wrote a book, The Golden Bible. Now Mr. Lamb had given a series of lectures here in Utah in the late 1880s. The lectures were put into a book form and it was the first serious evaluation of the text of the Book of Mormon.

59:28 And I read that and that was the final blow for me because he goes through and talks about my script not matching anything of the Anon transcript that Joseph Smith produced for the Book of Mormon sample of writing. Uh Anthony um Lamb goes into uh the all these problems of an anacronisms in the Book of Mormon changes. He talks about the uh uh life of the people does not sound like Jewish community.

1:00:05 They aren’t doing the Jewish holidays and yet the Book of Mormon says they’re living the law of Moses, but but it doesn’t sound like Jewish people following the Jewish calendar. It sounds like Protestants. Uh it it fits a lot better in that scenario. So, as I’m reading through Lamb, just one after another thing after thing comes up. But the one that really stuck on my mind at the time was in it lamb talks about the sacrificial system used by the Jews because of the law of Moses which supposedly they were keeping. And in it he gives the example of uh the Book of Mormon has them making their personal offerings of the first of their flock.

1:00:55 But in the law of Moses, the first of your flock automatically belong to God. Your personal offerings would had to been outside of that first offering that was already God’s. And so Lamb brings this point out. And I thought, well, yeah, if they were really Jews at 600 BC, I mean, they just got off the boat over here and they’re keeping the law of Moses. It’s not like, well, it’s been so many hundreds of years they forgot. if they’re right off the boat and they’re claiming to keep the law of Moses, then they would know all the ritual sacrifice laws and they wouldn’t be doing the sacrifices wrong. And I talked to a BYU guy about this one time and he says, “Oh, well that that’s all just nitty-gritty stuff. Who know who wouldn’t even know about that stuff?” And I said, “Protestants wouldn’t know about that, but a Jew at 6enter BC would have known, right? So, how could how could Lehi get this wrong?

1:01:51 Yep. Absolutely. And it’s it’s funny that uh restoration proclamation I mentioned just a little bit ago. It’s now so vague that it’s the Western Hemisphere. So, it happens somewhere in the Western Hemisphere and then the it used to be all right the inhabitants of the Americas and now it’s among and it just keeps shrinking to to quote my pastors. the amazing vanishing laymanites, right? The right um and so but at the end of the day does anything that fits is so broad it could fit anybody, right?

1:02:28 Solar symbolism on their buildings, right? That could be said of any people. That can be said of people anywhere in the world, right? Right. So there’s no there’s nothing is there anything in the Book of Mormon where you’re like I nailed this in a way that’s distinctive enough to make you pause. No, because anything that is accurate in it is stuff that was known in Joseph’s day. Yeah.

1:02:53 Yeah. And then and then he’s extrapolating. Yeah. And I I’ve I’ve even um read there’s a distinction between the Native Americans as in the 1800s versus the time of the Book of Mormon. And he so it’s not even um accurate to extrapolate from Native Americans 1800s to 1800 years earlier. Right. Right. Just like chickens. Yes. Exactly. Chickens of his day would have been known to the Indians. They weren’t known to the Book of Mormon people.

1:03:22 Right. Fanny Alger. This I know this is Wow. That’s turning this. Oh, this is this is a Yeah, this is a huge one. And I remember this was a big one for me. So the narrative I think it has to be I can’t I can’t see a way for the LDS apologist around like Fanny Alger for them has to be Joseph Smith’s first plural wife right um right when you ask a Mormon about when did Joseph Smith first get the revelation on plural marriage it used to be the quick answer was well you can read all about that in section 132, right?

1:04:04 But the church leadership came to realize that, well, we got to find some way to justify this earlier than that because he’s got plural wives before uh section 132 was even given. Okay. So, when did he first get it? Well, and so um well, it must have been when he was working on the translation of the Old Testament when he did his revision of the Bible in the 183031 time period. So, they’ll say, “Oh, well, that was in 1831 is when he uh got revelation on that.” Well, there’s nothing written down to say he got any kind of revelation about it at that time period.

1:04:46 But they also have to get it back early enough to cover the incident with Fanny Algar. Mormons have always been stuck with this problem. Fanny doesn’t fit the timeline of when Joseph should have been told by God to live plural marriage. And even if you use the Book of Mormon, she doesn’t fit that scenario because it was to raise up seed was the only condition the Book of Mormon gives for polygamy was if God was going to raise up seed. Well, he didn’t have seed with Fanny.

