103: ALL Over the Map with Rock Waterman

Thank you Rock for this great conversation!
We go all over the place! We discuss his early blog about Joseph’s polygamy, his recent blogs about Israel and Palestine, the current situation of the church, and much more.

Please consider supporting this podcast:

Links:

Why I’m Abandoning Polygamy, by Rock Waterman

Doctrine and Covenants section 101 – 1835 edition

Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy, by Richard and Pamela Price

Joseph Smith and Polygamy: Persistence of a Myth, by Rock Waterman

“How Mormons Should Think About The War In Israel,” by Rock Waterman

Episode 71: One “Polygamy Denier’s” Response to Bill Reel, RFM, and Brian Hales

R. McKay White article on the Kirtland Safety Society

Episode 78: RLDS Church History and Defending Joseph w/ Cheryl and Dan Clute

Episode 94: Historical Malpractice Part 1 – A Conversation with Whitney Horning

Topics Index:
0:00 Intro
0:01:30 Rock’s blog post on polygamy
0:37:20 Interview begins
0:46:40 Rock’s views on the LDS church
1:04:55 Thoughts on Israeli & Palestine
1:44:55 Joseph’s monogamy

Transcript:

[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy where we explore the scriptural theological and historical case for plural marriage. I am so excited that you are here today. I had the fun opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with Rock Waterman. Many of you will know his name from his blog, Pure Mormonism where he clear back in 2010, wrote a blog post called “Why I’m abandoning polygamy.” It was just maybe a year after this, that my husband came to me telling me that he no longer believed that polygamy was of God which sent me down this deep dive into the scriptures. I always thought it must have been this blog post that he read. He told me it wasn’t, it was a different blog post that wasn’t focused on Joseph Smith’s polygamy, but was just focused on polygamy in the scriptures. And he hasn’t been able to remember what that post was, but it wasn’t until many years later that I actually read this blog post by Rock Waterman. And it’s still to this day is one of the best things I’ve read on the topic. It is so concise. So clear. So to The point and Rock has given me permission to read this post from his blog called Why I’m abandoning polygamy. So I will first read this post and then we’ll go ahead onto the conversation with Rock where we went everywhere, up and down, top and bottom and I hope you enjoy the ride. I want to sincerely thank Rock for coming on and talking to me and for giving me permission to read this excellent blog post. It’s still to this day is one of the best things I’ve read on these topics. So I’m going to go ahead and read it for anyone who like me has an easier time listening to things so you can be doing other things with your hands rather than reading. So this is Rock Waterman from his blog Pure Mormonism written June 26th, 2010:

Why I’m abandoning polygamy: like all good Latter day saints of my generation, I’ve always been a committed polygamist to be clear, I’ve never been a practicing polygamist. You could say I’m a polygamist in the same sense that I’m a nutritionist. I know nutrition is out there; I’m told it’s good for me, and I always figured that one day I would probably get around to practicing good nutrition. That’s kind of how I thought about polygamy most of my life. It was out there in the future somewhere, but not necessarily all that relevant to me at the moment. Those of you new to the church in the last couple of decades may be surprised to learn that when we old timers were growing up, we were taught that someday they’ll bring back polygamy. And at that day, the faithful among us would finally jump back into the pool. Plural marriage is after all an eternal principle, the suspension of which we were frequently told was only temporary. I can attest to that. That is true. That is what many of us grew up believing when I was a young single man. My attitude toward polygamy was somewhat ambivalent. What did I care whether I ended up with one wife or 70? Just as long as I got to do it with somebody, just give me that first wedding night and we could discuss numbers later.” I love Rock. I mean, this is brilliant. “So while growing up, whenever someone spoke up in Sunday school or seminary, with a reminder that someday we would all be required to practice the principal, I was ok with it. Sure, fine, whatever. Then one day I met my soulmate, sorry girls. He’s married. Few men actually have the good fortune to meet and marry their actual soulmate. The first time out, some guys find her eventually, but it often takes a second marriage or a third most. Never do. I hit pa or the first time out I knew Connie was the one. The moment I saw her, I recognized her from my dreams I’ve known from the beginning that after finding her, there was no possibility of my ever wanting to take on any additional wives. Just not gonna happen ever. Connie is my one and only, my kindred spirit. We’re one couple indivisible and we ain’t sharing our bed with nobody else. Luckily, for us, we’ll never have to because I’m happy to announce that while I’m firmly devoted to most of the tenets of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I no longer believe in the doctrine of plural marriage.” I just love this again. It was 2010. A lot of us weren’t even thinking that much about this topic at that point. “I’ll bet you don’t really believe in it either. Not enough to start living it right now. If you were, if you were told to, as for me, I’ve had a real paradigm shift in my thinking and it came to me after reading the book by Richard and Pamela Price entitled “Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy”. How men nearest the prophet attached polygamy to his name in order to justify their own polygamous crimes. Yeah, I know. Stay with me here. The first time. I was made aware of this book, I did what every good Mormon boy would do. I ignored it after all. Everyone knows that the doctrine of plural marriage came to us through Joseph Smith. Right. Spoiler. Alert. No, it didn’t. I own Todd Compton’s book, “In Sacred loneliness. The plural wives of Joseph Smith”, wherein he traces the lives of the estimated 33 women who are believed to have been secretly married to Joseph Smith at Nauvoo. There may have been some disagreement among scholars about the exact number of wives the prophet had. But surely no one doubts the basic story. We all know Joseph kept the practice secret, so as not to give his enemies cause and to mollify his jealous wife, Emma. But to suggest that Joseph Smith may have actually fought against the doctrine of plural marriage was to me an absurd supposition. It was not even worth thinking about”, something many of us have been told, right? And many of us have heard that. “But I had an experience a couple of years ago that convinced me to take a second look at this hypothesis. I was reading Richard Van Wagner’s biography of Sidney Rigdon and send on page 292. Jumped out at me. The author was discussing how often and adamantly the prophet Joseph Smith attacked polygamy and those who promoted it. The this is quoting from Richard Van Wagner’s book. ‘The prophet warned against iniquitous characters who say they have authority from Joseph for the first presidency and advising them not to believe anything is coming from us contrary to the established morals and virtues and scriptural laws. The sisters were urged to denounce any man who made polygamous proposals and to shun them as the flying serpents, whether they are prophets, seers, revelators, patriarchs, 12 apostles, elders, priests, majors generals, city councilors, aldermen, marshals, police, lord mayors or the devil. They are alike culpable and shall be made and shall be damned for such evil, evil practices.’ That’s page 292 of Richard Van Wagner’s book. Those are some pretty strong words coming from a guy who is supposedly getting a little on the side. They leave no room for equivocation. Joseph Smith was unmistakably condemning to hell any man who advocated polygamy even if that man was the prophet himself. So who’s putting words in Joseph Smith’s mouth? The author of Sydney Rigdon’s biography is also the author of ‘Mormon Polygamy, a history’, which was the first major overview of the practice and he knows the subject. Well, Van Wagener does not question the widely held belief that Joseph Smith practiced plural marriage, but like many who write about him, he finds Joseph’s apparent schizophrenia baffling. further down the page. We read this: ‘The prophet’s most pointed denial of plural marriage occurred on October 5th 1843 in instructions pronounced publicly on the streets of Nauvoo, Willard Richards wrote in Smith’s diary that Joseph, quote, gave instructions to try those who were preaching, teaching or practicing the doctrine of plurality of wives. Joseph forbids it and the practice thereof. No man shall have but one wife’. What really popped out at me was what was Van Wagner’s footnote to the above quote on page 303 quote when incorporating Smith’s Journal into the history of the church. Church leaders under Brigham Young’s direction deleted 10 keywords from this significant passage and added 49 others so that it now reads, quote, gave instructions to try those persons who are preaching, teaching or practicing the doctrine of plurality of wives. This is the addition for according to the law, I hold the keys of this power in the last days. For there is never but one on earth at a time on whom the power and its keys are conferred. And I have constantly said no man shall have but one wife at a time unless the Lord directs otherwise. it is commonly known that the seven volume History of the Church which purports to have been written by Joseph Smith himself was substantially added to and edited after the prophet’s death. After all, Joseph Smith did leave great gaps in the narrative. And if his history was to be complete, the account required additional input from subsequent church historians, additions of the massive work were still being tweaked by BH Roberts as late as 1912. Still, it struck me that the passage above had been substantially doctored. So as to completely change its meaning, it put words into the prophet’s mouth that he simply had not spoken. words, that in fact contradicted what he had said, the added words I’ve highlighted in bold italics above could incline the reader to conclude that Joseph equivocated on the subject. But it’s clear from his original words that he did not; missing entirely from Joseph’s statement in the official history is the primary primary imperative. Joseph forbids it and the practice thereof. This is not editing for clarification. This is prevarication, a lie, a calculated attempt to change church history. I felt it was high time. I found out for myself what Joseph Smith had actually said about plural marriage in his own words. So I ordered a copy of Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy from restoration bookstore.org and read it thoroughly. I admit to approaching the book with skepticism. I consider myself pretty well read in the history of the Missouri Nauvoo period, so I figured I’d spot the flaws in this thesis right off the bat. But the startling conclusion I came to is that most historians, both Mormon and non Mormon who have taught that Joseph Smith was a secret polygamist were proceeding from a false assumption. Several false assumptions. Actually not the least of which was that many women who claim to have been Joseph Smith’s plural wives had no reason to lie. The truth is the precise opposite. They had some very good reasons to lie. The true origins of Mormon polygamy. You have probably never heard of the Cochranites because this odd religious community simply vanished from history sometime in the late 1830’s, while they were on the scene though they stirred up quite a fuss and enjoyed no small amount of notoriety. Richard and Pamela Price, the husband and wife, authors of Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy, reproduced several articles from books and newspapers of the era that tell of the charismatic leader, Jacob Cochran who convinced some 2000 supporters that what he called the patriarchal order, that is polygamy as practiced by Father Abraham was the proper mode of marriage and that this spiritual wifery was ordained of God. By the time of Jake Cochran’s death in 1829 there were still upwards of 1000 dedicated polygamists in the movement he founded and they settled themselves up and down the borders of Maine and Massachusetts with the main body in Saco, Maine. When the first Mormon missionaries arrived in the area in 1832 they found the Cochranites to be extremely receptive to the message of the restoration, accustomed as they already were to following the the tradition of the ancient patriarchs, It was not difficult for them to accept the message that the ancient church of Christ had been restored with all of its gifts. The missionaries tarried among the Cochranites for several months and many one and won many converts, no doubt during their prolonged interaction with each other, the Cochranites shared their philosophy of plural marriage with the Mormon elders. The Cochran stronghold was such a fruitful place for convert converts that the young church of Christ held a conference in Seiko in 1834. 9 of the 12 apostles were in attendance. Although the Cochranites vanished from the history books. By the end of the decade, they hadn’t really disappeared. They had simply been folded into Mormonism, selling their farms and shops and moving to Kirtland and eventually nauvoo bringing their polygamous families and teachings with them. A cancer is detected. Some of these converts to the church continued to practice their polygamous lifestyle discreetly while others openly sought to recruit other Mormons to, quote the patriarchal order. Before long, church leaders took notice and denounced the practice in short order. The 1835 edition of the Doctrine and covenants included this article on marriage in section 101 ‘inasmuch as this church has been reproached with a crime of fornication and polygamy. We declare that we believe that one man should have one wife and one woman but one husband’. If you turn to section 101 in your Doctrine and covenants today, you won’t find that passage. It was removed when the Doctrine and Covenants was reprinted in 1876. The quorums of the 70 out at Kirtland also made it known that polygamists would not be tolerated within that body when they adopted a resolution that which stated that they would have no fellow fellowship with any elder who is guilty of polygamy. The practice of polygamy was become an open secret among some of the saints in Nauvoo and Joseph was continually being asked by non-members if Mormons believed in having more wives than one. He published his official response to this question in the elders journal. No, not at the same time. But they believe if their companion dies, they have the right to marry again. while imprisoned in liberty jail, Joseph denounced polygamy and all its manifestations. In a letter he wrote to the Saints in Caldwell County ending with the warning that ‘if any person has represented anything otherwise than what we now write, they will have willfully misrepresented us.’ It’s amazing every time I read all of these sources, I’m amazed at what happened. Joseph Smith’s denunciations of polygamy were frequent and fervent. He considered the practice a plague that must be stamped out or it would eventually lead the church to the very brink of destruction. But even he was not prepared to learn that some of his best friends were seducing women by claiming the authority to do so came from him, with friends like these. It’s not unusual for many of us today to assume that when the church was young, Joseph Smith knew everyone in town and everyone knew him, but this wasn’t true. Some members lived their entire lives without having personally met the prophet. Thus, it was with a young lady by the name of Sarah Miller who was a member of the choir during one of brother Joseph’s sermons, condemning polygamy. Sarah became immediately alarmed at what she heard and quickly confessed to church authorities that she had been engaging in illicit sexual activities under the belief that Joseph Smith himself had authorized it. The gullible girl told a tale of having been seduced by Chauncey Higby, a prominent Nauvoo attorney who told her, she said that it was no harm to have sexual intercourse with women if they would keep it to themselves and continually urged me to yield to his desires and urged me vehemently and said, he and Joseph were good friends and he Joseph teaches me this doctrine and allows me such privileges and there is no harm in it. And Joseph Smith says, so. Higby duped the innocent girl into believing that she was Higby’s spiritual wife and that in time they would be married, several other women soon came forward telling similar tales. It turned out that chauncey Higby, his brother Francis and several others were having their way with many women using the line that Joseph Smith sanctions such seductions. as these women came forth to the Nauvoo High Council with their affidavits. A common thread emerged that as even the prophet himself. It seems that if any of these men encountered resistance to the claim that Joseph Smith approved their actions, they merely took the young lady to see the second most prominent citizen in Nauvoo and he would assure them that yes, it was all right, Joseph Smith says so. this unethical pad was seducing many women himself by telling them that Joseph Smith had received a revelation which allowed men to have plural wives, a scoundrel in the city of the Saints. I’ve long felt that if ever there was a Mormon whose life story would make a fascinating movie, John C Bennett was that guy. But the movie would have a very, very bad ending. It’s very likely that Nauvoo who would never have become the impressive city that it was had it not been for the able assistance of Doctor Bennett. Bennett arrived among the saints precisely when he was needed most. just after the saints had been expelled from Missouri and were now gathering weak, sick and destitute on the Illinois side of the river, he appeared like a knight on a white horse and Joseph Smith was grateful and relieved to be offered assistance from such such a capable personage as the well appointed Doctor Bennett, a one time colleague of Sydney Rigden, Bennett joined the church at Nauvo and immediately took charge of things, supervising the draining of the swamps and mapping out the city plots. Joseph welcomed the assistance of Doctor Bennett who came prescribing a miracle medicine quinine for the malaria which was killing the saints and also bringing great visions and expertise in city planning schools, a university, commerce and militia, a Masonic lodge and political stability. The grateful citizens of the city he built, elected John C. Bennett, their first mayor of Nauvoo. Bennett’s credentials were impressive, in addition to being a medical doctor, Bennett had also been a brigadier general, a quartermaster general, the dean of one university and the president of another, a horticulturalist, a postmaster general, a preacher, and an attorney. And now he was the mayor of the fastest growing city on the Mississippi. If anyone had shown up on the scene today with a resume like that, he would instantly be pegged as a fraud and an impostor which it turned out. Bennett was, but Bennett was brilliant and capable and he actually knew his step. So no one in navuoo thought to question the hats and savior who had appeared in their hour of need. Nauvoo grew prosperous and impressive under Bennett’s rule. He became easily the most prominent citizen of the city next to the prophet Joseph Smith himself. Bennett lodged with the Smiths and became fast friends with the prophet. And when Sydney Rigdon took ill Joseph even made Bennett first counselor in the first presidency of the church when it was revealed that Bennett has been, had been using Joseph’s good name in order that he and his friends could bed unsuspecting Mormon women, Joseph quietly conducted an investigation. He sent Bishop George Miller to Ohio to look into the good doctor’s background. Miller reported that Bennett had lived in 20 towns in as many years and he has the vanity to believe he is the smartest man in the nation and if he cannot at once, be placed at the head of the heap, he soon seeks a situation, always, always pushing himself into places and situations entirely beyond his abilities. And the next thing his friends hear of him, he is off in another direction. Joseph Smith was coming to the realization that his friend had cleverly maneuvered himself into positions of importance at Nauvoo for one purpose. He was building himself a personal empire. Bishop Miller reported one more thing. John C Bennett, the most popular and eligible bachelor in Nauvoo had a wife and Children who whom he had abandoned back in Ohio. When Joseph confronted Bennett with the evidence of his crimes, Bennett wept and blubbered and promised to repent, begging the council not to make his sins public for fear of how such news would affect his poor mother. But it wasn’t his mother that Bennett was concerned about. It was the damage that exposure would mean for his broader political ambitions. Mercy may have ultimately been Joseph Smith’s undoing, for He agreed that as long as Bennett was sincerely repentant, he would not make his sins public. Joseph made similar agreements with the Higby brothers when they wept and blubbered and begged, so without fanfare or publicity, the high council of the church quietly withdrew the hand of fellowship from John C. Bennett. He resigned as mayor of Nauvoo and Joseph Smith took his place. Bennett made an official statement before the city council in which he stated that Joseph Smith was strictly virtuous and he also provided Joseph with a lengthy affidavit swearing that at no time, did Joseph Smith suggest or give him authority to hold illicit intercourse with women. Bennett further stated in the affidavit that he hoped the time may come when I may be restored to full confidence and fellowship and my former standing in the church. But poor doctor Bennett just couldn’t keep his breaches buttoned. when it was discovered weeks later that Bennett was continuing his illicit activities, Joseph Smith preached a public sermon against Bennett and his false teachings. That was the end of it for John Cook Bennett, he was finished. And so he knew what was any chance to be elected to the Illinois State legislature, a position he desired very much and for which he had no hope of attaining without the support of the Mormons. General Bennett was cashiered out of the Nauvoo Legion and expelled from the Masonic lodge. He himself has had founded, he was also expelled from the church. He left town in disgrace, but he vowed that neither Joseph Smith nor the citizens of Nauvoo had heard the last of him, he would get revenge against them all. Then it ended up in Carthage where he began to write a series of letters that were printed in newspapers far and wide exposing Joseph Smith as a polygamist and charging him with seduction, murder, treason and other crimes. A few months later, Bennett published a book entitled The History of the Saints or an expose of Joe Smith and Mormonism. It was largely the inflammatory charges contained in those letters in that book that got the non Mormon populace so riled up against Joseph Smith, that in the end, some were even willing to murder him. As Doctor Robert D Foster said of Bennett, he tried to father all his own iniquity upon Joseph Smith. Ironically, many of the things faithful Mormons today believe about Joseph Smith concerning polygamy can be traced to the ugly lies originally promoted by the vindictive Doctor Bennett. A testimony against the centers. Although John Bennett gave Joseph Smith no end of grief, he was by no means the only person close to the prophet discovered to be practicing plural marriage. Joseph continued in his resolve to stamp out the spreading plague. The group that included Bennett and the Higby and their spiritual wives proved to be only part of the problem. The philosophy of the patriarchal order introduced to the church through the Cochranites proved very appealing to many of the saints. With the result that even some within the quorum of the 12 had come to believe in it and were secretly taking additional wives. Joseph told William Marks that he intended to expose and root out this disease from even his closest associates. But the prophet never accomplished the task because three weeks later, he was dead. It is a common belief within the church that Joseph Smith died defending his testimony of the book of Mormon. While that impressive work was clearly the crowning achievement of his short life. He left no recorded evidence that the book of Mormon was foremost on his mind either on the eve of his death or the weeks leading up to it. If you’re looking for a truly fiery testimony from Joseph Smith just prior to his martyrdom, you’ll find it in his vigorous defense of his singular marriage to Emma and his castigation of those advocating polygamous unions, as well as his vehement denunciation of those accusing him of impropriety less than a month before Joseph Smarter. Thousands of saints gathered to hear him denounce for the umpteenth time, the evil doctrine and those who would accuse him of promulgating it. You can find that address in the history of the church under the title, Address of the Prophet, his testimony against the dissenters at Nauvoo. I am innocent of these charges he declared and you can bear witness of my innocence for you know me yourselves. What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery and having seven wives. When I can only find one, it was Joseph Smith at his fiery best. You can read excerpts from that sermon here as Richard and Pamela Price stayed in their book. Joseph wanted to get the whole matter out in the open and to put a stop to the polygamous activities which some of the apostles and their friends were practicing at the time. The book is filled with examples of Joseph Smith decrying the practice in his many sermons, as well as numerous newspaper articles and affidavits by those close to the prophet disproving the charges against him. You can read the entire book online here as well as the yet unpublished volume two. I’ll have the links below as well. I highly recommend however, that you buy yourself a hard copy of the book because it contains sketches, photos and copies of documents vital to a full appreciation for the 30 years of research the Prices put into this effort. In the last three years of his life, Joseph took the precaution of having scribes and male companions with him at all times actions and whereabouts in order to make it impossible for his enemies to continue to con to contrive illicit affairs where, where none existed. There are absolutely no contemporary records of any woman being married to Joseph Smith except one, Emma Hale Smith. Virtually no one came for forward during Joseph Smith’s lifetime claiming to be married to him. As Joseph said in a mocking reference to these Phantom wives. ‘I wish the grand jury would tell me who they are.’ How we got from there to here. So what about Section 132? Isn’t that a revelation? And Joseph Smith’s own hand calling for the institution of plural marriage. Well, no, it isn’t. That is. The revelation does clearly call for plural marriage, but it isn’t in Joseph Smith’s hand and no one had ever heard of it during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. It showed up as if by magic, eight years after his death, after the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum, the Nauvoo temple was eventually finished. And some were, well, actually, no, it wasn’t ever finished, but we’ll go on. And so and some were soon put, putting it to use, performing secret ceremonies wherein men were being sealed to multiple wives. This was a purpose for which the first and only other Mormon temple, the one in Kirtland had never been used. in the original 1835 edition of the Doctrine and covenants, The church had issued strict rules under which all me were to be performed, Rules which are consistently violated by faithful members of the of the Lord’s Church even today. All marriages in this church of Christ of latter day Saints, the declaration stated should be solemnized in a public meeting or feast prepared for this purpose. The persons to be married are to be standing together the man on the right and the woman on the left. You can read the entire rules here at the church newspaper, the Times and seasons where you’ll see that the above rule is the only one practiced in this church. And that the words of the ceremony leave no room to suppose that it was ever intended that another spouse join the marriage at any future time. The mysterious D&C 132: Once the saints were safely ensconced in Utah, plural marriage gradually became an open secret. Still before making it official church leadership needed to present it with a sharp, with a stamp of authority to assure the saints that the practice was legitimate. The mark of legitimacy would have to come from Joseph Smith as Brigham Young did not claim the gift of revelation. ‘I don’t profess to be such a prophet as we as were Joseph Smith and Daniel’. He admitted, ‘but I am a Yankee guesser.’ So eight years after Joseph’s death at the special conference called for the purpose, President Brigham Young, a polygamist asked Apostle Orson Pratt, now also a polygamist to read aloud a document purporting to be a revelation from the Lord to Joseph Smith later to be incorporated into the doctrine of covenants as section 132. The document revealed that plural marriage was not merely approved by the Lord, but now actually required for any good latter day Saint man or woman not wishing to be damned. Brigham explained that this revelation of Joseph’s which Brigham called the new and everlasting covenant, had been kept locked in a drawer in his desk all the time, but he didn’t explain why it hadn’t been released sooner. Joseph Smith had been publicly declaiming against the very things contained within it for a year after it was reported to have been received. Why would any prophet withhold a revelation that came directly from God? Surely any information the Lord sees fit to reveal to his people would be intended for immediate dissemination. More curious yet, this revelation is purported to have been given in July of 1843 just three months before Joseph, as both prophet and mayor angrily took to the streets of Nauvoo and threatened to prosecute any who were preaching, teaching or practicing the doctrine of plurality of wives. And further warning all citizens that they are forbidden from engaging in it. In order to accept that Joseph Smith would engage in an impromptu tirade like this after having received such a revelation, you would have to believe that he was not just an outrageous over wrought liar, you’d have to believe he was completely insane. Nor does the excuse hold that Joseph had to be careful because of his many enemies, his enemies already believed he was practicing polygamy. I’ve made this point so many times I loved reading it in this article. This would not be good news to them. Joseph Smith was not the type of man to limp around a controversy, especially if delivered from God. On the question of whether supposing he had believed in plural marriage, would he have shied away from declaring it? He stated, ‘I have taught all the strong doctrines publicly and always taught stronger doctrines in public than in private.’ Brigham’s later explanation for why the revelation was not in Joseph Smith’s handwriting was that this one was actually a copy of the original as Sister Emma burnt the original. When Emma Smith back in Nauvoo, who heard this claim, she replied that she had never saw such a revelation until it was published by Pratt in the seer. This copy of a very lengthy revelation was in the handwriting of William Clayton. I think he gets that mistake and it’s actually the handwriting of Kingsbury. Um formerly a scribe of Joseph Smith. He was also now a polygamist. So just to clarify that William Clayton claimed to have written the original and it was Bishop Whitney Whitney that had Kingsbury make the copy and that’s the copy that we have. Here come the brides: So how is it that today we know the names of at least 33 of Joseph Smith’s alleged wives when during his lifetime, no one seemed to be able to suggest more than a couple of possible ones? After Joseph Smith’s sons were grown, he three of them made their long journey to Utah to challenge the polygamous system and attempt to restore their father’s good name. They made a wall of resistance out of nowhere appeared a number of women declaring that they had all been plural wives of Joseph Smith. While at Nauvoo most prominent of these women was Eliza R Snow, a well known woman of letters and now a plural wife of Brigham. Young Eliza claimed to have been married to Joseph Smith on June 29th, 1842. But this would mean she was married to him three months before she had led 1000 women and promoting a petition stating that Joseph Smith was not guilty of polygamy as doctor Bennett had charged. So was she lying then or is she lying now? See, all of these great arguments have been made long ago that we’re still making. Now, Eliza was sitting pretty as the wife of the prominent governor of the territory, certainly she had much to lose if polygamy was exposed as a fraud and Brigham’s empire crumbled. Besides, it’s very likely that most Mormons by then firmly believed in the principle, whether it could be proven to have originated with Joseph Smith or not. The saints felt constantly under attack from the gentiles for their peculiar ways and didn’t Brigham constantly preach that lying for the Lord was not a sin but the duty of every faithful latter day saint. Curiously, Eliza Snow held the honored seat at home and in public at the right hand of Brigham Young, this position of honor was ordinarily reserved for a man’s first wife. How was it Eliza Snow able to shunt wife number one out of the way and take her place. What did she know or what could she threaten to tell? nearly all the other women who claimed to have been married to Joseph Smith at one time were also in polygamous marriages to prominent church leaders. It certainly wouldn’t have taken much to persuade these women to make a public statement in order to protect the society, they had struggled so hard to attain. When you examine the statements of these women, you find some of their claims to be a real stench. to their credit, Some of these women went out of their way in their declarations to maintain that their marriage to Joseph had been for eternal purposes only and that they had never been physically intimate with the prophet. So I give these ladies props for at least having the decency to not thoroughly besmirch a dead man’s memory. Also, most of these women neglected to sign their names to their declarations, a clever way of protecting themselves from being called up on charges of perjury if the statements were to be challenged in a federal court. As legal affidavits, these documents are worthless (and I am still working on my episode on the affidavits. I think you guys are going to like that one.) Besides these women were soon marched through the temple to be sealed to Joseph Smith the 2nd, 2nd time in order that their marriages would now be on record. So they weren’t really lying in their minds. They now truly were sealed to the prophet Joseph Smith for time in all eternity. Why not simply admit that it was all a big mistake and move on. Personally, I don’t mind polygamists. In fact, I like all the ones I’ve met. over the years, I’ve been privileged to have several friends who chose to live that lifestyle. And I say more power to them. The women in these relationships tell me they are happy, not only to have the responsibility lifted up being the sole entertainment for their husband, but they enjoy the company of other wives in the house with them. I wouldn’t for a moment, tell them I disapprove or try to intervene. (I would at this point, I would, after how much I’ve learned,) why should I to each his own live and let live besides? I don’t belong to their church. But I find it curious that the church I do belong to has expressed an unusual disdain for those who practice the religion my religion used to practice. I was intrigued by the reactions of many of my fellow Mormons a while back toward the FLDS polygamists in Texas. members and leaders alike scrambled to distance the church from what they considered those wacky fundamentalists. Those aren’t real Mormons. I’d often hear people say, of course, those people say the same about us. I’ve long wondered why since Joseph Smith prophesized that the gospel of the church was destined to fill the whole earth that we would adopt a practice so repugnant to the earth’s other inhabitants that it virtually guaranteed we would never gain any more converts. It seemed to me if Satan himself ever wanted to bring the momentum of the restoration to a screeching halt, he couldn’t have devised a more effective scheme than declaring plural marriage a mandatory program. growth from outside the church was stagnant for almost 100 years from the 18 fifties to the 19 fifties only beginning to pick up steam when David O mckay took determined steps to shake off our unsavory reputation. Still the prospect of the future return of ‘the principal’ still hung in the air like the sword of Damocles. Then one happy day during an interview with Larry King, I saw Gordon B. Hinckley make it clear that we would, that we won’t be dusting off that doctrine for another go around as far as we’re concerned. Hinckley said ‘it’s behind us a long way. I condemn it as a practice because I think it is not doctrinal’. Well, that’s a relief and some and something our women folk especially can be think can be grateful for most of us wouldn’t wish to be forced to live under that system even if we did still believe in it. Which brings up a question, if the church today rejects polygamy, and since the evidence is undeniable, it wasn’t actually sanctioned by our founder. Why can’t we simply declare it just a big silly mistake. A diversion from the true path That our misguided ancestors trod in error. But that now we’re solidly back on track. I’ll tell you why it’s been said that Mormonism is a religion constantly running from its own history. If we let Joseph Smith off the hook by copping to this blunder, we’ll just open another whole can of worms to contend with, for we would then have to address the matter of a certain missionary of the church in 1834 1 of our early apostles who insisted he was exempt from the scriptural admonishment that missionaries are to travel two by two. Instead, he traveled alone. And after the first missionaries had left Maine, he tarried four months on his own as a guest among the cochranites, lodging in their homes, night after night, taking his meals with them, chatting with them by the gradually assimilating the strange religion of his hosts while sharing the message of the restoration with them. And when he left, he took with him, a woman from that community who abandoned her own husband and Children to return home with him and become his second plural wife. When John C Bennett was to be tried before the Nauvoo High Council for spiritual wifery, Bennett asked that this particular Apostle accompany him to the hearing and intercede on his behalf. And at the time of Joseph Smith’s death, this Apostle was already secretly married to four women living in Nauvoo. Of course, you’ve already guessed the identity of this guy. His name was Brigham Young”. And that is the blog post by Rock Waterman and on June 26th, 2010, that many people read and it opened many people’s eyes that this was a topic to start investigating. So thank you again, Rock for letting me read it for. Thank you for writing it. Thank you for letting me read it and thank you for coming and talking to me.

I am so excited to be here with my friend Rock Waterman and I feel like I can call you a friend Rock because we have met a couple of times in person, which is, which is pretty good in this digital age. But um I told Rock, I don’t actually like, I, I should have gotten a biography from him so I could do a better introduction. I’ll just tell you what I know. Rock started a blog. He told me it was in 2009 called Pure Mormonism, which I wasn’t introduced to it for quite a while after that, but it’s delightful. It’s such an excellent blog that just cuts right to the truth of things and really with great, just great insights and a lot of humor. So it’s really fun to read. And I know that Rock and his wife, Connie, I think have been married for, I don’t know how many years. 40

[38:05] Rock: 3, 43 years, 44th coming up.

[38:11] Michelle: That’s fabulous. So they’re a wonderful couple and just a lot of fun. And I think that they’re just people who make this world a better place. So, welcome Rock. Thank you for agreeing to come and talk to me.

[38:22] Rock: my pleasure. You know, Michelle, I, I gotta tell you, I don’t know how I didn’t know about you. I mean, I knew you but I did not know about this forum that you have, 132 problems. It’s amazing and I just learned of it a few weeks ago. So I’ve been catching up a couple of I’ve watched the two interviews you did with Whitney Horning because I go straight for Whitney Horning. Whenever, whenever I see something of hers, I’m a Whitney Horning fan boy, I’ll just, whatever she’s on or reading or, writing, I’m going for it. And now I say the same thing about you. You’re amazing. This is amazing work you’re doing. And I gotta say this whole topic of Joseph Smith and polygamy. I look at p there is so much evidence to refute and debunk the nonsense that Joseph Smith originated and promoted polygamy that I think a person has to be deliberately ignorant. You’ve got to want to not know and, and that’s what I see with, I was just watching your uh piece on Bill Reel and, and radio free Mormon RFM and I were really good friends. We talked on the phone a lot. He was always calling me and then after he did an interview with me, he stopped answering my calls. And I’ve always, I’ve told him repeatedly. I said you’re an attorney, you should know how to think like a lawyer. This should not, this should let me put it this way. If RFM was paid to defend Joseph Smith in court, he’s a trial lawyer. He’d wipe them out. He’d be amazing, but he doesn’t want to know, he just doesn’t want to hear this

[40:11] Michelle: stuff. That’s so interesting because I did think with a lawyer on that panel that they had, it’s like, yeah, if he kept saying, I think it’s a closed case, I think I’m like, yeah, because you only have the prosecution. Anytime you only hear one side, it’s going to look like a done deal. That’s why we intentionally have a prosecution and a defense. We have two sides to argue. I, well, I should go back and say so. So Rock wrote a piece I think it was in 2010 called Why I’m abandoning polygamy. That of course, will be linked below that I highly recommend. even as I was reading it, I was like, this needs to be read aloud. And I wondered if you would be ok letting me read it and release that as an episode

[40:54] Rock: by all means. No, no, go ahead and read it. I you can. I don’t know if you, this isn’t my regular voice. I sound more like Norman Finkelstein and Andy Devine now. I don’t know what’s happening his age, I guess. But, uh, yeah, please. You read it. But yeah, I’d be honored. yeah, this was just in a nutshell. My generation, we grow up, we were taught that, that we knew

[41:24] Michelle: about polygamy. We know, we knew that our, that we knew that Joseph started polygamy. We knew that he was a polygamist. We knew that polygamy was in Zion. And we knew that polygamy was in the celestial kingdom. That was just what it

[41:34] Rock: was. And we, and we were fine with it. You know, I was a teenage boy and we’re told someday they’re going to bring polygamy back. OK. But I see people these days try to refute it without refuting it. They just ridicule people like us. They call polygamy deniers without ever addressing the evidence. Never. I wrote piece called, This is a year or two ago pretty recently. Uh It was called Joseph Smith and Polygamy Persistence of a myth, in which I discussed a panel that had been assembled to once and for all, we’re gonna settle this thing. Well, there was four or five people. They were all on one side. They didn’t have a debate with anybody else. They didn’t address the evidence. All they did was talk about when they had one guy and I, I’ll admit right now, I was too hard on this guy.

[42:23] Michelle: i’m gonna link both of these podcasts because they are both, I mean, both of these blog posts, they are both very much worth reading. And I just was grinning as I was reading. because I had to catch up on these, on these posts. So as you were reading, this was a panel that Lindsay Hanson Park did to finally settle the question of this polygamy in the exact same way, they always settle it. Just like by not addressing any of the evidence. It was, it was ridiculous. So it was actually delightful for me to, to read you. I thought you were a little bit nicer to Lindsay, how the part that I would have been inclined to be. So I like,

[43:00] Rock: I like Lindsay, I like Lindsay and I, I really, and I addressed it. I, I was reluctant to bring it up because I don’t want to dump on my friends. But come on, if you’re going to, if you’re going to settle the question once and for all, address the questions, nothing was addressed. But you’ve got to, you’ve got to look at what we’re saying, the evidence we’re showing andrefute it then or debunk it or, or dispatch it whatever. But they didn’t, they just decided. And like I said, this one guy that I was, I was a little hard on, I don’t know him but, you know, I ended up calling him a little liking moron because his entire argument was the people who want to believe that Joseph didn’t practice polygamy. They’re just so surprised by it and they’ve just got to come up with an idea. No, we weren’t surprised. We’re all raised on it. It wasn’t a problem.

[43:58] Michelle: I just want to tell you that. And you wrote that in 2020. I think I just looked it up because I did. the arguments have not improved, they’ve not progressed. It is still that we’re polygamy deniers because we’re conspiracy theorists because we have to navigate our faith some way. And we’ve just been so upset by learning that Joseph was a, that we have to try to make sense of it in some way. And the only thing that they do is just say, um, like, even, it’s funny because you’re fighting on two fronts, right? Like, when I first came out, saying the first year of my podcast is only about polygamy is not of God. And I intentionally avoided the question of Joseph Smith because it was a big, hairy, ugly question that I didn’t feel that I had clarity on. I, I thought Joseph started it. That was, I really believed that, you know. And, so anyway, so it’s funny because the people that were coming after me then that are still coming after me now are the big, like, Mormon polygamy lovers, polygamy files should be like the people that are like, like some of my most, um, adoring critics, I guess I could say are people who are Mormon but are desperate for polygamy to come back. Right. And so it’s really interesting to see how anyway. I totally lost what I was just saying.

[45:16] Rock:They really want to see it come back? because I’m thinking most of them would rather it go away. But I think

[45:22] Michelle: that most Mormons would, but there is a huge, a huge segment of members of the church who are polygamists at heart. They are converted, committed.

[45:32] Rock: That sounds like me. That’s a 15 year old boy. It sounded fine to me.

[45:37] Michelle: The funny thing is the most like extreme and sort of hateful ones are women and they um oh, this is what I was trying to say that the, so it’s, it’s that side and also this side that is the RFM, the, the like anti Mormon side now a post Mormon anti woman. And they use the exact same argument. They say that’s been debunked. That’s an old RLDs narrative pushed by the Prices and it’s been completely debunked. And I’m always show me like, OK, come on, share, share, what do the paper? Give me the article. Come on and talk to me, show me where it’s been debunked. Instead of debunking something all you have to do is constantly say it’s debunked and you convince yourself and anyone narrow enough to believe what you say. Like, actually debunk it if it’s debunkable, debunk it.

[46:22] Rock: I wonder if these people even know the meaning of the word debunked. I think it means it’s been ignored. We’re not paying attention to that because debunked means take it, take it the evidence. Yeah. And refute. Exactly. Anyway. Oh OK. Getting back to your introduction. One of the things I wanna point out those who might not know who I am. I am a believing Mormon. I completely embrace the book of Mormon. I revere Joseph Smith. Everything about the restoration of the Gospel. My hot button issue tends to be where the church, the corporate church, which legally changed from a religious society to a legal corporation. My problems are where that entity, the hierarchy are changing the doctrine and lying about our history. And so I point these things out, so I don’t wanna be pegged as an unbeliever. I’m a definitely a believer. I continue to call myself a Mormon. I was excommunicated for the sin of apostasy, which means you’re criticizing the brethren. You know, that’s not apostasy, apostasy is when you turn from your belief in God and, and your belief in the Gospel. But anyway, I was excommunicated for apostasy and yet they couldn’t find anything, they couldn’t point to one thing that I taught that was undoctrinal or historically inaccurate. I begged at the hearing. I said, just show me well. And the stake president who was running the thing he says, I just have some notes here. He was given this stuff by Russell Ballard. So, oh, my point coming around to the point, I’m still a Mormon. They excommunicated me. I still call myself a Mormon. I am a Mormon because that’s what you are. If you believe in the, in the book of Mormon, they can’t take that away from you. You know, we’re Mormons, you know, Christians and Mormons, Mormon, Christians. All right.

[48:22] Michelle: Thank you for sharing that. I hate our practice of excommunication, particularly excommunication for apostasy. It really, I just, I don’t know, I hate it so much. I always just mourn and grieve because I think it does violence to the people who are excommunicated. But I actually think it also does violence to us as a people because it, we’re, we’re trained, we do it to try to um take away credibility from people. Like, like some people, if they know that I have you on my podcast who’s an excommunicated member, then they won’t listen or then, then I’m also guilty by association, right? That’s kind of the, what we are trying to accomplish, I think and, and I just find it to be like, it does not make us better people as a church. we should be challenged. We should engage the solution to wrong ideas is better ideas. So again, like, like debunk, right?

[49:17] Rock: I wasn’t excommunicated for any sin. I was excommunicated because, because the hierarchy cannot have somebody, they can’t have somebody going around uh calling themselves a member of the church in good standing who’s pointing out the flaws and the lies and the disingenuous nature of the leadership. That’s all they, it’s, the Mormon church’s way of, of left wing counseling. You know, they just want to put you away but you, I, well, I was given an ultimatum. So in other words, I wasn’t, I was clearly not sinning. I was given an ultimatum, stop blogging or resign from the church voluntarily or we’ll excommunicate you. So I had those two things, I could stop blogging. I could stop telling the truth or I could resign. They didn’t want me, they, they wanted it so I could not claim to be and it wasn’t claiming to be a member in good standing. I was just a member of the church. But anyway, it doesn’t matter.

[50:16] Michelle: OK? I just have to give voice to like how uncomfortable this topic makes me because um you know, I just, I’m really careful to not to try to not criticize the brethren. I don’t want people to think that that’s, you know what I mean? I try to um point to truth and, and true doctrine. I think you were doing the same thing, but I don’t ever want to criticize. So maybe that’s the OK.

[50:41] Rock: All right, I’ll try to avoid that. Except for, except for the link that I’m going to recommend. But I understand that

[50:48] Michelle: well, and tell me how had, like, so, so you um attending church, did you kind of um give voice, you know, would you bear your testimony that the leaders are off or you or was it just because of the public, the public blog and the public persona and the New York Times.

[51:05] Rock: of, one of the, one of the reasons where, you know, there are laws in, in the Doctrine Covenant of how excommunications are supposed to take place. And the first thing is a member of the congregation is supposed to complain about you and here’s how it generally goes. Oh There was a, there was a guy in Joseph Smith’s Day who he’s an adulterer, just a regular member. I can’t recall his name but his wife came to the bishop and said, my husband keeps being this uh what’s the word for it? You know, unfaithful with other women and everybody knew it. And so they held a court and he was just fellowshipped, which means they withdrew the hand of fellowship, which means that now this guy can’t go around telling people, ‘Yeah, I, I’m be women but I’m a Mormon.’ You know. So that’s the whole idea behind it. Withdraw the hand of fellowship because you can’t have people like that in the congregation who are disobeying the core fundamentals of the faith. It’s not meant to shut somebody up. But I wanted to make a point about the September 6th. I thought this was all over, the September 6th. Yeah. Back in around 89 there were six members of the church in good standing. They were intellectuals who were pointing out some of the flaws in the history and some of the shortcomings in the statements of uh of the leadership. And so these people were all in the space of just a few weeks were all excommunicated and that they were known as the September 6th. And it was such a scandal that the church would excommunicate these righteous believing members. But that never happened again for decades. I thought it was all over. But then they can’t started coming after, you know, people like me, Denver Snuffer and others who were faithful believers. And that just doesn’t make sense.

[52:58] Michelle: My perspective is I don’t need to tell the leaders what they should do or shouldn’t do because that’s not my stewardship, you know, but as a member, I don’t have to agree with everything they do. I don’t have to believe false doctrines because previous presidents of the church taught them. I don’t have to. Right. Like we’re all free to seek the Lord, kind of, regardless of what the leaders of the church are doing. You know, they don’t have to have as much impact on us as we sometimes think. Oh, yeah.

[53:25] Rock: Yeah. And of course, one of the problems that entered in is this false teaching that leaders can do no wrong. You know,

[53:36] Michelle: which, which is fascinating that came directly out of polygamy. I always love to tell people that they don’t realize that that is completely central to polygamy. It was the first time that was said was, well, you probably know, Wilfred Woodruff when he was trying to end polygamy and a lot of the, you know,that was going directly against what previous leaders said. So anyway, I, I think that’s a fact.

[53:56] Rock:I take, I take my creed from Harold B. Lee who said, if only the would learn to get their answers from the scriptures. And he went on for a couple of paragraphs explaining why that’s where everything is. And if you can’t find it in the scriptures and this is what Josephus said, then it isn’t. So so if, if some leader in conference says, keep your eyes riveted on the leader of the leaders of this church, we cannot lead you astray. We well, then look for the revelation where God said that.

[54:25] Michelle: Right. Right. I love that Hyrum Smith taught that to Hyrum and Joseph. take me back to. So I just think it’s fascinating that you were so early on this polygamy idea. Clear back in 2011 or 2010. Do you

[54:42] Rock: remember somewhere like that? And so I started my blog in 2009 and I was blogging once a month until so I guess by that time I was starting to come around to uh well, again, following the council of Joseph Smith and Harold B Lee, I think where we went astray is when I was a mission missionary, we taught the Joseph Smith story and we taught how Joseph met the Lord and then the line we give to the investigator is. And so Mr Brown, I testify to you that ever since this day, the Lord has had a prophet on the church to guide us and tell us what he wants us to do. Well, that doesn’t really follow logically, the Lord appeared to Joseph Smith and that doesn’t mean that anybody else who just automatically comes up in line behind him is appointed, he’s not appointed until the Lord appoints him.

[55:37] Michelle: all I do. So I just, I’ll tell you how I think about all of this because I think that it is actually the universal inescapable pattern of humanity on this fallen world. I think again and again, we have a person who connects to God and then shares that message and then others follow the message of that first person and then it kind of ossifies, it calcifies into rules and gets all of this personality and then, and then, but there’s still this idea of, but we are following the person who connected to God. So we are the ones, right? And I think I, I don’t think it is at all unique to any specific organization. You know, I think that like, like I think God absolutely did do something through Joseph Smith. I don’t know that Joseph Smith is, I, I know that Joseph Smith is not the only person God has ever done something through, right? God did something through Moses. God did something through Abraham? And then, but then it ossifies into the understanding that’s needed by whatever people in that institution, passing it down. And so I think, but I think the mistake that we make is thinking that it’s supposed to be about the institution instead of about the individual. Because I think the idea that you can just be like, ride any institution to salvation, any institution to the presence of God is misunderstanding the purpose of why we’re here. So I, I really do like I, you know, I get pushed back on both sides from people who have left the church and don’t like it or people who are opposed to Joseph Smith or people who have left the church and are um still, you know, more in your camp that still believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but everything since then has been, and my perspective is God’s been in charge of this the whole time, right? Like God allowed all of this to happen. So, whatever the problems are, are between those people in God and between me and God. And my only question is my, , like for me, my job isn’t necessarily to and we might have different jobs and different perspectives and different ways of seeing it. But for me I actually really don’t like just finding fault or saying what they’re doing wrong. You know, that’s not my um like, like I’ve definitely gone through those phases. But for me, it’s like, of course it has to be wrong. It was wrong at the time. The Jews at the time of Christ had a way better case of being the one true church of God than we I have ever had today, right? And they’ve gone completely sideways because they believed too much in the, in the occupied institution instead of connecting to God. And so those who were in the institution but were connected to God could recognize Jesus when he came

[58:29] Rock: there. He was, there was God right in front of them, but they wanted to defer to the leadership of the institution

[58:34] Michelle: institution. And so I, so I do feel a lot of gratitude for people who lead on every level. I think it’s a very difficult job. Right? You can always find fault and, you know, I, I just constantly say I wouldn’t want that job. I think that trying to lead an institution at this point would be, you know, because we have one expectation or one thing we feel like we have to claim that it is and it’s just not quite that exact thing. So, so far be it for me to say what any of them should do. My only goal is to do my best to be connected to God. Say God, where do you want me? What do you want me to do? And to encourage anyone that’s interested in my opinion, to be connected to God, right? And from my perspective, I think the more I, I don’t think the world is a better place without the church. I don’t think the world is a better place without these institutions, ossified as they may be, you know, and, and some may disagree with me. So I think the church is better with more of us in it. And I think the world is better with more good, you know, and, and this is not to say that I’m ignoring the problems. I am very aware, I’m sitting on the edge of my seat to see where we’re going step after step after step that we take, I just don’t know what my job is other than to be the best I can be wherever I’m supposed to be if that makes sense.

[59:55] Rock: Yeah. Well, I’m sure you’ve been accused of leaving the church or, or turning your back on the church. Maybe not. But here’s the thing that I’m in the church. I still at it. Yeah. I, I understand you are. Well, ok, when people talk about people like me and say, well, he left the church, what do they mean by that? They think I’ve turned my back on the faith. I have not, I have not abandoned the faith. I believe in everything that was ever revealed from, from Joseph Smith onward from, you know, from Old Testament based on. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so it’s a misnomer to say he’s left the church and I’ve had people, I’ve been in conversation with people and realizing what they mean by leaving the church is something entirely different. They think I’ve left, I put my beliefs behind. Yeah.

[1:00:45] Michelle: Yeah. It’s a rough, it’s a tough, it’s a tough thing to navigate, but I do want to understand like, so, so when you started your blog, it was because you said this is what we claim to be and I don’t see that we are what we claim to be as a church and as church leaders. And so that’s what motivated you to start the blog

[1:01:01] Rock: It’s perfectly said. And, and, you know, most, most members aren’t that way. They’re just following along. Like I was, we all were, we believed just like you said, we all believe that Joe Smith taught polygamy and initiated it. So when I would learn these things that weren’t true, I was gobsmacked every time. OK. Here’s another piece I called ‘Vengeance and the Latter Day Saints’ was the name of the piece. And a couple of these guys said, the reason for all those war chapters in the book of Mormon was because Lord knew that when they, we’d, we’d have to face all these bloody wars. No, that’s not the reason at all. The reason for the war chapters is to teach us two things: that God’s people have a right and an obligation to protect themselves, their lives, their families, their homes and their lands from invasion, even if it means the taking of life. And the, the inverse of that is we are not allowed to go up to battle against another people because then we become the invaders and we are the ones attacking and killing their men, women and Children. And so that’s everything in the war chapter of the book of War is encapsulated in uh D&C 98: 32-33 where the Lord said, this is the, this is the rule I’ve given all my prophets. He names a bunch of them from, from Moses to Abraham, to Moses to Nephi. You don’t go up to battle unless I command it. So anyway,

[1:02:39] Michelle: it’s interesting, you went to that topic because I find it’s such a challenge because the scriptures, people use them in such a variety of ways that you can kind of find whatever you want to in them. I you don’t like about polygamy. People still try to use the scriptures to defend polygamy. And, and I’ve heard people using, people love the Old Testament to defend polygamy to defend war. I, I wouldn’t be surprised. I mean, a lot of people don’t come right out and say it, but they kind of do that. They are all all on board for slavery as soon as God brings that back, right? Like it’s really interesting to see how people use the scriptures. But I do feel that as a church, we tend to really, and I guess it’s as human beings because I think that everybody does this, we just cherry pick little parts, right? Like in our manuals are just these little one verse that we can take and say it means this and, and claim that we understand it. And then, and I,like I do, I do. That’s one thing I really appreciate is the about your blog is the desire to connect us more to scripture. I wish that as we were engaging on the topics of war or just whatever it is in our Sunday school lessons, it would be amazing if we were actually discussing the scriptures and trying to discern what they mean. Right. Trying to understand what we are being taught, rather than having it be prepackage. Dumbed down here, are all of the answers and the nice little white package, you just need to open it and take it out and there are your couple of little answers and that’s all you need to know. And so I do, I do think that when we get in and really grapple with the word of God trying, which you cannot really discern the word of God without inspiration, without the gift of prophecy, right? And so bring those things together and, and then I think we also do it best in community. And I think that’s what church ideally is when it’s at its best is people trying their best to bring together in community, the spirit of God and the word of God to try to discern the best it can, they can what it means and what God wants them to see. So anyway, so I guess I’m just thinking about that. So we’re kind of jumping all over the place. I know

[1:04:49] Rock: that you can.

[1:04:53] Michelle: Yeah. Right. Right. So, Rock sent me his most recent blog posts and so maybe we can talk about that now if that’s ok. And so, so I’ll just tell the Rock sent these to me and asked me to read them and said that he wanted to talk about it and I opened it, saw the topic and was kind of like, oh, can I, should I cancel this interview? Because I feel like I do so much controversy that the last thing I wanted was another controversial topic. But I’ll tell you, I read all three of those posts. And so I’ll go ahead and let people know they’re on the Israel Palestine situation.

[1:05:33] Rock: It’s, it’s now a three part series. I’m still haven’t got to my fourth, which is discussing what happened to the last 10 tribes. But the series is loosely called How Mormons should think about the war in Israel. So go on.

[1:05:50] Michelle: So, and I, I just felt like this is like a radioactive topic right now and I need more controversy on my channel. But I actually, as I read through them kind of got excited about talking about it because I, so I’m going out myself here, which I hate to do too much. People know too much of my politics anyway. But I did tend to be, I was previously very much on the, like I was sympathetic to Israel in this battle for a number of reasons. I had listened already to Jordan Peterson’s conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu, and really found that he made some compelling arguments about that land before Israel was founded, right? And then I listened to other arguments that were happening by commentators and more conservative commentators. And then I watched the atrocities that happened in Israel. And then I watched the college campuses and, you know, all of those things and to me, it seemed like this is horrible, this is horrible what’s happening. And my twin daughters were very much on the opposite side, very much on the other side. You know, so we had some conversations where I was just trying to hear them and understand them. But I just very much disagreed with them and we didn’t argue but I, I just didn’t, I was, you know, maybe anyway, I just thought, ok, they need to learn a little bit more. It’s with my arrogant inside feeling. And so I have to tell you rock, reading your articles was really, really good for me because you didn’t, like, my husband didn’t share my initial position either and, and one of my sons. But so that’s why I wanted to talk about them because what I find is that being on one side and thinking you have the information you need, even though I wasn’t like I wasn’t fighting or arguing with anybody about it, I just felt pretty firm in my perspective. Right. And so this is why it’s so important to, I had tried to listen to people on the other side. I just hadn’t listened to the right people on the other side. I remember the people that you introduced me to. And so yes, I needed to listen to orthodox Jews. That’s who I needed to hear from. So, Rock why don’t you go ahead and kind of give us whatever overview you want and I’ll link the blogs below as well.

[1:08:16] Rock: Give us believe it or not. Even though after my first post like that, a couple of people accused me of being a leftist, which is like, you know, well, if you know me, I’m the furthest thing from the left as possible. All I do, as I say, I’m, I’m on the side of scripture and currently the Orthodox Jews and there are tens of thousands of them mostly in New York because they don’t want to live in that hell hole over there. Anyway, so I’m Jewish on my mother’s side and I bring that up. And so when I want to know what Judaism teaches, I don’t go to the Zionists, I go the orthodox Jews, the ones who are actually reading the scriptures. Go ahead.

[1:09:07] Michelle: So that’s an important distinction that was good for me. I mean, I looked into it and I, and I, and I was somewhat confused by like this is how it appears to me and, and maybe, you know, especially after reading your article, but I already had kind of these feelings, the reason that American Christians are so pro Israel is religious, right? In the mind of American Christianity, we are defending and protecting this religious people, right? But then you look at Israel and there’s like very little that’s religious, right? Like the the

[1:09:43] Rock: founders of Israel, the founders and prisoners have all been atheists. This would be like if, if I wanted to, if I was a non-member and wanted to learn about the book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, the origins of Mormonism. It’s like going to an atheist and having him tell me what Mormonism is all about. It makes no sense. Zionism and Judaism are diametrically opposed. The religion of the Judaism is, well, there’s, there’s no comparison. So the Zionist, the, the original Zionist and you saw this if you read all, three posts, one of, one of the rabbis explained the who the founders were and they didn’t want to be thought of as Jews. So they, they set out to change what it meant to be a Jew. And they believed that once we do that, once we join with the anti semites, then everybody’s gonna love us. So, so it’s, these are the people running the government of Israel, the government is really

[1:10:46] Michelle: and then, and then I’m going to push back on the other direction as well, you know, like, but those were some of the things that were interesting to read is that before, like, I know Israel has been so divisive in the world, right? And, and my tendency has been to want to defend Israel. But I also see that before. According to many, many people, I’ve listened to in your post and others before the establishment of Israel Jews and Arabs lived in peace for the most part,

[1:11:16] Rock: Jews, Arabs and Christians. No, everybody was saying as, as Rob Weiss points out, we’re babysitting each other’s Children. What is, it’s just like now I’m in, I live in a neighborhood where I have some evangelicals and I have people of different face. We get along. So did they, it was only after 1948 when, when Rothschild maneuvered the British into taking Palestine and then that was given to the United Nations to give to the Zionists who are atheists to form a country for the Jews, which,

[1:11:54] Michelle: which is very, well, that’s so interesting and problematic in a lot of ways because we as a people tend to be kind of opposed to that kind of sectarianism. Like, like you can’t have a nation, just build on a religion really. We don’t want nations to have religious requirements, but we also don’t want nations to have what’s the word, genetic requirements? What’s the word I’m looking for like you from, from this, from this racial group or this ethnicity, ethnic requirements, right? And as you get into it, Judaism isn’t like the founders of Judaism, like you said, I mean, the Zionists and we should clarify the difference between Zionism and Judaism. But because the Jews, I remember reading the chosen as, you know, as a girl, I’m being confused how the orthodox Jews were. Like they talk about it in there, how the Orthodox Jews were opposed to people doing like establishing the land of Israel without God, which actually goes along with the Bible right. So I was introduced to the idea then, which is, it’s been really interesting to have religious Jews say that the Zionists stole their identity to use it to create it. That was an interesting perspective that I think deserves to be understood and to be voiced that now we have liberal people or people that are um either opposing or well, people that are defending Israel calling people whose entire families were killed in concentration camps and who are practicing orthodox Jews, calling them anti Semitic and accusing that they have this weird situation going on.

[1:13:34] Rock: Well, one of the main problems is the use of terms. First, Zionism sounds good. You know, because that’s what so these guys pick this name Zionism and they call themselves Zionists and now they are Christian Zionists who promote the which is the political atheist ungodly, institution. It has nothing to do with Judaism or being,

[1:13:59] Michelle: you mean the political institution, the

[1:14:03] Rock: political institution. And then, then there’s Judaism which everybody we Americans think. Oh, Zion, you know, Israel, that’s good because that’s where the Jews will have a peace in the homeland, but it’s not the same thing. So, the religious Jews recognize this, and what I was going to say earlier was, it wasn’t until 1948 when Zionist took over that the animosity began between the Jews and the Palestinians because Jews began to move in and saying we have a right to your house, get out. And that’s what they did. They took over Shlomo San who wrote a book, wonderful book called The Invention of Israel. He s he says I grew up in a house, I never questioned where it came from or who used to live there. Well, it was taken from the people and then they were shoved off a little bit by little. They were shoved further and further toward the coast and, and until they end up in this really crowded ghetto. But Israel itself is a misnomer. Judah isn’t Israel. Judah is one tribe of Israel and they do not have a claim to anything. And as the orthodox Jews will tell you, Everybody is perfectly welcome to live there and move there. If you want, come over and buy buy some land, start a farm, a vineyard have a house, but we can’t go in as a wall. That’s according to the scripture. You can’t go in guns drawn with swords. You can’t go in and take over somebody else’s land. You know what this would be akin to. Now, what a lot of Mormons don’t understand today is we’re not going back to Jackson County.

[1:15:38] Michelle: right. That’s exactly what I was the comparison I was going to make. Yeah. Go ahead. If, if we say God gave us this

[1:15:43] Rock: land. Yeah. God appointed Jackson County as Zion. But he also told us in D&C 124 that if you don’t get this temple built on time and you don’t do what you’re told you’re going to be moved out of your place. All bets are off. And that’s what they did and what I find interesting.

[1:16:02] Michelle: I just want to clarify, you’re combining because, that was about Nauvoo that was after they already had lost Zion. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right.

[1:16:10] Rock:But they still thought they were going, but

[1:16:12] Michelle: they thought they were going back. And it’s interesting because I think that is what caused a lot of the animosity in Missouri. What I’ve read is that a lot of the members of the church saying God has given us this land and that

[1:16:27] Rock: it was Mormons who started burning out the farms of the people who lived nearby and then they would retaliate, it was going back and forth. But it was the Mormons who started it because Mormons, you know, getting in a spat with somebody and put this poor farmer and his family out in the cold. Well, of course, they’re gonna retaliate. So, anyway, so if we were told, ok. So, anyway, yeah, Zion has moved. It’s not in Jackson County anymore. It’s, we now know it’s somewhere in the top of the mountains. We don’t know what that means. Although some people have given me a pretty good argument that it could be in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, which is nice because I’m close living in Idaho now. Easier to get to than when I was in California.

[1:17:13] Michelle: Maybe it has yet to be revealed as my thought. If we need to know, we’ll know when, let’s say,

[1:17:19] Rock: let’s say the leaders told us, ok, which is what a lot of people are expecting, that one day the president of the church is gonna say it’s time to go back to independence, Missouri. Ok. What do we do? We’re gonna shove people out of their homes. We’re gonna, we’re gonna, so maybe if we get the United Nations to help. That’s the equivalent here. What’s happening in

[1:17:42] Michelle: the argument that Benjamin Netanyahu made that I thought was, well, I was that the, the land was not, they didn’t have homes. It was like, he quotes Mark Twain saying, oh, Israel, when will you come back and, and raise this from the, like, you know, I, I should have looked at the quote. But anyway, that’s what I found. So this is why I want to complicate the matter because I don’t want to you. Like, this is what’s complicated is that we look at what happened in Dresden and in Germany after World War two. Right. And how many people were just completely killed? Right. And, and then that’s used to defend Israel doing the same thing, which is horrifying, but also, right. But it also has precident, like we all know and then, right? And, but, but, and, and so it, it, it’s, it’s complicated to think through because, like, like I heard, um, is it, um, what’s the, what’s the young, he looks young, the commentator, Ben Shapiro, I heard him say something about, um, like they were saying something about that they’re, you know, killing Children. He said so if I commit murder, but then hide behind a child, I get, what’s the word for? You don’t go after me? Like I basically, um, oh, there’s a word he uses, but it’s quite, and I, yeah, I don’t have to have a punishment for that. And it’s like, well, ok, I see what you’re saying. But at the same time, if you’re hiding behind, if someone killed someone and then is hiding behind my child, I don’t want them to shoot my child to get the guy that committed murder. Right? Like, like these arguments get so twisted and convoluted and then I’m just going to throw a bunch of things out. So, so I, what I mean about your

[1:19:29] Rock: that’s not happening. That’s a myth that Hamas is there. You know, hiding under, under the tunnels, hiding by Hamas is gone. They’re not in Gaza anymore. Hamas is a bloodthirsty terrorist organization and the leaders of Israel know that they’re not there. In fact, they think they found one in Lebanon. I haven’t followed up to see if they, they got the right guy but the they found one, he’s in Lebanon. They, the guys who initiated this thing on October 7th are long gone. Israel is using that, using them as an excuse, getting back at them as an excuse to do what they wanted to do all along was completely get rid of Palestine. They want the, the Palestinians, they want all the land, and now we know there’s $365 million worth of oil in the Gaza Strip. So that tells us something.

[1:20:26] Michelle: OK, so I feel like this whole and maybe I’ll start this whole, this whole discussion by saying rock does not necessarily speak for me because I don’t, you know, I feel like I’m letting you share your views, but I don’t know that I agree with all of them or many of them, but I’ve been uncomfortable a lot during this conversation because I’m like, I don’t know what I think on these things. But I think one of the challenges we have is that people have different facts in this day and age. Right. On, on so many topics. It’s hard to even engage because people believe completely different things as a set of facts, right? And so what I, so what I loved about your post though is that you you like you started out with, how should Mormons think about war and how should Mormons think of? Right. And I thought it was so beautifully done. I, and I wasn’t trying to shut you down at all. I’m just saying, I don’t know enough about this topic because it’s one that I just kind of and then let go. And I, yeah, I appreciate

[1:21:31] Rock: I didn’t look, I’m Jewish, but on my mother’s side, I would have sided, I always did. I always sided with Israel until I understood that that the political entity that is pretending to represent the Jews does not represent Judaism or the Jews. Uh So let me just make one point. Vivek Ramaswamy had the right idea in my opinion, how Israel should have responded. What they should have done is gone in and got the perpetrators put their heads on a pike at the wall. That’s how you do it. It’s brutal. Yeah. But that’s how you do it. But what they chose to do instead was indiscriminately lob 2000 pound bombs. American made bombs indiscriminately at buildings and homes and hospitals and schools that they knew the perpetrators weren’t in it. Which brings us back to the book of Mormon teaching. I always go back to what does God tell us to do? You don’t go after it if OK, this is what happened with Mormon. He, he threw down his sword and said, I quit because the Lamanites had come across the borders and been causing all kinds of mischief with the knee fights and eventually knee fights really beat the snot out of them and they, they killed a lot of them and sent them packing across the border back to their own lands and they were just ecstatic. These Nephite soldiers says, let’s go and wipe them out. Let’s get this finished once and for all. And that’s when Mormon laid down his sword and says, I’m not gonna defend you guys anymore because you can’t go back. You can’t go after people that just look like your enemy or live where your enemy lives. They had every right to go chase the enemy, the soldiers and kill them, keep them from coming against them again. But you can’t go where the women and Children are and that’s what they’ve done in Israel.

[1:23:29] Michelle: Yeah. And so it’s been, it, this has been my interesting journey with it because so my perspective just tended to really side with like, like I, the mothers whose Children had been, were being held hostage and it’s like the Israel mothers, you know. And so when people were ok, what am I trying to get to? There are all these different perspectives and my husband’s and my sons um perspective was that they, they looked at it kind of like we consider 911, you know, like you allow this thing to happen and then use it as an excuse to do exactly what you wanted to do.

[1:24:11] Rock: there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that, I mean, a

[1:24:14] Michelle: lot and, and so as I to

[1:24:17] Rock: wipe them out now, we’ve got an

[1:24:19] Michelle: right, and it was hard for me to like, I was so emotionally invested in, in the atrocities that had happened, whatever the details might be, you know, the attack was, the attack was horrible. But using that as an excuse to do far worse things, right? It just like, that’s the position I was in and then seeing people just basically have no sympathy for the attack that had just happened and instead just being blaming Israel right at the beginning, that was not a good way to approach it for. Do you know what like like there is, there are these sides. I, I guess I’m trying to talk my way into to explaining something, you know, these different perspectives. And then my daughters were on the side of kind of these protesters that are just saying from the river to the see, Palestine will be free, you know, that they weren’t protesting. But I, that’s how I encapsulate that. Then my husband and my, it was actually my second son were saying this looks like a false flag, like 911, so I’m nervous about that. I was more sympathetic with Israel saying this is not OK, what happened and you know what, whatever they need to do to take care of it. It’s kind of more where I was, I wasn’t that invested in it anyway. So it’s been interesting after reading your articles, I sent them to all of those family members. And I was like, we should talk about this, you know, because I feel like all of those perspectives have some truth and also are missing something, right? Because there’s a lot more to all of this. So let me, so now I’m I’m really on board with where you are. I think we like this was horrible. Like Zionism was a horrible thing, is kind of what I tend to believe now, especially when you understand that the Orthodox Jews believe that,they’re the biggest critics of

[1:26:04] Rock: the people who know the scriptures, right?

[1:26:07] Michelle: The people who like, like that was compelling to me when they said they stole our identity, they claimed to be the Jews in order to do what they wanted to do. But they hated us, right? And so, and it’s, and it’s turned the Jews into, they’ve been persecuted much more since then because of, you know, because of these wars that have happened anyway. It’s an interesting perspective but this is where I got to with my daughters who I called them. I was like, ok, we have to talk because I was wrong, you know, and they really appreciated that. But then, but then I said, but look, now it looks to me like there is some similarity between what happened in America. You know, the Europeans came and took the land, wiped the people that were here off of it. So now what? Right? Like this is the story again, the story of humanity from the beginning of time. It’s not reasonable or even possible. I mean to say, ok, all of the white people have to leave North and South America and everywhere that white people live and go back to, you know, northern Europe. And so what it came to after all of these pieces coming together was like the only thing that we can learn from this is the importance of peace, of forgiveness of one of because I look this, this is an unsolvable problem because like you also sent the video of the year of the um Israeli Israelis is that the people living in Israel actually turning on their water and turning on their electricity mocking… that that destroyed me. That was so it was like not only are they suffering like this and there’s no compassion, there’s actually mocking, like the hatred

[1:27:56] Rock: with wounds and putting makeup on dead and wounded

[1:28:00] Michelle: and right. They they’re mocking this horror that these people are living through. But then I’ve also before, before seeing that I had watched all of the videos of the Palestinian Children being taught from infancy. I killed the Jews, I killed the Jews, right? This is

[1:28:13] Rock: why, how do you solve this problem? Right?

[1:28:15] Michelle: That’s and that’s why I was like that, right? There is our problem. It isn’t even this happens, then this happens, then this happens. Those things we can always, we can always overcome things that have happened in the past. It is the ongoing hatred and war making and blood thirst that makes problems unsolvable and that. So that’s kind of I I went into that whole thing to just encapsulate. This is where I’ve come to. I’m not on anybody’s side now because I just see the workings of humanity through, you know, all of this has happened, but I don’t think it’s any more reasonable to tell Israel you need to just leave than it is to tell America you need to just leave. And, and so the only thing I can take from it is in my own life. The best thing I can do is recognize the incredible danger of becoming angry and resentful and bloodthirsty and going that direction rather than al it’s given me new resolve to always look to peace make and forgive the best I can. And I don’t want to say that to gaslight, what the Palestinians are experiencing just this. That’s the only possible solution. And that’s the only way to even make a solution possible is to somehow have people let go of their bloodlust.

[1:29:32] Rock: There’s a tendency to choose sides. In other words, you’re either with Hamas or you’re with the government of Israel. No, no, I’m with the people. I stand with the people. Yeah. Yeah. It’s the governments. This is why I would never, I would never go to protest and wrap my self in the, in the Palestinian flag because that represents the government. And when people say from the rivers to the sea, Palestine will be free. The people on the other side are interpreting that to mean, we’re gonna wipe you off the map. Well, how about both sides decide you’re not gonna wipe the other off the map? I think I agree with, with the Hasidic Jews who say that the state of Israel needs to be dissolved. Um but the way it used to be, it was a country where people of different religious faiths live together and, and now the religion of one faith says, well, they pretend to be the religion. They say it’s all ours and that’s, it’s just never gonna work. You’re never gonna have and, and they’re, they’re essentially, the Israelis are essentially saying from the rivers to the sea. Israel belongs to me. But, but getting back to what I said about mislabeling Israel, everybody in the Bible said, I got my awakening when I came across, somebody was offering a $10,000 reward to anybody who could show where the Bible says that Jews are God’s chosen people. I thought, well, that’s easy. It’s all over the place. But now he didn’t say that I was talking about Israel and the tribe of Judah during some of that time was only 1/12 of Israel from the time that they had the divorce and Judah became its separate kingdom and Israel became a separate kingdom, God always spoke about the kingdom of Judah and the kingdom of, of Israel separately. Except in those times where the prophets that he was speaking through said all the whole of Israel or all of Israel then that included Judah. But these people who think that this land of the holy land belongs to them, what about the rest of us. I’m also of ephraim. And believe me, I’m more proud of my ephraim blood than I am of Judah. Judah tried to kill his brother Joseph. I like the fact that I’m descended from Joseph. You know, if I’m gonna boast about my ancestry.

[1:32:05] Michelle: Yeah. And I feel, I feel this desire to make, I don’t wanna demean our ancestors. I just don’t want to worry about lineage. I’m always uncomfortable when we talk about blood and lineage because

[1:32:15] Rock: This is who God made his promises to. He made his promises to Israel. All 12 tribes and those 12 tribes have been dispersed amongst the nations. We know where they are, by the way, they’re not lost. I’m just enjoying um rereading about what happened to them after the Assyrians took them. And just one interesting fact, they weren’t slaves. The Assyrians did not make the Israelite slaves. What they did was they put them as a buffer between their enemies, Assyrians, enemies and Assyria. So if anybody wanted to come against the Assyrians, they were gonna have to go through the Israelites who were very first fighters. They were a very accomplished horseman. I think it was uh Sargon. He said when he captured the Israelites, there were 40,000 horses and 20,000 riders and uh as many chariots. Syria, they were very smart because now they didn’t have to spend all their time defending their own homeland because they had this buffer of free people to do it. These people were not slaves, they had farms, they had and they, they traveled freely between the different tribes. And anyway, after they left, there was a lot of intermingling. So Gad and Ali are in there with, with Dan and Ephraim, but we’re there. I mean, America was the new Jerusalem. This was the land that the Lord put the promise on and that’s why we’re all here and guess what? We’re getting along? The Irish don’t fight with the Italians anymore. The or the Scots or, you know, I mean, the French, the French and the British were enemies and yet they were all cousins, all of them were cousins, and yet for centuries they would fight amongst each other because they kind of forgot their bloodlines. Then things settled down and we have this continent where everything is pretty cool except the left is trying to stir up trouble.

[1:34:24] Michelle: Well, I I want to bring in because we can’t just talk about the Europeans, right? Because we also have what happened to the, the indigenous Africans and that were brought in and the even with the horrors of all of that. And I don’t, again, I don’t want to minimize anything, you know, but the promise of America that people could learn to get along even with their tremendous differences is such a beautiful promise. Right? And I do believe that the less that we focus on differences, that’s part of my big objection to the left now is that we’re maximizing focus on difference, which is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. And so we’re making it worse instead of better. And that’s one thing that’s also confusing about Israel is this country with and, and, and I liked when, when was it on your blog that I was listening to or something else that they were like, what is even, what does it mean to be of Israel? Like, is it ethnicity or religion? Right. And that’s a really good question because neither one actually works as a definition that could defend anyway, I think

[1:35:32] Rock: The blood of Israel is now in all races of the world. I mean, they really spread out, they became Mongols, they became um Asians, they became blacks. In fact, Ethiopians, one of the things that really bothered orthodox, not orthodox Jews, basic Jews was learning that Ethiopians had been converted centuries ago. And so we had their tribes of Ethiopians were Jewish and they practiced the orthodox Judaism. They did, the Jews did not want to accept them as Jews, but they were because they were converted and intermingled in the races. Those who aren’t of the blood of Israel, those few, are Israel by adoption, if they accept Christ, you know, which makes, which makes all of Israel these lost tribes much more people of the promise than the people in Judea. You know, the people of the tribe of Judea who reject Christ. And, you know, these people who, they’re observant Jews, but that doesn’t make them pure blood of the tribe of Judah. I’m not pure blood.

[1:36:45] Michelle: Well I think the thing that, that really hits me is that if we are monotheists and we believe in God, that is the God of the entire world, then it’s, then God is the God of all people. And so we should be looking for commonality and unity and everybody is our brother and sister. And that’s why I guess I’m a little bit more opposed to this idea of lineage because some of these people that come after me, some of these polygamy lovers are talking about how it’s all about bloodlines and all about lineage. And that’s how they now defend polygamy. And I find that to be abhorrent, right? This idea that like you had to have the right ancestry to be somehow chosen by God. I just find that to be like racism on steroids. And so

[1:37:31] Rock: God knew what he was doing. God is the one he says, right In the scriptures, He put it in tla pli ours mind to go and camp Israel. He knew these people going to be. He knew we were all going to be a mix. That’s what he wanted.

[1:37:47] Michelle: So what is your, what is your take on the Jewish situation? I like that you’re trying to help us as Mormons recognize bloodlust and the righteous war ethic that God has given us, which I think is very profoundly explained in the book of Mormon, right? And so what, so what is your, I guess that is that your goal is to just help people to see this more clearly, kind of like you’ve done for me.

[1:38:19] Rock: Well, since this has been an interest of mine for decades, it just, you know, just, you know, came out when all this started happening. But I think my end goal here um is once we start talking about what happened to Israel, not Judah, but the rest of Israel, then we start to realize, wait a minute, we’re all Israel. We all have these promises and we’re not going to be tucked away in an old desert. And by the way, uh I, I was going to comment on what Mark Twain said about the place being empty and barren and that wasn’t like that at all. Yeah, it was like a desert area, but there were, there were huge pockets of people living mostly farms and vineyards and things. So it wasn’t an empty place where we come in because nobody lives here. You know, because there wasn’t, it was, they ran people out of their homes and away from their farms.

[1:39:10] Michelle: Americans can say the same thing about America that, I mean, the, the Europeans, like, there’s nobody here but it’s just because they want the kind of settlements they recognize maybe. Right. That was, I was like, oh, that’s interesting. Like the, even if the native Americans didn’t live, the indigenous Americans didn’t live the way the European settlers lived, It doesn’t mean that they didn’t want that land and we’re utilizing that.

[1:39:36] Rock: They don’t count, they don’t count. You know, it’s funny to me when I watched as a kid, I watched the movie, ‘they died with their boots on’, which was made in the forties. But I watched on TV. Even then we were on the side of the cavalry. Always the cavalry. The Indians were always bad guys. What we didn’t realize was the Indians were retaliating. They’d come but they retaliated wrongly. They would, they would be attacked by,the, uh, or, or encroached on by the military. Yeah. And then they would take it out on some farm that hadn’t harmed them. And so what would come in is the cavalry come in and then wipe them out. People need to calm down, you know, and learn to get along just like you’re saying. I don’t know what the solution is other than a change of heart. Um, the, the Israeli people and it’s happening. Now, a lot of people are becoming, coming to realize that the Israelis have taken this too far. And this is the title of a book by Norman Finkelstein, which he wrote about a previous attack. He said “this time we went too far’, is in the title of the book. Um this time they really have gone too far. And it’s really, well, you saw that, you saw that clip that I showed on my blog where there’s some orthodox Jews with the prayer shawls and the yarmulkes and everything. And these cops, Jewish cops slam them to the ground and start pushing them and you go, what the hell is going on here? There’s a different mindset. There’s an authoritarian mindset and this is what’s wrong with Zionism. It’s authoritarian, it is not, it is not Israel could be a, a country again and it could be, it could be a political state but they won’t let anybody, they’re running the Christians out. They won’t let you if you come. Uh The funny thing, funny thing is these Christian Zionists who are all pro Israel because they think that Jesus has to come again to the, to Israel before the second coming. So if they go to Israel, they won’t be allowed to live there and they’re surprised to find that out because wait, I’m your ally.

[1:41:54] Michelle: Well, that, that, ok, so I kind of want to touch on that because, so it does seem that the reason that American Christians in particular are so pro Israel is because they think that they’re fulfilling biblical prophecy. And I know that a lot of people seeing the war happening now, I think that, you know, it’s easy to interpret that as, oh, the last days and that. Right. But I think that maybe we’re getting that wrong as well to some extent because these aren’t, these things aren’t. Well, what is it? There was one other point I was going to make that. So there are a couple of different reasons that I think maybe we’re a little off base on that. First of all, most American Christians who are pro Israel tend to be more conservative, which means tend to be for limited government and for freedom and don’t recognize that Israel is a very totalitarian regime and it’s very Communistic even, or at least extremely socialist

[1:42:48] Rock: thinking of it in biblical terms. They’re thinking of it. We’re on the side of the people of the Bible and they don’t realize that

[1:42:55] Michelle: that it’s not there. They don’t have anything.

[1:42:59] Rock: Most of the world is now the people of the Bible, you know, the people of the pro heirs to the promises of Abraham. So it’s not,

[1:43:07] Michelle: we should try as people to separate out our religious ideas and just look at the political situation without overlaying that. It’s God’s people on

[1:43:18] Rock: it. Well, this is what, this is what the Zionists have done. This is how they muddied the water. They said, if you are Jewish by birth, you are Jewish and you have these rights of the God promised to Abraham. Even though they don’t believe in God, they’re using these people,

[1:43:37] Michelle: these people. And I know that someone just held up the Old Testament and said this is my deed to the land, right? And and, but the, but the rabbis and the orthodox Jews say that’s not true. There’s nothing in the Old Testament that there’s nothing in the Bible that tells us that that’s our land.

[1:43:53] Rock: And by the way, and I don’t know if I made this clear in my blog, the first five books of the Bible, that’s the Torah which contains the law, the laws of Moses Deuteronomy and liberty. Is that for that, there’s Tanakh, which is the rest of the equivalent of our Old Testament. So that’s what they go by. When they’re studying, they’re studying the law and they’re studying the Tanakh and they know and they can see what God allows and what God does not allow. And God absolutely forbids coming in and taking this land before he comes again. It’s not going to be done by us.

[1:44:29] Michelle: It’s the Messiah that’s supposed to leave this Jewish messiah is supposed to do that. Ok. So now let’s go back for a minute. So Thank you for talking. I hope that we like is there anything else you wanted to say on that topic before? We?

[1:44:42] Rock: I can’t remember you, you triggered some ideas in my head but when we moved on to something else because I like talking to you. We just grabbing two

[1:44:51] Michelle: before they, right. So, but so let’s go back to your blog on polygamy if that’s ok. I, I am curious to know you explained in the piece, sort of what inspired it. And I love how you spell that out. I’m curious to know though what sort of the initial but if you can remember clear back then what brought it to the forefront to make you want to write about it and how it was received.

[1:45:17] Rock: I stumbled, I stumbled across this book. It’s called Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy. And whenever I hear something that sounds absolutely. Of course, that can’t be. I want to know about it. You know, this is why, you know, I don’t care for people who say, well, that’s ridiculous, you know, tell me why it’s ridiculous. Find out why. So if you throw something at me that said Joseph Smith fought polygamy. My first instinct is well, who would believe that and why? So I wanna read that book. So I read that book and my goodness, there’s where the evidence was and that’s only volume one of three. And I think there’s one more in the making, Richard. Yeah, Richard Price died, unfortunately, not long ago. His, his wife is still around. But I think Charney and, uh, anyway,

[1:46:03] Michelle: and are helping and still working hard. One

[1:46:08] Rock: of the things that I found interesting was that there was a, there was a lawsuit Joseph was suing Chauncey Higby for slander for accusing him of polygamy. So these people went down to Carthage to the county courthouse to find that old court case and, and you know, there’s stacks of stuff and they, and it was given to them and you can go and you look at it and then they copied it by hand. There weren’t xerox machines back then and they took photos of the papers and what they showed was, Joseph’s lawsuit was laid out. Chauncey Higby claiming the Chauncey Higby had been, had been caught in adultery and he told the girl that and the girl said, well, yeah, Joseph said you can do it. So, so they gathered all this stuff and then they turned the papers back in and they leave. years later, they come back and they want to take a look at it again because now they’ve got photocopy machines and most of the stuff is not in that packet anymore. And they go to the clerk and they said, so the stuff we had we saw before isn’t here. And so she looks up the record and say, oh yeah, some people from the Mormon Church came and looked at it. Well, you’re not allowed to take documents out of the courthouse. That’s absolutely forbidden. But somebody, some representatives of the LDS church did. They took out the stuff that was damning. The reason that case never went to trial. It would have and it would have exonerated Joseph because there was, was because all of a sudden Joseph had to go into hiding because lies were being told about him. By the way, most people don’t know the reason Joseph went into hiding was not because he was hiding from the local sheriff. There was a price on his head and we don’t know anymore whether it was $1000 or $3000. And we don’t know who put that price on his head. But the idea, and this occurred now and then we know of an Indian chief who had a price on his head of $1000. There were people watching Joseph all the time trying to, yeah, the idea was they cut off his head. They turn that head in and they may, they get the bounty and $3000 was a ton of money back then. I think, I think it might have been the Masons that put that price on his head because he was blamed for, uh, for starting the Nauvoo Lodge when, when it was, um, it was not legit, it was not authorized by the, uh, whatever the main

[1:48:36] Michelle: and so whatever

[1:48:37] Rock: it was John Bennett who did that, of course,

[1:48:45] Michelle: the reason, the reason it’s so important for people to understand that piece about a price being on his head is because it’s when he was in hiding that he wrote the letter to the Whitneys.

[1:48:57] Rock: Let’s talk about that. Yeah, let’s talk about that. All right, George D Smith wrote a book. I can’t remember the name of it. And in the beginning he shows this letter that Joseph wrote to, what’s her name, Sarah Whitney? And it’s got elliptic in it and it’s, he’s talking about it. I wish, I hope you’ll come and visit me and it would be a great comfort, elliptic. But be sure you don’t come when, at the same time, when uh when, if,

[1:49:24] Michelle: if Emma’s not there, you should be safe.

[1:49:26] Rock: Yeah. Yeah, because no, it’ll be unsafe if you come. So that’s really damning. It looks like really damning evidence until you see the full letter. And you realize. Ok, so here’s the full letter is not to Sarah Whitney, It’s to Sarah Whitney’s parents and we should all

[1:49:42] Michelle: come in. It doesn’t ever say Sarah’s name anywhere.

[1:49:46] Rock: She’s just part of the family. He’d love to see them. He’s lonely, he’s in hiding because they’re after his head. And if these people are watching every step that Emma makes, so what Emma would do when she wanted to come and visit Joseph, she’d pull her wagon up in front of the house of a friend and it would look like she was in there visiting the friends and she’d sneak out the back. By the way There are all kinds of bad guys living in nauvoo. We think of nauvoo as some kind of almost utopia. But n was a safe place for criminals because Nauvoo would not extradite. And uh and it was a, it was a great place for, I think, I don’t remember who it was

[1:50:37] Michelle: and it was a huge criminal element moved into. Nauvoo.

[1:50:41] Rock: Yeah. Yeah. And so these guys, these guys are sitting across the street waiting to see when Emma Emma comes out to see where she goes next, but she’s snuck out to visit her husband. Now if, if somebody’s following Emma or you know, don’t come at the same time, just come at different times. But, but think about this would, would, would

[1:51:06] Michelle: if you, if you’re, if you’re wanting to arrange a tryst with a young teenage girl, you don’t invite her parents, do you, do you write the letter to the parents? Not the girl, write the letter to the parents and say I have one small room or you can all come and we can be perfectly safe. So you’re gonna have all three of you, all four of you in that one small room with and, and like the things that people have to believe, to make the arguments and then they back it up with the Whitney revelation that they claim is a revelation that which, which we can prove is forged, it was a later forgery, was never from Joseph Smith because Sarah and Whitney’s mother, this is just one piece, wrote a biography and never even mentioned it. And her version of what happened completely contradicts what the revelation says happened. So, so we have so many reasons to call foul on this entire story. But that’s the funniest thing to me is like, hey, I’m really lonely and if you’ll bring your little teenage daughter to comfort me and you can just stand there in the corner while we do our thing, right? There is one room and they couldn’t wait outside because remember they had to be sneaky. Nobody could see that

[1:52:23] Rock: by the way. Yeah, I guess we already covered this. But where the Olympics were in that letter, that’s where we find out what’s really going on. So this is flipping dishonest. You know, I haven’t used that word since I was a missionary flipping dishonest. But, you know, here’s the thing and I’m sure you’ve covered this. There’s two, there’s two schools who are dead set in covering up, you know,

[1:52:49] Michelle: making sure that Joseph was a polygamist.

[1:52:51] Rock: So there’s the ex Mormons who need this because otherwise you don’t, by the way. Ok, I gotta stop and tell you RFM. I count him as a friend. He was calling me all the time. We were very friendly and until once we, he did an interview with me like this, he wouldn’t answer my call. He was calling me all the time and suddenly he just cut me off. I don’t know. I insisted on saying something on his podcast that he didn’t want me to say, but I don’t know why that would be a problem. But anyway, we haven’t been in touch now since then. But, um, I count him as a friend, I call Count Bill Real as a friend. I’m watching your piece of, what was that? Was it? Number 71 you know, offhand. It’s one of my,

[1:53:34] Michelle: where

[1:53:35] Rock: you’re discussing where you were going to get together with it. They wanted to get together, but they kept wanting to have you do all the research for him essentially. Anyway, I did say this about RFM. He could get to the truth of what I said to him. I said, I don’t understand why you, a trial lawyer would believe something that is so clearly

[1:54:01] Michelle: ridiculous.

[1:54:02] Rock: Ridiculous. But anyway, ok, back to my point. So you got those people and these guys are mild compared to the real anti mormons who have to have Joseph seducing 14 year old girls

[1:54:13] Michelle: because that’s the number one thing they can accuse him of the very worst of the worst thing they have against

[1:54:20] Rock: him without that. They don’t have anything that, uh, that, that shows, I mean, they can say I

[1:54:26] Michelle: is the best they can

[1:54:27] Rock: do, which by the way is another story you want me to give you a quick one on that. Every bank in 1937 failed. The guy’s name is mckay. Last name is mckay and he writes about the Kirtland Safety Society. It’s online somewhere, a wonderful piece showing how, you know, this wasn’t Joseph Steel anyway, you know, he okayed it but it wasn’t. Joseph never claimed to have gotten revelation to start a bank. These people are desperate. Let’s find, figure out how well we can buy, you know, we can, we can become a bank anyway. Everything nobody hears about the 1837 collapse because

[1:55:08] Michelle: I just went into that on my first episode on you. It was a huge depression, the 1837 crash and the, and the depression lasted for years and years. It was still going on in the

[1:55:18] Rock: 1857 collapse so overshadowed it. Nobody talks about it. Some, sometimes in history books, I can’t even find it. They, they go to the 1857 because 1837 was mild compared to what really happened. Of course, everything was overshadowed by 1929. But where was I?

[1:55:36] Michelle: We were talking about the,

[1:55:39] Rock: you have the anti Mormons. They gotta have this, gotta have Joseph Smith was a complete cad. Then the Mormons, you wonder why it’s, it’s like what Whitney says, she took her book and she sent her book to one of the historians thinking this might help. They didn’t want to hear it and there’s, they can’t, they have to take the line of authority through, bring him back to Joseph. And they have, they have no choice but to throw Joseph under the bus and sort of explain it away by like you guys said, having a female historian explain it. I just love that piece where uh where they were answering questions, you had an apostle there and I hadn’t even thought of that until you brought it up. OK. So, and I thought this was a small group of maybe a dozen teenagers they were talking to until the camera pans out and it’s, it’s a huge field. So they had,

[1:56:29] Michelle: it was broadcast worldwide. Oh,

[1:56:31] Rock: yeah. So the Apostle was that Quentin Cook. I’m not sure if that’s OK. Quentin Cook and a couple of others, a couple of historians. And so the question from the, the audience up front, they asked about Joseph Smith’s polygamy. And there’s uh you know, there’s, it’s awkward but let’s laugh it off. And instead of an apostle of the Lord giving the answer, he palms the answer off to the female historian because, well, we’ll let Sister Kate explain this, why” Because if it’s coming from a woman, it sounds like, well, it couldn’t have been so bad because this woman understands. I stand up on my seat of that kind of thing. I go What the heck.

[1:57:14] Michelle: Right. Obviously, we, so this is how I look at it and I’ve mentioned this a lot. So if it’s a repeat for anyone, I apologize. But you’re exactly right that it is the polygamy makes for strange bedfellows pun intended. But we have the, the people that hate Joseph Smith and most want to accuse him. And then we have the people that claim to be the one true church that Joseph founded. It’s been interesting to me to engage with all of the other branches that they all claim to be the one true church, right? Every new polygamous break off claims to be the one true church as well. So I think maybe we’re misunderstanding that. But what I find interesting is that first of all that these people share resources like the church, John C Bennett as an authoritative source on Joseph’s polygamy or, or so his boss wick as it like, like the things that they explain away. You’re just like, what are you doing? You know

[1:58:04] Rock: The most man in Nauvoo that we know of the most traitorous.

[1:58:10] Michelle: He’s a nightmare and it is a nightmare.

[1:58:13] Rock: They quote him to bolster their claims,

[1:58:16] Michelle: right? They use his hip as an authoritative source on polygamy. And I brought that up several times like so many points about that. But first of all, I’ve said this before, was he a polygamy insider, Brian Hall or was he a polygamy outsider? If he was a polygamy insider, why wasn’t he brought in his right where he

[1:58:35] Rock: abandoned back in Ohio? Um,

[1:58:37] Michelle: the thing that I do find interesting from the perspective of the church is we have already disavowed and condemned all of Brigham’s other doctrines, we’ve acknowledged now that racism came from Brigham Young, the priesthood ban, then we have completely abandoned and condemned, I hope blood atonement, right? And we,

[1:59:00] Rock: I was a firm believer in that seemed like justice to me.

[1:59:03] Michelle: OK. OK. Right. And so, and, and then, like, even Adam- God, I just, I’m gonna have to do some new episodes on Adam God theory because I’m like, I just discovered a new Brigham Young um false doctrine that I have to refute, which I’m going, which I’m now calling divine incest because I didn’t realize that the idea that God literally through sexual intercourse, conceived Jesus with Mary. I didn’t know that people were cool with that idea still, you know, anyway, I’m hoping that’s when we can officially disavow because that’s, I think a horrible idea. But anyway, the point I’m making is we’ve already completely disavowed every doctrine

[1:59:42] Rock: that until you bring it up everything that every false teaching and yet

[1:59:47] Michelle: the church is here, the church is here and we’re going on, all we have to do is add one more thing to that pile. Right. And even though it’s instituted, it’s canonized in scripture now. Well, we had no problem getting rid of the original 101, which was canonized scripture throughout Brigham Young’s entire life until the 1876. Doctor Covenant was made, we can change canonized scripture, especially if we’re going back to true scripture and correcting an error, right? The church is still here. And I do recognize that our current leaders are, it seems to me converted to polygamy, consider themselves eternal polygamists, right? So I I know that there are a lot of people that are still polygamists, which I think is our biggest problem with correcting this false tradition which the book of Mormon tells us what happened. But from my perspective, I actually, I got some push back with this, but I actually think Wilford Woodruff made a huge step toward repentance because his predecessors, John Taylor would have let the entire church be destroyed for the sake of polygamy. He certainly gave his life for it. You know, he let them, like he died in hiding and, and he said no matter what, no matter what, no matter what we will not. Polygamy. Wilfred Woodruff was willing to face the wrath of the polygamists and willing to contradict previous leaders, you have to give him credit for that. But he had the at least the courage and maybe humility to say, ok, we are disavowing polygamy even though I mean, we are abandoning polygamy even though he still believed in it. He was willing to take that step, which I do count as repentance, right? Because he was willing to turn his back on polygamy officially and then the numbers have decreased since then. But we already have a wonderful example of a president of the church going against the direct word of his predecessors in a repentant way. We we we can do this. Go ahead.

[2:01:41] Rock: But on the other hand, the federal government had seized Temple Square, they seized the temple, they sold, there was a lot of pressure. There may not have been much. But yeah, I’ll give you that.

[2:01:52] Michelle: I think it’s a difference between like, like the comparison I made was in the book of Mormon where the people came at the town of the Rameuptum and whichever town it was. And you know, and, and they were told blessed are you because you have been forced to repent. More blessed? Are they who are not forced to be to repent? Right? So even if Wilford Woodruff was forced to repent, he still made that choice rather than letting the church be destroyed, which is what John Taylor said, they had to do.

[2:02:20] Rock: You gotta wonder if Taylor would have just let them take it.

[2:02:23] Michelle: That’s what he said. That’s what he said. Like he would have, he would have gone to his grave as a polygamy martyr. Well, he did that anyway, but he would have, I don’t know

[2:02:30] Rock: how the brethren today. Here’s the problem. Of course, the problem is the internet because the internet, they could keep all this hidden from the masses until the internet became widespread. Now, if the missionaries come to your door and you like their message and you say, wow, this is really something and they set up something let’s meet next week, you’re going to go right to your computer and learn all about the mormons because this sounds exciting and it’s gonna destroy it if you’re done. I spoke to the local missionaries some years ago when they still would talk to me and they said, yeah, we never get past the first discussion ever. Oh, then there’s the members who are faithful who can’t reconcile that Joseph Smith did this, by the way, this is ground zero. What, what’s the term we’re looking for? Center? This is the place now, your, what do we call this? Not a blog, your podcast. This is the place. Yeah, that channel. This is the place to learn this where all coming together. I mean, it’s been spread out and going great guns all over the place, Sean High buddy and defending Joseph Smith. In, in different places. But this is the way I like that. You’re gathering people and getting, I can’t wait to hear from Jeremy Hoops. It was from Jeremy hoops that I heard one of the best things I start, I got about halfway through the Temple case. It’s a, it’s a big book and I was following that. But like with a lot of books, I move on to some other book before I finish the one I’m reading, and it was from him that I learned that now everybody here know about the temple case. You do. Yeah. The temple lot case. OK. So it came down. So polygamy was tried in a court. OK? And polygamy lost and the reason it lost, There’s, there’s the temple lot in Independence, Missouri. There’s a small church. They call themselves the Henderguist. Is that the henderguists?

[2:04:30] Michelle: I don’t know if it’s the Henderguist, I’ve been told it’s the Church of Christ and I’ve been told it’s just the church of Jesus Christ temple lot and that the church of

[2:04:36] Rock: Christ Temple

[2:04:38] Michelle: there is the church of Jesus Christ Temple lot that owns the temple lot. It’s right

[2:04:42] Rock: across the street from, from the from the reorganized, community of Christ. OK? So they own that lot and they’ve been care taking it and they’re taking care of it and holding on to it until the time the temple is going to be built in Jackson County. Well turns out that the RLDS church, the RLDS church decided that they wanted it and they were going to sue for it and they had much more in the way of resources. The RLDS thought they ought to have it. Well, a guy by the name of Cannon who was former RLDS, he got wind of this and he told the, uh, the Henderguists, hey, they’re gonna try and take your church. They’re gonna sue for it. Hederguists didn’t have the money to defend. And so somebody took the train or to Salt Lake City and told him what was happening. Salt Lake City couldn’t let the RLDS, because that’s where the feud is. Uh That’s the blood feud between uh Joseph Smith, Junior and Joseph Smith and his cousin. Um So the, the les church financed and went,

[2:05:55] Michelle: they joined the lawsuit on the side of the head of the temple on the side of the head to keep it from going to the RLDS

[2:06:02] Rock: just to keep it from going to the RLDS because the LDS church, RLDS church always thought eventually they’d get it, but they get that lot. But they knew they, so

[2:06:11] Michelle: they wanted the temple lot church to keep it just so the RL DS couldn’t get it. And then they thought that at some point they could pro I’m assuming that they thought at some point they could probably get it from the temple.

[2:06:21] Rock: So the court trial, it’s a gentile court, gentile judge. It’s all about who, which church, the LES Church and the L our LDS church, which one was the legitimate descendant of Joseph Smith? Which one, which church was the

[2:06:37] Michelle: one that is the, which is valid,

[2:06:39] Rock: which is the valid successor of Joseph Smith. So the RLDS church pointed out that the Mormons had completely gone off the rails with polygamy. And so they aren’t the same. So the RLDS church really did have a good case there. But so the LDS church now had to prove that polygamy was of Joseph Smith, that it, it’s not something they made up. And so they brought now this is where Jeremy hoops came in because I hadn’t gone that far. It was amazing. There are still nine women still alive. When was this early 1900s? 1907. Anyway, don’t worry. I know, I know it, but I don’t care. Um But it was so these elderly women, there were still nine of them who had claimed to have been wives and they had, the women who claimed to be wives of Joseph Smith were queen bees in Utah. You know you were because because when you die, you’re going to be celestial wife of Joseph Smith. So they had it. So they, they got to strut around and be real, even though they were married now to general authorities, you know, at the time. But,

[2:07:47] Michelle: and it was in the 1890s, it was 91 through 96. That the, a lot,

[2:07:51] Rock: thank you. So many of them were frail. They wanted at least a deposition, you know, sworn deposition. These women were happy to, to boast about how they had been married and sealed to Joseph Smith. But when it came to swearing before God, that’s when they all backed off. Except one who was known to just really be a, a liar. Always change your story. Yeah. But these women, they’re not gonna, they wouldn’t sign an affidavit and they wouldn’t appear in court. The church needed them desperately to say yes, Joseph Smith, I was his wife. He taught me that polygamy was a conduct. So they were fine until it came to, they’re not gonna, they’re not gonna swear. So help me God.

[2:08:39] Michelle: So I need to look into that. I just have had fun reading through the testimonies and how hilarious they are, how badly they all fall apart and it was part of the court and the judge did not find them credible, did not find the Mormon witnesses to be, the judge actually found in favor of the RLDs church’s claim of being the valid successor except the they basically won on kind of what is it like letches

[2:09:08] Rock: Yeah. So RLDs Church won the case, but on appeal the Hedrickites got to keep it because the law was, if you have it so long and you’re keeping it up, If you have a piece of property, you keep it up, you build a fence, you can keep the house, then that’s yours if there’s a dispute. And so the RLDS lost anyway, so both RLDS and the LDS church lost that case and the Hedrickites got to keep it. So anyway, I don’t know how I got up on that

[2:09:35] Michelle: And I loved, I loved my friend Cheryl Clute that came on. I hope you watched that episode. Cheryl. I think they’re great. She made a really great point that she, because she’s part of the restoration branches which Pamela and Richard Price are as well that broke off from the RLDs church when it went super um liberal. And um she says that she really feels the hand of God in that because if the community of Christ, if the RLDs church had been able to get it, they would have built their temple on it, right? And, and they now have really, in my opinion, betrayed, like, like they started out as Joseph Smith the third, one of the main tenets of his religion was his father had not been a polygamist. Emma gave testimony after uh after testimony throughout her life that Joseph was never a polygamist. And now the RLDs church betrayed that and has gone on to the same and, and people also use that just like they say, um, the Prices, books are debunked, which they’re not. They also, they also said even the RLDS Church admits that I did an episode on where they get that wrong and don’t, well, they don’t recognize that that was not, that was a totally motivated move. That was not from evidence. It was from a desire to distance themselves from Joseph Smith and be more like the Methodists who had been training them

[2:10:56] Rock: So nobody, nobody who’s making those arguments. Well, the RLS church believes it, but don’t ever ask why, I mean. Right.

[2:11:05] Michelle: And I’ve, and I’ve, I’ve interviewed several historians and it’s so interesting because I’ll have a be having a conversation and all and they just come in really, I don’t want to say arrogant. It maybe not but confident and they just know they’re just going to tell me what they know and put me in my place. And as I start asking them questions, they’ll eventually, they say, well, I’m actually not a front line historian on this. This isn’t actually, I mean, you know, so they kind of punt and I’m like, then why are you saying it like it is, why are you elevating yourself to say everyone should listen to me when you aren’t, right? And when you don’t have the expertise, then be more humble and say, well, according to this person, this is instead of saying, well, everybody knows and everybody listen to me say what everybody knows.

[2:11:48] Rock: I don’t care if the RLDS church says that Joseph Smith, I want to know. Did Joseph Smith the third? No, he did not. And if he was still here today, he would and neither would anybody in that general. We’re talking about completely different people here. They’ve been influenced by now. Falsehoods. Yeah. Just like, look how many Mormons believe it. Come on. This is the founder of our faith and they’re believing lies and falsehoods.

[2:12:14] Michelle: And you know what is I find fascinating, show me any polygamist Mormon fundamentalist, polygamist who really believes in polygamy, who hasn’t taught his Children polygamy, right? We’re claiming that this is the highest holiest doctrine. Joseph Smith the third was almost 12 years old when Joseph died, they lived in that tiny little house together and Joseph Smith hadn’t taught his son anything about this highest holiest doctrine of the church. He described it was the necessary key to heaven, right? Like I find that to

[2:12:47] Rock: be absolutely

[2:12:48] Michelle: ludicrous. Right. Right. And then, and then in the 1800, I still need to do my episode on this. But it was just common knowledge that it with Brigham Young, everybody knew during Brigham’s life that he started. It, it was mentioned in Congress. It was mentioned by writers that we mentioned Mark Twain before, like, like it was just, well known that Brigham Young got up this fake revelation and started polygamy. And yeah, and it is interesting that people also don’t know that it wasn’t until 1869 when the RL DS missionaries came out when the sons of Emma and Joseph came out. That’s when we start getting a hearing from wives that we start getting these affidavits. And if you, it

[2:13:28] Rock: just so happened, these wives were married to the current apostles. They had a lot to lose because here’s the, the Mormon people were waiting for Joseph to come back and take his place. That’s what Brigham said was to happen. And here they’re attending all these meetings where he’s speaking and these guys are gonna, they’re gonna lose all their power. So they get their wives in line and said, why don’t you tell him that you are married to Joseph? I’m sorry. I,

[2:13:54] Michelle: no, you’re right. I wish you had in front of me where Brigham says, where Brigham says, we would love to let him take his rightful place if he would bow to us and you know, he acknowledges that it is Joseph Smith the third’s rightful place, but they need to bow to the apostles and, and come online with what the apostles have said with what Brigham Young has set up. It’s, I’ll see if I can find that quote. But, um, anyway, I think it’s so fascinating that for people to understand that’s when we start to getting claims of Joseph’s polygamy is 1869. And the compilations of these affidavits are hilarious. They’re ridiculous. They’re so bad. We claim that it’s the women claiming it. It isn’t at all. This is a culture. They’ve had decades of being told, You follow the priesthood, you follow your husband, you follow the head. They were almost all, like you said, married to Brigham Young and Heber C Kimball. And Right. And, and there was a ton of, not just credibility but a claim to be gained by signing one of these affidavits by being and a ton to lose if you didn’t. And so

[2:15:03] Rock: by the way, did you ever read Judge Phillips Ruling? It’s thick. Uh The, on the, on the he read all the way. It’s almost like he could barely keep from laughing. The LDS position was so ludicrous and so without merit that uh but he spent a lot of time breaking it down and that, that’s good because

[2:15:28] Michelle: I have to read that. That’s good to know. OK. Well, I do want, I did also want to ask how your blog post was received because so for me, I, like I said, I didn’t start out with the question of Joseph Smith, but that’s immediately that was your first time handling polygamy was about Joseph Smith was not a how was it received back then?

[2:15:48] Rock: I’d have to look and see the comments section. I used to get like 200 comments a month and now I get very few. I’m gonna have to take off. I had problems with anonymous posters. And so I just had to make it where the blog wouldn’t accept anonymous poster posts. But I gotta make it now where people you can use a fake name. I don’t care. But the, the biggest problem we had a, aside from a couple of trolls was there’d be discussions in these comment sections and they would say was this anonymous set above an anonymous? Well, you OK, actually had, we couldn’t tell what anonymous they were talking about, but I think it was met with some of the same astonishment as I experienced when I first. But, but the other thing was some people said, well, yeah, but your source is RLDS, you know, so what, you know,

[2:16:45] Michelle: it’s not valid,

[2:16:46] Rock: read, read the book and then you tell me if, if what they’re saying , you don’t argue from who the source was, you know, argue, argue from what is being said. And that stuff is so step by step. And it got to, I, I couldn’t even include very much, but I did a follow up piece that I called why Mormon history is not what they say in which I showed how many, how common it was to lie and it wasn’t just Mormons. I was absolutely gobsmacked to learn that Bancroft’s Histories, 10 volume History in the United States. This was the, you know, you know, early 1900s, late 1800s, 10 volume. And this was the authoritative source for American history. And then he, he admitted that he would make things up if it helped give the reader a patriotic feeling. Well we have members of the church. This goes back. I quoted a lot of stuff about, remember the story when Brigham Young took the stand, Joseph and Hyrum are dead and we’re going to decide whether who’s gonna run the church. And Brigham Young stood up there and we start giving these ideas that people thought they, it started with a guy named Albert Carrington. He said what I saw, and he wrote this 13 years later. He says, when I saw Brigham Young up there speaking, it was almost like I was hearing Joseph himself, OK? You know, you see, and then somebody expounded on that, next thing, you know, they’re talking about how I saw him completely transform into Joseph Smith, his voice, his words. And then other people were saying, yes, the crowd stood on their feet and said, Joseph has, has returned, Hurrah and other people. This was my favorite. Some of the I can’t, I think it was Orson Pratt. He, he talked about how, how he saw when he was watching Brigham Young, he said it was, I saw the visage of Joseph right down to the whistle. You’ve heard that story? Well, Orson wasn’t even there. I mean, neither was John D Lee. These people were testifying of what? This went a long way in, in my childhood to believing that Brigham Young was chosen of God because you know, this was a miracle. So anyway, this, this piece was called Mormon. History is not what they say, but you can’t blame just the Mormons because everybody was doing it. It was just back here in history was not. Well, you know, the who was it? Abraham Smoot, I don’t think it was a Abraham Smoot. Abraham Smoot told the story of another Apostle who’s riding through Tennessee on a, on a mule. He’s, I think he’s on his mission and a hairy man comes up next to him. He’s about shoulder height on him or so it’s big hairy man. And he has a conversation with him and his hairy man tells him he’s Cane and this is his mark and he’s, he’s fated to wander the earth. And you know, these are the kind of stories that I felt were faith promoting as a kid. And now I realize, I was um on the road a lot in business I had and I, I remember being in going down this highway in Arizona long, just wishing I was home, tired and bored driving along the highway. I’m starting to have daydreams. Wouldn’t it be nice if I came across a car that was wrecked at the side of the road? And in it was a dead mafia guy and there was a suitcase full of money next to him. And then I, I could leave and go home and have to do and have to do all this stuff. You know, your mind does these things. You know, it’s, you’re not, you’re not dreaming but you’re thinking, oh man, you know, wouldn’t it be nice? I can understand how he’s sitting on that mule for hours. Just, just uh just loosely coming up with

[2:20:47] Michelle: stories. One thing I think is interesting is that I’m glad you brought up how historians you know, just chose the stories that works for them. I wish I could say it. They’ve gotten a lot better because we do the same thing like the Michael Quinn used Mark Hoffman source and said, well, it told the story, that’s probably what happened. And then, then Park said that he utilized William Law’s diary to a great extent, the extent because it was too good of a source not to use, right? And it’s like these are fraudulent sources that it’s not that hard to see. So we

[2:21:23] Rock: understand that, that the Mormons told stories, faith promoting stories is part of the history. Well, the whole thing about the seagulls, I don’t want to keep you any longer, but that doesn’t

[2:21:33] Michelle: work and I do need to go. But also I think it’s good to recognize this too because I know we’re really hard on our modern leaders for stories they’ve told, like, I know President Nelson’s plane crash and, and, you know, there are lots of other examples I feel

[2:21:46] Rock: bad for, for uh the guy with the baseball stories.

[2:21:50] Michelle: Yes. Yes, Paul Dunn. Paul. We really hard on them and like, rightfully so, this is not good. We shouldn’t do it, but it’s good to recognize that it’s happened forever and it’s not

[2:22:01] Rock: because he was so humiliated. But you know, what are you gonna do? You can’t

[2:22:06] Michelle: thank you so much. It’s been great to talk to you and I talk to you again.

[2:22:10] Rock: Been a delight to get to know you. Thank you Michelle.