Please consider supporting this podcast:
Transcript:
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy where we explore the scriptural theological and historical case for plural marriage. As always, I want to hu hugely thank all of those who have shared this channel, shared these videos who comment on the episodes and all of those who have subscribed. And I want to especially thank those who donate to help this channel grow. It is immensely appreciated and it has been massively gratifying, I think to all of us to see um this channel growing like it has to see the shorts taking off and to see these um ideas resonating with so many people. So thank you so much for your help. And if you can continue to help us, it is very appreciated. As always, I want to invite people to go back and look through our past episodes and consider listening to as many as you can to get yourself caught up. I know it’s quite a pile up now. But um it’s really helpful to be able to understand where we have come from and where we are now, especially as we engage in this conversation today with Gary Arnell, who was a new listener about a year and a half ago, I think, and he shares his journey as a sort of a newly released bishop being introduced to some of these ideas and introduced to my channel and the journey that he took and he ties it into some ideas that are important to him. And I thought this was a really good conversation. I was excited to be able to have it. I have to thank Gary, not only for coming and talking to me but also for being so patient. Many of, you know, some of the challenges we’ve had recently after um I had to cancel because of the extended illness that my Children and I were dealing with. And then, um this morning, I had to postpone again recording because my cute little 15 year old got his um learner’s permit and he did great the first day driving the second day, things didn’t go quite so well and he overcorrected on a turn and panicked and slammed on the gas instead of the brake and we got up to about 25 jumped over the curb and straight into a tree. So I’ve been dealing all of the airbags out. I’ve been dealing with migraines and whiplash going to a chiropractor. We’re getting it taken care of, but it’s been an interesting, an interesting little while around here. And um I had to share because it’s so funny because it was Brigham driving who um many of you saw Brigham get the introduction a few weeks ago, my cute little 15 year old and he and I were laughing and, and he’s such a good sport, but I just thought I knew Brigham would try and get me some way or other. So anyway, we had, we had a lot of fun with it, but we are recovering. We’re doing better. I wanna thank Gary for being so flexible. He actually, when I told him what had happened because I had to, we had to get a rental today. It’s, it’s been, you know, life, right? But um he shared with me that he had a similar experience with one of his daughters. So all of your parents could understand and life goes on. So thank you so much to Gary for coming and talking to me and thank you for all of you tuning in and I hope you enjoy our conversation. Welcome to this episode of 100 32 problems. I am so excited to be here with my friend, my online friend, Gary Arnell. This Gary is a man that I have respected for a very long time and I just want to kind of give a brief introduction of how I came to know Gary. And then, um and then I’ll let you introduce yourself a bit more Gary because I actually haven’t met you in person and this is the first time I’m seeing you. But um my recollection is Gary started commenting on my videos. Gosh, it’s maybe been a year and a half ago. You can remind me something like that. And um and, and my memory is that Gary was not uh necessarily on board but was incredibly open and I have to say has been one of the most kind consistently even kill but firmly, um I, I guess what it is is this combination of incredible patience, kindness, love, charity, and gentleness combined with conviction that has always come through in his comments. And so often I, I wish I try so hard, but sometimes in comments when I just feel like I’m getting attacked too much and sometimes when it’s people that have attacked me again and again, I can, I’m good at being snarky and it feels really good at times. And every like every time I read one of Gary’s comments, I’m reminded, that’s the way to do it. That’s the way I want to do it. So anyone I’ve ever been snarky to, I apologize, I am trying. And it’s people like Gary who, who have been such good examples to me. And then also Gary, um I, I believe from his comments early on. He had been a bishop recently when he started listening to the channel recently released and watching Gary’s openness and engagement and sort of his um hi his growing beliefs, evolving beliefs. If I could say that has been, I, I don’t know, Gary I could not have more respect and appreciation for you in just about every way. So I’m so excited to talk to you. I’m so thankful that you would come and talk to me today and welcome.
[05:03] Gary Arnell: Thank you so much, Michelle. It’s, it’s a privilege and I, I’m, I’m very, I respect your work so much and I’m so grateful for the, the incredible amount of research that you’ve done. Um I feel kind of like for those who have watched the movie, clue, you know, you, you get almost to the end and you think, you know, who’s done it. And then all of a sudden they flip this alternative ending on you. And I feel like that’s what this journey has been. For me. It’s like I thought, I knew the ending, I thought for decades, you know, my entire life thinking that I understood, you know, polygamy as much as we talk about it, which isn’t very much in the church and to suddenly have all of the evidence represented in a different way to show like the exact opposite has been um honestly, a mind bending experience. It, it’s been a very difficult experience. Um but just to maybe give folks a little bit of background about me. I um I’m the oldest of eight. I grew up in southern California. My parents met at university and I grew up there. They, they met in, in northern Utah. Utah State University. That’s where they met but I grew up in southern California.
[06:01] Michelle: My husband’s an, he loves the Aggies.
[06:04] Gary Arnell: Yeah. Um, beautiful Cash Valley, you know, nothing like it. Um, I grew up there in southern California, uh served a mission for the church in, uh, in Argentina in Buenos Aires, uh married in the temple, um, you know, gospel doctrine teacher, early seminary, seminary, uh tea, early morning seminary teacher. Uh, you know, all of the callings, you know, state level ward level um and um you know, seminary graduate institute graduate all the while, you know, just basically sticking to the, the, the, the correlated church material regarding uh polygamy, knowing very little about it. Quite honestly, if you want to bring up the, the uh the, the stage there all just show the, the little bit of, of a taste of what I got. Um you know, with polygamy growing up. And I think, I think that most people will probably relate to this um that are remember, have been members of the church when we didn’t really talk about polygamy growing up. Um in my, in our family vacations from California to Utah. We would go up to Preston Idaho where he had family and we would pass this little house that I’m showing on the screen here in Richmond, Utah. And that was the home of one of our, my ancestors and my mom just in passing as we drove by. Yep, that’s where your polygamous, great, great, great grandfather. Lived and he had two sides of the house, one for each wife. And I, that was, you know, as a little kid, just like they needed different sides of houses for the life. I just, but that’s all we never know. Off, we go, who wants some liquorice? We wouldn’t, you know, talk more about it, you know. But I just remember that stuck in my mind, like, oh, they needed separate sides of the house. How interesting. Why is that? Um Turns out so I’ve learned a little bit more about this. You know, this ancestor’s name was Aiah Coates Brauer. Uh That’s who he lived in the Navoo era. He lived in Navoo, he had property there. Um There’s a mention of a Mr Brower in the last letter that Emma of that Joseph Smith wrote to Emma on the day that he died. He said my friend Mr Broer, our family likes to think that that that’s him. We’re not sure because there was also a military man by last name Broer. But we do know that he helped um uh George Cannon. He’s the one who helped with the molds of the faces of, of Joseph and Hiram after their death. So, so we do know that he was there and he had that acquaintance with, with Joseph and Hiram. And I’ve wondered since I’ve gotten into this, how, you know, if he knew Joseph and he heard the teachings of how did he later become a polygamist, you know, and he didn’t write a whole lot of his history. Now, I want to go and ask him like, how did that, you know, what, what transpired there? So this was um this was Aiah Coates, this was my great, great, great grandfather. I come from the first wife. Um there, Margaret only three years difference in their age. It’s been very interesting to me as I’ve learned more about polygamy how the first wife, if they were before the polygamist era, they were usually within just a few years. But then afterwards they all became, there was often a father child, age difference and sometimes even greater. And that’s, that’s kind of an interesting power differential that that creates and, and seems to be relatively consistent um throughout. Um So that was pretty much it. But then when I started courting my wife and we went and met her grandfather and it turns out his la his middle name is the same as my mother’s last name. We’re like, well, what are the chances of that? It’s not that common of a last name or of a name? Broer? Well, we went and told my grandfather who’s on the right there. Uh We went after visiting her grandfather, went to, to her, my grandpa and he’s like, well, let me check. So he pulls out the family genealogy flip flip flip turns out we are cousins, you know. But so it was the same So we’re like, why could we even get married? Like, I was like, so nervous at the county courthouse. Like, can I sign this because it says are you related? I’m like, well card. Yeah. So, you know, that, that was my first, like, this actually affects me, this, this polygamy thing which I had never really given too much thought to. Um, turns out I’m from the first wife, she’s from the third wife. And so, so, yeah, so that’s, that’s, that’s what it really kind of started to become personal for me, but still fully believed it. I’ve, you know, you know, studied and learned the polygamy narrative that it was of God that uh faithful members can make totally make it work and all the testimonies and that’s, that’s all I had been exposed to. So turns out that my wife and I are related through this 1st and 3rd wife, the two Margarets. Yeah, that wasn’t confusing at all. I’m sure. Um So what, what I didn’t know or what in, into my adulthood, my mom started to share um a little bit more about the polygamist history of the family. And um my parents just, I mean, they are salt of the earth. They are, they’re incredible, you know, faithful disciples of Christ and have given their lives to raising their Children, you know, callings the entire time they were growing up and into that. I mean, they’re in their seventies now they’re preparing to go on a mission to Africa. I mean, it’s just, they are, they’re the best of people. And the only thing, the only time I’ve ever heard my mother speak anything against any doctrine leader, anything whatsoever just angel, you know, in danger of being translated at any moment. But the only thing she’s ever spoken against was polygamy this one time a few years ago at a family gathering. She’s like, I just, I just don’t believe it’s a God. And I was so taken aback by that. I was like, what do you mean Joseph Smith and the angel and the drawn sword. What do you? But that, that was the first little inkling of is there. How could my mother of all people, you know, um and she had shared with us a story and that’s the story I’ll show you now just to kind of because I thought it was an aberration. The these, there’s um Margaret, the third wife, the third wife, who is my, my wi my wife’s direct ancestor had several sisters, one of which was the sixth wife. Hannah Thompson. It’s like, OK, what, what was going on there? Why did he marry two of these sisters? I want to tell you a little bit about this um this woman and her story and how she relates to my family story. So Hannah Thompson Winder Brauer is the one on the far left. Her daughter is the one in the middle and uh she was, uh, she came from Scotland. Uh, she was the youngest of five Children. Um, her mother died when she was eight years old. Um, she had an idyllic fairly idyllic child in Scotland. Her father was like a butler for a wealthy family. Um, her sister, uh, well, her sister, Cecilia, when her mother died, her older sister, Cecilia was 14 and became like the mother of the family, had a nervous breakdown trying to take care of all the kids. Cecilia joined the church with Hannah. Um and they came across um the ocean together and across the plains in the early fifties to Salt Lake. And on the way, Cecilia, her sister who’s her older sister, who had been her mother, you know, basically um met a young man, um fell in love with him, married him and the day that they, they’ve got married, he got called by the captain or whatever to go off and do on a multi day thing, she got cholera and died and was buried in her bridal clothing. All this just this, you know, tragedy after tragedy type of a type of a thing. There’s this beautiful story of, you know, the consolation she wrote in her diary, the consolation which came to me, she had gone to mother and as the sun was going down, that lovely June evening, she was born quietly away, dressed in her bridal attire that she had sewed and washed with her own hands. Her work was ended. I just think these people are incredible. Now, these things are incredible as they, uh, the sacrifice is just the, and even just part of what was then, you know, that we don’t, the, the, the mortality that we, that they experience, that we don’t quite so much anymore. She moved a couple of years later, she becomes the plural wife to John Rex Winder who would later serve in the first pregnancy to uh Joseph F Smith. Um Winder Dairy. If you’ve ever heard of Winder Dairy, that comes from that, that’s, it’s that Winder. Um her first child died at nine weeks old and she wrote in her diary about that experience. Um I cannot describe my sufferings nor do I like to dwell on the sorrow I had. But at the, the end of the month, the nine weeks, my baby boy died, I should have been glad to have gone down in the grave with my baby. I was 23 years old. So just thinking of and, and she talks in her diary about, you know, what was it like to be faced with polygamy? And in wrestling with is this of God. And she, and she, she came to believe that it was and that two people who loved God um could make it work. But if they didn’t, if they didn’t work by the spirit, it was, it was, it was not of God and could not be done. Um Her second child died shortly after birth as well. And it gets, this is where things start to get like the the culture of polygamy. I feel uh and I’m not sure, but it feels like it starts to settle in here. She wrote in her diary that just 13 months from the birth of my first son, I’m firstborn. So just a year later, I was taken in labor very unexpectedly and sent a note by one of the workmen requesting him to hastily deliver it to her husband. But her husband, brother Winder was so busy with business. He could not leave and sent the midwife who was to wait on me. The baby came all right. But there was something at my side which required her attention and she wrapped the baby in something and just laid him aside for a moment and waited on me when she next turned her attention to the baby, he was dead. Some phlegm had gathered in my darling throat and he choked with it when she got my, when she got me attended to, when she got me, attended to the baby was dead. Oh, my sorrow and disappointment. Who can tell I won’t try. He was a lovely baby, fully developed white and pure like waxwork Elizabeth, who is winter’s third wife at that critical moment, was waiting on eight men at the breakfast table and was obliged to give them attention. And by the time she reached my bedside. My darling was strangled. And I, I don’t know, I don’t know. What kind of, you know, what was the culture back then? Was it like, hey, we need breakfast. You can’t go help the midwife, you know, deliver your sister, wife’s babies. Like the, the men in their breakfast was too important. Type of. It’s kind of the feeling that I’m getting. It’s like, oh, wow, that’s, is that what Joseph would have done? I, you know, people, people, often when these online conversations that we have, they’ll, they’ll accuse me of present is you’re applying today’s standards to, to be, it’s like, no, I apply Joseph Smith’s standards. II, I apply. What kind of a husband was he? What kind of a father was? He? Is, is how I do it. And I wonder, you know, if Joseph had been at breakfast and there was a, you know, if, if there was a woman having a baby upstairs and Emma was, you know, the one who’s to attend her with the midwife, would he have said? No, stay here. And, you know, I just, I wonder about that anyway.
[16:26] Michelle: That’s a really, that, that’s such a good insight because yes, like it is her faith in just submitting to. He couldn’t come. He was too busy. She couldn’t come, she was too busy. But if you hear the pain wrapped up in that because her baby died because they were all too busy and um and maybe if they had known it was life and death, it would have been different. But childbirth was life and death, right? And so it is, I think that is such an insightful question to ask of what, what can teach us about the dynamics of that time period. That, that’s, that is a painful, painful story.