1:05:24 So, or at least not that we know of, right? That’s another question. But, um, okay. So, when the Mormons are in Kirtland, Ohio in the mid 1830s, there’s this uh young girl that’s living in the Smith home, Fanny Algar or Alger, however you pronounce her name. And so, Fanny starts living in the Smith home, I think, when she’s 15 and has to move out when she’s 17. Uh so she’s living in the home as a house househ helper uh Oliver Cry, one of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, who’s very active in the church at this time, uh accuses Joseph Smith of having an adulterous affair with Fanny Algar.

1:06:19 And so this comes before the church council and in private and um uh this Jose Joseph has Oliver put out of the church over this uh because he had accused the prophet of adultery and he’s lying. See he’s lying about Joseph. So the church is stuck on the horns of a dilemma. History shows there was a charge of adultery given by Oliver Cry. So what do you do with that? Jose Cry wrote to his brother Warren in 18 37. We’re getting in the weeds. uh and says, “I stood Joseph to his face about his dirty, nasty, filthy affair or scrape with Fanny Algar,” which is him telling about when they had this uh confrontation with the elders over whether Joseph was guilty of adultery.

1:07:23 So what do you do with Fanny? So the church has to make the knowledge of polygamy revelation predate some way fanny augur and so oh well it must have been in 31 when he’s working on the old testament this is all behind Emma’s back now Emma didn’t know anything about this and she evidently caught Joseph in the barn with Fanny now the Mormons want to say oh well we don’t know that there was any sexual connotation to of this whole thing. Uh, Cry saw it as an adulterous affair and there is evidence that uh, secondhand evidence that Emma caught Joseph in the barn with Fanny. We do know that right after this, a cuff full of all this stuff that uh Fanny left the Smith home and went and lived with another Mormon family for uh just a few months before she went to her parents’ home. And I don’t remember the locations of where everyone was living to know why it was that progression, but she didn’t go

1:08:32 immediately to her parents. Uh and then uh she and her parents move and um within the year I think she marries some military guy as I recall uh and is out of the Mormon picture and she never would talk about her connection to Joseph Smith after this and well what girl wants to admit, oh yeah, when I was 15 uh I was in the barn with Joseph when his wife caught So the question is whether Fanny was pregnant and you know it’s one of those things of history that you can’t prove one way or the other. Uh, but the Fanny Algar connection leaves the Mormons on the horns of a dilemma of can we make this a religious situation and not Joseph being unfaithful to Emma behind her back. And so they have to list her as the first plural wife. and they have a very late recollection of somebody uh like 75 years later or something uh that the guy saying my dad told me he performed a ceremony for this thing.

1:09:58 Well, that’s a little late. I mean, if I were giving a late memory on uh Joseph being adulterer, they sure wouldn’t accept it at that late date. But they’ll take this statement. But other than that, uh they can’t deny the connection to Fanny, right? But she’s but Emma’s not involved in this. And then when you move into Nauvoo period in the 1840s when Joseph’s more clearly having um live-in affairs with different women, it’s still before the revelation’s given. He’s got over 20 wives, women I don’t like to use the word wife because these are not marriages.

1:10:44 These are um a few words spoken between us. Hey, you know, you could be my eternal companion and we’ll do this little ceremony and I’ll say something and and pray and and then we’re when we’re married, you know, they these aren’t real marriages. They’re just arrangements to them that they’re saying are religious. So you have 1841 uh Louisa Beman, a single woman in Nauvoo, uh done they have some ceremony down by the river and she’s disguised in men’s clothing so no one will know what’s even going on when they have this supposed ceremony. Uh but Emma knows nothing about this. And then he goes on to have a marriage arrangement, whatever you want to call it, with um I don’t remember the count, like eight or more women after Louisa that are married women. They have living husbands. And Emma doesn’t know about this.

1:11:51 Some of the husbands knew, some didn’t. If if anyone else did this in any other church, the Mormons would say, “Oh, that horrible pastor. Can you believe anyone would believe that guy after he was exposed for doing this?” Well, here comes this John Bennett who was a convert into Mormonism. He writes up an expose because he leaves Mormonism and he says, “Hey, Joseph’s got this secret doctrine.” And not only that, he’s got seven at least seven women that we know of that he’s claiming these relationships with. And Bennett lists these women by initials, not spells out their whole name. And so like Louise Beman, you would have L and then the number of asterisk to spell out her name and then B and then the number of asterisk to spell out the end of her name. And so we have seven women listed in this book that we can now plug back in the first initials to know who the women are. And they are seven women that the church has to admit are his plural wives.

