About a month ago I delved back into LDS history and doctrine, but for a much different reason than renewed faith. I started on a path that led me to a sea of knowledge, and I want to share how I got here and also to share some of the truths I've learned about the Church that I had absolutely no idea about until now.
Here is a quick outline of the path my research led me, and I'll explain each one in detail below:
"Citizenfour"/"Snowden" —> 1984 —> the Church's Gospel Topics essays —> Tanners' articles on race and the priesthood —> David Whitmer's An Address to All Believers in Christ —> Tanners' book Evolution of the Mormon Temple Ceremony —> Tanners' book Mormonism—Shadow or Reality?
A month-and-a-half ago I finished reading the book 1984 by George Orwell. I read it once in high school, and I wanted to read it again after learning more and more about the invasion of our privacy by the government (if you want to know what's going on, then watch "Citizenfour" (2014) and "Snowden" (2016); don't let the R rating deter you!). But this time around, what bothered me most in 1984 was the idea of changing history. A lot of the meat of the story is about history—what's reality, how do we know what really happened? The main character answers that history and truth are in people's minds and in the written documents, and his interrogator says that the Ministry of Truth ensures that the documents are altered to reflect what actually happened so that it appears that everything The Party and Big Brother say and do looks correct, that they are always right. This got me thinking about the Church.
A couple of years ago the Church finished publishing their Gospel Topics Essays which admit things about the Church's history that they previously sought to hide, things that too many members are now finding about on the internet. Here's the main page from the Church's website where you can follow the links to the essays: https://www.lds.org/topics/essays?lang=eng And this is an online article by the Salt Lake Tribune which talked about a memo written to leaders of the Church regarding the release of those essays: http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=1606088&itype=CMSID I tried to find the official memo itself but I couldn't; this news article is the best I could find. According to the article, the memo to the LDS leaders states, "The purpose of the Gospel Topics section is to provide accurate and transparent information on church history and doctrine within the framework of faith... When church members have questions regarding [LDS] history and doctrine, possibly arising when detractors spread misinformation and doubt, you may want to direct their attention to these resources."
Notice it says "within the framework of faith". I read through these essays and yes, they all have a pro-LDS spin on them, even when they're coming clean with some unpleasant facts.
Reading 1984 reminded me that these LDS essays are proof that the Church came clean on many controversial topics (multiple First Vision accounts, violence in the early days of the Church, polygamy in Nauvoo and Utah, etc.). Information can easily be changed online, and so I wanted to print them out so I have a physical copy of what these essays said.
One of the topics is "Race and the Priesthood". This reminded me of the website I linked in one of my first blog posts, the one which had two articles by Jerald and Sandra Tanner that dealt with statements the LDS leaders have said regarding doctrinal reasons why black men will never hold the priesthood in this lifetime. Here is it again for easy reference: http://www.bible.ca/mor-blacks-racism.htm (the more recent of the two is at the top). I printed off those articles, too, and included them with my copies of the Gospel Topics Essays.