[17:02] Gary Arnell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So um the next year, uh she gives birth to her daughter, Anna Jane, who’s the first one who, who survives into adulthood. Uh This is her husband John X Winder in his youth and you can see him over in his old age. Um You can see him in the first presidency that he served in and the, the Tabernacle at his funeral when he passed away. He had this big glorious, you know, funeral. Um Here’s the story now that I grew up with uh or not, didn’t grow up. I didn’t know until adulthood. This is the story. My mom, we were at a I think we were actually at Hannah’s grave. We went to the cemetery and we were sitting at the graves of these, of these two sisters and she told us this story. Um these, these are the four wives or four, these are the four wives of um John Rex Winder. I guess I’m not this story yet. Eleanor Walters was just a few years. Uh I think three years younger. So again close in age, that was his first wife. Um Hannah was the second wife. Uh Elizabeth Parker was the third wife. She was, it was actually her dairy and eggs business that turned into winter, you know. So she was actually her, it wasn’t him, it was her anyway, she died when she was like 46. But um with under, you know, sad and illness, but Hannah and Elizabeth were very close, they lived in the same house apart from Eleanor. So they had their own house and they were very close. They got along really well. Uh Hannah lived upstairs, Elizabeth lived downstairs. Um once um uh and Maria I’ll talk about here in just a minute. So um here’s the story that I, that I learned at the cemetery sitting at the grave of this woman who was my wife’s uh base, you know, ancestor’s sister. Uh It was at Christmas time when my darling baby, Anna Jane was less than three months old. And on Christmas Eve, I had not all my work done and she was restless and needed my attention, but on account of so much work to do, I asked Joe Joe is this 13 year old boy, an orphan boy who worked on the, on the property. But often she slept in the shed outdoors like, you know, we’re out in the cold. It was. So she asked him to rock the cradle because Anna Jane the baby was, was fussy and she didn’t, haven’t gotten all of her work done. It was Saturday night and I was left alone with the boy, Elizabeth had gone to visit with her folks. And in her absence, I occupied her room downstairs, which is on the first floor. My room having been upstairs and very much more inconvenient and uncomfortable place. He Joe, this little orphan boy had been sleeping out in the shed or down at the mill. And when bedtime came, he looked outdoors and it was very dark. It had been raining and was damp and cold. He said, I wish I didn’t have to go down to the shed mill to sleep. I then said to him, bring your bedding, I’ll make it upstairs for you. It was from that act of kindness that all the trouble started. He afterward willfully or thoughtlessly while talking with the workmen. The next morning, he jested or made a remark, something like I had a good place to sleep. Last night, I slept in Hannah’s room or bed. It was from that remark that mischief makers started to gossip and cause a trouble which came between me and my husband. As soon as the idle gossip reached brother Winder, he evident, he evidently became enraged and he came to me in a cynical and accusing manner and said, where did Joe sleep last night? I was dumbfounded for a moment before making a reply. From that time, he ostracized me from his affection. He never returned to my room from that time I fasted and prayed much to have him converse with me, but he never would. I continued to make his clothes, knit his socks, spin yarn, cook for the men, milk cows and do the general work. Until my dear little baby grew to be four years old. I became heartbroken, worried night and day over the falsehood, fasted days and days exercised faith and hope as best I could. But to no avail, my husband would not relent and listen to me and know the truth before Anna was a year old, I had a nervous breakdown which had been caused by having lost the confidence and affection of her father. But as soon as I had sufficiently recovered from my weakened condition, I was taken to the farm hou home there to cook for the men and to attend to the domestic affairs there. I had a chance to get up to the city and with my little charge by the hand, went to the home of Aunt Jane Jane Taylor and with my heart full of sorrow and sat down and shed tears and cried bitterly. I remained at the home of my aunt for one week. And from there wrote a kind letter to brother Winder and plainly informed him that it had been nearly four years since he had deprived me of a husband’s affection, attention and affection. And that nothing short of him keeping the covenants that he had made with me in the house of the Lord would do and that I would take steps to have a separation. My letter was not answered. Neither would he come talk to me? Then I then went to President Young’s office and signed my divorce with his consent and left it there for by the winter’s signature. He signed it and sent it to me. Now, that’s the story that I heard and he never, he never did. They, they, this was in 1960. Um They divorced in 1960
[21:53] Michelle: 4, 1860
[21:57] Gary Arnell: 1860. This happened in 1860. She was unjustly accused. Um He, he, he basically, he disowned her essentially uh for four years. Nothing for four years. Divorced in 1864. She remarried to my great, great, great grandfather. Um a year later in 1865 Winder lived till 1911. He served in the first presidency from 1901 to 1911 and um on his deathbed, in fact, do I even do I have a slide for that? I don’t think I do on his deathbed. He um he someone, he, someone called on him and he said, I’m so glad you’re here. I have something to tell you. Can you please take this uh this money? Give this money to Anna Jane, my daughter, the, the daughter of, of Hannah to give to her mother. It was about $16,000 in today’s money and let her know that I’ll be providing uh $5 a month, which is about 100 and $65 in today’s money uh for, for the rest of her life. So this is like 50 years after the 50 years, 35 45 46 years after this, he finally does something in sending through the daughter. Can you give, you know, this money to, to Hannah for, for her 46 years later? And Anna Jane, and you can actually go read in Winder’s die in his uh family history. That one of his descendants uh composed. It talks about this, that he um he had, he felt that he, he had unjustly treated her. Um and, and, and regretted it but never talked to her about it, never corrected the story. So she lived with this, this shame, this story, this accusation for, you know, for the rest of her life. And I just, I compare that to, to Joseph and Emma when he was, when he had a difference with Emma, what did he do? He had to go out and pray. He, he couldn’t continue, he had to go out and pray in the orchard until he could come back in and set things right with his wife. And then he could continue his work. That was, that didn’t happen here. You know, why is that, was that just an individual thing? Was that a cultural thing that he was able, you know, that, that it set him that you know, the pride that allowed him to treat his wife that way, not hear her out. Was that a, was that cultural, was that due to polygamy? Was it due to the, the different standing that women had under that um administration than the prior one? Um Those are,
[24:23] Michelle: that was one of the things that actually awakened me truly to, to knowing polygamy wasn’t of God I like, like that’s, that’s the very thing that made me realize how naive I had been was the power differential. Because when, when you have one husband and one wife, you’re equally yoked, you’re equally committed, right? And if a man has multiple other wives, he doesn’t ha he has very little incentive to resolve something with any particular wife because he, it’s just more work, it’s just more effort and there’s no need. And so that’s, that’s it. Like it gives all of the power to the man and completely disempowers the women, which is so hard.
[25:02] Gary Arnell: Yeah. And you know, this story perpetuates the Winder family had the 2/100 anniversary of his birth. And in that they told stories and they talked about Hannah and how it had been an unhappy marriage and how he regretted his actions his whole life. But it wasn’t unhappy until that happened. And he didn’t really, he didn’t really, if he regretted it. He never said anything. He didn’t correct anything. So that even his posterity to this day don’t, they didn’t tell what the problem was. You know, you only find that the story is in his history, but they didn’t tell it anyway. It’s just,
[25:37] Michelle: and it ruined her life and had barely effect on his other than he had regret. Right? He was in the first presidency. He was, yeah,
[25:45] Gary Arnell: his career continued. He was in the, the, the presiding bishop Rick. He was, he was, he called the important offices. He was very good with business and finance, which is why he was called into the first presidency to help the church. Um In fact, he was, he only had one wife at the time because Han was divorced and Elizabeth had died. So he only had his first original wife when um the uh United States started putting real pressure on the the saints. And so they put, they basically put property in Winder’s name. He was able to manage things while the other members of the presidency were, you know, on the lam while they were hiding out. Um So, um or that was actually before the presidency though, before the first presidency, it was while he was in the presiding bishopric, I believe it was during that late 18 hundreds period in 18 seventies, I think when, whenever it was. But so he was, he was instrumental in the church trying to navigate the, the persecution from uh because he only had one wife. Uh It’s also interesting to note that um once uh once his first wife uh passed away. So he was now a widow for a year. Um at the age of 72 he married his fourth wife, Maria Burnham, who was 24. She was a temple worker. So it was a 48 year uh differential in their age. That’s a grandfather granddaughter, you know, you know, this temple worker like that, you know, that’s just not the kind of thing we think about when we go to the temple that there’s, you know, somebody looking out to see if anyway, just uh an interesting part of the story.
[27:11] Michelle: So let me ask you. So did you know these stories before you started delving into like maybe we’ll get there. I kind of also want you to share your journey to learning about polygamy. So did you know these stories before or have you learned them since you started studying
[27:25] Gary Arnell: polygamy? I knew the story about the false accusation? I knew that story, but I figured it was an aberration. I figured it was just this one, husband, this one. But since since then, as I’ve, you know, read, you know, Annie Clark Tanner and got some of the other stories like, oh, this was not, this was not an aberration, this was, you know, not uncommon. And so, you know, you know, going and, and just before I jump back into my story, um uh because this is kind of the background to where I, where I came from you know, I, I, II, I took all this in but I, I saw it as, you know, imperfect people trying to live within the gospel and the doctrine. But, um, what’s, what’s occurred to me since? And there’s, there’s a short story called the, the ones who walk away from Omaha. I don’t
[28:09] Michelle: know if you remember that one.
[28:12] Gary Arnell: It’s, it’s, it’s basic for, you know, for those who may not have heard of this short story, it’s well worth reading. Um And it’s a short story about a beautiful utopian city where everyone is happy, like the birds are always singing, the sun is always shining, the music is always playing. It’s like the best place ever, but it has one dark secret. And that is that in order for that prosperity, that peace, that happiness, that joy to occur there is, and I believe in the town hall in the center of town in the basement, a little child locked up and being tortured and miserable and that, that misery and that torture is essential to the ha the happiness of everyone else. And, and you know, there’s, it’s a, it makes for a great conversation and, and Ola, by the way is Salem O or Salem Oregon spelled backwards. The whole point of the teacher was the whole point of the story was we are all to what degree in what way are we, the ones who live in Olas? And uh you know, there’s there’s that question of Kib Bono, which is Latin for who benefits. And there’s, there’s another question we should be asking ourselves K Ole, which is who suffers, who suffers, who is made to suffer. That I may live the way that I live. And that’s, that’s the question that I, that has come repeatedly to my mind with the, with the, as I’ve gotten into the polygamy question, it’s like, well, it wasn’t the man and it wasn’t the prophet, it was the women, it was the Children and they’re the ones locked in the basement. You know, and the only way you can make and, and, and one of the points of her story is that happiness is not possible without suffering, there’s going to be suffering. And it occurs to me that the only way to make Olas work or indeed all of civilization is if the only child in that, in that dungeon is the Christ child. If he’s the one, the only one who suffers because he offered himself freely. And if, if we make anyone else go into that dungeon, it’s an unjust society in some way. And I just, I can’t get away from the idea that um in our church culture, the, the legacy of polygamy was it was putting women and Children into that dungeon and you’re the work you’re doing, I feel is helping to bring that to light. So we don’t uh one, we are more humble and inquisitive about who, who are we putting in the dungeon? You know, in, in our day and age or in our family? Is there someone in the dungeon in our family? Is there someone in the dungeon in our, in our ward or in our, in our friendships? Is there someone that, who’s, who we make to suffer? Um, but with polygamous, seems to be the women and women and Children.
[30:53] Michelle: Yes, I’ve actually thought about that same story even with things like our cell phones and the awful minds to get the lithium batteries and that, you know, like we, we have, I, I think of it as the blooded sins of our generation and it’s so hard to know what to do about it, but I love you um connecting it to polygamy and it is true that that’s why the book of Mormon is so important because it makes it clear that God sees through that lens that you’re sharing with us, not through the lens of it doesn’t matter because our glory matters more.
[31:24] Gary Arnell: Yeah. So it was about Christmas time of 2022 that I first came across your podcast. I think you had been into it about almost a year by then. And uh I was interacting online as I often do and um with someone who, and I’m trying to remember exactly what it was in regard to, it may have been polygamy based, may have been something else, but basically they they use often, these are kind of antagonistic, you know, little, you know, back and forth, you know, interactions. But this particular woman said, please listen to the voices of women. And it took me aback because I thought that I, I thought that I do, I thought that I had and I, but I did know I had, I had learned a lesson, you know, over, over life that you have, you have to listen to both sides. You, you cannot think, you know, um the story until you listen to both sides. And so sometimes there’s more than one, more than two sides of the story, but you have to listen to both. So I was like, ok, fine, what, what could she have to teach me? And so I went on her, on her, on her wall in Facebook and there was a link to one of your videos and that’s how I first and I was like, what, you know, what, what is this? And so that began the journey and uh completely derailed all of my other, you know, personal extracurricular studies, you know, I’ve somehow my, the last two decades of my life has been a uh you know, instead of sports or whatever else that other people occupy their time with. It’s for me, it’s like the false traditions of the father seems to be like, but my lot in life, it was first, it was education and my, my oldest son was six and we started putting him in school and I’m like, wait a second, you know, because I, I had a certain experience in school. I didn’t want my Children to necessarily have the same experience. My wife had a great experience. I, not so much. So, it’s like, ah, and I, as I studied education, I realized, oh, my gosh, we are way off the mark in terms of education. So I went and got a master’s degree in education um from an alternative, you know, type of environment. And just, and we are, it’s, uh, I mean, we’ve had many conversations. I know you’ve been into education as well. There’s, we are way off the mark when it comes to education. So that was the first and then I, that led to a, um the, you know, the, the traditions of our fathers as far as our political system goes and how far off base we are there, how far we have strayed from the, from the, the model that, you know, that the founding model and, and, and even farther back, uh we are so far off the mark and it’s, it’s, you know, if there’s a recipe for how to make a cake, you have to follow the steps. And those are the ingredients. There’s a recipe for freedom, there’s a recipe for education. We are way off the mark and, you know, but we are the, we’re the fish swimming in the water, you know, we don’t, we do not, we do. We, the vast majority of people that I run into, they are completely comfortable in the, the water that they’re swimming in. And it’s so, those are the first, those are the first two, the third one was cultural. Um, as I got into, you know, Marxism and you know how that’s now manifesting in our day, that was the third one of how, how the take over the, you know, institutional capture and
[34:19] Michelle: so forth through the institutions.
[34:24] Gary Arnell: Yeah, exactly. So I was, I was happily trying to solve the world’s problems in those three areas when I came across your stuff. And I’m like, through all of this, at least the church is solid, you know, doctrines are, you know, sound and that’s something I can stand on and, and this was the really, and, and I’ve read the ce S letter and I’ve read all the rebuttals and I, you know, none of that shook my, my faith or my foundation um until this, you know, the whole idea of polygamy because it was like this, this actually happened. This is not, this is not false, this is not an norman, you know, falsehoods. It’s like no either Joseph Smith lied through his teeth. These are not carefully worded denials, they are absolute, you know, they, they were either the most horrible lies um or leading people astray or someone else was, you know, and it had, it was Joseph Hunter Brigham, there’s no way to get around that and that, that was very difficult for me and I struggled with that. You know, it’s now been, you know, going on 18 months, like you said. And, uh, that was really a struggle for me. And so, um, I think that’s a good place for us to go next is, you know, how do we, because I, I can’t be the only one, you know, who, who feels firmly anchored, you know, and then comes across this kind of material and is really quite shaken and it has to re evaluate to like, where, you know, what, um, where, where do I go? Where do I go with this? What, what, what unravels, how far does the unraveling go? You know? And so for me, it was profits. It’s like, how do I get past if Brigham Young did this along with the other things that he’s often accused of, um, what does that do to prevent? What does that mean? You know, so that, that was for me. And so I thought I might spend, you know, the time that we had together going into. What did that mean for me? And how did I get through it? Where have I landed, uh, hope in the hopes that it can be of help to others who have traveled, who are traveling or have maybe have traveled and have left and said, I can’t be a part of that or that’s what I’m, that’s what I’m hoping for this, you know, the, the rest of our, you know, for this, this recording is that it can be of help to, to those who are struggling with those kinds of things.
[36:31] Michelle: I would love to talk about your journey, with faith with the church, with prophets because I do think that is the central question that’s been, it’s been so challenging because, um I just was responding to a question today and explaining that I and my husband and I have my editor and her husband and now um my web designer who does the shorts and his wife, we are all, he was just recently released as a bishop. And we, we, we’re all serving and it’s hard to um that’s why we’re doing this, right? Like I don’t want the um super hypercritical anti Mormon voices to be the only ones speaking on these things. And I feel like our false traditions have destroyed more faith. I mean, our, our tradition with polygamy. And then the way we’ve continued to talk about, like, it’s so unfortunate our history with polygamy, who knows what the church would have, what the gospel would have become in the book of Mormon. If, if these, you know, false traditions hadn’t entered in so early on. And so anyway, so it is born out of love and commitment to the gospel and the church and the restoration that we’re doing this. So I would love to have you share your journey because you said you all. So I assume that in your tenure as a bishop in your experience, you probably sat with people who were struggling and losing their faith over these issues. It seems to be ubiquitous. It’s just we all know, know many loved ones who have gone through this journey. And so that’s what I’m trying so hard to help people understand is that and it’s not, it’s not better to throw Joseph under the bus, right? Like why are we doing that? That’s not helping us more. And the fact that these things happen doesn’t mean God’s not in charge and doesn’t mean that you, you know, we don’t need to be black and white. So yes, I will let you take it away because this is exactly what I would love to have you talk about.