1:12:54 So if Emma didn’t know about it, she’s just uh putting her head in the sand because it was published 1842 whenever it was uh where Bennett’s making this accusation. But Joseph’s telling everyone, “Oh, it’s all lies.” No, no, no. one wife. Yeah. And and yet he hasn’t even given section 132 yet when all this is going on. Well, it all becomes such a big mess that Hyram, Joseph’s brother, finally says, “Joseph, you’ve had all these problems with Emma. But I think if you write that down, give me the revelation written down.

1:13:33 I’ll take it to Emma and I think I can convince her this is really true.“ So, Joseph writes out section 132. It’s pretty long revelation. And Hyram goes off to show it to Emma. Emma evidently has a real um argument with Hyram about this. Hyram comes back and tells Joseph, and this is in church literature. Hyram comes back and tells Joseph, “I never received such a severe talking to in my life.

1:14:04 Emma did not take to this. Joseph does finally get her to consent to uh two sets of sisters at that time, the Partridge sisters and the Lawrence sisters. But he’s already had more than 20 women that he’s told they’ve got these plural marriages with before Emma’s ever even informed of this. So, it’s such a messy history and how anyone can look to this man and say, “This is God’s prophecy in Revelator.” And they’ll, of course, they’ll point to, “Well, well, prophets, all kind of prophets have said, “Look at David. Yeah, look at David. Yes, he took a wife and uh God didn’t think that was kosher.” So, why would I accept a man that is taking all these women behind his back?

1:14:57 He’s doing something illegal. It’s not just a preference. It’s illegal. Illinois had a law against bigamy. And he’s got couple dozen women that he’s claiming as some sort of spiritual wives. We know he had sex with them. We can’t prove that he had sex with all of them. The Mormons are always say, “Well, you can’t prove he had sex with them.” The Mormon scholars will concede at least 11 or 12 women that Joseph had relations with, either from the women’s statements or their relatives statements or their friends statements that we can put together incidences where we know that he had physical relations with uh a third anyways of of his wives. And that’s key because I remember even if someone would concede the polygamy of Joseph Smith, it was always followed up quickly with but it wasn’t sexual. Yeah.

1:16:04 But but you’re saying the evidence shows that we can prove even sexual relations with some of them. Right. Right. And and if and if you’ve got 10 or 12, why not all? Yeah. Well, where should the bias be where the evidence is more ambiguous? Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like there’s, you know, to tie some of these things together with the magic in the early period, they want to overcontextualize it to put blame on as if it’s society’s problem, not Joseph’s. You know, he he couldn’t control where he grew up or whatever. Here, they need to make it more otherworldly because it’s so if it’s so obvious in the Bible, why weren’t Christians doing it? uh why was it illegal? Why why was he hiding it?

1:16:50 Why was he trying to hide the fact that he was doing this? Right? And so they have to make it otherworldly. Well, God’s laws are not our ways or, you know, kind of uh make it as if society was in the way. And so notice the the it really the common denominator is a procrustian bed of making the evidence fit Joseph’s purity. That’s really what dominates, right? I mean, so if if this stuff looks sinful, they don’t want to go so far as to sanctify the sin, but they kind of have to, right, to say, well, Joseph still is this moral example. In fact, you still see that in the manuals that he’s the model for the LDS life, right?

1:17:34 As they craft what his life was. Well, and in today’s world where the Mormons are posting different historical statements on their website about polygamy, they want to paint it all as uh God brought this to Joseph Smith. It wasn’t something he brought up because of his lust. God commanded him to take plural wives. and we don’t understand at all and uh someday we’ll know but this was all holy and this was a beautiful thing. Uh, and they’ll even admit on their uh in their gospel topics essays stuff that he had they admit he had 30 to 40 plural wives and they want to make these all as though this was God orained, God blessed uh holy unions.

1:18:27 Then why don’t they publish officially a list of the wives? Yeah, it seems like they’re hiding who these women were. Why would you hide them if in fact they made this great sacrifice to live this new law of God that in spite of public opposition, they obeyed God? I mean, if section 132 really came from God, why don’t they honor these women, right, that sacrificed everything reputation to do what they felt was honoring to God? If that’s really the scenario, then they should be proud to list all these women. Tell us the dates when he married them, their age, their age, were they married, you know, some of these details. and they won’t give us any of that, which says to me they’re really embarrassed by it. When you just hear the number in a footnote, oh, he had 30 to 40. It’s not the same as having the list where you could see their ages, whether or not they’re married, uh that it’s like every month he’s getting another wife there in Nauvoo. It just looks so sketchy.

1:19:36 Yeah. Uh that, oh, okay. If God commanded him to live polygamy, would God really make him marry this many women? Why married women? Why teenage girls? The teenage girls would have found husbands. There were girls that were being courted that the girls had to turn away the guy. And so it’s not like they couldn’t have found someone to be married to. The married women already had husbands. He doesn’t need to be marrying them. So the whole thing falls apart. So they have to do what they can. On the one hand, you have today in today’s world the polygamy deniers. There’s a whole group of people out there, Mormons, that are saying, “Oh, Joseph never lived polygamy.” That’s all lies of the enemies of the church. So the church has to come out and say the polygamy deniers are wrong.

1:20:28 Joseph really lived polygamy, but it was holy. Uh, and so you guys over there that want to attack us because he was living polygamy, it was from God. And he really lived it because the polygamy deniers are making a big fuss in the Mormon community that he never touched it. So they’re between a rock and a hard place. Absolutely. Um uh we we had the the honor of having uh recently John Turner on to discuss his recent biography. And um he he mentions at the beginning of the book that you know one of the big questions in in all this is how who was Joseph Smith truly and how would you explain him? And if you were Yeah. Let me just pose that question to you. Who was Joseph Smith and how would you explain who he is?

1:21:23 He is a great storyteller also a bit narcissistic. Uh he is God’s prophet. He he has the power to find buried treasure. He has the power to talk to angels. He has the power to talk to God. He has the power to marry as many women as he wants. He has the power to start a whole city. He has the power to raise a militia of two or three thousand people, men there in Nauvoo. The Nauvoo Legion was the size of like a third of the US Army. Uh kind of scary. Uh he has himself appointed uh lieutenant general of the Nauvoo Legion.

1:22:06 He has this great ego um that he has to always be the headman, the guy on top of everything, big ideas, great storyteller. He can get people to believe him. His gift is the gift of storytelling that he must have some sort of charisma about him that he he was a great salesman at car sale. He could have done great as a car salesman. uh and his ability to try to rise above his poor beginning uh is shown in in what he is trying to build this whole community by the end of his life when he marries Emma in his own story at the back of the pearl of great price. He tells when he marries Emma that they were so poor that they had no hope of ever being otherwise.

1:23:04 And I think that’s telling. Um there’s a phrase in the Book of Mormon I think is telling that says whatsoever persuadeth to do good is from God. Now on the surface that can sound good, but think of what you could rationalize with that. All you have to do is convince yourself this is ultimately for good and I can do whatever I want then. So I can make up a book of scripture for it. It’s for good.

1:23:35 It’s to help people come to Christ. So it doesn’t matter if there were Indians or there ever was this story. It’s persuading people to do good. And how many times have Mormons told us, “Oh, but the Book of Mormon has such beautiful teachings about Jesus.” Yep. Yes. That’s not enough to make it scripture. Right. And I mean Ellen G. White in the 7th day Adventist wrote some very inspiring things for her movement. That doesn’t make them scripture or from a prophet either. So Joseph has this one desire to get out of poverty and the other to build his idea of the ideal community.

1:24:20 And but of course with him at the top uh he’s going to run for president of the United States. I mean this is the ultimate ego. He’s going to be the head of absolutely everything wherever he goes. So I see him as a great storyteller who’s a narcissist. Right. Does it surprise you that it persists that we’re still talking about him not as just an interesting historical phenomenon um but as the founder of a religion that at least in parts of the world is still growing maybe not here. Does it surprise you? You know what how what do you think about that?

1:24:59 Oh yeah it’s kind of amazing. Well I think if Joseph would have lived he would have ruined his movement. I think he would have been exposed as a fraud. But by being killed in the jail, he gave the Mormons a martyr. They were very fortunate that Brigham Young stepped in to be the leader because had Sydney Rigdon become the leader or James Strang, uh, the church would have gone into ruin. And we know that because the movements they headed up did go into ruin. So the Mormons were lucky, cursed, blessed, whatever way you want to paint it, uh that Brigham was the most levelheaded of the men that stepped stepped forward to lead it. Sydney Rigdon had had some uh brain concussions in years before and may have affected his mind a little bit.

1:25:57 I don’t know what happened to Strang for him his search for glory as a prophet but uh Brigham seemed to be the most level-headed in the crowd and so by him leading the church he was able to hold it together to arrange the Mormons in their trek west he was a good enough organizer when they got out here to build a kingdom it wouldn’t still be here today if it wasn’t for Brigham Young but once you get past the polygamy period. Then you get the Mormon church shifting from a end times prophetic movement waiting for Christ’s return any day into entering the mainstream of society in 1900.

1:26:44 And then they they are moving away from polygamy that’s behind them. They’ve got to reorganize themselves and then they and they’ve got to fit in with American society. So that helped them to stay as a religious movement. If they’ have stepped stayed with the old uh return of Christ uh polygamy kind of thing, they would have fallen apart. But because of that, they were make able to make the shift into American society and decide they were going to cooperate with the government now instead of fighting against it. Mhm.

1:27:18 Then they enter into the corporate model and they are um growing and once they get past they have a financial crisis right after the turn of the century but once they get past the financial crisis at the very start there they start to make investments. Of course they’re here in Salt Lake and they own all the land so they can start building a kingdom. They invest in land. They invest in farmland.

1:27:49 And as their portfolio grows, they get better and better financial guys into top church leadership that then move the church into a corporate model. And Mormonism is run today like a corporation. Uh in fact, the president of the church is the president of the corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s not a model any other church follows that I know of.

1:28:15 Yeah. So it becomes then a business model and um they’re struggling here in America to make converts. They’re making it in other lands. But that also brings the problem of how do you have a church headquartered in Salt Lake City with a church growing in Africa and Asia and South America and not in the United States. Right. So in time it’s going to be a problem on leadership. Do you start bringing in more and more foreignb born apostles?

1:28:56 In the past the apostles have been related some way or another. There’s huge interrelatedness amongst many of the Mormon top leadership. There are a few uh now coming into apostilhip that are uh convert uh you have you know a few a not not a Africans in this um 70s but not in the quorum of 12. Uh you do have a couple of different ethnic people represented in the 12. Now, um, can the church make the shift into international leadership?

1:29:40 And I think that might be their next test on growth. Can they change from pioneer heritage Mormonism to internationalled church? And if they do, does that have the same sticking power of keeping people a part of the system before? We all were related. I mean, I got thousands of cousins, you know. So, so uh and that was part of the glue that held the Mormonism together was this interrelatedness of everybody. uh you don’t want to disappoint your family if people are from too diverse of backgrounds. Can you have the same commitment of loyalty to a very demanding religion? Right. And that remains to be seen.

1:30:35 Yeah. And it it seems like it also runs the risk of taking away what may be in certain parts of the world the allore of Mormonism as oh America rich. Yeah. Right. And that might be part of the allore as it is for other prosperity preachers that we also don’t like. Yeah. Uh Benny Han and others um that you know part of I think the allure in these countries like I want to be rich like America you know you know but if if you transition again that might take away some of that but I I want to we’ll put in the show notes several examples. I cannot emphasize enough, of course, longtime listeners, pe long longtime uh people in this space will obviously know the contributions of you and your husband uh to to Mormon studies. I mean, there are some things I just, you know, it seems like, oh, a book came out last year. You guys were talking about it 50 years ago. Yes.

1:31:26 You know, Book of Abraham, all that stuff. There’s not a topic that doesn’t have the fingerprints of the work of Gerald and and yourself. And so I just want to thank you for all your work, all your years of of service to um understanding Mormonism and helping Christians understand Mormonism. Um and so I I just want to make that point before I ask you the concluding question. You are descendant of Brigham Y. Young, correct?

1:31:53 Yes. He’s my great great grandpa and through his son Brigham. Young Jr. who was an apostle and then uh my grandpa was Walter, son of Brigham Jr. Uh so my mother’s maiden name was Young and I grew up with great pioneer stories of how God saves polygamists from the law and Wow. Yeah. Well, I’ve been doing a deep dive into John Taylor and so yeah, that’s You grew up with those stories.

1:32:21 Yeah. Yeah. Isn’t that wonderful? Oh yes. Grandma, my great grandma Young, last living plural wife of Brigham Young Jr. uh had her one of her favorite stories to tell was how uh she married Brigham Jr. in 1887. It was already against the law to live polygamy and the whole uh leadership of the church was in hiding for fear of being arrested. Uh so one of the times when he was at her place uh they got word through the underground that the federal marshals were coming to look for him. And so uh Abby tells Brigham Jr. uh change into my bed clothes and my bed cap and get into bed and uh just kind of hide your face and that just kind of moan or whatever you know like you’re real sick shivering or whatever over in the bed. And so the marshall comes to the door. We’re here to get Brigham Jr.

1:33:16 and we hear he’s here. And she says, “Well, you could come in and search the whole house. All I ask is that you don’t disturb my poor mother who is sick in bed and on the point of dying, but uh but you’re welcome to search the house.” So they search the whole house, and they don’t find Grandpa Young. And they go off, and then Brigham and her have this big laugh about how they fooled the federal marshals.

1:33:42 Well, yes, those are kind of great faith promoting stories. Yeah, it’s it’s a dying breed of story that the LDS tell themselves. The the reason I bring that up is, you know, you and I both know that a lot of people that will discover the truth about Joseph Smith um don’t some don’t leave at all. they just stay socially um leave into agnosticism, atheism, sometimes even a lifestyle that reminds me of Joseph Smith. Yeah.

1:34:15 Um in Nauvoo. But um why and then you know and then I’ve heard this. It’s a double standard. If you if you used the same amount of scrutiny toward the Bible or Christianity, um you know, it would disprove that. What What would you say in conclusion? What would you say to someone who says, “Aren’t you using a double standard and and why um is Christianity survived the same test in your mind?” Well, you have a different set of issues. We can’t answer every question about historicity in the Bible. There are cities we can’t find. There’s not ancient records that go back to the time of Moses. But we have we do have ancient manuscripts. We can show the preservation of the text when you get into recorded history time. There is documented uh evidence of the manuscripts for the old and the new.

1:35:14 Dead Sea Scrolls did a lot to show that the um Old Testament records go back into the 600 time frame BC. And in the New Testament, you have all kind of archaeological manuscripts that um parts of the book of John that go to uh 130 and 180 AD that support the transmission of the Book of John. So I think that it’s there are different questions. The Book of Mormon has nothing to support the civilization. It isn’t that we have less, it’s we have zero.

1:35:51 Yeah. And so we have tons of evidence for historical claims for the Bible. We have zero evidence for the Book of Mormon story. So I am not saying there aren’t issues to resolve in the Bible. Absolutely. It’s that it is still a historical record. You can find different accounts of any item in church in any history. you you can find differing accounts or lack of records or whatever, but there’s always some kind of evidence for something in historical events, but you have nothing for the Book of Mormon. The Mormons do not have a Bible museum. I mean, a Book of Mormon museum. Uh they don’t have a place to see the artifacts. I mean, there aren’t any.

1:36:34 Right. So, it’s a whole different type of issue. Absolutely. And this is, you know, one thing, too. But I remember being in that vulnerable space of um not knowing what is next, but I couldn’t leave Jesus. No. Like I couldn’t just, you know, and I I I had done enough to know, okay, that, you know, I know there’s mythsists out there, but um Jesus of Nazareth existed. These are reliable accounts of his life.

1:37:07 They they they fit into a context. These places exist. Nazareth exists and we have maps and that makes right we can trace the journeys of Paul right and the more we dig the more we find rather than the opposite right um but I just really appreciate that and I think uh um along with that that gratitude for your work of Mormon studies uh thank you so much for your you know your example in terms of not giving up on God, not giving up on on Jesus. I think it it’ll mean a lot to some of the listeners. Yes. Amen.

1:37:40 Sandra, hey, thank you so much. This has been absolutely wonderful. What an honor. Great.

god loves mormons mormonism glm jesus christ lds exmormon the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints joseph smith joseph smith magic magic mormonism distinctive christianity sandra tanner the tanners sandra tanner joseph smith sandra tanner magic lds magic seer stone joseph smith seer stone early mormonism mormon history lds joseph smith sandra tanner mormon sandra tanner lds book of mormon book of mormon translation magic stone exmo exlds tanner article youtube-com

Looking for comments…

Searching Nostr relays. This may take a moment the first time this article is opened.

Nostr, Curated Thoughtfully

The Inconvenient Truth About Joseph Smith (w/ Sandra Tanner)

Source: The Inconvenient Truth About Joseph Smith (w/ Sandra Tanner) Channel: GLM Published: October 13, 2025 | Archived: May 24, 2026

Description

Tags

Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)