The night I did all this printing, I reread those articles by the Tanners, and I decided to look up a few references they made. One of the ones that caught my attention was in a book by David Whitmer called An Address to All Believers in Christ. Here is what they said in their article and the quotes that intrigued me,
The reader will remember that President Brigham Young once said that if the blacks were given all the blessings of the Gospel, the priesthood would be taken from the Church and it would go to destruction. Our research leads us to believe that the Mormon Church never had any priesthood to lose. Even David Whitmer, one of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, seems to have had some real reservations about the "priesthood":
"This matter of 'priesthood,' since the days of Sydney Rigdon, has been the great hobby and stumbling-block of the Latter Day Saints....Authority is the word we used for the first two years in the church—until Sydney Rigdon's days in Ohio. This matter of the two orders of priesthood in the Church of Christ, and lineal priesthood of the old law being in the church, all originated in the mind of Sydney Rigdon." (An Address To All Believers in Christ, Richmond, Missouri, 1887, page 64)The question might well be asked, "If what David Whitmer says is true, how can Section 27 and other sections of the Doctrine and Covenants be accounted for?" Actually, these revelations have been changed from the way they originally read when they were first printed. David Whitmer charged;
(This is an especially interesting topic since a current issue that the Church is dealing with is a group of people who say there is no scriptural reason why women can't have the priesthood and the responsibilities that come with it.)"You have changed the revelations from the way they were first given...to support the error of high priests. You have changed the revelations to support the error of a President of the high priesthood, high counselors, etc." (Ibid., p. 49)
I found the reprint of David Whitmer's book on Amazon and so I bought a copy. I read the whole thing and yes, the Tanners quoted that portion correctly. What was so interesting about David Whitmer's Address was that if I had still been a Mormon when I came across this book, if I still believed Joseph Smith was a prophet and that he did translate the Book of Mormon by the power of God, then this Address would have kept me a believer for a while longer, because many of the things I disagreed with about the Church that made me want to leave it were found in the Doctrine & Covenants, which had been changed by the leaders. It would have made me realize that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the Utah chapter of the original Church of Christ—is false. And since the original Church of Christ as Joseph Smith first organized it in the Midwest no longer exists, then God's true Church is no longer on the Earth. It was an excellent book which painted a very good picture of the early days of the Church in the Midwest; it really takes you back in time, and I thought that was pretty cool. And I appreciated that David Whitmer based his arguments on scripture; like the Tanners, he also cited his sources.
The accusation by David Whitmer that the leaders of the Church changed the revelations really struck me, because that is exactly what 1984 was largely about! And the next sentence in the Tanners' article is what made me want to delve further into this topic: "In Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? Pp. 19, 22-25, we show through photographs of the first printing of Joseph Smith's revelations that Whitmer was right when he charged that serious changes were made concerning priesthood, and on pages 177-182 we demonstrate that the Mormon idea of "priesthood" is unscriptural." These two articles of the Tanners were very well-done and they have a scholarly quality to them, and throughout these articles about the Priesthood they reference a few of their previous works which dig deeper into many topics. And so I bought some of their books to read further.
The first one that arrived at my house was called Evolution of the Mormon Temple Ceremony: 1842-1990. At the bottom of the cover it says "Includes the complete text of the 1990 endowment ceremony and a study of all the recent changes," which it does. But they discuss so much more!
***Heads-up: the things I'm going to write about in the next three paragraphs are things that were in the LDS temple endowment ceremony but they've been removed and are no longer part of the ceremony. If you don't want to read any of it, even though they're not sacred anymore since they've been removed, then just skip to the 4th paragraph down that starts "If you're looking for information..."***
1990 was the year that many key parts of the Endowment ceremony were removed and changed. All of these changes were unknown to me until I left the Church. When I joined the ex-Mormon Facebook group that first year I left the Church, that's where I learned about the penalties. When you are shown how to do the tokens of the priesthood with their accompanying name and sign, there used to be penalties attached to them as well. You used to do a motion with your hand that indicated a way in which your life would be taken if you revealed the tokens, names, signs, and penalties outside the temple. One of the oaths you took was, "we agree that our throats be cut from ear to ear and and our tongues torn out by their roots"; the next one was, "we agree to have our breasts cut open and our hearts and vitals torn from our bodies and given to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field"; and the third one was, "we agree that our bodies be cut asunder in the midst and all our bowels gush out." The Tanners aren't sure when exactly, but sometime in the early half of the 1900s the gory wording was removed, but the hand motions along with the replacement words, "Rather than do so [reveal the token, name, sign and penalty], I would suffer my life to be taken," remained until 1990.
I found out about the penalties from the Facebook group a few years ago. But there were a few other things that the Church removed or changed in 1990 which I just learned about: the women used to have to swear obedience to their husband, not to the Lord; Satan used to hire a non-Mormon preacher to spread false doctrine; instead of God and Jesus and the apostles addressing and referring to Adam and Eve and their posterity, they used to refer to Adam only and his posterity; there used to be something called Five Points of Fellowship at the veil and it were removed entirely, as was the lengthy lecture at the veil; and the words "Oh God, hear the words of my mouth" used to be "Pay Lay Ale". Many things in the Endowment ceremony were taken from the Masons, of whom Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were members, and the Tanners compare the similarities between the two ceremonies in this book.