[38:29] Gary Arnell: Great. Yeah. Um In the last 15 years, I’ve had many friends, some family as well. Uh many friends leave the church and these are good people. These are like really good upstanding, strong marriages, um diligent, you know, hard working pillars in the community type of people. Um And, and they leave the church and many of them have subsequently got divorced. You know, it’s, it, it just, it just wrenches at these, at these relationships and they don’t, you know, their identity. Where do I go? Who am I? Um So
[39:01] Michelle: that’s not common foundation,
[39:03] Gary Arnell: all, all of that and so it has real consequences and, you know, some, I don’t, and I haven’t talked to all of them about what specifically it was, you know, but in, in many cases it was either church history or LGBT Q issues or those are like the two big ones right there. And I don’t know anyone who left because they wanted to live a different lifestyle they wanted to see and in some ways like, no, no, no, it has to do with what they learned about uh church history very often. That or, or the, the, the current event. Yeah, current event, current events. Exactly. So that, so my and I tried to, you know, I’ve tried to love all of them through the, although I couldn’t really empathize with them, I didn’t, you know, I had never come across anything myself with the ce S letter exposure, et cetera that had ever shaken my, my faith. Um But this, this one thing really did cause me to back up and, and say, what, what, where, where does this unravel to? Where, how far does this go? How, how bad is this? And you know, I have um I have a, I have a small uh blog and podcast that I’ve basically abandoned since I’ve done this because it’s so, so overwhelming. But the, the name of it is culture stack. And the whole idea is that every culture is, you can map it, you can understand it because it’s built on four layers, you have a, a moral layer, a a political layer and economic layer and a culture layer. And if you and, and what, what happens at the moral layer influences everything above it and, and so on. And so you get a, at the moral layer, you have prophets, philosophers and poets and they’re the ones who create, who, who established the morality of that, of that society. And so you have a society formed on, on Moses, you have a society formed on Jesus, you have a society formed on Mars, you have a society formed on Muhammad, whoever it is everything, then everything that flows out of that like the political is simply the, the, the, the legalization or the, the legislation of the morality from the, from the moral layer. Yeah. So if you understand what’s happening at the moral lay, you understand what’s happening then at the political layer because it’s simply an enforcement of similarly, the economic layer is, is taking the, the moral and political. And then how do we, how do we make a living? And so capital uh capitalism under a um under America is gonna look very different than under Mao or under, you know, under China present day because their moral and political layers are so different. And so you can have the same name, the same theory um capitalism for example, but it will appear very different because it’s being influenced by what’s coming up underneath. Um And then similarly, of course, our culture sits on top of all of that. So how we raise our families, what do our marriages look like? How do we take care of the poor, all of that? You know, what kind of music,
[41:44] Michelle: entertainment? Yeah,
[41:45] Gary Arnell: entertainment, all of that. So there’s this stack and you can by understanding what’s going on down at the bottom and work your way up. And so the upheaval or the, the upheaval might be too strong a word. But what’s going on in our society right now is really that the, these, the seismic shifts that are happening in our society are due to, we are having a shift in our moral layer. We are moving away from the traditional judeo-christian Foundation of America to something else. And, and so that, that those are like tectonic, you know, plays that, that, that we rub up against each other and we are so because the political layer is out of alignment with the moral layer, we’re seeing shifts and wrestling with that and up into the culture. So anyway, that, that, that was until I came across your podcast, that’s, that’s where my head was at. It was like, how do we solve that? Because I know the right foundation for all of this is the gospel of Jesus Christ and it’s solid and then I would come across your podcast. I’m like, ah, how do I share this with people until I solve it myself because there’s this gaping hole of horror quite honestly at what you start to see of what, what to me, that’s, that’s the feeling that I had. It’s like this, this really does rock. Um How, how do you share this? How do you, how do you know my daughter is serving on a mission right now in Mexico? It’s like, you know, this is not part of the discussions. There’s no, there’s no conversation about this. And I think that’s, that’s one of the things that I’ve come to realize is that the, the, the modern church, the church is really about discipleship, not scholarship. It’s really about helping each of us to us right now to live a Christ like life. And that’s where the, the leaders of the church are focused. That’s, you know, it’s on the, on the ordinances and helping our, our Kindred dad. And, but how can you become more like, like Jesus right now? Um You and your Children, how can you have a better marriage? And that’s been helpful for me. As I realized the emphasis has not been on scholarship. They, you know, the church didn’t fund the Joseph Smith papers. Somebody else came along and said, hey, this would be a great idea. And they’re like, OK, I guess, you know, and so it’s like that, that hasn’t been an, an emphasis. Um So that, that’s been, that’s been helpful. It’s like, OK, I can see how maybe that this is persisted over time. But um so that’s, that’s kind of, that’s where I had, I had to take this diversion off of the, the path that I was on as far as extracurricular study because I’ve been trying to, you know, for the last 20 years. Understand what, how do, how do we have a happy flourishing people? How do we, how do we have a happy society? How do we overcome the struggles that we, that we have? And you know that getting the moral foundation right is, is paramount and then you can build up. So um I had to go on a on a journey of understanding more about prophets because I obviously didn’t understand something because how could this happen in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints? If you know, they can’t lead us astray and they’re led by God and, and all the things that were part of, you know, my, my growing up experience. So um so this is my journey of understanding prophets and try and, and coming to peace with or coming to a place of OK, I think I can move, I can continue on with this. First of all, the idea that everyone could be a prophet that Moses said, would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord had put his spirit upon them. Joseph Smith saying something similar a prophet is anyone who has a testament of Jesus Christ is moved by the Holy Ghost. So that’s a lowercase prophet, lowercase P prophet. We see that in the Bible dictionary, it’s like, OK, this is not just a one above everyone that we’re all expected to participate in this, right? We’re all expected to have this relationship. It’s like, OK. And on the other hand, we have capital P prophets, we have the Amos 37. Surely the Lord God will do nothing until he re reveal his secret under the servants. His service of prophets. We have the book of Mormon telling us that God speaks to angels and they speak to the chosen vessels and then the residue I love being I’m part of the residue, love that, you know, we as the residue of men, we get receive that. So I believe in prophets, I, I believe in them. I, I have a testimony of them. I know that God works through them. It’s like, ok, profits are still a thing. And we can
[45:38] Michelle: I ask you a question on that last one? I don’t want to interrupt you though. So um I’m just interested because it is lower case p literally in a s3 7 and in the, and it’s also plural. And so it’s hard. So I, I have because I’ve studied these two and, and like like kind of my mantra toward the previous side is that we all have equal access to God, right? We all have, we all have different stewardship but equal access. And so, um, so I am curious because also chosen vessels like, like I, I guess, I guess for me it’s been helpful to kind of separate out ecclesiastical leader or institutional leader and I absolutely sustained them in that calling. If God wanted that different God could make that different. But I don’t necessarily, um, think that they, that being a prophet automatically comes with that and that nobody else is a prophet does that or however we, according to Joseph’s definition of profit, I don’t know that there’s a different one, I guess. Like so for me, it wouldn’t be lowercase and capital case P profit, it would be more like prophet and ecclesiastical leader or steward of the church. Does that work for you?
[46:46] Gary Arnell: It does, that absolutely works for me. And that’s what I mean by capital P is they have, they have a stewardship over the whole institution, institution, authority. Yeah, I agree with you. The lower case P and that actually ties into if we have time, I, I’d love to get into um the, you know, the, the idea of the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration, declaration of Independence actually ties in directly to the need for everyone to have God reveal his secrets to them. It’s not just this one person that reveals and the rest of us are waiting around for that person to tell. It’s like, no, it’s actually everyone has to have that connection. Um And so hopefully we’ll get into that too because yes, I absolutely agree. Ok.
[47:24] Michelle: Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for letting me interrupt a little.
[47:27] Gary Arnell: And so it’s, to me it’s, I’ll just take a moment here for those who have given up on profits and said not a thing. I’m atheist. I’m agnostic. God does not speak to men. I would just ask them to take a moment and reflect on the, the blood, the boat you’re sailing in the, the civilizational boat that you, that we are all sailing in the, you know, as part of western civilization, we owe our world to profits, the world that we live in. The prosperity, we enjoy the freedoms, we exercise the rights, we claim are all the product of prophetic pronounce. We did not come up on this, this come up with this, on our own. The, you know, if you’ve read Cleon Scouts in the 5000 year leap, how sudden, you know, life was a certain way forever and ever until all of a sudden it just, it, it went up in prosperity in the reduction of poverty and freedom. And that’s because of the ideas that were shared by prophets that then other people took and wrestled with and said, oh, our morality is supposed to be this way. Our political is supposed to be this way. Our, our economics is supposed to be this way and so forth. So you got like Imago Day, the idea that we’re, we are all Children of God. That’s where, you know, human rights come from. Let me get to my little notes here on that one. So I don’t forget something like this,
[48:41] Michelle: which is actually huge. That’s a huge civilizational advancement. She’s actually fragile. We don’t recognize how fragile it is. We’re throwing it away now. Yes.
[48:50] Gary Arnell: Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So we’re Children of God. We’re his spirit offspring. We’re made in his image that leads to our individual sovereignty that we have inable rights to life, liberty, happiness, and property that leads to human rights, like conscience, speech, association, self defense. So all these things that we just think are normal. But if you read any history at all, it’s like this is not normal. This is the last couple 100 years of world history have been an aberration. So stan standards of morality that are universal. Um We have received God’s law, the recipe for human happiness and flourishing justice. All mankind is subject to God’s laws accountable to him for our choices. There’s justice in the next life. If not the, if not this one, like back in the days of the founding when you were gonna go to court, if you wouldn’t put your hand on that Bible and swear that you would tell the truth, they wouldn’t let you testify because the whole idea was if you lie here, you know, you’re, you’re reminding yourself that if I lie here, God’s gonna hold me accountable. So, so somebody’s like, I’m not gonna, I don’t, I don’t ascribe to that. It’s like, well, how do we, how do we trust your testimony? So we still do that to this day. Why do we put the hand on the Bible? It’s to remind us that there’s accountability for it, whether we tell the truth or not in this, you know, in the court um victory over death. I mean, we could spend hours on each one of these, right? What are the benefit to us? Um as a society that all humankind will die but will be resurrected through the power of God’s Son, Jesus victory over sin, that all humankind sins but can be saved by the merits of Jesus atonement. Um healing, we can repent, be made whole, that misery, injury and regret need not be permanent. We can be forgiven and forgive the supremacy of God’s law. That God’s law is higher than man’s law. Any human law that violates God’s law is invalid. That’s the declaration of independence. It’s right out of there that says if these, if these laws, if that government are, is um antithetical to these ideals that we’re getting from the prophets, we can, we can divest ourselves of this government and reconstitute another one that’s revolutionary. That the idea that you can set off your government and bring up a new one that comes straight out of the teachings of the prophets, uh limited government that political power should be limited and dispersed. That comes right out of Moses with his when he had his father in law Jethro saying you can all do this yourself. You need, you need captains of tens of fifties of hundreds. That whole idea of subsidiarity that we get from the, from Catholicism is from Moses and, and, and, and that didn’t come from God, that came from Jethro. So, you know, Jethro and he Moses accepted input from someone else other than God, you know, and, and that’s, and, and built that into his society. So we get that from, from uh uh Moses and from the prophets.
[51:19] Michelle: Well, God sent Jethro. Jethro was also an inspired man, right? Like, like that’s, yeah, that was moses’ experience experience and where it came from.
[51:29] Gary Arnell: Yeah, exactly. Divine guidance that the Holy Spirit can guide each of us in daily living. That prophets are sent to remind and warn us and then tolerance, the idea that belief must be voluntary, it cannot be forced. And you got John Locke with a letter on concerning toleration, our whole societal idea of you get to speak your mind and we have to tolerate other opinions. That’s a Christian idea. You know, we owe our world to profits. So to anyone out there listening who’s like, forget the prophets. I’m gonna go figure out some other way of, you know, figuring out life. It’s like you’ve got to account for all of this are you gonna give all this up? You know?
[52:04] Michelle: Right. And I want to, I want to speak to people that are so critical, you know, hearing this and going crazy. If anyone happens to be listening in that mindset, there is a difference between the ideal and the ability to live up to the ideal, right? So the fact that individuals in America and government in America and America as a whole at times has not lived up to those ideals does not erase the value and the um reality of the ideals, right? And the fact is you can see how many times America when it’s ideals and its practice were out of alignment, it had to elevate its practice, right, or lower its ideals. And hopefully it’s usually elevated its practice. And so that’s the concern is like, if there are areas where they are out of alignment, let’s try to elevate the practice rather than to claim that the ideals are either wrong or are worthless. That’s the challenge. I
[52:56] Gary Arnell: see that that is a crucial point. There’s so many people who, you know, down with America, whatever. It’s like, it’s the ideals that we hold that we esteem. You know, I’m, I’ve always been a conservative politically, but um in reality, I, I kind of consider myself a radical, progressive because I want things to be so different than they are right now, which is what the progressive, you know, mindset, you know, Jordan Peterson, says you need both. You need conservatives, you need progressives because one wants things to stay the same. One thing, one wants things to change because some things do need to stay the same. Some things do need to change. So it’s like there’s a whole lot I want to change. So. Right. You know, to go back to this.
[53:28] Michelle: Yeah. And the core of all of it, in my opinion that we can agree on usually is corruption. We’ve become, our society has become so corrupt. And so I was just talking to my um two of my Children who are, who are on a vastly different side politically and ideologically than I am in many ways. But the thing we can agree on is that corruption really is the problem. And the best solution I see to that is again, these ideals, understanding godly morality and the central importance of that. So, yeah. OK, great.
[54:00] Gary Arnell: And it goes back to the idea of malpractice and malpractice, which we’ll get to what you’ve talked about on your, on your podcast before historical malpractice. We’ll talk about that in more in a minute. But yeah, I, I had a conversation recently with a lady who was pro choice and she wanted, um you know, complete bodily autonomy for herself. But um she wanted all males to be given a vasectomy at birth. It’s like, so the, you know, the idea of like, that’s how I’m gonna solve society’s problems is like, you know, so it’s like, well, you, you want the sovereignty that are given by the prophets but you don’t want to then granted to everyone else. And so anyway, that’s, that was just an example of you, you know, take it or leave it if you’re gonna leave it, what are you gonna take in its place? Because you can’t, this is not a smorgasbord, this is not a, a buffet where you can just, you know, just pick and choose what you want
[54:46] Michelle: to be logically consistent in order to stand or, or can’t stand. Yeah. Ok.
[54:52] Gary Arnell: So we owe our world to profits, you know, and I, you know that, you know, and anyone who’s like, no, it’s like pause the video and go spend two months studying this stuff and come up with a, you know, grapple with this idea that the, the evidence is clear that prophetic pronouncements have given us the world that we have. And you know,
[55:12] Michelle: and you know what I think we could add to it, that many of the enlightenment thinkers were also prophets in my estimation, the Montes and the John Locks and that, you know, many others. And the James Madisons and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, I think, you know, according to our own religion and our own scriptures, we believe that they were inspired men of God. In other words, prophets chosen by God. So so that we don’t even need to limit it to just the biblical because it kind of is a combination of the Bi the Bible and the Enlightenment. But the enlightenment ideals grew out of a biblical worldview, right? So it all comes together. Yeah,
[55:49] Gary Arnell: it’s like God gave the raw materials and then he let wise men and, and inspired men, like, start to grapple with those raw materials and say, well, wait a second, we’ve had slavery forever. Maybe we shouldn’t have slavery, you know, those kinds of those kinds of ideas. So, um again, things we could talk about forever and that I, I would love to, that’s super fun, but just for the purpose of our discussion here that we can’t just throw out prophets, you know, babies with the bath water. We have to, you know, the profits are, are paramount and of course, latter day prophets, all that was like Old Testament, New Testament prophets. What about the latter day prophets? The additional scripture, the nature of the Godhead exaltation, social marriage. I mean, there’s, there’s so much to be grateful for that. We have to like, can, can we untangle all of this good from these, these stories and this history that is like, how can these both coexist, you know, and that’s, that’s the wrestle right there. But let’s not forget. It’s like, oh, let’s just go pre Joseph’s like, and we’ll just only stick with the Bible. It’s like, no, there’s so much wonderful. I mean, it changed my, my life has been, I owe my life to these ideas. You know, I, it’s, and, and all of the good, I mean, I look around it, all of the good that I have seen in, in the many words that I’ve lived in, in my life of people trying to live these ideas and follow these, these councils and the kinds of communities, the kinds of families, the kinds of marriages that they built. It’s like I do not want to give that up. It’s like, how do we untangle, how do we, how do we do that? So latter day prophets too, for sure. And we could, you know, that’s again, I don’t want to minimize by just going past this quickly. But I want people if they want to to stop and really contemplate like, oh, these are gifts from God do not, we cannot treat them lightly or set them aside. Um They, you know, they, they, they, they are, they’re still real even though there’s, there’s trouble, we have to figure out.
[57:39] Michelle: And I love, I love it too because to me, the false traditions, the tears among the wheat are again, further proof, further evidence of the truthfulness of the book of Mormon and the words of Jesus Christ, right? We were warned that this would be the case. We shouldn’t be surprised by it.
[57:54] Gary Arnell: And, and that’s, yeah, and being surprised is, yeah, I was, I was surprised. I, I, you know, and maybe that was my fault. You know, I, I mentioned,
[58:03] Michelle: I mean, of course, we’re all surprised. I just mean, it can, it actually serves as an additional testimony of the truthfulness of these things and that we’re right on track for where God said we were going to be right.
[58:14] Gary Arnell: So, as I, as I dug into the, the idea of prophets, it’s like, ok, what kind of prophets are there? Well, there’s all of these prophets who had heavenly visitations and I’ve got a list on the screen for those who are watching um for those who are just listening and you can go and just look in the, in the scriptures at the dozens, dozens of people who if not hundreds and, and even even thousands, if you look at the, the large groups that also had manifestations where, where Christ himself or an angel came and visited. So prophets um often have heavenly visitation visitations. We also have prophets by inspire who receive inspiration, but not necessarily uh receiving visitation like Elder Elder Oaks at a multi state fireside for youth in Washington. Just five. No, I guess it was actually eight years ago now stated in answer to a question that neither he nor any of his brethren, the first presidency in the corner of the 12th, I had had at the time, had seen God Christ or angels, but that their witness was obtained by the spirit. And I’m fine with that. That’s ok. That’s that’s also a way that God can speak to His, to his prophets. We’ve had reluctant prophets who didn’t want to be there. We don’t, we don’t look at our prophets today as reluctant prophets, but there have been, you know, we also don’t look at our prophets today as young, but there have been, you know, God can. God calls who he wants to call and may not look like what we in our short lifetime span have been exposed to prophets can be very different um than what we’re the norm that we what is now normal in our short time frame that we’ve been around prophetic utterance. Um God prophets speak in different ways. You’ve got the thus say the Lord type of utterance like the 10 commandments where it’s literally like dictated. You’ve got many sections in the doctrine and covenants dictated. You’ve got best personal efforts like the 16 stones are just trying their best. Like what I’ll take these stones and see if that works or praying for guidance. Like general conference talks. I do not believe anyone. I’ve never heard anyone say I this has been dictated to me by the by, by the Lord himself. It’s like, no, they’re praying for guidance, they’re shutting it out in their mind. They’re feeling God’s approbation, which is like what all of us are supposed to do in all the different aspects of our life. And then there’s by committee, the proclamation on the family it took like, what, over a year? And it doesn’t mean I don’t feel like there’s, you know, oh, that can’t have been inspired because it took a year. Whereas, you know, God could have dictated that in, you know, 30 minutes or whatever. Sometimes it’s by committee. You know, I look at, you know, when we serve in our ward councils or state councils or presidencies who thought those are by committee. It’s like, that’s totally fine. He God expects us to wrestle with work through. Those are all normal. Sometimes God pre prophets just give their opinion. I’m a 4020. I give it as my opinion. That that’s, that’s a thing too. And sometimes they’re silent because we are not worthy and we’ve got instances in the book of Mormon and, and other scriptures where we’ve, you know, we’ve got the sealed portion of the book of Mormon we haven’t received yet. You know, that’s silence from heaven. There’s, and yet it’s silence we know about. We know that there’s something waiting, we know God is waiting for us to be ready. Uh which is a whole another piece I didn’t really even put on the slides. It’s like, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of emphasis here on, well, did the prophets do something wrong? There’s, there’s also the whole picture of what about us, the people, the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Where are we as a people? How diligent are we being, what are we like? 30% activity in the church like we are we worthy of the kind of utterance that God could, could possibly give us. And we know that we’re not because we haven’t received the sealed portion yet and we know we have to do to get there and we haven’t done it yet.
[1:01:27] Michelle: Right. And the profits do come from us and grow from us and have to be sustained by us. I don’t think the profits generally, we’ve, it’s been a little different with our most our current profit, but generally they don’t just make sweeping changes unilaterally. Generally, there’s like, like it’s, it’s a challenge to keep all of the people, you know, on board. So it’s a, it’s an unwieldy ship to steer. Yeah. And I do want to say that I do also, there is silence in heaven because of unworthiness. But there also are times when there is silence in the heavens because the Lord is stretching us or because of like, like Jesus on the cross, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? And I’ve had times in my life of incredibly difficult times when, when I knew from experience that God was just letting me stretch a little bit and then would come back, you know, so there that exists as well. I I just want it. So it’s not always due to sin. It sometimes is just God giving us growth opportunities in ways that he knows we’ll need
[1:02:24] Gary Arnell: room to work it out and figure it out for sure. I think that happens more often than for me. That that’s usually what’s happening. I, that’s, that’s my experience personally is the, the times where I’m like that, that, that was not for me that came from above, that’s, that’s few and far between, compared to the wrestling it out, you know, doing the things that I know I’m supposed to do. You know, as a father, as a husband, as a provider, as a, you know, in whatever calling. It’s like, it’s a lot of the effort time for me is spent just in executing on what I’ve already been told. You know, then we get into prophetic fallibility. It’s like, ok, so can they be, can they, you know, make mistakes? Well, we have error, um which can happen. We have, you know, Bruce Armor Conkie when the eight, the 1979 78 revelation came out and he said, forget everything I, that we all said. We have folk with limited understanding. Oh, prophets can speak with limited understanding and speak and yet speak as though their, their understanding is complete and yet later say, oh, it was limited. Sometimes we have slackers in the mix. You’ve got first Nephi 19 4 where, where ne I says, I I’m gonna command all these people to keep the record after me and they’re going to be prophets. He’s like, yay that I’ve got this, I’ve got this in motion. Then you’ve got Omni Amron Chees. I been, and I’m like, I wrote it in the day that I gave to my brother. I wrote one verse, you know, like it’s, it’s like sometimes there’s people who don’t live up to the mantle that they were called to and that happens. Um, you know, uh Samson would be another example of a, of a prophetic slacker, someone who had a, an, a AAA mantle or a uh you know, something given to him like you’re supposed to do this and then they don’t transgression. Mosiah 1513, there’s, he talks about, you know, the, the prophets. If as long as they don’t fall into transgression, then this will happen. It’s like they can fall into transgression. Yes, they can fall into transgression. The prophetic c can be occupied by evil men. You have um King Noah, he received from the legitimate leader, um the authority, he had his counsel. He was, you know, had the counsel from his father, Zeev, uh the high priests kind of like our home of the 12 type of the thing and then it boost them out. And consecrates new ones, he still keeps to the, to the, to the ordinances. He has the priest and we’ll talk about that a little bit later too. But sometimes we even have evil men occupying and he was the, he was the seat of government and the seat of the church, which often happened in the book of Mormon. He, in that case, we had an evil person actually occupying those
[1:04:43] Michelle: and we have um Caiaphas in the Bible. That’s been a really important one to me that he, he prophesized of the death, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but he knew not what he spoke. He didn’t understand it, but he did speak in the power of his calling as the high priest of that year. So that’s an interesting one as well.
[1:04:59] Gary Arnell: Yeah. And, and all of us as you know, the residue, you know, as, as the book of Mormon calls us, we’re sitting here watching all these people trying to discern well, which is it, is it, is it one of the utterances we talked about a minute ago. Is there error going on? Is there slacker hood going on? Is there transgression going on so that we are put in the position of having to evaluate and come to know for ourselves? Is this a prophetic utterance? And, and in the latter days, it, it looks really stable to us, you know, who are not 100 and 40 years old. But in the latter days, there have been 100 men called as apostles and more than 10% of them have been excommunicated. That’s, that’s a big deal though. That’s a pretty big failure rate, you know, among apostles, uh, the most recent being within living memory, Richard Lyman in 1943. So um yeah, to me it’s like, ok, that is, and we can, you know, we can look in the scripture to find the backing for all of that. We’ve got, we’ve got false prophets. You know that if you just go look up false prophets in the, in the uh topical guide and it talks about prophets that speak a vision of their own heart, prophesy lie in my name. They prophesized falsely unto you in my name. They all rise false Christ, false prophets. Like this was known, this has happened in the past there. This is, this is if it happened to us, it wouldn’t be a new thing and we’ve been warned about it. So there’s even false prophets that are, that are part of the mix that we just don’t talk about very much, you know, in our day.
[1:06:23] Michelle: And Isaiah and Jeremiah also talk quite a bit about blind prophets, blind guides and their mouths are covered, their eyes are covered. So there’s, that’s another one as well that the visions are hid from the prophets. That’s another challenge.
[1:06:35] Gary Arnell: Exactly. Yeah. And I just included some of the references. There’s more,
[1:06:38] Michelle: there are a lot.
[1:06:40] Gary Arnell: So I think of uh you know, so, so all of that is kind of percolating in my head like, ok prophets, it’s a much more expansive um history and concept, this idea of prophets. And I really, for me, it was like the prophet speaks, you know, the thinking has been done. I know that was, you know, that was refuted by George Albert Smith back in the day. But um there’s still that mentality, kind of, at least in my, the culture that I grew up in that you don’t have to think it’s like done. I can, I can do that. I can follow that. Um So how does that, you know, so we come, we come to the question of a faith crisis. How do you, how do you deal with a faith crisis? And I think that in Jacob seven, Jacob’s response to Sharm gives us a really important uh key or clue there where Sham was learned uh um had a perfect knowledge of the language of the people. He used flattery much power of speech. So this was a very impressive individual um presenting his anti if you want to call it that creating a faith crisis where wherever he was going. And this was Jacob’s response. He had hoped to shake me from the faith, faith crisis, notwithstanding the many revelations and the many things which I had seen concerning these things for, I had truly seen angels and administered unto me. And also I had heard the voice of the Lord speaking unto me in very word from time to time where I could not be shaken. And to me, what that, what that tells me is that there’s a difference. It’s a, there’s a reason it’s called a faith crisis and not a testimony crisis because testimony is you can’t refute that. You know, I, I can’t refute that. It’s like I can count the times I can go through in my head where I know that wasn’t me. I know that was the Lord speaking to me. I can’t refute it. And so the things that I haven’t gotten a spiritual confirmation of those are the ones that hang in the balance, the unknown. Because I, and this is, this was very humbling for me, Michelle because I realized that I had taken on faith, many things that I should have been pursued to the point of testimony. And I think that that’s probably one of the, the issues we have in the church is we take a lot of things on faith that really we should be taking to the point of testimony. And I see it as a, as a laziness on my part or just like, I don’t need to do that. I’m sure it’s all fine. But in, but then you find out that it’s not um Korah who is, is an interesting um Another interesting study here where in Alma 30 he gives his old spiel, you know, 10 verses or so, uh 1012 verses very, you know, people can go and read and read that. But what’s interesting is that there was four groups that followed or that, that listened to him and responded in different ways. The first group in verse 18 of Alma, 30 the people of Zemla, they were led away, their hearts were led away. They were, it caused them to lift up their heads in, into wickedness. They led away many women, women and women. It’s supposed to be women and men to commit whoredom. So they were, they listened and they were swept away by the things that he taught. The second group in Jhon. They were more wise, they took him, bound him and delivered him to the high priest and they kicked him out. They didn’t know necessarily how to refute him, but they knew that what was, what he was saying was not like that. Doesn’t, we don’t, we don’t believe it. Same thing happened with group three in the land of Gideon. They, they, they, they, they were able to stop, didn’t, they didn’t know how to refute him. So they sent him up to Alma and the chief judge of the land. And it was only in that fourth group of Alma and the chief judge where Khor was first confounded intellectually through the scriptures and then struck dumb admits his heirs and his heirs source, which was an angel that visited him. So it’s like, ok, which group am I in? You know, this is kind of a, you know, the, the, the parable of the sower where, how deep are your roots? How well do you understand things you want to be? At least in group two or three, you may not be able to refu, you may not be able to argue, you may not be able to contend or, or to dispute the chart that what’s being told to you. But at least you know it, well know the gospel well enough, you have enough of a testimony that it doesn’t sweep you away. And so, you know, I, that’s, that’s what I’m trying to do with my Children. It’s like I want them to be at least group two and three. I wanna be in group four personally myself where I can actually respond to and say this is why that’s wrong, you know, and, and actually articulately be able to, to have a conversation with this, this the, the, the faith demoting side, you know, but definitely don’t want to be in group number one where I’m so shallow or my roots are so not into the ground that I, it comes along and I’m swept away, you know, and I, I, and I, and I don’t wanna, you know, I can’t speak for anyone else’s experience of what group they might be, but I’ve seen a lot of people swept away, you know. And um anyway, that’s, that’s an interesting uh teaching from the book of Mormon that helps me kind of orient myself to like, where am I, where am I with my Children? Where, which group are my Children in right now? Um And where am I personally?
[1:11:30] Michelle: And I want to also, can I just add one thing to that? And, um, I know we’re spending a lot of time so we can move along. But I just wanted to add this, that, um, it’s also interesting to consider which side is, which because it’s so easy for each side to accuse the other side of choral horror. People call me Cora, who, which I think is silly, you know, but one good point is, is to recognize where the inspiration comes from and how it can be refuted, right? And so in 0.4 if, if you are grounded in truth, then you can articulate your side, you can argue your side. You don’t just try to get people silenced or get them kicked out of the church to take away their credibility without ever having to engage with them. So you can falsely claim that you were right all along, right? So I think that’s an important, an important thing to recognize is that truth wins out through honest engagement. Khor didn’t actually want honest engagement. He was a sophist, right? That was trying to be tricky and it was like the captain of the debate club. There’s a huge difference between that, which is based in tactics and, and basing things in truth and evidence that you’re bringing forward that just hasn’t been known. So anyway, I hope, I hope that makes sense what I’m saying.
[1:12:42] Gary Arnell: Absolutely. You know, for me, I’m, I live in the red rock, uh, part of, of Utah where climbing and rebelling and canyoneering your thing. And to me, it’s like when you’re climbing and you have these, these points where you can clip into, that’s like a revelation moment where you can clip in. And if, if you were to fall, you at least are saved by that, that moment. You know, uh, whereas faith is where you’re climbing up above your anchor point, which they do, you know when you’re a climber, you climb up above your anchor point until you have another revelatory experience that you can clip into. So you can see in this image, you’ve got a climber which I would uh see as, as an analogy to faith, they’re proceeding in faith towards things that are true. Um And clipping in as, as you have those, those revelatory experiences occur. It’s, it’s when we climb without, it’s when we participate in the gospel without asking for and seeking the revelatory experiences that we’re not clipping in. So we have a lot long, a lot more farther way to fall if we, you know, if we come across something like the history of the church, if we haven’t been clipping in along the way that fall can be substantial and cause a lot of damage. So,
[1:13:44] Michelle: or if we thought we were clipping it, that’s the Sandy Foundation as well. We were clipping into sand without recognizing it. That can be terrifying. But, but we do know, there is rock. Right.
[1:13:54] Gary Arnell: Yes. Yes, you can clip into something false, which is, you know, faith in both Hebrews and in Alma, it says, you know, well, it, it really is just in Alma. Alma adds, the witch are true part. Right? We can have faith. It’s not real faith, but we think it is in things that are not true. And to me that’s, you know, if I have a, like a, like, ah, I wish there was, this was done differently, the, the, the, the white washing for lack of a better word of church history and as an effort to not cause faith problems with people, it’s like, no, that’s, you have to have faith in what is true, but you have to share what is true matters. Truth matters. If you’re sharing a, a very like, you know, like, don’t look behind that curtain as soon as the curtain gets open because it’s part of the truth. That’s when, that’s when the anchor gives and you fall. You thought you were clipped in and you’re not. And that’s where people get hurt in their testimonies. It was like, yeah,
[1:14:47] Michelle: now we’re told throughout the scriptures that all things will be revealed, things will be exposed, things will be shouted from the rooftops. You can’t, you can’t do that. It doesn’t work. Truth matters too much. Yeah,
[1:14:58] Gary Arnell: which brings us to the whole idea of, you know, canonize scripture. Can the church can prophets lead the church astray, you know, and this is a, this is a tough one. This is canonized. It’s, of course, from Wilfred Woodruff. It was part of the um first manifesto. It came out of the polygamist era. You know, as, as you’ve talked about many times, I won’t, I won’t go into it further. But this doctrine has been repeated more than 100 and 20 times by church leaders and major church publications since 1857. You know, it’s, it’s the, the idea that profits are fallible, but they can’t lead us astray. So which is it? There’s, there’s, there’s a disconnect there and if you go. So this was 1890 30 years before that. Uh It was um it was Orson Hyde speaking of Orson Pratt. So this was in 1860 in the temple. I I believe it was in the temple. Um They had a, they had a corm of the 12. It was, I think there were seven of them present. Um But Orson Hyde said of Orson Pratt, I do not feel competent to take up the points of the difficulties between Brother Pratt and brother Young. But to acknowledge that this is the Kingdom of God and that there is a presiding power and to admit that he can advance incorrect doctrine, meaning Brigham Young is to lay the ax at the foot of the tree. Will he God suffer his mouthpiece to go into error? No, he would remove him and place another there, brother Brigham may err in the price of a horse or a house and lot. But in the revelations from God, where is the man that can give thus saith the Lord when it was not? So I cannot find one instant. So that’s an apostle speaking to an apostle. What were the circumstances of this conversation? It was the Adam God doctrine. Pratt was the only one of the rest of the Corm and the presidency who said, I don’t believe that doctrine. So you have the entire rest of church leadership saying we’re gonna fall in line with brother Brigham and Pratt Orson Pratt saying I don’t believe it. And Orson Hyde stands up and says, if, if he was an heir, the Lord would remove him. So we this, it was, it wasn’t just the, you know, and what did President Kimball do in the seventies? He said the Adam God doctrine is not doctrine so that this is, you know, this is, this is tough, this is tough. Even the majority can get it wrong. You have, you know, you have elder Anderson saying the doctrine is taught by all 15 members of the church presidency go the 12. It’s not hidden in an obscure paragraph from one talk. The Adam God doctrine was taught by the vast majority of the corner of the 12 in the first presidency. So it’s even that safety valve, even that check and balance can be a problem. He was the lone dissenter. Um, and yet we have a, so which, who either Brigham was wrong or Kimball was wrong. It’s like, which, so it’s like, I, I wish that’s, it
[1:17:35] Michelle: would be lovely if it lined up that easily. It, it’s a, it’s a lovely, um, kind of juvenile fairy tale. I don’t mean to that in a, in a demeaning way that, but it is, it’s like we all have that until something shakes up and shows. I mean, we really do think the bishop and the state president and the area authority and the uh from God and the Holy Ghost and they all line up perfectly and then you have experiences that show you that’s not the case and you have to wrestle and I think that’s the whole purpose of this life is the wrestle that I love that the book of Mormon. It’s like we hear these things about follow the majority of the 12, you know, but that’s not what the book of Mormon says. The book of Mormon universally consistently tells us follow the Holy Spirit. That’s the way we are supposed to know truth according to our own scriptures.
[1:18:19] Gary Arnell: Exactly. You know, President Nelson has talked about the meaning of the word Israel that it’s those who let God prevail. There’s actually another half of it. It’s those who wrestle with God and let God prevail, there’s a wrestle. And if, if we, if, if it’s true that no prophet can ever lead us astray. That takes away part of the wrestle because all, all I have to do is sit back and wait for that prophet to say something. And as long as we stay within those, within that, that track, I’m good. But no, it’s those who wrestle and sometimes we’re wrestling with things that prophets have said. For example, here’s some examples right from the scriptures, you know, Eli, his, he allowed his sons to officiate in the Tabernacle. So this is like the temple president really, I mean, he was, he was, he was the highest on the chain as far as I, as I can tell. And his sons were the corrupting the sacrifice, the, the, the, the the sacrifices and they were um with the, with the women at the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation. That’s, that’s awful. I mean, what would, how would we deal with that today? You know, something like that happened if the temple president, I mean, I’m a temple ordinance worker. I mean, this is like, right in my, it’s like, I can’t even imagine if something like this happened today. Um Samuel, same thing Samuel was the successor of Eli didn’t do the more the, the um immorality with the women, but still they were his sons were corrupt in the officiating of their, of their, of the ordinances of the temple of the Tabernacle. And you know, we, we give the Israelites a hard time for saying we want a king like unto other nations. But it’s, they said that in the same verse that they said you’re getting old and your sons are corrupt. We gotta have a, we haven’t fixed this. We have a different system. This system isn’t working. So it was, it was prophetic fallibility that led the people. Now, maybe the people should have trusted the Lord that the Lord will fix it somehow. But they were looking at this succession and saying this isn’t working. This is that we’ve got to have a different system. Their system seems to be working. Let’s try that. So that connection never gets made. I, I’ve, I’ve studied both before and I’ve heard both, but I’ve never seen that’s why
[1:20:21] Michelle: the people I made it in my, in my episodes on King David. I definitely did make that connection.
[1:20:26] Gary Arnell: I never heard it in a seminary class or in the doctrine. Yeah, I murmured, you know, Jacob two, of course, contradicts DNC 132 moon. I says condemn me not because of my imperfection, you know, good old humble moon. I saying there might be errors and they’re my fault. Please, you know, don’t, don’t, don’t lose your testimony because of me, Joseph Smith. But you know how wonderful that he included, you know, the Lord’s um you know, getting on his case. Uh so often in the scriptures call, you know, the Lord called him weak. He was trying so hard. He was, he was, you know, part of the weak and simple things of the world and yet, and it gets included in the history. Um Right for there, for all of us to see a
[1:21:07] Michelle: 116 pages that 100 and
[1:21:09] Gary Arnell: 16 pages, you know, the Lord just like goes off on that one. You listen, here’s all of your weaknesses. Um You know, Wilford Woodruff,
[1:21:16] Michelle: but you know what I love about like Joseph Smith explicitly, it shows us all these things will be for thy experience, you know, to, to get the experience and for thy good. And I think that that really is the pattern for all of us watching God. Like Joseph Smith is one of the best examples we have of God training up a prophet and that’s true for all of us, right? All of our weaknesses and mistakes give us experience and for good and our suffering. I know that was in liberty jail that he said that, but it applies to all of it. So we don’t need to decry them for their errors. We need to learn from their pattern of growth that we should all be following.
[1:21:51] Gary Arnell: Exactly the, the idea that the prophets can’t lead us astray. II. I feel like there’s a, there’s a culture of perfectionism in the church or at least looking perfect to everyone else that wouldn’t, I don’t think it would be there to the degree that that it is. If we were more aware of this kind of thing going on, it’s like Joseph, we don’t have to look down our noses at Joseph Smith. We can be grateful that the Lord was able to use him in spite of, oh, he can use me too. That’s a beautiful lesson to learn. So otherwise we feel like we make one mistake and the Lord can’t use this anymore. Um
[1:22:25] Michelle: And yeah, the Lord’s goodness and patience and lung suffering to train us up beyond our weaknesses, I think is a beautiful thing.
[1:22:32] Gary Arnell: That’s a beautiful doctrine. Yeah. Um My wife loves Brandon Sanderson and Brandon Sanderson has one of his stories. Um He has a city where um wounds never heal. And so if you get a paper cut or a broken bone, you have it for the rest of your, you know, existence. And the gospel of Jesus Christ solves that for us, we can be healed, we can forgive and we can be forgiven. Um other examples, Wilfred Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F Smith allowing limited plural marriages for 14 years. So you’ve got the, the, the scripture of not leading us astray. Um And yet that it was, it was a lie that that statement itself was an untruth because he was saying we’re not going to do this anymore. And yet for 14 years, they continued to do it. That’s, you know, it’s like, ok, that, that, that should lay it to rest right there. Spencer W Kimball Gordon B Hinckley being tricked by Mark Hoffman, Ezra Benson. Um, who I love and adore in his talk for fundamentals. One of the backups is he to, he shares the story about the living oracles, which was, you know, one of the leading men stood up and, and then Brigham Young corrected him, that leading man was Hiram Smith who was a prophet. So in the very example of follow the prophet, you have a prophet being, you know, looked down upon because Brigham had to get up and correct him, which we know is not a correct story either. So anyway, it’s just Thomas. Yeah, Thomas S Monson who again love. Um but attributing the happiness letter to Joseph Smith when the only connection we know about is to John C Bennett. And then, of course, in very recent history, we have um you know, President Nelson’s 2018 pronouncement that the use of the word Mormon is offensive and a victory for Satan. It’s like, well, what does that do for Gordon B. Hinckley and Thomas S Monson and meet the Mormons and mormon.org. And it’s like, did the Lord just barely decide this? It’s like, no, we know that um President Nelson was kind of agitating for this for many, many years but didn’t have the backing of others. And it was when he became the prophet that he then said, you know, here’s how, so it’s like, that’s that. That was very interesting to me that he didn’t try to explain the p the position and posture of past prophets who had used that term. Um, very, you know, liberally. So anyway, prophets are fallible. That’s ok. So are we, uh we can take courage from that? We can take consolation from that. Um And, but it’s still something we have to wrestle with like, oh, I didn’t think that they were, there’s lip service to it but not, not in any meaningful way. And God doesn’t expect perfections of his servants either, you know, in doctrine, Covent section one, the introduction um in their weakness, I given unto my servants in their weakness in as much as they erred in, as much as they sinned. And it’s like, it’s right there. It’s right there in our own, in our own scripture. Plus, not everything a prophet says is prophetic. You know, Joseph Smith, a prophet is not always a prophet, only when he’s acting as such or uh elder Christopherson. It should be remembered that not every statement made by a church leader, past or present necessarily constitute doctrine. It is commonly understood in the church that a statement made by one leader on one occasion of often represents a personal though well considered opinion, not meant to be official or binding for the whole church, but it still presents an issue. Even Elder Anderson’s uh idea of it has to be said by all 15. It’s like, what are you supposed to do? Like, keep a tally? Oh, Ella kn hasn’t talked about that yet. So I’m not gonna follow. It’s like, no, that’s not really. Or do they need to list in the, in their, in their notes afterwards? Here’s all the other times someone else has said the same thing that I just did. I’m now one of like, that’s not practical either. So, here’s some things that like elder mckay um from the, from the one of the corner of the 70 he was at a devotion in 2023. He speaks to this and I’m really grateful for what he said. He’s actually speaking about declaration one. He says another of Satan’s strategies is to use human error to disprove or diminish God’s truth. We sometimes have an unrealistic expectation that God must somehow search out or raise up errorless people to do his work and lead his church. Then he quotes declaration one about prophets leading us astray. And he asked, what does that statement mean to you? Unfortunately, some have interpreted or distorted it to mean that the Lord will never allow church leaders to make a mistake. That is simply not the case. It has never been the case. The scriptures repeatedly show that God does his work through humans and those humans make mistakes sometimes even while God is using them for his purposes, consider how many times in the Old Testament. God used mistake prone people to establish or preserve his covenant and guide sustain and deliver his confident people. And then there’s Peter. So I’m really grateful for that. It’s like, thank you for, for putting that out there. Another, another author, not a church leader, but Adam Miller, author of letters to young Mormon said something very similar and very, I think, very encouraging to all of us. We humans wrestling with the Lord trying to help him make him, you know, let him prevail in our lives. He said this is both the good news and the bad news. While it is scary to think that God works through weak, partial and limited mortals like us. The only thing scarier would be thinking that he doesn’t. It’s a false dilemma to, to claim that either either God works through flawless people or God doesn’t work at all. The Gospel isn’t a celebration of God’s power to work with flawless people. The gospel is a celebration of God’s willingness to work today in our world, in our lives with people who clearly aren’t demand the church to demand that church leaders past or present, show us only a mask of angelic pseudo perfection is to deny the gospel’s most basic claim that God’s grace works through our weakness. We need prophets, not idols, our prophets and leaders will not turn out who you want them to be. They are not in fact, even what God might want them to be, but they are real and God really can nonetheless work through their imperfections to extend his perfect love. You know, we’re, we’re talking here about my journey through. How do I reconcile? How do I reconcile what I’ve learned about church history, particularly Brigham Young. Um And it was helpful to me to apply what I knew about truth seeking in other spheres to the sphere of prophets or revelations. So you’ve talked on, on your show before about, you know, historical practice or malpractice, which is, you know, there really that this idea of practice and malpractice is, is, is applicable and crucial through all truth seeking you. Epistemology is the idea of how do we know it’s true, you know, we have, you know. Yeah, I don’t know how much, how far we want to go, you know, what is epistemology? But, you know, we, we pers there’s reality, truth is a description of reality. We have perception, which is a sub part of reality. We don’t see everything. In fact, we see a tiny, little tiny piece of reality and it’s like us hunting our way through, you know, trying to find out what is true. And the three of them may, there’s many, there’s, there’s quite a few different epistemology or ways of finding truth. Three that Latter day Saints will be familiar with is, you know, empiricism or the scientific method, reason or logic and then revelation or inspiration. And to me it was, it’s very helpful to know there’s practice and malpractice for each one. We’re, we’re, we’re, we’re very familiar, I think with the proper practice or evidence within, within the scientific method. But there’s also malpractice, small sample sizes, um, conflict of interest, bias, ego, uh, pursuit of the fashionable, who’s gonna pay for my research. You know. So, you know, that all those kind of things are, you know, can, can play in to the scientific method. It’s not infallible reason. You know, there’s a, there’s a right way to argue um to, to give forth argument and there’s invalid or unsound ways, you know, fallacy is, you know, rampant, you know, and that’s, you know, and revelation is the same, same thing. There’s divine or metaphysical communication in the form of ideas, impressions, visions, visitations. But there’s also malpractice like the, you know, the co ed who goes and, or the, the, the BYU student who goes and says to that girl, the Lord told me that you’re supposed to marry me. That’s, that’s malpractice. You know, you can’t receive, you know, it’s revelation is only valid for the recipient God. You know, we can, we can, we can request from God confirmation of what somebody else has said they have received from, you know, by way of revelation. And we, and we struggle mightily, we have the spirit is the Holy Spirit is not the only spirit speaking to us. There’s the evil spirit, we’re constantly um you know, have both of these influences um available to us or, or nearby and the way we live, um, will dictate which one is louder, you know. So there’s, we should have a whole lot of humility as we approach the search for truth, you know, and, and become very, you know, it’s like, it’s like the superhero with his little tool belts. Like which of these epistemology can you pull out? Are you conversant in, do you know how to use? And which are you gonna fall or, or misuse? Um That’s a, it’s a lifelong practice to get to be a good practitioner of
[1:31:12] Michelle: epistemology. Yes. And another, I love how you say we need to be humble because another um I don’t know if we would call it a malpractice maybe or just an improper but it’s receiving learning a piece and assuming it’s the whole right that happens very commonly in each of these methods and like, like the scientific method. Um you know, like, like it’s interesting studying all kinds of scientific learning. But, but even nutrition is a good example. Once they learned, oh, there are fats and proteins and you know, carbohydrates, then they were like, oh, that’s all you need, that’s the entire part of nutrition. And, and then it took later to learn about things like fiber or vitamins or, you know, and I think that it’s really easy for someone to have a revelation of some way that they should live. And then assume that is the way to live for all people and that, you know, only to go a little further and receive some nuance to that or that was just for that time or, you know, I think that’s another thing we need to be aware of is that also we tend to think on every new piece of learning is means we have the whole and it’s infinite and it’s usually quite limited. OK? It’s
[1:32:16] Gary Arnell: like a small sample size problem, you know. Yeah.
[1:32:18] Michelle: Yeah, kind of.
[1:32:21] Gary Arnell: OK.
[1:32:21] Michelle: This is good.
[1:32:23] Gary Arnell: Um An example from the on the science side, I’ve, I’ve got a, I’ve got a lot of friends who are like, you know, science is where it’s at. That should be our only guiding star. And I’m reminded of the um the, the, the lancet which is a leading British medical journal in nine, in 2015. Uh the editor in chief uh bemoaned the prevalence of questionable research behavior data sculpting other instances of malpractice stating that a lot of what gets published is incorrect, poor methods get results. The case against science is straightforward, much of the scientific literature, perhaps half may simply be untrue. That’s, that’s an enormous problem. You know, it’s
[1:32:58] Michelle: devastating and we know now we can follow the money to see that the pharmaceutical companies own the medical journals. Like we have big problems,
[1:33:06] Gary Arnell: we have big problems. Yeah. Epistemology is, is, yeah, there’s a lot of problems with how we do it. And of course, on the revelation front, you know, we should be the first to admit that there are and we could add, um, warn Jeffs to this list, you know, and then there’s just enormous malpractice in the and of course, there is, you know, of course, the adversary would focus on, you know, inspiration, revelation on that avenue as, as, as having, you know, he, that he’s gonna focus efforts there. Because if you can, if you can, I mean, we, you know, we talked, you know, a little while ago about all the important things that have come through prophets if you can discount or cause people to disregard um prophetic pronouncements, like look at what could be lost as so for sure, churches, religions revelation is not exempt at all, which brings me to this slide. You know, you hear bits and pieces, you know, you know, you hear Adam God, you hear blood at tone but we don’t really, we don’t talk about, but you dig into each one of these things and there’s, I mean, some of them get very, very dark and this is, I don’t know how you don’t call these leading astray. You know, I don’t know how they can be anything. But you think of all of the individuals and families who were denied pre pre ordination, who are denied Temple ceiling who are denied all these things that we say are so important, they were denied for, you know, over a century. That’s, that’s not a small thing and that’s just one of them. And so, you know, I, I think of, I didn’t put this quote in here but, um, Lord Acton, he’s, he’s the guy. We get the, you know, the, the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. He’s that guy. Well, the, the quote continues and we never study the other part of the quote, but it says that great men are almost always bad. Great men are almost always bad. And he, and he says, whether they’re in the seat of power or behind in the seat of influence, they’re almost always bad. And so the whole separation of powers and all that, you know, that’s like, like begs for that when you realize that almost all great men are bad, you know, you think that, you know, sex money power are the three great motivators of bad men. And I look at Brigham Young and I’m like, check, check, check, check, oh my gosh. And so that’s what we’re wrestling with, you know, and, and then we have, you know, George Buchanan who is an apostle under the kind of, I won’t even go into all these, you’ve gone into most of these, if not all of them and you’re in very, and there’s others that have as well. So anyone who wants to pause and say, and, and I, I put this slide later in the deck because this is not meant to be like a gish gallop of, look at all these things and like to start up. It’s meant to be a summary for people who have already who are already familiar with, who are already wrestling with. I’m just kind of like here, here they are, these, these are the ones that I know of, maybe there’s others, but these are the ones that I have had to wrestle with and, um, we wouldn’t, you know, it’s like they’re, they’re all out, completely out of congruity with what I would expect, you know, prophetic behavior to, to entail and we have to wrestle with that. That’s, and so we get George Buchanan who was a member of the 12 when, when Brigham Young passed away and, and he had this option and he was there for years and he was even in one of the, you know, as a counselor and he said after Brigham passed, he said this some of my brethren as I have learned since the death of President Brigham Young did have feelings concerning his course. They did not approve of it and felt oppressed members of the form of the 12 fell oppressed. It’s like where, where’s the unity? Where’s the document Covenant section 107? Where’s the, you know, they felt oppressed yet they dare not exhibit their feelings to him. He ruled with so strong and stiff a hand and they say they felt that it would be of no use in a few. So those who might have, we’re supposed to be an equal authority with, you know, according to 107 they, they shriveled, you know, they, they couldn’t, they could not withstand whatever they were feeling from him. Um, in a few
[1:36:51] Michelle: words, whatever he might do, there was also some terror because there were some authoritarian tactics that were terrifying. Yes.
[1:36:57] Gary Arnell: Oh, yeah. When, like, changing the rules of seniority in the core of the 12 to present Orson Pratt from becoming president, you know, threatening with excommunication, excommunicating and the
[1:37:05] Michelle: S and S we do have, we do have a document history of um blood atonement. Like there, it was, it was really and a different time. That’s hard for us to understand it is.
[1:37:20] Gary Arnell: Yeah, exactly. So continuing, he said in a few words, the feeling seems to be that he transcended the bounds of the authority with it with which he legitimately held. I had been greatly surprised to find so much dissatisfaction in such quarters, which is remarkable. He was within those quarters for years and was so blinders on to only looking in this one direction and not like is there unit, is there unity is there? You know, he, he didn’t see it until after uh in it. It is felt for example, that the funds of the church have been used with a freedom not warranted by the authority which he held. And some even feel that in the promulgation of doctrine, he took liberties beyond those to which he was legitimately entitled. Oh, that’s, that’s the one other piece I forgot to mention the very beginning. I remember as a child, you know, going to Temple Square as a family and going on the tour and, and I remember looking at the bee, the, the beehive house and the Lion house and going, how did he afford that? You know, where, where, how did, what, what, you know, what did he do for a living? You know, and it wasn’t until much later. It’s like, oh he took, he took loans unpaid back, interest, free loans from the tithing funds anyway. It’s like this is, you know, this is hard stuff.
[1:38:25] Michelle: So those and that doesn’t even include the guard house, which I think most people had a shock to learn about the Gardo House
[1:38:31] Gary Arnell: or the Saint George,
[1:38:32] Michelle: you know,
[1:38:32] Gary Arnell: the house or the Yeah, so, so for those. And so this is just meant as a, you know, I don’t know how many people, you know, will watch this who aren’t already familiar with. And I don’t mean to, again, this is, this is the, the anchor in the false rock and the, the, the the it’s like there, this is not meant to, is a criticism as much as a um these are real issues that if we as saints, if we don’t know about them, our faith, we may be able to proceed in faith to the end of our lives and be part of group or two or three where as long as these things don’t come into my life, I can just live just fine, but I won’t be able to necessarily help my Children or my grandchildren who may encounter this stuff. And I’m just like, what are you even talking about? And yet they’re like, they’re like, my whole life is a lie type of a, you know, the identity crisis. You know, you, you talk to people about the identity crisis that they face when they learn about this kind of stuff. And I, and I can understand it. You know, this is, this is hard to deal with.
[1:39:30] Michelle: It is and I just want to say this slide is actually so important for another reason too that you’ve, that you’ve, you know, hit on. But I want to talk about it explicitly. It’s the validation of truth because it is so painful to be gas lit to be told that your reality is not reality, even though you have seen the documents, you have, you know, I am totally fine with people saying, oh, well, there’s this additional document or you know, like that’s a great conversation to have. I love that but to be told you’re not allowed to talk about that or that never happened or he wouldn’t have done that or it’s so painful when you are honestly trying to do this wrestle that you’ve talked about that God has brought into your life. I am having this painful wrestle and instead of like either engaging in it with me or at least supporting me in it or at least recognizing the goodness like my goodness in this wrestle. You’re just telling me that my reality is not valid. That, that, that is so I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it justice but people who have experienced it, know what I’m talking about to just be told that never happened. You’re wrong and you may not talk about it. It’s so painful and it’s such a uncharitable approach. And so to even just see a list that’s like, oh, oh, because I didn’t know exactly where you were gonna go, Gary, you know, like and so as we’re going and then all of a sudden this comes on and it’s like, ok, we are dealing in the same reality. He’s not gaslighting me. So we can do, you know what I mean? Like that’s, that is, that is an important thing that people need to recognize. You need to know about these things so that you can know, you know, engage in the wrestle yourself. But also be there for people who are engaging in this very valid, very real wrestle. And the more gas lighting you do and the more bad apologetic you do, the more difficult you make it for them to retain any degree of faith because you’re representing the faith side and they know you’re wrong and, and you can’t acknowledge that.
[1:41:32] Gary Arnell: Yeah. And I, and I put this, you know, this slide is out of place in terms of my experience, I, I experienced all of this without having yet done all the profit research before. But I put it in here to try to. Now when people see it, it’s like, oh now armed with the knowledge of the scriptural and historical evidence that prophets are fallible and stuff does happen. Now, we can look at Brigham Young in that light and it’s not quite so jarring. And you
[1:41:59] Michelle: did people the service of building the scaffolding for them before you shook the building, your building got shut, shaken and you had to balance on it while you built the scala thing around yourself, right? So I appreciate that you did that in reverse as a service to people because, and you were able to do that because you honestly engaged because you honestly went through this. This is truly what ministering is and what missionary work and testimony bearing should be.
[1:42:24] Gary Arnell: And you know, another, you know, just to share my experience and maybe others have had it as well with, with the polygamy question, I guess church history in general. It’s, it’s not like, oh, here’s this one thing and now we’ve solved it all. It is like a blanket where you’re undoing every single stitch. And so it’s got this huge quilt and it’s not just one stitch, you got to undo them all and re like, what is and that’s, that’s been hard. So it’s not people, you know, there’s some people, you know, who will listen to this, you know, for the first time hearing this kind of thing from me and say, where does this even come from? It took 18 months of wrestling listening to your podcast and other than wrestling with the historical record and go and, and realigning and, and seeing how can God work through this circumstance? I just, I guess I want to just validate those who are in the, in the stitch removal and the re stitching. And
[1:43:14] Michelle: the question of where is it? How deep does it go is a very valid question. And my experience and what I just desperately want to share with other people is it goes as deep as the rock of Jesus Christ. There is a whole lot of sandy foundation to dig out and then you do reach bedrock if you are willing to engage honestly in faith and it’s easy to just walk away from the whole tower, you know, but you can dig through that sand as painful as it is and as painstaking and effortful as it is. But, but my gosh, we grow spiritual muscle in that process, don’t we like? Wouldn’t you say you’re completely, your faith has been transformed in remarkably good ways for having done this? Would you go back to where you were 18 months before that wrestle, right? And so, so that’s why I say, keep digging through the sand until you reach bedrock and God will let you know when you reach bedrock.
[1:44:08] Gary Arnell: Yeah. There, there’s someone who’s very dear to me who left the church a number of years ago and I know have far more sympathy, you know, or, or, or even empathy for them. It’s like I see it now what you are experiencing, what you wrestled with and I, I, I’m making a different decision. I’m staying, not leaving, but I understand, I understand what you wrestled with and I can see why someone could be led in that direction. Um because there, there’s a betrayal and this, this person even said Brigham broke your heart and like you’re right, he did break my heart. I, I thought he was one thing and he’s really another and, and, and that’s not to say I love what I love what you said once and where you, you believe that Brigham has come to grips with this, you know, now where he’s at and he has repented in his root.
[1:44:52] Michelle: I hope I can’t know. And that hope makes me happier than imagining him burning in hell. So I choose to think of it that way. Yes.
[1:45:01] Gary Arnell: Yes. And I, and I hope the same thing for, you know, Brother Winder for, you know, President Winder, for example, that even though he kept you know, in, in his history talks about all the great conference talks that he gave as a, as a, as a member of the first, you know, temple works, the best missionary works the best. I’m like, what about this big gaping hole in your, your personal life that you didn’t deal with? Like, but it’s like, I think, I hope, I think he and Hannah have had some conversations since then and have, have, you know, I, that’s what I hope for, you know. Um I don’t know,
[1:45:28] Michelle: I think I want to hope that because that’s what I hope for myself. Who knows what blind spots I have, who knows what errors, right? And I don’t, I don’t want to pass and have my descendants, you know, like, like, II, I think it’s important to acknowledge wrongs. But, but I think that giving people grace even in the next life is a beautiful choice to make. Right?
[1:45:49] Gary Arnell: Yes. Yes. But I, I certainly need it. Yeah, I certainly need it. Let me pop back here a couple of things. Um So the, the idea of priesthood keys in succession, this question comes up all the time. Well, if Brigham Young really did do those things and that’s not to say that he was all bad. You know, you, you think of the, when the teachings of the presence of the church came out and I remember the Brigham Young manual was so thick and I was like, why is that so much thicker, it’s like this is compensate, this is overcompensation is what I, I feel like. Now it’s like, oh, I see what they were doing. They were trying to, like, see he really had some good stuff which he did, you know. Um But the question often, very often comes up in these circles of, well, if Brigham did, was erring to that degree, then what about the priesthood keys? And I, for me, the answer has come in the story of King Noah. And I’m not, I’m not saying that they, they were exact, you know, duplicates of one another, but we see some patterns that are super helpful in Messiah 11 through 18 where, you know, Zenne conferred, conferred the kingdom on Noah and he had both the ecclesiastical and the state would like Zen if he passed it on to
[1:46:52] Michelle: Brigham Young, that was the same
[1:46:54] Gary Arnell: just like Brigham Young um
[1:46:56] Michelle: and Smith
[1:46:57] Gary Arnell: and Joseph Smith. Um He Noah consecrated new priests. He actually kept, he kept the, the appearances just, you know, Brigham Young did that too and, and did the ordinations and everything. Um He had that council, he had the high priest, he was working in the temple. They were making it a lot more beautiful than it was before. But the, the temple that Nephi established, they were in there and they were, that’s where they were, how they were keeping the the appearance of even though their actions were going far a field. Alma was one of those. He was one of those who was conferred upon consecrated. Yet, even though he, once he, he fled, he was able to baptize, he was able to um he was able to organize the work. He was able to tell people he was able to teach all things ordain. He was able to do all of those things without any mention in the scripture of some other person coming along and saying that was invalid. I’m going to. So that to me is where I have been able to like, ok, this is the, the priesthood keys are still on the earth. God decides when he wants to reveal to any one of us, including the prophet, whatever he wants to reveal to us. And so it’s, it’s back to I will, I, I, you know, I revere, I honor, I sustain the prophets and I have a responsibility and the opportunity and responsibility to hear what they say and clip into that rock by getting a rev a revelatory confirmation of my own. Um which to me is actually one of the, one of the beautiful things, um lessons that I’ve learned from the temple is um maybe that’s actually where the next slide goes into. I guess I’ll, I’ll hit that here in a minute. Where do we go from here? The last part of my, you know, the, the presentation
[1:48:32] Michelle: I just want to jump in on that I, I love, love, love your um Noah and Alma analogy because it’s the exact same epiphany I had that like, so this is like such a beautiful second witness because it really was like, first of all, my understanding of key, I, I think we understand a whole lot less about keys than we think we do honestly. Like, if you study the doctrine of covenants for keys, they are varied and compli complicated and, and I each have different, you know, it’s not just one thing you can lump in and say I have that power, you know, like, and so, so it’s a really complicated thing, but the idea of authority, right? I’ve, I really did grapple with that. Is it necessary? How do we, what do we do about it? All of these questions? And this was the exact same thing I fell on and I do think it is about the faith of the individual, you know, God honors faith and then tying that alma piece in with authority, I think is exquisitely beautiful in what we are talking about because really there are so many parallels between I’m, I’m just restating what you said, but I just want people to really let it sink in the parallels between Brigham and K No, what they’re there, they exist, but each of us has the opportunity to still tie in. We still, we’re not Brigham and any of the ensuing prophets did not divorce us from the restoration from what God did. And because of this church, the book of Mormon is worldwide where we’ve, we’ve existed, we’ve sustained you, you know, like, like the church has served incredible purposes and like you said about the kinds of people, the fruits of the church, right? And now I just see God’s hand in it again, that God is awakening all of these ideas for all of these people, the honest and heart, the true seekers, truth seekers are awakening to all of these things. So to me, I can’t help but see God’s hand from the beginning to the end and all the way through the middle. And so anyway, I, I really, I’m glad you brought that out. Thank you. That’s a gorgeous answer. It wasn’t for me.
[1:50:31] Gary Arnell: That’s, that was, that was like the, the little, the one spot I could go through it like, oh, it’s in the scriptures. It’s happened before, you know. Yeah,
[1:50:38] Michelle: I, I came to believe that’s why I mean, the book of Mormon is written for our day. That’s a profound thing directly for our day. That is so, so very applicable.
[1:50:49] Gary Arnell: Yeah. Yeah. So grateful that Mormon included that in the record. So, you know, we, we’ve, you know, you asked me to share my story. And so I, I shared, you know what I, where I was at before, what I’ve gone through in the last 18 months and what I’d like to close with is, where do we go from here? How do we, how do we proceed as a people? Um, which, which I think will shed light on why I interact with people the way I do online, which you brought up at the very beginning. Um, I didn’t always interact that way. Um, I used to be very, you know, the snark and the sarcasm and the, you know, I was very much in that camp and I, I had a, a good friend who I’d known for my, when I was really, I mean, I’m still in the education, education space and, but a good friend who was also, you know, put on conferences and things like that and she has a family and she came out as lesbian and, um and is still, you know, married to her, you know, she’s just an incredible woman but it’s gone through as you can imagine a lot through that. And she approached me privately after some interactions online that she had seen that were not maybe as gracious as the ones you’ve seen. And she said, you know, Gary, uh and in the most kind loving Christ like way, you know, taught me an important lesson about kindness. And so I can’t say that I’ve 100% followed that, but it really, it really hit me hard. That’s like, oh, I am not being Christ like I have got to be Christ like, and, you know, in my work, we have this way of looking at problems when there’s problems. When there’s an issue at work, we have two ways of looking at it. If, if this microphone was a problem, we can be on two sides arguing with each other or we can both be on the one side looking at the problem, hand in hand, arm over the shoulder saying, look, here’s the problem we want to solve. How do we, how do we do this?
[1:52:25] Michelle: It’s like the problem is the enemy. You’re not my enemy. The problem.
[1:52:27] Gary Arnell: Exactly. Exactly. Yes. The, the, the, the hearts and minds of, of our fellow brothers, our brothers and sisters are the territory that we want not to be conquered. You know, that so to treat them like that, that to love. And it’s like they, they remain our brothers and sisters regardless. So anyway, um that where we go from here, you know, is how this, this will speak to all of this kind of those ideas. Karen Schultz wrote a book called Being Wrong and she said, embracing our fallibility, our fallibility, you know, us too simply acknowledges what philosopher Richard Roarty called quote, the permanent possibility of someone having a better idea and quote, you know, it’s like that’s we have to live that way. We have to as in a classic liberal western civilization, you know, it used to be, it was all about power under western civilization. It says it’s about truth. If you do it, right. Which was a whole another conversation, but which you have to, you have to have the humility of saying someone might be right. Someone might have a better idea than me and always be in that position of humility. So that’s, that would be, you know, step number one is having the humility of there might be somebody out there who knows something more than I do that would overturn the better,
[1:53:37] Michelle: the better idea benefits all of us. We all want the better idea even if it hurts our pride. For a minute.
[1:53:43] Gary Arnell: I think most people will be familiar with, with these, with these scriptures, but trusting in the Lord with all thine heartly, not unto thy understanding, in all thy ways, acknowledge him. He shall direct thy paths. Oh Lord, I have trusted in thee. I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of the flesh feast upon the words of Christ. For behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things that you should do. The Holy Ghost will show unto you all things that you should do. So the Lord has been very clear about asking each other to receive knock and should be open unto you. It’s like seek the spirit. So in in humility, seek the spirit and kudos to President Nelson for this killer quote. I think he’s absolutely spot on in coming days. It will not be possible to survive spiritually. Without the guiding directing, comforting, constant influence of the Holy Ghost we’re there. It’s the, the coming days we are in them. Now, as soon as you get exposed to this stuff, which many people have for many years in the past, I just happened to be in the last 18 months. But as soon as you do the, it’s too late to plant the roots. You know, the, the clipping in along the way. once you start getting hit by the winds of church history, if you have not already clipped in, it’s a much tougher battle, you know. So I think this is an absolutely prophetic statement that if you are not already clipped in, get clipped in because the, the diff the difficulties will come. They’re out there. The, the internet is there, the information is there and it’s going to hit you or a loved one sooner or later. And this is just one little, this is just one part chur church history polygamy is just one part of many things that we could get hit by and, and, you know, I, and also, you know, going kind of back to the humility point that this information has been there the whole time, you know, as, as a child, even though I went through the whole correlated church classes and everything, there was a set of the journal of discourses sitting on the shelf at home. My parents had it. I’m the one who didn’t pull it off the shelf and read it. And I, I did ask my dad, I’m like, how can we never read out of these things? And he, I remember and I was, I was pretty young and he said something like they don’t know that they were always transcribed correctly or what cause which is actually the official if you put on the, if you look on the church now, like, why don’t we? Well, they’re not considered doctrine like this is why this
[1:55:38] Michelle: is why. And that’s actually a false, like a false, like they say that they don’t know if they’re, it, it’s, we know that those were their words because they approved them, they had to be published in the newspaper and they had to be approved before they were published in the journal of. So it’s not that they were transcribed incorrectly. It’s just that some of the doctrine is not quite correct. Right. So,
[1:56:00] Gary Arnell: yeah, and it’s not just one, it’s, there’s, it’s all throughout and so it’s not like a mistake in one place. It’s everywhere. Yeah.
[1:56:07] Michelle: And it’s not one topic and it’s, yeah, it’s,
[1:56:10] Gary Arnell: yeah. So, so disciple over scholarship is, you know, as far as you know, having, having mercy towards the church, like why didn’t you tell me all this? Like it’s over this discipleship over scholarship. And also, you know, something that occurred to me is that we have, you know, in Mormon Mormon when he is, when he is uh putting together the book of Mormon and picking and choosing he’s doing so with, I mean, these, these people that he’s that he’s selecting records from were hundreds and hundreds of years before him. He’s disconnected from them. He’s, he says, you know, this King Benjamin did this. You know, it’s not like he knew King Benjamin that was hundreds of years before him. Our church does not have that benefit. It’s recent history. This is, we have like this is like almost living memory. I I my um my great grandfather was born in 1895. He lived 100 years till 1995. He was a state patriarch. Gave me my patri blessing. He served in the World War One. I mean, so it, I, I have a connection to the 19 century in my, I knew someone. It’s like that it wasn’t much of a leap back farther than that to these people. So it’s very recent. And how do you correct? I mean, you do what Kimball did where he says some church leaders, you know, have maybe in the past like, you know, so it’s, it’s just that would be very hard. It’s a hard position to be in, to have to correct recent past leaders when you’re in that same seat yourself. So I feel like there’s some, there’s some mercy or some, some the difficulty of that.
[1:57:29] Michelle: Yes, I’ve said so many times. I would not want to be in those colleagues. It’s incredible and trying to keep all of the people together when they’re such, you know, it’s, it’s an incredibly difficult. They do need our prayers, right. And I love, I love your focus both at the beginning and coming up now on what the church does do, like, it really does benefit us and learn. II, I was just sitting um because I’ve had kind of a rough week and had to renegotiate things with myself again, you know, over the church. But I was sitting at my little boys soccer game and, um, and a little like three year old came walking past and she was just seeing um heavenly Father. Are you really there? And, you know, and just like the thought came to me, like, we don’t know what it does to a child’s brain to grow up from their earliest days being taught, God loves you and you are of great worth and God will always be there for you. And, you know, this, this structure we have that teaches us to love one another, even though that’s hard. And again, the aspiration of the ideal, we don’t always live up to it, but we can focus on the ideal it. I know I have had so many experiences of being stretched to try to love people who I wouldn’t associate with if they weren’t in my board. Right? And I’ve had so many um experiences of the incredible good people who have loved me and have like the service that our family has received over the decades, like unbelievable service by the good people of this church that, you know, like there is so, so much goodness that I, um, I compared it recently to a marriage, um, a marriage has its strength and as we, your spouse has their strengths and their weaknesses. Right. There are the good parts and the bad parts. It’s not only the bad parts, it’s really easy to get in a mindset where all you can see is the are the faults and the negatives that just point and point and pick at them, right? And, and then you eventually divorce and then you have no motivation to even try to see the positive anymore and all and it just becomes only the negative. And that happens to a lot of people who leave the church, a lot of these voices that now just become 100% critical and it’s not true and it’s not accurate. And I think staying engaged and looking for the positive and trying to maximize the positives while trying to like we’re doing our best to try to minimize the negatives in the ways that we can, that we feel called to. Right? But, but recognizing that that continued involvement with the church is, is not something to be taken lightly or to be thrown out lightly even when it’s really, really hard, which is often it can be especially for those of us who, who are loyal dissenters, we are loyal to the church, but we disagree with some points and it can be a difficult place to be. But my goodness, I feel like it’s important and it’s worthwhile and I’ve had to, again this week really dig to the bottom of that where I just again was like, ok, should I just wear sleeveless tops and drink coffee and stop having all of this pressure and you know, because it can get really hard when there are continuing um continuing struggles that make it even harder. But I always for me, I’ve just know that that’s my own hurt, speaking my own, you know, it was my own self protection. Just wanted to say you can’t fire me. I quit or you know what I mean? Like I’m gonna break up with you so you can’t break up with me or whatever it is. But really like if I get still a listen to God, God is calling me into this church always and showing me the benefit for me, for my husband, for our Children, for our family, for my Children that are on missions that have served missions and my Children that have yet to serve missions. And they have like the way we teach morality, the way we teach service. But like, like these lost values in our world, I think it’s so easy to take them for granted and not recognize what we are giving up. And that’s why I just am like desperately wanting to say, let us have this space to talk about these things um loyally in a loyal way, right? Instead of just a critical way and then to the people talking about them, please let’s do our best to engage in these topics filled with the spirit of God, with charity, with love, with mercy and grace. You know, anyway, I’m, I’m kind of going off, but this is really speaking to me. I love, I love that. This conversation is happening right now as I’ve been thinking so much about all of these things and having to struggle with them because it’s, it’s really challenging.
[2:01:59] Gary Arnell: I love all of that. It reminds me of Mosiah 18, the hearts new together in love and unity. That, that to me, like that’s one verse out of all of the canon. And yet it’s like that embodies the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the modern church community for whatever rewards that we all have the, the hearts. I mean, all of my closest friendships, all of my, you know, deep family relationships that I cherish all come through the gospel of Jesus Christ as embodied in the church of Jesus Christ of latter day Saints. I, that is, it’s so beautiful to me. So it’s which, you know, brings me to another point that I was thinking of as you were saying that it’s like just to give people context. You know, this is, it’s like we have almost like the, the church history up on, up on the lift in the, in the, in the, in the, in the um, auto shop fixing this one broken part. It’s like, I, I don’t, and I don’t know that and I wouldn’t recommend that we, you know, always have it up on the lift, examining the one broken part without recognizing the beauty of the hole and driving on the in the whole. It’s like, it’s like, I, I have not spent my life in criticism nor did they. Last 18 months. I spent hundreds of hours studying and trying to figure this out. But I’ve also been fulfilling my callings. I’ve also been a dad, I’ve also been a husband, I’ve also than a provider. But, you know, there’s just, I guess a caution to those who are like, where do we go from here? You don’t, you do need to maintain the balance of and this is where I’ll go next with, with uh another thing that I, that I believe that the gospel has given us, you know, we have in Genesis, the account of the creation with Adam and Eve. But with the restoration, we have three other accounts. Why is that? And from those three other accounts, we learn something we don’t get from Genesis, which is that the, the idea behind a savior was an if, if they fall into transgression if we, they do, we will provide a savior. But there was a, there was another door go, there was another door available and that was the door of, we will go away and come back later with further instruction. Keep the commandments we’ve given you so far, we’re gonna come back and give you further instruction. They didn’t wait for the further instruction. They, they got input from another messenger. Another source of that, that’s one of the, to me, one of the, the uh lessons from the temple is what messengers are you listening to? You know? So they, they got message, they got a message from the messenger over here that was in contradiction to the, the, the, the commandment and information and instruction they received from the Lord. And rather than saying, OK, thank you for that. I’m gonna wait for the further instruction that was promised to me. They went with it, you know, which is what we as humans do. I, I do not look down on Adam and Eve at all for that to me. It’s a learning lesson like we all wrestle with our, with our reason like this looks like the right way. I should go. But keep in mind they, they, you know that and this goes back to our little clip in point. They had a clip in point moment. They knew God, they knew Christ, they had seen them, they had been in their presence, they had been instructed and they had been told to wait for further instruction. And so to those who might, who might be like, I’m throwing the baby out with the bath water, it’s like no, what instruction have you received? What can you clip into? Um, there’s a lot of other messages and messengers. I’m one of them today, you know, here on this podcast, you know, that, that, that will shout in your ear and say stuff, but hold true to the message that you’ve already received the clip ins that you’ve already gotten the word. You know, God spoke to you and don’t deviate from that path as you wrestle with the reality of other messages. You know, that, that, that principle from, from modern day revelation, the three different accounts that we have of, of, you know, the new accounts we have of the creation have been very helpful. Hold on to what you know, don’t deviate from the instruction you’ve been given, wait for further instruction, but still you still got to take in everything because we live in a world where things are coming at us all the time. So that was, that was, that was very help. That’s been very helpful to me to like, don’t, you know, stay true to what you have what you know already, I guess.
[2:05:47] Michelle: And I, I, I like that. I like that and I like for me, the question repeatedly has been God, what do you want for me? What do you want me to do? What? Right. Because that for me, I have learned again through challenging experience, a life of as we all have a life of challenging experiences to trust God. If God tells me to do something, then I know it is in my highest good and in the highest good of everything I care about my family, right? And so so I think that there is so much value in learning to ask and, and recognize answers and direction. And if you know, and so if someone for I’m not saying that someone can for a time because of their own circumstances and their own situation, feel inspired that staying in the ward or staying in the act, activity in the church is not the right thing for them. But what I fear happens too often is that it’s kind of a the church lied to me. Therefore, it’s not true and it’s not what it claimed to be. Therefore I’m out and I’m, you know, and it’s kind of that um response without recognizing like the question I’ve asked every time I’ve really faced the wall, you know, when I’ve really had the challenging experiences that I didn’t see how I could go on. I’ve always, the question has always been God. Show me where to go, show me what’s better, show me what I can do that would be. And, and every time I have had the answer, the profound answer to stay. And, um, and so I, I like that idea of like, and, and for me it’s not that just, there’s one little, something loose on the car. I mean, maybe the whole feels really wonky at times. You know, you’re like, we’ve got two flat tires and we’re leaking oil and, you know, maybe the thing is about to explode, you know, like there are times like that. And so the question is just like God, what do you want me to do to make this ride a little smoother? And do you want me to stay in this car? You know, and I think that, but, but it is, it has also been helpful to me to have the Lord turn my thoughts repeatedly to the fact that we teach our Children from infancy and that we are taught always to seek the spirit that’s profound, right? And, and that we teach to repent and that we teach to read the book of Mormon, you know, like there is so much good and you know, and, and maybe as a younger mom, I would have felt more energetic about, I’ve got this spiritual education of my Children under uh uh uh you know, in hand just fine. I can homeschool and I can home church. We’re good, you know, but, but for me, I am, I recognize at this point as a mom, my own insufficiency and my need, my need for a community of people that genuinely want, whether they always live up to it and whether I always live up to it, genuinely want to be like Jesus and recommit to that either daily or at least weekly. Right. There is so much beauty and value there that it’s just not something they give up lightly. I would just say trust God and where God directs you. But don’t think that because you see, oh my gosh. I didn’t know my husband had that, that characteristic. I need to divorce you. Do you know what I mean? It can kind of be like I didn’t know that about the church. OK. What’s the good I can focus on if that’s what God wants me to do and how can I help minimize the bad if that’s what God wants me to do?
[2:09:07] Gary Arnell: Yeah, I love that. The last thing that I thought I would share ties right back into the what your, your very first comments and that is um contention. Um The problem is contention we have. And so, so that with this, I guess I would make a plea to um all sides of this, you know, current this debate because there’s so often that contention enters into the picture. And I wanted to share what, what I’ve learned about what contention is, what it sabotages and why we so and, and the Lord’s feelings about contention. Um You know, if I were to summarize, it would be that as soon as we allow contention to enter into our heart and our conversation, the adversary has already won. It’s like it doesn’t actually matter, you know, I, I don’t know how much it matters. At least, at least for that person that we’re arguing with in that moment. You know, the whole idea of a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion. Still, the people don’t care how much, you know, until they know how much you care. All those kind of ideas deal with this issue of contention. But I believe that allowing contention into our conversations actually has a much larger detrimental effect society than we really understand. So I, I hope that I can show what I’ve learned that way because I I because as a plea to like, let’s be civil and let’s be kind, let’s be on both sides, you know, both be on the on the one side and look at the issue, not at his, at each other as the enemy. So I I won’t read all of these because I think people can pause the video, they can look up the scriptures. But the Lord has denounced contention over and over and over again in the scriptures. And if we pull out our trusty websters, 1828 we see that it is strife struggle, a violent effort to attain something or resist a person, claim or injury, contest, a quarrel, strife in words or debate, quarrel, angry contest, strife endeavored to excel um the vehemence of endeavor. Speaking of the violence of your passion, so love that definition that we get from, from Webster. Um It reminded me, I’ll just read this one part. They should not contend with one another. So contention in this particular verse in second Nephi 26 is surrounded by all these other terrible things. Like it’s up there with murder, lying, stealing, taking Lord in vain, envy, malice, um cords, they should not contend. It’s like, why is what is content? Why is contending in this group? Why is it being class here? Who for who so doeth these things shall perish? And that reminded me of like parish. There’s another scripture that talks about parish. It’s Proverbs 2918 where there’s no vision, the people perish but he that keepeth the law happy. Is he? What’s that all about? Well, Webster’s 2828 vision, it is definition is in scripture, a revelation from God, an appearance or exhibition of something supernaturally presented to the minds of the prophets by which they were informed of future events. So revelation from God, that’s what vision is without revelation from God. And I don’t think it’s just capital p prophecy. I think it’s lower case as well without vision individually and collectively the people perish. What does parish mean? Die, lose life, wither decay, waste away to be destroyed, come to nothing to be fail entirely or be extirpated. I had to look that one up was to extirpate to pull or pluck from the roots to root out, eradicate. Destroy. Totally. There’s more words there but perish that paints a certain picture. If we don’t have revelation, those things happen to us individually maritally familiarly. Um, but societally, but he, that keepeth the law happy is he? It’s like, ok, what is law and what, what, what does happy have to do with it? Well, there’s just a bunch of other scriptures and people can stop the video or you know, second nephite 2845, they can go look at that, Mosiah 232 to 33. All of these are talking about how contentions, you know, are drinking damnation to here. So how bad contention is Mosiah 1820 you can go look that one up. He in 16, this one felt a little close to home on the polygamy front. Many more things that the people imagine up in their hearts, you know what doctrines were imagined up in their hearts which were foolish and vain. They were much disturbed for Satan to stir up them up to do iniquity continually. Yeah, he did go about spreading rumors and contentions that he might harden the hearts of the people against that, which was good. So again, contention playing in there and he in 1635 11, there should be no disputations. There should be, you know, concerning the doctrine of the points of concern, the points of my doctrine. He that has to speak of contention is not of me, but is of the devil. That’s, that is a real, but every time I get into that headspace, I have to stop. It’s like I can’t go there. I don’t want to be of the devil. Father contention. Stare up the hearts of men to contend that. That’s where I get the idea of as soon as we allow contention into the conversation and we, and we participate in it. That’s where, that’s why I feel like maybe that’s just my opinion, but that’s why I feel like he, there’s, that’s a victory for him.
[2:14:05] Michelle: That’s the victory for Satan. That’s not saying Mormon, it’s to contend that is a victory for Satan.
[2:14:10] Gary Arnell: Exactly. And those things should be done away with and I just pasted just slapped in 4512 or 18, just four, no contention. This, so this is the Zion People chapter, this is the Zion people. That’s what we want is the people, right? Aspiration, aspiration. And so we’re studying this chapter from that perspective of this is what we’re aiming for. And so I bolded all the beautiful promises, the beautiful benefits, the blessings, you know, that that come from being that kind of people. No contention is mentioned there four times, four times, you know, as part of we’ve got to get rid of that if we want to have that, you know. And so you mentioned snarky how it feels good. It does, it feels good. You know, being sarcastic, feels good. And yet I’m cutting, I’m, I’m sawing the limb off of the tree and I’m on the other side of the tree because I’m, I’m undoing the progress to resign, which is actually the goal. So my, my little victory, losing the battle, you know,
[2:15:06] Michelle: and you know what I’m gonna say this, even though it’s sin feels good often, right? The natural man is an enemy to God. And so I, and I know, yeah, it’s so hard, it’s so hard at times, especially when it feels so well deserved. And like you’ve been so forbearing for so long, but I love that you’re bringing out these scriptures because remembering, I mean, in the, in the um pro price that Lucifer is called the Father of Lies in the Book of form and he’s called the father of contention. That’s kind of shows, right? Like what spirit do we want to be acting under? And I have become convinced Zion is not a place where we all agree. Zion is not a place where we’re all the same. Zion is a place where we don’t contend. That’s and, and we can absolutely engage without contention, we can engage and have disagreements and differences of opinions without contention. Like presenting truth that some people may disagree with does not mean contention. Contention means contention. So I’m OK, I’m gonna keep doing better
[2:16:06] Gary Arnell: as I, as I think of just the genius, the genius of some of the, of, of some of the Lord’s teachings, like the two great commandments to, to consolidate so much into those two commandments. When I think of love your neighbor, it’s like I have to remember if my manner of speech makes them think that I love being right or I love this issue or I love my stance more than I love them. I’m doing it wrong. And that’s really, and so it’s like those two commandments, it’s like you hit your head against them all the time. It’s like you got it. You say that there’s, I love that He can so concisely, it’s like I, I can remember that I can remember. Love God, love that
[2:16:47] Michelle: sum up the principles of our entire existence on earth. You are here to live according to these two principles which are ee excruciatingly difficult to constantly remember how often are we told to remember and to seek the inspiration to know how to best implement them and to have our hearts constantly turned to God so that we can OK? OK. I am, I’m being called for repentance, Gary. I’m gonna keep, I’m gonna keep doing it.
[2:17:13] Gary Arnell: Ok. You and me both. So you know, going back to that Proverbs 2918, just remind us that where there’s no vision or revelation, where there’s no God speaking to us, the people perish and we know we know we’ve seen people, we’ve seen parts of society that have withered and decayed that have wasted away where, where that, where the, you know, they even whole societies when you look at the Soviet Union where no one trusted each other or China, where they were turning each other in like, like what happens when, when that is we, we live in such a judeo-christian society where this is where this kind of thing where, where people trying to talk to God and be kind to each other is still so much a part of how things happen, we forget what’s, how much farther society can sink and go. You know, if, you know, we can go farther than, than we have so far. This is where my study with, you know, polygamy has and the church history has joined with other areas of, of my personal study that helped me appreciate how, how important the lack of contention is and how the he that keepeth the law happy is he, how that works societally? Um Here’s where I’d like to turn to um this idea of the pursuit of happiness. We just talked about uh happy as he, we, we learn in the book of Mormon. Well, there it is right there nev there could not be a happier people among all the people who have been created by the hand. That’s what I want, you know. And so, you know, it’s curious and I’ve, and I’ve had people ask me this, you know, why is pursuit of happiness in the declaration of independence? Is that just like this? What’s that doing there? It’s like, what does that have to do with anything? And it has everything to do with? It’s, it’s one and the same and this is like one of the lost sections of like of our history of, we don’t understand what the pursuit of happiness is. So I’d like to share it because I did spend a lot of time researching this and this was actually before the polygamy thing that got into my life. But it’s, it’s helped me understand why it’s there and what, what it, it creates a whole framework for how we’re supposed to be operating as a society. And then we can compare how are we doing, you know, against that. So, um four or 500 years ago, 350 years BC before Christ Aristotle wrote the, wrote this book called Ethics. And he, and I’m gonna just paraphrase this really quickly, but he said that happiness is, it’s a book about happiness. That’s what it is. It was. And I believe he was, I believe he was inspired to write this, this book. It is, it is such a profound book on happiness. He says, happiness is the thing that we are all. I mean, it’s, it’s the object of divine design of our existence. And now we don’t, you know, it was like, can we quote that? It’s like I love that quote. I don’t know what Jo said it, but he, that’s what Aristotle said. Aristotle said that happiness is what we’re all aiming for. If you ask somebody, why did you do that? And then you keep asking why, why, why, why, why you’ll get back to the final answer is always, I think it’ll make me happy even if they’re wrong. Like I think drugs will make me feel better to make these bad feelings go away. We want to be happy as human beings. We are programmed for that. And the scriptures constantly talk about and point to this is what they did to become happy. So
[2:20:08] Michelle: what can I just go back and and correct your letter? Um What’s it called the happiness letter book? We don’t need it because we have in the book of Mormon Men are that they might have joy, right? Adam felt that men might be and men are that they might have joy so we can throw out the happiness letter and keep the truth of the principle. I just wanted to, to, to let us go forward with that if that’s
[2:20:29] Gary Arnell: OK. Good point. Yes. Um So, so Aristotle said that happiness is what we’re all seeking for. Well, how do you become happy? And you know, I googled when I was studying this years ago. Um I googled, what does you know, what is it, what is happiness? What is the pursuit of happiness? And it was all like, you get to have goats. If you want goats, you get to go skiing. If you want to go skiing, you get to have a garden. If you wanna, you know, you can, it’s like your hobbies. It’s just whatever, it’s like, that’s not at all. What happiness is comprised of happiness is. It’s actually four parts. It’s virtue, virtue is learning to do well, virtue is this the right way to at the right time towards the right person for the right length and the right amount. It’s like, it’s basically how, what would God do? What would Jesus do in that moment
[2:21:13] Michelle: for
[2:21:13] Gary Arnell: the right
[2:21:14] Michelle: reason as well for the right reason for
[2:21:16] Gary Arnell: the right reason. Yes. So all of that, that’s, that’s virtue and it’s like super hard to do. It’s like this fine point into either side. Aristotle said it’s a vice. So courage, courage, for example, is a virtue. If you don’t have enough courage, you’re a coward. If you have too much courage, you’re, it’s likely um um Bravado Rashness, um you know, charging the cannon with your men, you know, even though you’re all getting a blow to some other, it’s not, it’s not the right reason. It’s not the right. So it reminds me of this pursuit of virtue is a lifelong pursuit. It, it, it’s, it’s what builds character and it reminds me of Apollo 13, that scene in the movie where they’re both piloting, they’re trying to get back to earth and they have the window, the two windows and they have to keep the earth in the windows. They don’t bounce here. That’s what the battle for virtue is like. I can’t say I’m like a constant battle, you know, trying to keep me virtuous. So it’s a lifelong battle to be, to be virtuous. You know, Benjamin Franklin with his 20 points carrying it around all day trying to do the 21 things, you know, virtue. We don’t talk about it enough, but virtue is, it builds character. It engenders generosity, magnanimity, justice. It facilitates friendships of virtue. We have three types of friendships. He talked about friendships of pleasure, friendships of utility, friendships of virtue. And what happens with those friendships of virtue. They, those people come together because they’re drawn to one another. And Aristotle said they create communities based on and with the intent of perpetuating freedom and justice rather than being based on with the intent of perpetuating power. That’s the difference all other systems seek like I want power. I’m gonna gather people around me so I can get power. He says the way to do. If you want to have a free society, you have to be pursuing virtue because it’s those people who are people of virtue and character, who will come together and form society so they can have justice for their fellow men. So that’s the virtue element and this is the complete life is what Aristotle called it. Virtue is the first element second. And I won’t go into too much detail on these two wisdom you have is the ability to judge things that don’t change. Judgment is the ability to judge things that do change. And surprisingly, you have to have property because that allows you to be independent, self sufficient, generous magnanimous and pursuer justice on the behalf of your fellow men. This is where we get the life, liberty and
[2:23:30] Michelle: property.
[2:23:31] Gary Arnell: So people say why property versus happiness they have nothing to do with each other. It’s like no property is the piece of the four elements of happiness that government can have anything to do with. They can’t help you with their virtue, they can protect your property. That’s, that’s why the purpose of government is to protect life, liberty and properties because those three elements are necessary to happiness.
[2:23:50] Michelle: Property is a subset of happiness and it is necessary to be protected. And I love adding to it also, that part of the reason it was changed from property to happiness is because slaves were considered property and that was not according to the ideals and it was the anti um it was the abolitionists among the founders who insisted that we can’t have property in there because that would further embed slavery into our founding documents. I think that’s a good thing to include as well in this discussion. But this is, this is really cool. I really like learning this. OK.
[2:24:25] Gary Arnell: So, you know, in pursuit of happiness makes it the greater, the larger, you know, the Declaration of Independence is not so much a legal document. The constitution is like, how do we set up the government? The declaration set forth the purpose. And so what a great noble purpose, the pursuit of happiness. That’s why we’re setting up this whole structure with limited government and federalism and vertical and horizontal separation of powers. Like because power corrupts and we got, it’s like all because we’ve got to enable freedom. So we’re only gonna handle life, liberty and property. Everything else needs to be the states of the people. Because the idea is that people of virtue, these, these people who have become happy, have all four things, you know, God has given to uh to them so they can give so you receive and then you give back to society in, in great ways. And so
[2:25:06] Michelle: II, I will agree with you because the reason that I exist in, in what I’m doing is because of Larry H Miller and Gail Miller funding the Joseph Smith Papers project, which I think is a, is just like building a museum or a library or a hospital. So that’s a great example of magnanimity. And I would just say again, thank you to Gail Miller and Larry who’s passed for the incredible gift that they have given us. We’re all in debt in their debt.
[2:25:35] Gary Arnell: Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. And the, you know, when someone, you know the book of War talks about it’s, you know, it’s not a gift if you don’t want to give it, that’s, you know, speaking of what, what does it do when we twist these things when we like, you know, we, when we think of people on both sides of the political aisle, for example, we all want to, I think we all want to feed the hungry, clothe, the naked, heal the sick house, the homeless, liberate the captive, educate the ignorant. We all want to do those things. But how do you do? It is the question and under, you know, the progressive movement within the history of the United States was that, you know, life, liberty and the pursuit of life, liberty and protection of property is not the only thing we can do with government. Let’s use the power to do all these good things. But the the problem with that is what one, the concentration of power. But it also removes the responsibility from the individual. To be the person of virtue is judgment and property that gives back to their community. Because the the doing the good stuff belongs. That’s the job of the state under this vision. It’s no, the state just protects life, liberty and property. And we all try to become one of these people so that we can be the solution and that very different citizenry
[2:26:43] Michelle: and we can, we contribute all our way up. We don’t wait until we are wealthy to think. Now I can be magnanimous. We practice those virtues. All we practice wisdom, judgment, virtue, every step of the way as we build, build all of those things in our life.
[2:26:59] Gary Arnell: It’s how we become the person that knows what to do with that property. But we’ve accumulated over the course of our life. We don’t go and buy the additional, you know, the cabin or the yacht or the retire and go golfing for the rest of our lives or whatever, not to disparage any of those activities. The question is what does God want you to do with what you have accumulated? Like you need, if people have property, I want them to be people of virtue, wisdom and judgment, who know how to use it and what, what problems to solve, what orphanage to create, what hospital to endow. And they’re gonna know because they see their community, they’ve lived their whole lives, they, they know what problem to solve, you know, the, the citizenry that’s created under this model is different than we delegate all good doing to this, you know, and we, and we just pay our taxes. That’s our only responsibility. And I make sure I have enough retirement to just go in
[2:27:46] Michelle: and turn a blind eye to all of the corruption because that creates corruption. So, ok, this is awesome. OK. Continue.
[2:27:53] Gary Arnell: So, so when you regulate humanity or, or, or remove from them, the opportunity to do good, you diminish their, their ability or incentive to pursue virtue, character, wisdom and judgment. But this, this comes back to or brings us back to where we, the whole idea of the um those who keep the law happy. Are, are they where there’s where there’s vision where there’s no vision they perish. And this is, this is the last slide here. Um The founders understood all these ideas and it speaks to why prophets and religion and morality are are so crucial and why things like church history that are that are, that have problems that we don’t address um serve as a stumbling, they’re a stumbling block. They are a stumbling block to the very thing that our society needs to be happy. And so I think of some of the quotes that we were all familiar with these or most of us will be. But this is from uh George Washington’s farewell address where he said of all the dispositions and habits would lead which lead to political prosperity, happiness, religion and morality are indispensable supports in vain. Would man would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who would labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens, what duties to do to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, all those things, the mere politician, equally with the pious man ought to respect and cherish them. So those who are not particularly religious, understand the impact that this whole model has so respect and cherish it a volume could not trace all their connections with private and public Felicity happiness. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation for life? If the sense a religious obligation deserts the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice. We talked about that before, you know, putting your hand on the Bible. Let us with caution, indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion, whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring a popular government. The rule intends indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government who that is a sincere friend to. It can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric. And that’s so that is like to me, it comes all of this. We’ve been talking about the, the, the the problem with the history of the church. For me, one of them is it creates a stumbling block for those who would look to prophets who would look to prophetic utterance in the scriptures, uh for guidance on individual marital, familial, communal political civilizational happiness. It’s all tied in. And when we don’t properly address our church history, it inhibits or when someone comes up against it, it, it’s a stumbling block for the big picture. And so I’m, I’m really grateful to people like you who are doing the, I can’t even imagine how, how much hard work to, to wrestle with the difficult history. You know, I think of Fon Brodie and she’s, you know, she starts out the book with like, it’s really contradictory. It’s really hard. By the way, there were like 12 other prophets when Joseph Smith pray sprang up and said, hey, there’s like 12 others that she could document. It’s like, it’s a hard thing knowing who’s the prophet and what are the utterances from God. It’s, it’s a wrestle, we wrestle with God. We let God prevail. That’s how we gather Israel starting with ourselves. Thank you Michelle for the opportunity to share that with your audience.
[2:31:21] Michelle: Oh, I appreciate it so much. And I think it’s, I think it’s fabulous and like one of the comparisons I think about, even as we’ve been talking about, about the churches, you’ve kind of gone over to quite an extent, the ideals of the church and the gospel and how in some ways we’ve fallen short of those and laid out the ideals of our system of government, which is universally was up until recently. A agreed to be the greatest system in the world. I’m not talking about just America, I mean, the principles of self government and individual rights and individual worth of man, right? And e equality under the law, all of those principles. But as we talk about those, we see the ways that our society is failing to live up to those ideals and those principles and has throughout time. But does that mean we have to leave America? Right. Do we need to go? Fine. I turn in my card. I’m done. I’m leaving. And the same question, where’s better? Where do you want me to go? Right. And so I think that I see a similarity there, there’s something about, about blooming where you’re planted. What is it something where you stand? What did, what did president,
[2:32:29] Gary Arnell: where you, where you stand?
[2:32:30] Michelle: I
[2:32:30] Gary Arnell: was
[2:32:31] Michelle: like, where you stand outside where you stand? There’s something about God, what can I do to make this thing the best it can possibly be whether it’s the, the, the country or the church because I see a huge parallel between the two of them beautiful ideas that we are failing to live up to in many ways.
[2:32:51] Gary Arnell: Yeah, exactly. Yes.
[2:32:53] Michelle: So, Gary, thank you so much for coming and sharing this and just feeding all of us with all of this wonderful information. And thank you for, I’m so glad you tuned into the podcast that day. I’m so glad you got in that conversation and I, I do want to know about kind of your change of heart. You know, I, I assume this was not an easy transition for you. So do you regret tuning in? Do you wish you hadn’t, would you recommend to others to not get it? OK. Yeah.
[2:33:21] Gary Arnell: Gain knowledge as fast as you can. The glory of God is intelligence. You know, you’ve got to learn the truth and this is, this is a, you know, someone said this online about this movement of, you know, wow. And I know it’s not the first time that people have said Joseph Smith wasn’t up. But we have more, we have more info. I mean, I can’t believe what’s been dug up. Like really? I thought we were in the 21st century. It’s like we are just like the stuff is being, it’s like this is a freight train. This is a freight train coming at and, and I, I don’t know when you know it will, you know, go mainstream quote unquote, but it is, it feels like a freight train when you haven’t known about it and it suddenly comes into your life and, and it’s, and it can shake you up and that’s not that not, it’s not that everyone has to explore these things, but very likely someone in your life will and do you want to be the person that can help them, you know, with, with the stumbling block, help them over and, and rather than watch them trip and not know how to help them because I’ve had that happen too where I’ve had people that I love trip and fall over things. I didn’t know how to help them. And, and now that I realize I could have, I could, there’s, there’s things that I did with my time in the past that I could have spent preparing myself to help them. Not that I’m ever anyone’s savior, but I could, I could be a, oh, I’ve, I’ve traveled this road, let me, let me shine a light down this road for you. So it doesn’t seem so dark and dismal and, and like a dead end, you know.
[2:34:39] Michelle: Yes. And, and I guess for me it just comes down to this is our heritage. Oh, say what is truth to the, the dearest gem. That right? And, and like the whole restoration, the people’s lives could have been so much easier if they had just stayed where they were, stayed in the religion that they, but truth beckoned them forward, even if it created upheaval in their lives, even if it created hardship and uncertainty, that is what God calls us to. Right is true. So if I guess if we want to keep in the tradition of the restoration, seek truth at all costs, seek truth and,
[2:35:15] Gary Arnell: and, and as President Nelson said, you’ve got to have that closeness to the spirit. Absolutely. 100% agree with him on that.
[2:35:22] Michelle: Beautiful. Thank you so much for coming. And sharing all of this with us. It was just wonderful. It’s a pleasure to meet you.
[2:35:29] Gary Arnell: Likewise. Thank you, Michelle.
[2:35:32] Michelle: Thank you again to Gary for coming and sharing his thoughts. He had so many things that he’d been thinking about a lot that he wanted to share, that he felt very important to him. And I love being able to share messages from different perspectives. And I thought it was beautiful to listen to his journey of faith and how he was able to, has been able to navigate his faith. And his continued involvement in the church is which is what I’ve done. Of course, I know that everybody has their own direction and their own answers. But I hope that we all can take, can, can ponder on the things that one another shares because I think that they’re valuable. So thank you again to Gary and thank you for all of you who are joining us and I will see you next time.