The Tanners also show evidence that there were other changes made to the Endowment ceremony prior to the big 1990 alterations; these I also just learned about. The patrons used to have to strip down nude for the washing and anointing portion of the ceremony, and the workers rubbed oil over the patron's whole body, including women's breasts; thank goodness they had sense back then to separate the men and women for that part! Women were initially banned from the ceremony. Men used to be sealed to other men; it was essentially a pyramid scheme. The Oath of Vengeance (inserted into the ceremony after Joseph Smith's death) was also removed; this is where those who went through the temple took an oath to avenge the blood of Joseph Smith on this Nation (the USA), and that they would teach their children and their children's children to do the same. The Tanners aren't sure exactly when the Oath of Vengeance was removed, but they show evidence that it was gone by 1927. The Tanners also show evidence that the temple garment was originally much longer: the neckline used to go all the way up to the neck, the sleeves went down to the wrists, and the pant legs went down to the ankles, and there was a strict charge not to alter the garment in any way since those specifications were given by God. The Church says the same thing about the current garments, although clearly those measurements have shortened over the years to accommodate the fashions of the time. There was even talk at one point a few decades ago about getting rid of the garment all together, but that hasn't happened yet.
If you're looking for information about the history of the temple ceremony or the exact wording of the ceremony itself, you really need to look no further than this book. The Tanners give multiple examples and much evidence for every topic they cover, along with their sources. I've said it before: they are very thorough and their work is truly scholarly. And when they come to a conclusion or they're putting forth their best guess about something, like with the woman's role in the Eternities, they say they're guessing—they make it clear they're presenting their opinions and suppositions rather than facts.
In their articles about black men and the priesthood, they quoted a few times from their book called Mormonism—Shadow or Reality, and so I bought that as well (the reformatted 2008 version). Man, that thing is huge! The pages are 8.8" x 11", with 11 or 12 size font, and the whole book is 1.5" thick! It's exciting, though, because from their previous works I know they're going to present a mountain of evidence. They cover many topics: changes in the revelations, changes in Joseph Smith's History of the Church, the Book of Mormon, complete lack of archeological evidence that the BoM was about real events, Joseph Smith's money-digging, false prophesies, the book of Abraham, polygamy, and the Danites, just to name a few. In fact, many of the chapters in this book are topics that were covered in the Gospel Topics essays.
I've been reading this book for about a week-and-a-half and I'm about 1/4 of the way through it; it's fascinating and extremely eye-opening. The amount of 1984-style rewriting of the early documents of the Church is astounding! The Church leaders changed words; they removed words, sentences, sometimes whole pages with no indication that they did so; they added things to support practices the early leaders were already doing; they keep many early members' journals that contradict anything written in the canonized history literally under lock and key in the Church historian's office, to where even family members of those who wrote the journals can't have access to them. I had my own reasons for leaving the Church, but I had no idea how dishonest the Church has been in the past and currently is! And again, the Tanners provide ample evidence to support their claims. Many things they outright prove were false, and for a few things that can't be proven for certain—such as did Joseph Smith really see words translated through the seer stone when he put it into his hat and covered his face with it?, and did the Three and Eight Witnesses really see what they said they saw?—the large amounts of evidence they give is enough to cast reasonable doubt that it really happened.
I am so grateful for the time and effort the Tanners have put into uncovering the truth. The amount of evidence they provide is incredible, and in many, many cases this information was extremely hard to find and I probably would never have found it for myself. Books like this are priceless. Well, I paid about $50 total for the three books I mentioned here, hehe, but the information in them is priceless for someone like me who is a seeker of truth. For someone who is still a believing member of the Church, the things in these books will be hard to accept and it will take a lot of thought and contemplation and soul-searching to accept the truth. But for those who are pondering their doubts or who have left the Church, or who never were members, it'll be easier to read through the books and accept the evidence in them. These books are an excellent place to find that truth, and I'm so glad I found it. I can't wait to keep reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment