154: Response to Keith Erekson - No Sir, That's NOT History - 132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

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Transcript

[00:00] Keith Erekson: One of my favorite little memes says, I can do all things with a verse taken out of context.

[00:07] Michelle: Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy. It has been way too long since I’ve gotten to sit down with some of my favorite people and have a panel discussion. So I am very excited to bring you this amazing conversation. I have to sincerely thank Karen Hyatt, Gwendolyn Wine, and Whitney Horning for coming and joining me on a minute’s notice when I sent them this. Amazing fireside that I can’t even believe happened, that you are not going to believe that that that you are going to want to watch. Um, I want to, again, so sincerely thank all of those who donate to this podcast. It is such a huge help. Please, anyone else, consider if that is something you can do. And thank you for joining us as we take this deep dive into the murky waters of how some people look at Mormon polygamy. I am so excited to be here for another panel discussion with 3 of my favorite people in the world. I am here with Whitney Horning, Gwendoline Wine, and Karen Hyatt, who everybody who watches my channel knows these amazing women. And, um, I, I, I don’t even think we need to do any specific introductions. Everybody knows who these, who these incredible people are. But we have had some things happening, um, recently in the church, two things specifically that I wanted to talk about that I asked these three to gather with me to talk about. Before we begin, I know Karen wanted to give us a quick update.

[01:46] Karen Hyatt: So I turned my movie into a paper spiral bound packet. And I delivered them to the Quorum of the 12. So you’re absolutely not allowed to drop it off in person, but I talked to several of the secretaries and wow, they have been so nice, especially one of them was just a gem. And she was like, Well, just bring it in and I’ll come down and meet you and grab it. And then she called me right back and said, Security says I can’t do that. So it was super cute. But so she gave me instructions on how to mail it and how it would get distributed. And then she sent out an email for me to everybody explaining what it was and stuff. So anyway, maybe they already round filed it, they got it Monday morning, and I don’t know if it’s already in the trash or not, but, you know, you never know. And so maybe prayers and happy thoughts that way.

[02:37] Michelle: OK, that is great news. Very exciting to hear. And I know that, um, Karen and I will be doing another episode in a little while to update everybody on the progress of it and talk about a few other things. So, thank you for sharing that with us. So there were, there were a couple of things that have happened just this last week that I, well, I guess this, maybe it’s been a week and a half ago by the time this plays, but I wanted to show people some of you have seen this survey going around the internet net that’s been shared, and I think this is a huge deal. So it was a big survey that asked a ton of different questions, but this was one of the questions on it, and many people were able to take this survey. It apparently for a while had just an open link and anyone with a link could take the survey, and then I guess they shut it down and only people who were sent it could take it. But in case anyone can’t read it, this survey question says at the top, Please mark whether or not, whether you do or do not believe each of the following statements about plural marriage and then in parentheses polygamy. And um the options are, I do not believe this statement. I am not sure whether I believe this statement or I believe this statement. And these are the choices that let you mark how you feel about. One must enter into plural marriage, polygamy in order to be a Exalted. Some people will be forced into plural marriage, polygamy after mortality. Members of the church today practice plural marriage, polygamy and remain members in good standing. Joseph Smith did not institute plural marriage polygamy. It was initiated by Brigham Young without divine direction, is one of the options. And then if I enter into plural marriage polygamy, I would be committing a sin. So I was thrilled when I saw this. I know it’s just one checkmark on one question on one survey, but the fact that they are trying to get information about this seems to me, um, like a big, I don’t know, it’s kind of like, OK, we’re at least on their survey, right? What do you guys think of this? Does it strike you as like really exciting to see that happen?

[04:42] Gwendolyn Wynn: Michelle, you have been on their survey even earlier than that, even though it wasn’t your name, because I got one of these surveys. I just looked up when I did it because I forwarded it to a friend. September 2023. So not just a few months ago, September 2023, and it also had a question. This is more specific what you just read, but in September 2023, 1 of the questions was, do you believe that Joseph was a polygamist and or, you know, and you say you did not. And so that was already being asked back then and now we’ve got, it looks like more detail, so.

[05:19] Michelle: This, I think this is good, and I’m hoping that they realize how much this is growing, because the next thing that we’re going to go over is a, is a, um, fireside that just happened. And I’ve had mixed feelings about this because I don’t think that it was intended to be left up on YouTube. It was zoomed and it was recorded, but I don’t know if it was meant for more than just this stake that it was that it was shared in. But I want to from the outset to talk about why I thought it was important to talk about and Uh, so here, let me go ahead and introduce what the fire site is so everybody can know. This was your tough questions about church history answered. Oh, your questions about church history answered, even the tough ones. Ask your questions about church history to expert historians involved in keeping the church’s records and publishing its history. Have something you’ve always wondered about, know someone who is struggling, all questions will be welcomed during the conversation. So, and you can see that it was just Sunday, January 12th, and um the speaker, the presenter was Keith Erickson, and you can read his bio here. So apparently he used to be in charge of the church history library. And, um, I, I just was speaking to a friend who, who kind of understands these things. It was actually John Hayazek. I’ve been texting him about a couple of things tonight, and he told me that that actually probably sounds a little more prestigious than it is. It’s more like just man. being in charge of, of that facility rather than being like a PhD historian, you know? But he, he has been in charge of the church history library, and now I guess he’s been, he’s changed to outreach, whatever that means, Church history outreach. So he’s the presenter that gave this fireside and, um, I, as a friend sent it to me, I think, either on, I think on Sunday, and, um, and it was, it was on the internet for at least several days. I, I’ve, I’m hesitant to, I, I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. I really think this needs to be responded to, because this fireside shows the information I’ve been getting that this is Polygamy is the biggest issue for active members of the church. It’s the biggest thing that Temple recommend holding members of the church are dealing with by quite, quite a measure. Like, I think it’s like twice as important as anything else that, that people have on their mind, uh, issues. And this question of Joseph Smith’s polygamy is growing like crazy. As you will see in this fire site, so I think it’s important to show both how much of an issue this is for them. And this is a 2 hour long fire site that Keith speaks, and he spends 40 minutes on answering the questions about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, about polygamy, but they’re all framed generally in did this start with Joseph Smith or did this start with Brigham Young. So that’s amazing. And I also, I, I, I sent it to um Karen and Whitney and Gwendolyn, and I think you guys, let’s first just talk about our reactions to the entire video. Does anyone want to go first?

[08:30] Karen Hyatt: I didn’t know they had the term outreach for gas lighting, that’s cool.

[08:38] Michelle: It did feel very gaslighting. That’s the perfect word for for almost all of it. I, I, I, I was actually amazed. I, I, I just, I, my jaw kept dropping more and more and more as I kept listening. Does anyone else have anything go ahead

[08:54] Whitney Horning: it made me think of when, you know, in The Wizard of Oz, they’re like, there’s nothing to see here, and there’s the man behind the curtain pulling the strings. There’s nothing to see. Everything’s wonderful, you know, well everything’s falling apart in the background, it made me think that this fireside and these, these, um, the way it was presented is to Basically lull people back into that carnal sense of security that they can trust in their leaders, and they don’t need to invest any time of their own in researching these topics. You know, that, that’s how it felt to me that it was very charismatic and laughter and kind of some mocking towards those of us who are seekers of truth. And like, hey, you’re OK, you just keep staying, you know, active and coming to church and we’ll do the thinking for you.

[09:55] Michelle: Yeah.

[09:56] Karen Hyatt: Did you guys think any of the questions got answered?

[10:01] Michelle: Not very well. They kind of got dismissed. Yeah. When were you gonna say

[10:06] Gwendolyn Wynn: something? Yeah, one thing that I’ve at first thought, is that what’s going on here? And then as it kept going, I started checking and I, yes, in fact, he did not accurately quote one scripture. Nor did he use any historical references. The entire presentation, 2+ hours, was him kind of riffing on the historical information and paraphrasing and absolutely misquoting to a a terrible extent, scripture. And I just thought. Uh, at the end, I’ll kind of like, at the end, the leader said, oh, I feel like we’ve just been at a Thanksgiving meal. We’re just so well fed. And I thought, only if you weren’t hungry. Like, if you were hungering for these answers, you were given a boatload of empty calories. Like, that didn’t satisfy any of my deep questions. All I was told was a bunch of these just quick thoughts and Paraphrases and don’t worry, you know, as, as they said, don’t worry, don’t look over here. So I just thought, if, if this is, this is not the best we can do for sure as a church, but if this is how we’re handling these questions, people will continue to leave over this, like a lot of people. So, and, and it’s so sad because there really are good answers and it just Involves reframing your paradigm. He was perfectly fine to have this ability to say, hey, I don’t know, and it’s OK to not know, but there were some things that he felt so confident about knowing that was just like, well, that’s why people are leaving because you’re telling them that you have to know what what you’re told by by these leaders instead of what the scriptures tell us or what God tells us ourselves in prayer.

[11:56] Michelle: Right, right, that’s so good. I did, thank you for sharing that because I want to set up the framing of the beginning. I did feel like this presentation sort of expected that the entire audience was completely ignorant. Right? This, this presentation would work for an audience who didn’t have access to scripture themselves or who didn’t bother to read it much and who didn’t have interest or access to historical documents. Then it would have been fine, right? So I, so I first of all, I want to just, I, I guess part of my, um, wanting to respond to this is to beg. Our church historians and our church leaders to do better. We need better than this. We deserve better than this, and, and the church deserves better than this because as Gwendolyn says, this does harm. This really does do harm when they respond in these ways. The other way that I, that, that the other thing I’m really concerned about is it feels to me like it also increases division, because I felt like this was designed to be to people who aren’t necessarily. Investing as much time and effort and spiritual work in an intellectual work in the scriptures and the historical documents. And so it’s telling those people, those people doing that, they’re dummies. They’re idiots. They have too much pride, they have too much fear. Don’t listen to them. They’re just stupid, you know, you know, and so when we, when, when so many of us are trying to Reach out to our friends and families and loved ones, and they’re being given this message. The last thing we need is more division. There was just no compassion, empathy, openness, sincerity, or honesty that I could sense from this. It was, it was just this like gaslighting, nothing to see. Don’t worry about the scripture. Say, I’m gonna tell you what they say, and you only have to listen to me. That is how I sense. And I also was concerned in the introduction. They did let us know that Elder Martinez, who, who is over the church history department, I guess he’s the general authority over the church history department, he set up this fire site. He recommended it, and he, so, so that’s why I guess I’m just requesting, we really, really, really need to do better. I, um, the other thing I want to say is I felt really bad responding to a video that people couldn’t watch and not playing it in full. I, I, I have worked so hard to try to not take anything out of context. But so it’s been, I’ve been torn about it. What I have decided to do is to, in a separate video, I will post this, this fireside in full so that people can watch it. I might only leave it up for a period of time, maybe a week or two from the time that this airs, and then, and then take it down because I don’t want to, but so that way people can watch the full video for themselves to see what it is we’re responding to, because I, I, I. I know with all of you, I have spent 2 days painfully watching this video, making the most painful decisions over what parts do we respond to. I told all 3 of these ladies that what we really need to do is schedule 8 to 12 hours and watch the whole thing through, pushing the pause button because there is that much to respond to. We can’t even begin to touch it. We’re just grabbing a few things. So, um, I’ll go ahead and really quickly introduce the video and then we’ll start into the clips. So first, he, he, he, I just want to go in really quickly to how he sets things up. I won’t go into it much, but he really does seem to set up what he’s going to be talking about in a way that he can use throughout the rest of the time. It felt, I felt sort of manipulated. He’s talking about this binary, and we have this culture war and everything has to be either or and he keeps setting it up that way. And then he goes into something that I hope Karen will be excited to respond to. Let me go ahead and play the first clip.

[15:30] Keith Erekson: There are conspiracies in history. I taught history. I’m a history professor. There are lots of them. A conspire, and it’s defined by law in different jurisdictions. A conspiracy is when more than one people or groups do two things. One, they intend to act together, and then they do that action, and it causes harm. That’s the third part. A conspiracy theory, by contrast, is the idea that the whole world is organized against you, that everything is being controlled by, I don’t know, the Illuminati or the Danites or the correlation department, make up your whatever your conspiracy theory is. And they’re just nonsense. They’re not that level of a theory is not built on evidence.

[16:19] Michelle: The floor is yours, Karen, you get the first response at this one.

[16:24] Karen Hyatt: It was so sad when he first started talking and he said, you know, there, there is such a thing as conspiracies. And I was like, oh, this is great, because usually people will say, um, they’ll go, 0, 9/11, that’s just a conspiracy. And what they mean to say is that’s just your silly conspiracy theory. But they say it’s just a conspiracy, so they don’t even know what they’re saying. So here he was saying, look, there are conspiracies, and that’s when two or more people get together and do this nefarious thing secretly, and I was like, hot dog, he’s actually going to explain the difference. And then he says, and then there’s conspiracy theories, conspiracy theories when the whole world’s against you. I was like, what are you talking about? He cites Abraham Lincoln. He said, Everyone knows about John Wilkes Booth, but they don’t know that there were two other conspirators. He said, so that was a conspiracy. And I was like, correct. And then he gives that crazy definition of conspiracy theory, and I was like, are you serious? When someone First started to suspect that John Wilkes Booth hadn’t acted alone and that there were others. That was a conspiracy theory until the facts came out and it became conspiracy fact, as President Benson called them, you know, so it was just such a bizarre, weird, right off the bat. What a weird thing to say.

[17:41] Michelle: Yeah, let’s play the next part of it.

[17:44] Keith Erekson: Here’s what it appeals to. It appeals to fear. Somebody bad is trying to get you, and it appeals to pride. I’m gonna tell you a secret thing that somebody else doesn’t know.

[17:59] Gwendolyn Wynn: Can I just, can I just read something from the Doctrine and Covenants, which I know that he knows. I know he knows that, but we are to waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness wherein we know them, and they are truly manifest from heaven. That section 123 verses 11 to 14. I, I just like, where is he? Where is he scripturally, where is he doctrinally? What is he doing? Why is he telling people they shouldn’t think that there’s more going on than meets the eye.

[18:31] Michelle: And why is he starting a presentation on church history this way, right? Like, like I’m going to give a presentation on church history. So first I’m gonna talk about those crazy conspiracy theory people. Like, like

[18:47] Whitney Horning: the fastest way to shut us down. It’s the fastest way to actually instill fear into others so they won’t listen. So it made me think of, um, in the mid 1800s, like we all know this. I think everybody does this, the history of hand washing for doctors, right? So the mid 1800s, there’s a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis or Semmelweis. And he noticed that the mortality rate of women who gave birth with a doctor attending was significantly higher than women who gave birth with from a midwife. And he started, he came up with a theory that those doctors were working on cadavers and then going and delivering babies and infecting the women. So he says let’s wash our hands. Super simple, you know, and what happened was all of the other learned physicians were offended and feared that they had actually caused these women to die. And their pride, they weren’t willing to admit that something that simple, they had caused the death of these women. And so he actually was, you know, looked down on, don’t listen to him. Finally, those who did, the mortality rate dropped down to the same rate as midwives, and then he even got the midwives to start washing their instruments. So they weren’t infecting a woman, they’d just given birth to one woman and took that that disease with them to the next, and it got down to the mortality rate dropped down to 1%. So to me, I, I think that that was the same idea. So learned people like this man considers himself a learned, you know, he has master’s and master’s degrees and, you know, other things. He’s been a professor. Um, how dare a bunch of, you know, housewives like us. Go search this evidence ourselves and actually come up with um Better proof and better evidence because we’re literally speaking to the learned and the wise and saying, look, your, your education has caused you to stumble. On you’re too you’re too prideful to be able to humble yourself and, and say maybe we’ve had it wrong all these years, and can we take a different look. You know, all of us had to overcome that pride. We all thought we were in the one true church that had all truth, and we had to overcome that stumbling block to and humble ourselves and say, maybe we’ve been looking at this evidence wrong all these years.

[21:35] Michelle: Mhm. I think, I think so. I really was throughout this, this presentation, was astounded by the amount of projection, what felt to me like projection, accusing anyone who thinks differently of fear and pride when that’s what I see see through so much, even his beginning setting it up and saying, In this, in this binary way of thinking, we say, I’m right, you’re wrong. I’m the only one that can be right. You can, and I’m like, isn’t that exactly what, what, what you’re saying throughout this? I also, it made me think we need a new logical fallacy. I know this is really ad hominem because if you can call us conspiracy theorists, then he doesn’t. But it’s like That’s not specific enough. We need the new conspiracy theorist fallacy, where if I can call something a conspiracy theory, I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to talk about it. I don’t have to look at evidence. I don’t have to do any work. I can just dismiss them no matter what and and have my pride and my fear, right? And so, so that was interesting. I think this, oh, go ahead. I,

[22:33] Karen Hyatt: I think they call that thoughts stopping. Have you heard that term? It’s a thought stopping technique. So I think it exists, you know what I mean, what you’re saying,

[22:43] Michelle: so

[22:43] Karen Hyatt: lazy.

[22:45] Michelle: It is. And I think this next clip helps us see what one of the reasons he starts out with the conspiracy theory because he kind of builds on it right here.

[22:53] Keith Erekson: Another question that you didn’t ask but I’m gonna just offer this one because it’s a very common one that I get. People say, oh, you work for church history we’ve heard of you guys you hide stuff you hide the church’s history. It’s your job to make sure people don’t know it. I say, yeah, you’re right, that is totally uh what I do. Uh this is another little conspiracy theory angle, right? And so, um, people are always encountering things from church history they didn’t know and then they get upset they’re like, why didn’t I know that? And so when we encounter things that we didn’t know, in the kind of conspiracy culture war model, the mindset is to think, well, the only way I couldn’t know that is if someone was hiding it from me. Because clearly, I know everything. I, I mean, you can hear the, the hubris in there, right?

[23:50] Michelle: I’m astounded again and again and again. The yeah, someone you, I, I don’t want to call on you. You whoever has to go, go.

[23:59] Gwendolyn Wynn: I, this is reminding me of of something that happened when we had the teachings of the president of the church, and it was Brigham Young manuel time. I was sitting in sacrament meeting, and one of my good friends was giving a talk. She had been, it was the beginning of the year and she’d been tasked with introducing Brigham Young as, as a person. And so she gave this talk. And as I sat there, I was listening for something about polygamy, because that was kind of my tender point, my sensitive topic. And she didn’t say a word about it. She gave his entire biography, everything. Except that he had married many, many women, and I was, I got more and more upset. I was like, I love this person, but what is she doing? This is really weird. And like, I know he married 50 something women. Don’t tell me he didn’t. Why are you giving this talk as if like because she talked about his wife, singular. He married, um, I think Marianne, was it Marianne Engle, who was the one who he married and then she lived during the rest of his time alive, but she only mentioned that one wife. And I was so upset and then I went and so I went home that day and I, I opened the manual because I was like, this is nuts. And sure enough, the entire biography which was listed at the front of the book only listed the marriage to his wife who then who passed away, and then the next wife he married after when he was a widower. And that was the last time any marriage was mentioned. And so I was like, oh, that’s why she didn’t say it because she just used the church manual and went through and gave his biography that way. So You know, um, I, I completely agree with him, just because I haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean that it’s not real, it’s not true. And, and of course people aren’t hiding things from me just because I don’t know about them. But like, don’t act like we’re not trying to downplay polygamy, because we try to downplay it. If we collectively could just put it in the closet and never have to think about it again, we would do that. And it feels like that’s what we’re trying to do on some level, and it’s just Like, we know what happened, but you’re, you are kind of putting some things to the side that people should know about.

[26:15] Karen Hyatt: I have two things to say about what he said there. When he says, OK, so people have done this to you, Michelle, like I’ve heard, you know, seen comments and things from the scholars on your comment section and they’ll be like, this isn’t new information, there’s nothing new here. And I’m like, exactly. Like that’s the point. It’s not new. You knew it. It’s new to us, and you might want to ask yourself what you’ve done wrong, that it’s new to us when you knew it. So frustrating. And then the resources he suggested, like the gospel, we’re hiding it on the gospel library app. I’m, I’m being so snarky, but I was really upset, but he, it was like, that’s not funny. I get on there and I typed in. What do you think I typed in 8 April 1844 and a raise of hands. How many think Hiram’s speech came up? I typed in noseru. How many people think Hiram’s speech came up with that? Mhm.

[27:15] Michelle: You can also try things like cloven foot or cloud of blackness from his speech the year before. You can try all kinds of things. And this is, I’m so torn on this because I, on the one hand, I so appreciate, well, 3 things. I really do appreciate the difficult spot the church is in. It’s really in a tough spot. And it’s not our current church leaders spot. Like, it’s all just kind of happened as it’s happened. People responded to the time that they were in the way that they did, and it’s fallen in the lap of the leaders today. So I do understand that. And I have appreciated their steps toward transparency. I mean, how thankful are we all for the Joseph Smith papers, for example, right? And they are coming out with the William Clayton, um, diaries, and, you know, like, like they are, they are trying to be more transparent, but then at the same time, it’s like getting pulled back like this, where this whole presentation. It was designed to be as opaque as possible, to make us all not know anything that was happening, right? And I mean, and it helped me, part of the reason I wanted to share this also is like, I’ve been so troubled by saints, by the book Saints, the history. Like, why, why? I, I can’t understand. And when I see, oh, this is a guy that’s high up in the church history department, it helps me understand, oh, this is the mindset that this is coming from. So, OK, now I have a little better understanding, and I can put saints in its place along with this guy’s presentation, right? And just hope that we do better, that, that we get better because we need better than this. It was, I mean, this statement was so massively gaslighting. And then victim blaming. Like, if you didn’t know something, if, if you’re sad that you didn’t know something, you’re just too proud. You have too much pride to think that you wouldn’t have known it, right? Like, what are they, what is he even talking about? So if anyone does, does anyone have anything else?

[29:11] Whitney Horning: Yeah, I was just gonna say that it, it would have been better had he just admitted that he himself doesn’t know everything. Yeah, like these, like, we think that they should all know everything, and they don’t. Um, we have a friend who made an appointment with, I think it was Elder Ballard. I think he’s the one that’s a used car salesman, or was, and went in and asked him a bunch of really difficult church history questions, and he just like threw his hands up and he said, Hey, hey, hey, I don’t really know anything about church history. I’m just a used car salesman. So we think that these people should know, and they don’t, you know, they did a, um, survey a few years ago for, um, bishops, state presidents, general authorities, how many of them had read the Book of Mormon, and there were some who’ve never read it. Like they’ve been businessmen, husbands, fathers, busy, busy, busy, and gotten into church leadership at very young ages, and they, that’s like a whole, like a bishop, that’s like a part-time job, unpaid. You know, you get to say president, that’s even busier. And so we, we need to give them some grace and charity that they don’t know this stuff, but they need to also be honest in their answers when they answer these kind of questions and say, you know, we don’t even know all this. Like we still have things presented to us. To me, This entire presentation demonstrated that he doesn’t actually know any of this evidence or source material. He’s just parody, you know, the, the the line basically.

[30:50] Michelle: That’s sure, but it, I, I hope that. I hope that that is the case, cause that’s, that would be the, the generous interpretation, because it was difficult. I will say I appreciate how you say we need to give them grace. I also, I was just, you heard it right there, and it gets more intense at times, the sort of snottiness, for lack of a better word, just this kind of arrogant snottiness and dismissiveness. And I want to give them grace, but I also want to request that they give us grace. The leaders and his Historians and just whoever, and, and people who don’t know, that give us grace that maybe we are intelligent people who really are sincere and really care and deserve love and, and, um, empathy and better answers, right? Like, I would be thrilled with, these are really hard answers. We have some hard issues. Yeah, we just, you know, follow the spirit. Like, like, there are lots of ways you could answer without this degree of snottiness and gaslighting. And that’s part of what I find troubling. So going forward now, we’re gonna dive in. We had to skip over so many things as I like, I desperately wanted to respond to how he frames Mountain Meadows. I know that Whitney wanted to respond to how he talks about the Shroud of Turin and so many, I’m sure we all have a dozen. Issues, but for for time’s sake, we’re gonna go on, so as I said, he spends a full 40 minutes talking about polygamy focusing mainly on questions by and about monogamy affirmers who are questioning the origin of polygamy. So we’ll go ahead and start with those.

[32:20] Keith Erekson: OK, now. Now it’s gonna get real. I’m gonna read this whole thing. Is there a place in the church for members who are faithful to their covenants, but are now discovering through extensive research of the scriptures, the Joseph with papers, prayer, that polygamy is not ever commanded by God, that Joseph Hira and Emma fought polygamy and Brigham Young and others like he. Kimball Willard Richards, altered the narrative after Joseph was murdered to fit with what they were doing. Or do these individuals need to be flushed out, punished, and excommunicated for their beliefs? OK, that’s how it was typed up right for us. Did you hear that? Did you hear the really strong either or talking about somebody else’s sex life?

[33:11] Michelle: First of all, can I just, whoever sent that question in, please let me know who you are. Yes, like round that was an excellent, excellent question, and the way he dismissively read it. Uh, and then, and then he only chose it. He did say before this, I cut it out, that this was, um, representative of several dozen questions that were sent in. And he chose to read this one because he could frame it as the binary, is it this or this, we’ll go on to it. But should I go on to the next clip or does anyone want to respond to the first one?

[33:44] Gwendolyn Wynn: I just, I just want to say that this really shows that the people Who they requested this fireside for know some things. They’ve done their own research, and they’ve probably gone to the Lord themselves. And they’re just like, Hey, what you’re telling, what I’ve been fed is not true. So what I would like to know is, is there space for me? Because I, I’ve actually researched and I’ve gone to God myself. And I’m like, Oh, OK. Polygamy is not of God. And that’s great news, honestly, Keith, this is great news. You were the one, you were the one who was like, sisters, don’t worry about it, and I’m telling you, yes, we won’t

[34:23] Whitney Horning: to dismiss this by by flippantly saying. Oh you want to talk about somebody’s sex life?

[34:29] Michelle: I, well,

[34:30] Whitney Horning: let’s talk about the sex life then because it’s been proven, and there are historians who are active LDS and who are very, um, academically acclaimed who believe Joseph never had sex with. Any of them. So therefore, if sex equals marriage and polygamy equals sex, then it equals marriage, then there was no polygamy. I mean, we can reverse engineer that. So that felt so dismissive and flippant, like, oh, you just want to talk about their sex life.

[35:00] Karen Hyatt: Very flippant. And even when he said, these people that have, oh, I don’t know, read a scripture or prayed and they thought Joseph was, and I was like, did you just dismissively say that they’ve read scriptures and prayed and come to this conclusion? A

[35:13] Whitney Horning: scripture. So like, just like what? Like a, a verse.

[35:17] Michelle: There’s only does the same thing with he says it with all three. The scripture. Joseph Smith papers prayer, blah, like, like all these useless embarrassing things that I can just dismiss.

[35:28] Karen Hyatt: It was shocking, that’s

[35:28] Whitney Horning: all just about sex, people. So we don’t want to talk about that.

[35:33] Michelle: And I just want to say, Keith, while you’re talking about people’s sex life and trying to shame us for that, can you talk to us more about Fannie and the bar? like, like, right, it’s it us that is focusing on sex. Oh my gosh. OK, go ahead, sorry.

[35:49] Gwendolyn Wynn: I just wanted to add that the word consummate means to complete. So if you have not consummated a marriage, then you don’t have a marriage. That’s why you can get an adult. And so, like, you can’t separate, as Whitney said. And then later, he even mentions, oh yeah, he probably wasn’t in sexually involved with them. So it’s just like, OK, then he wasn’t married. Own it, right.

[36:10] Michelle: And you don’t get to shame us and silence us by pretending that we’re focused on sex when we are being talked about like it is, it, this is marriage, this is what we’re talking about. It was so weird. So let’s go on with the next part of this clip.

[36:24] Keith Erekson: Now, I want to answer this question the same way the savior did when he was faced with this identical scenario. The question puts two extremes. One is, I know the truth. Brigham and Hebrew and Willard made this up. They changed it, it’s full of lies, they put it on Joseph and Hiram, or do I get excommunicated? You hear, you hear that’s the way they’re framing it. The answer is neither of those extremes. The answer, neither of those extremes aligns with historical sources or scripture. And so they’re just wrong. Now, you’re gonna be kicked out of the church? No, I told you I’m just a guy. Talk to your state president if you, if that’s what you’re worried about.

[37:12] Gwendolyn Wynn: OK, it’s too much. It’s just this is the exact same question that the savior was faced with. It’s just like, was he though? Was he

[37:22] Karen Hyatt: faced with this the Bible. Uh, it, you know, what’s funny is that the question was, is there space for me if I believe Joseph was innocent of this, or do I need to be kicked out if I believe it? And did you hear what he pretended the two questions were? On one side was, Brigham made it up, and on the other side was, I get kicked out. I was like, those are both on the same side. Like, what, where, where did we lose you?

[37:58] Michelle: How did he create that as the binary, and then the truth is in the middle. What? Yeah, and I wasn’t terribly comforted by his, his answer. It was like, I’m not anybody, talk to your state president. I was like, not a very comforting answer, not a very comforting answer.

[38:17] Whitney Horning: And maybe he is not aware, but there are people who have been excommunicated for this very thing. We’ve got Jacob Isbell was called in and excommunicated because he was teaching his elders quorum that Joseph didn’t do polygamy. I have dear friends, Joe and Kathy from Kentucky, who were just excommunicated a few months ago for believing that Joseph didn’t do polygamy. So it does happen. They’re not, and they’re not even going around and like shoving it in people’s faces. You know, and, and so maybe he’s not aware of that, but that’s a very painful thing, and that’s something that people are very concerned about. They want to exonerate Joseph Smith. They want to hold him up as the pure holy monogamist man he was, and then they are facing church discipline for that. So, I mean, Michelle, you’ve been called in. How many times and threatened with that for,

[39:17] Michelle: well, I, I have to say it, it’s been, if some of these people who are harassing my local leaders constantly were in my local leadership, it would be a different story. There, I, it is, it’s definitely not like. A comfortable place to be because so many of us are extremely loyal, active, faithful members who love the church and and highly value our membership in the church and yet feel so. Convicted by the spirit that this is true and that it needs to be shared, right? Like, if we feel called to share this, I know all four of us here have felt this calling, right? And so do we want to just turn up, I mean, anyway, I This was painful. This was painful to see this beautiful, sincere question that is expressing pain and have him turn it into this, or this, ah, you know, I, I was very sad about that. I’ll, I’ll play the next part, unless, unless anyone has anything.

[40:19] Gwendolyn Wynn: I just want to add that I know that, that all of you know people who believe this, who have had the negative consequences, but also I want to assure those who are like, am I alone in this? I know that you’re not alone in this. You can see it from the online community, but, um, there are many people who have higher callings who are like, you know, it doesn’t make sense to my heart for me to come out about this right now, but I believe this and you should keep going. So awesome. I, I just, I’m quite astonished that, that he would treat it so flippantly when it’s like, you have no idea how many people believe this and how high the callings are of, of this belief. So I don’t want us to feel insecure, like, oh, it’s just the lowly people. Like, nope, there are people in leadership who believe this, and so we’re, we’re not alone in this, and, and that’s also why I kind of feel like, hey, I don’t want to ever come out against the leaders and say like the leaders are blah blah blah because it’s like. We don’t know what people personally believe and what they may not be in a position to publicly um announce, but they might have been converted in their hearts and just the fact that Karen gave that booklet to all the leadership. And, and they were given Carolyn Pearson’s book, The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, now, some years ago, 7 years ago, 8 years ago. So these things have been working on our hearts. I mean, as, as people who are affected by the doctrine of polygamy, this has been working on our hearts since all of us were born into the church. So we know that this affects our leaders as well, and I just want to kind of put it out there that that this is not just for the little people up and down the up and down the hierarchy, there are people who believe it.

[42:02] Michelle: And, and I’m glad that you paused there because I also, I didn’t like how Keith answered this very important, very sincere question. So I want to answer it. The answer is, yes. Yes, there is room for you and for me and for us in this church. Yes, there absolutely is. And if a church leader doesn’t see that, that’s unrighteous dominion. And it is improper to threat. Somebody’s church membership. I do always recommend that we be very thoughtful and circumspect and respectful and not bring, I, I don’t, I don’t want everyone to bring their various beliefs into the Sunday meetings, you know, that’s like, like, we need to be able to have a peaceful, um, non-threatening church meetings. But the answer is no, we do not need to be kicked out of the. No, we don’t. And no, we don’t need to leave. I, I spend every week promoting that message. So Keith, let me help you answer that one. The answer is, yes, there is room for you in this church. No, you don’t need to be kicked out. OK, we’ll go on to the next part.

[43:05] Keith Erekson: I wanted to do is talk about the details about plural marriage. There are dozens of questions in this pile about plural marriage. That was one that kind of frames it.

[43:16] Michelle: So I wanted to include that one just because he does say there are dozens of dozens, this was one stake, one stake, and by far the most questions they got were those dozens about plural marriage framed by that one. Uh, amazing, right? Uh, like someone being able to articulate the question that well, and then him saying it’s representative of dozens of other questions. I, I just was like, Hey, you, you tell us again that this is just a flash in the pan. This is just a trend, a fad that’s gonna die away. I don’t think so. And it’s not because we’re all such good spokespeople. It’s because the truth is, no unhallowed hand can stop this work from progressing. It’s just, it’s just true. Oh, and I did, I did think that that was fun, that he said that in connection to that survey being put out. I’m like, OK, maybe, maybe they’re gonna figure this out. I really hope that they see this and don’t keep trying to dismiss it, shame it, accuse it, write it off, and then, um, prosecute, persecute it, right? I hope, I hope that they see there are so many members of the church that you don’t want to lose. Please don’t have another, um, a purge of people who believe this way. So should we go on to the next clip?

[44:33] Keith Erekson: Being misled to think the things that you wrote about Joseph, uh, that’s not a sin, but you have been misled. And so, Humility is really hard. I know. We’ve talked about that. It’s so much easier to say, I discovered this thing on a website and I, that’s a, that’s appealing to your pride, it’s appealing to your fear. It’s really hard in American culture and so I plead with you, I plead with the spirit of the Lord that it will help you uh to think through this.

[45:07] Karen Hyatt: Amen. 00 wait, were you talking to us?

[45:13] Michelle: For me, this was representative of the exact wrong approach. Please don’t do this. This is exactly the wrong thing to do. Any thoughts? then we’ll go on to the next one.

[45:27] Whitney Horning: Well, I love how he says you found this little piece of evidence on a website, and I think, well, that website most of us go to is called um Joseph Smith Papers, and it’s run by the church

[45:38] Michelle: or Church of Jesuschrist.org, right? That’s history

[45:41] Whitney Horning: library catalog, you know, so

[45:45] Michelle: yes. Those, those darn little stupid websites, I mean how silly are we? So now yeah now comes another polygamy question that he also says is representative of dozens of questions.

[46:00] Keith Erekson: Uh, with all the recent controversy on social media regarding plural marriage, what evidence is there that Joseph Smith practiced it? Especially since he publicly denied he did. OK, so this is a good question because it was asking about evidence, what evidence is there for plural marriage, and it talks about a denial. So the information that I’ll share is cited if you go to the Gospel topics essays, the little Navu Temple one, there’s one in there called Plural marriage in Kirtland and Navu. That’s when Joseph is living in Kirtland and Nu and so you can find the sources there so.

[46:37] Michelle: I want to pause there for a second to say, I reread that essay for this when he said that. I don’t know if anyone else did. Did any of you see any of the sources that he kind of sort of talks about in that essay? And he, I think that what he’s saying is the version of history I’m going to tell you, you can read there, but I don’t think that it has any of the sources that, that are important in this. So anyway, I’ll keep going.

[47:05] Gwendolyn Wynn: Michelle, can I, can I point something out? Yes, he says, and it talks about a denial. He kind of, he minimizes it, right? The question was actually that Joseph denied it, meaning he denied it over and over and over, and in fact, he only denied it. There are no teachings about polygamy um in a, in a positive sense by Joseph. They’re only denials and uh don’t do this teachings, and he just kind of was like, oh yeah, and it talks about a denial, and it’s like, yeah, it’s not a denial.

[47:38] Michelle: We’re going to get into those in depth because I really did. I wanted to spend less time on his tactics. We’ve talked about them a bit, but I want to spend more time on his actual claims because we can just show factually that not only is it unpleasant how he’s doing this and unhelpful, it’s also just flat out incorrect.

[47:57] Keith Erekson: Let’s talk a little bit about evidence in history, because it works differently than other disciplines.

[48:05] Michelle: So now I, I cut it out, I again, I had to cut out so much. He goes on this big long thing about What is it, cow stomachs and Abraham Lincoln and like how we find evidence, right? I didn’t find it to be anyway, it was, so,

[48:18] Karen Hyatt: um, just a real quick for anybody that’s like cow stomachs and Abraham Lincoln, that was pretty wild. But he really did. He was like, if you want to know how many stomachs a cow has, you could just open one up. But you, if you want to know, you know, if there was a conspiracy, a conspiracy about Abraham and Lincoln, you can’t just open him up. It was so weird. But yeah, so that’s why history is different.

[48:39] Gwendolyn Wynn: It was, it was if you want to know if Abraham Lincoln was racist, wasn’t it? So it was about his feelings and his beliefs. It’s just like, yeah, we’re not, we’re not asking to dissect Joseph. We’re literally looking at the records that he left.

[48:52] Michelle: Yeah, no one wants to exhume Joseph here. That’s not our, that’s not our quest. OK, so I’ll play the rest of him talking a little bit more about evidence.

[49:00] Keith Erekson: In history, evidence is always limited. The past is gone, those people are dead. We, I would love to ask them all kinds of things. All we have are little pieces that are left over. So historical evidence, one error that people make is they find one little piece and they say, see, here was the whole past. And humility tells us I’ve got one piece and

[49:25] Michelle: I just have to respond to that quickly as he goes on and talks about the evidence he claims we have from Joseph, right? Like, who is actually looking at the evidence comprehensively in this topic? I would strongly claim it’s those of us who are researching it as we all have done.

[49:39] Keith Erekson: So historians, we like to find lots of pieces. That’s what gives us confidence and we put the pieces together. When we talk about historical evidence, There’s some kind of rules of thumb that we use. One of them is we like it if it come, we like it more if it comes from people closer to the action rather than farther away. Somebody said, I was there, I did it, that’s better than somebody saying, I, I heard them all say something. So we like it the the people uh closer. We also like it better if it’s closer in time. So, if you go home and write in your journal tonight, we like that better than if you wrote it 50 years from now saying, I remember this meeting.

[50:25] Michelle: I don’t need to respond. Go ahead. I

[50:27] Gwendolyn Wynn: think he just, he just made the case of why so many people are like, I don’t know if Joseph was a polygamist. It seems kind of weird because he never said it, and nobody, nobody said much about it until they were all the way in Utah and they were under threat from people wanted to convert to the RLDS. I mean. He just made our case.

[50:47] Karen Hyatt: Not one wife, not she didn’t write in her journal at the time. I was like, are you hearing yourself? I like that’s exactly what the historians rely on is late, far, far, far away testimonies.

[51:02] Michelle: Yep.

[51:04] Keith Erekson: So I’m gonna start with evidence that is close to the person, Joseph himself and close to the time from the 1840s. So we have three sources directly from Joseph. One is his journal where he records a marriage. Two of them are revelations that get written down and so, uh, one of them we have in the Doctrine of Covenant section 132. Another one was an instruction to, uh, one of the men about how to perform uh ceiling. That one’s in the Joseph Smith papers. So now, if

[51:36] Michelle: OK, so I was going to quickly respond to these pieces of evidence. I know all of us have much to say, but if you notice, he said we have 3 pieces directly from Joseph. The first one he wrote in his journal A marriage. He recorded a marriage in his journal. I, I, I, he was so cryptic about these. So I have two guesses of what this might be. You guys can tell me if you think I’m right or wrong, because if anyone is like, Oh, I know, I know. I mean, I think we’re all quite expert on the sources, you know? And I, I wasn’t like, Oh, I know, I know what he’s talking about. So anyway, we have this page. This is the this is after the last page of Joseph’s, um, Mark. through July 1843 journal that Willard Richards created and kept right and it’s even the Joseph Smith his story and the Joseph Smith Papers editors say that this was written after the fact by Thomas Bullock, most likely in Utah, right? And you can see it says Mirinda Johnson to Joseph Smith and it says Lucy Walker and Joseph, and then it records several other bizarre ceilings. This is not a contemporaneous. Document. This is not a Nu document. This is certainly not Joseph recording it himself in his journal. So I, I don’t think that it’s that one. So the other guess is that it could be this 12th of June 1843 journal entry, which it says Married to R Rids. I think that’s Rhoda Richards, and Willard Richards married to Susan Liptrot. So I’m going to blow it up and you can see this is written in Taylor shorthand. This journal is that same March through July 1843 journal that was written by Willard Richards, not by Joseph Smith. And it records this cryptic shorthand, Taylor shorthand. I, I have, um, corresponded with Lein Carruth, who is the church’s shorthand expert, and she has told me, we cannot just assume that shorthand was written to keep something secret because Because far too many people knew it. However, we don’t know that Joseph Smith knew it, and we don’t know when this was recorded, right? Because I want to show you one more thing quickly about this journal. I’m assuming this is what he’s talking about, is this Taylor shorthand entry in Joseph Smith’s journal that is not written by Joseph Smith. This is not directly by Joseph Smith. This is not Joseph Smith recording something in his journal. And also, can we get our stories straight? Was it too dangerous to record it, or was It not, right? Were the mobs coming through and looking through the journals and the like, can we, can we please get our story straight at some point? But I want to show you this because in the episode that I just recorded with, um, Kimberly Brown a little while ago, I talked about this. This is in that same Willard Richard’s journal that he kept for Joseph Smith, and he records on May 20th about getting ready to present something to the newspaper for Publication. But if we look, the thing that he was that he was talking about on the 20th was published in the newspaper on the 15th. So that’s just one example of the problems that we can show with this journal to say, like, first of all, even having anything about it is not a slam dunk at all. But for him to say Joseph himself, this is evidence directly from Joseph. He recorded one of his marriages in his journal. I, I don’t even know what to do with that. That’s massively, massively problematic. Then

[55:06] Karen Hyatt: he, of course, provo to you for even coming up with some a plausible explanation for that, because I was like, do you mean his journal where he said, no man shall have but one wife? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Good job. I’m

[55:21] Michelle: thank you. Thank you. And I’m glad you brought that up because I was amused because Joseph F. Smith. We have his letter saying there’s a, there’s no evidence. There’s no evidence from Joseph, but the one piece he could find that he published in his, um, the origin of plural marriage and Blood Atonement, I think is what the pamphlet is called, the one piece he could find was the October 5th journal entry, right? Whitney, I’m, I’m probably stealing your thunder. You could talk about this, but it’s the one thing he could find. And now we know that journal entry was completely altered. So I was glad that at Keith Erickson didn’t try to use that, which was what Joseph F. Smith used as the one thing he could say for sure. So I guess that one’s been taken out of the barrel. So now it’s like the, I mean, the, the apples at the bottom of the barrel are so rotten this time at this point, they don’t even look like apples. And I don’t know what you’re scraping up from the bottom of the barrel. So anyway, that was, if anyone has anything else, I think that’s what he must have been talking about. I’m not convinced. Go ahead.

[56:22] Gwendolyn Wynn: You remember the wedded and sealed acronym.

[56:26] Michelle: I do remember that. I did a full episode

[56:28] Gwendolyn Wynn: on that. Maybe it’s that Joseph which as you know, which, as you know, it’s just W and S and it was washed, washed. No,

[56:40] Michelle: no, it actually just means what I I used to think wash and, no, it just means was. It’s just I was. Yeah, go ahead with the and then I’ll go to the next one.

[56:50] Whitney Horning: Well, and, um, it all, it could also, so this is one of the things this this Keith does, is he, he throws out such cryptic statements that even us who spent years studying. We’re like, what are you talking about? But he could, he could have. One other thing he could have been referring to was, um, in May 1843, I think it’s May 29th, it’s recorded that, um, Joseph sealed Hirum, and a lot of people aren’t sure if that was stealing Hirum to his dead wife Jerusha with his living wife Mary standing as proxy, and the church historians have footnoted that to say he was sealed to both women, both Trusha and to Mary. So that could be what he’s referring to. All he says is Joseph recorded a marriage. Well, there’s a lot

[57:43] Michelle: of marriages his marriage.

[57:45] Whitney Horning: Uh, who knows what he really mean? I don’t know. That was so cryptic. I, I had to listen several times like, what is he talking about? And

[57:53] Karen Hyatt: I don’t know what the second, I can’t remember the second piece, but the third piece was the instructions for performing a marriage between him and I’m like, you mean the typewritten one? Yeah,

[58:03] Michelle: we’re getting to. So, so the second one was section 132, directly from Joseph. OK. Anyone super quick overview. I thought of Brigham’s desk in 1852. Done. Not directly from Joseph. OK.

[58:18] Gwendolyn Wynn: Can I handwriting. So if we’re talking about section 132. The biggest problem, how, how do I even say the biggest problem? There are so many problems. That is the title of your channel. But here we have the Nuvo Neighbor Extra, which was published during Joseph’s lifetime, right? This is right before he dies. And this is the Proceedings of the city council. Let me just show you here. Let’s zoom in. Joseph says, here is a paper that is exciting our enemies abroad. He holds up the novo expositor, and he read a statement and said where the truth of God was transformed into a lie concerning this thing. He then read several statements. And he said that he preached, he never had any private conversation on this marriage revelation, that he preached on the stand from the Bible, showing the order in ancient days, having nothing to do with the present times. So Joseph held up the novo expositor which quote. From our more or less a very close quote to our current section 132, and Joseph said,

[59:22] Michelle: yes,

[59:22] Gwendolyn Wynn: portions of it, and Joseph said this transformed the truth of God into a lie. That means that the provenance of Section 132 is hugely problematic. That’s not from Joseph because he himself said, I did not write this.

[59:40] Michelle: Right. Thank you. Yes, excellent. And we could go on and on about the 132 problems, right? I mean, yes, to claim that that is directly from Joseph is astonishing. And then the third one, yes, Karen, was the Whitney, the Whitney revelation, right? And I just, I’m sorry to put this up there. I just want to refer to this episode that I did on it, right? I’ll get that off the Screen, but here it is, the Whitney revelation, right, that has zero provenance. If you think that 132 has bad provenance, this is far worse. This is the earliest and the best version we have of it. This is a type script made by Orson F. Whitney in, I believe, 1912 to give to the then church president Joseph F. Smith by request. Afterwards, somewhere in from out of somewhere, who knows where, there showed up in the 1920s, 2 handwritten versions of it in a file somewhere. No one knows where they came from. No one knows anything about. They, they say, maybe circa 1870s. Who knows? Who knows who they, who wrote them, where they came from. This is the very, this is the only version of What we have that has any sort of provenance. You cannot claim that this is, I know that I say that it’s July 1842, but that’s only because that’s where they dated. This is what the Joseph Smith paper says, which is really painful if you actually dig it. I hope people will go watch the Whitney Revelation episodes if they haven’t, because we, we have really hard questions to answer about these documents. So again, if this is the best you can do, there’s nothing.

[1:01:15] Keith Erekson: We, Joseph, when he dies, there are little more than 100 people participating in plural marriage. So we don’t just have to look at Joseph, we can look at all of those people, uh, there are 100 people in Navu, not all of them kept records, not everybody does, but several of them did. Hebrew C. Kimball is one whose journal says the most about it right from that time in Navu.

[1:01:39] Michelle: OK.

[1:01:40] Gwendolyn Wynn: You don’t say.

[1:01:43] Michelle: So there were 100 polygamists, according to him, and lifelong journal keepers who kept journals their entire lives. Eliza Snow, for example, several other examples. For some reason, they have no journals during this period. Hmmm, interesting, right? But, um, but so he did say those are the only three things we have from Joseph Smith, but we have, there are 100 other people, and he tells us about two other journals. The one with all of the polygamy evidence is Hebrewy. Kimballs. Whitney, do you want to respond to that?

[1:02:10] Whitney Horning: I was shocked when he said that. No one has ever that I’m aware of until this fireside ever used Hubery. Kimball as a contemporaneous source. Um, usually it’s always just the only one we have is William Clayton. And so for him to throw out Hebrewy Kimball shocked me because I’ve done quite a bit of um Digging into Hebrewy. Kimball’s life and his journal actually does have a lot of information about his own personal adultery during his mission in England. And he, you know, he’ll write statements like, Ellen Bedford Redmond came over and, you know, Wilford left and so it’s just the two of us, and she combed my hair and then washed my feet and we went to bed. So, like, he’s, he records that kind of stuff. Um. And as far as Navvo goes, the way that he said this, it leads the listener to believe that Hebrew C. Kimmel’s journals must be filled with evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy, because isn’t that what we’re talking about? Yes, 0, mention of Joseph Smith’s polygamy, um, because there wasn’t any. But then if you go and read, so Hebrew C. Kimball’s um grandson, great grandson put together his journals, and he claims they’re a faithful compilation. They’re not, because I, you can go on to the church history library and see. areas where, like, for instance, where he went to bed with Ellen, that’s been tried to be erased. And so he doesn’t include that. So it’s called the on the Potter’s wheel, the compilation. But in the introduction, I found this interesting. The introduction says, references to plural wives are rare in the Navo period of Mormon history. Unfortunately, one does not learn much from Kimball in this respect either. Still, Kimball does refer at least in passing to 9 of his plural wives. Abigail Buchanan, Mary Fielding Smith, Margaret McMinn, Violet Murray, Sarah Peake, Mary Anne Sheplin, Ruth Wellington, Sarah Whitney, and Nancy Maria Winchester. In addition, there are oblique allusions to seven other wives, usually couched in references to the woman’s father or family. So in other words, Hubre C. Kimball writes about his plural marriages, but in oblique and couch terms that even his grandson putting together his journal was like, yeah, there’s not really much about plural marriage in Navu. I would like to say that’s because Joseph Smith would have excommunicated him. So he had to do, you know, veiled references because he was an avid journal keeper. So that’s just very upsetting to me because Keith is putting himself out as, hey, I’m going to be open and honest with you with your sincere questions. And then he throws this out, and he believes, and most likely, very few of the people listening to that fireside in the audience would go and then look up Hebrewy Kimmel’s journals, and he throws out, he doesn’t tell them that there’s a type script called On the Potter’s Wheel for free on internet archives that they could easily read. No, he points them to the handwritten ones in the church history library, which you have to Um, you know, have the gift of tongues to be able to read. Yes, exactly. So, um, no, Hebrewy Kimball is not a source of proof that Joseph did polygamy. He is a source of proof that he himself did, but not Joseph.

[1:06:10] Michelle: And I didn’t include the clip, but it was interesting cause he said here that there were about 100 when Joseph died. And then he says there were 500 immediately after that, which is another point we make. Like, yes, polygamy was being hidden in Navvo from Joseph and Hirum, right? Because Navvou became more dangerous after Joseph and Hirum were killed. They say. We chased out just a few years or fled just a little while later. You can’t make the claim that, oh, now it was safe to practice polygamy. Now that Joseph and Hyrum were dead unless they were the ones who were the limiting factor. So, OK, I’ll go on. Thank you for going into that. I just, again, I’m astonished that he’s saying we have plenty of evidence. It’s a done deal. Joseph Smith was a polygamist. I’m giving you the evidence and this is what he’s giving us.

[1:06:56] Keith Erekson: Another journal in Navvo written right then in the 1840s with a lot of information was by a a convert to the church from England who moved to Navvo and became one of Joseph Smith’s scribes. His name is um William Clayton.

[1:07:12] Michelle: And he goes on to describe just he tells us when the Clayton journals are going to be released. They now have the publisher, Yale University as their press is their publisher, and they’ll be out either very late this year or next year is what they are currently saying. So, so it’s progressing. But I wanted to also really quickly respond about the William Clayton Journal. I just did an episode. I already had done an episode with John Hayacek and another one with Jeremy Hoop talking about the Clayton Journals and some of the questionable nature of them. I recently just did a few weeks ago another interview with Kimberly Brown, which was excellent. And I just want to quickly point out one of the things that she brought up in that episode that I thought was marvelous work. She went ahead and she read James Allen’s book about the Clayton Journals, and she points out that on his in his March 9, 1843 entry, he records that Joseph told me it was lawful for me to send for Sarah and said he would furnish me with money. The problem is the letter arrived in England on February 12, 1843. James Allen actually found the letter, which meant, since it took about 25 days for a letter to be sent, it had to be written, it had to be postmarked around January 19, 1843. So just like the problem I showed with Willard Richard’s journal, it’s an even, it’s an absolutely egregious problem with William. Clayton’s journal. This is his book number 2, which we know was recopied, which even the historians working on it acknowledge there are problems with. His other journals weren’t recopied, just this one for this critical period of time, and we can already show a lot of problems with it, but this one huge error that can’t be explained away, I don’t think. So that’s all, that’s all the evidence he gives us. Oh, he also, in passing. quickly says, we also have some newspaper references and other references, which was an interesting way to throw in the Novo expositor and John Bennett is my assumption, right? So again, the testimonies of traitors, which can be addressed, which have been addressed, which I will continue to address in the future. That’s the evidence we have of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. So this is how he sums that all up.

[1:09:24] Keith Erekson: When you look at the historical record of people in Navvo who were practicing plural marriage and wrote about it in the 1840s while they were practicing it. We have that information. We have a lot more sources that come later. The Latter Saints moved to the west, they announce plural marriage publicly and then they start talking about it a whole lot more. They publish things in newspapers, they write reminiscences, poetry, journals, pamphlets, uh, for 40 years. And so, uh, so we have a mountain of evidence about plural marriage, and we also have evidence, uh, right from Navu. So I hope you can, you can feel confident and you can search those in the Gospel topic essays. There’s evidence from Navu. Yes, Joseph practiced plural marriage. Now, do you have to like that he did? No, that’s not required, but you can’t just say, no, there’s no evidence that doesn’t exist.

[1:10:19] Michelle: OK. Uh. Anything I, I just watch,

[1:10:24] Karen Hyatt: watch. I can. No, that doesn’t exist. There’s no evidence I did it.

[1:10:32] Michelle: You can do it.

[1:10:36] Gwendolyn Wynn: It’s just, it’s just a continual, these are not the droids you’re looking for continuously. You know, when he says that once they get to Utah and then there’s a lot of evidence and it’s like, well, not, not from the women, not, not for a long time. The women were actually very quiet for some years. The relief had been many decades. The relief society had been shut down for almost 25 years before the women were. allowed to speak, and if you think that women cannot be persuaded to defend a position after 25 years of being steadily impressed with this doctrine, which is how the first presidency and the quorum of the 12 described it in a letter to President Benjamin Harrison, um, asking for amnesty for polygamy in the 1890s, but But they were steadily impressed with this for decades, and so yes, eventually they started to defend it, but not, not many of them.

[1:11:36] Michelle: Right. I really wanted to play back to back that clip with his clip about, um, we like evidence that’s close to the time period. We like evidence that’s close to the people, right? I’m just gonna go ahead and share my screen quickly to show you this, because I, darn it, I had meant to show this when I was showing the, um, The journal entry that he claimed that we have of the um of Joseph recording his marriage. So the one we have in Taylor’s shorthand is to Rhoda Richards, and I want to show you the two versions. So you have to remember Joseph F. Smith is the one who compiled all these affidavits, who actually created all of these affidavits, and he did two versions of each of them. This is Rhoda Richards’ first affidavit. You can see right here, Rhoda Richards, and I just want to show you the signature, how it’s filled in. Right? And the changes that are made. So here it has the date, the 12th day of June 1843, and if we look at the other one, however, um, You can see the date on this one, how it’s written in, right? How they’re having to decide what the date is and changing it afterward. And this is not in Rhoda Richards’ handwriting, and on both, and you can see Rhoda Richards Smith written in after the fact in a different handwriting. Rhoda Richard Smith written in there. We have So many questions about these affidavits. So these are the two things that are considered direct evidence of Rhoda Richards being married to Joseph Smith. And I just want to say I have questions. I, I don’t see that as the solid evidence that they see it as, right? So, so I think that, again, we can claim like Karen said, we can claim there’s not evidence, and we can use his own words to say we want things that are close to Navi. We want things that are close to his time period, not decades later motivated claims that are this problematic and this questionable. So, OK, I’ll go on to the next clip. I think this is where he goes on to talk very cryptically again about the denials that that question asked about.

[1:13:39] Keith Erekson: So there are about a half dozen sources that are published in Navu, uh, and some one is by Jose well one is Joseph in his sermon, that’s actually minutes in his journal, but he and Hiram published one in a newspaper. Hiram publishes another one, the year before, there’s a group of women and a group of men, so we’ve got about half a dozen of these, uh, denials.

[1:14:04] Michelle: OK, I just loved how he kind of throws out these little, uh, there’s about half. I, I think Whitney is gonna talk to us about these specifically again.

[1:14:14] Whitney Horning: Yes. So he says half a dozen and then he only gives 4. So 4.5 a dozen, um, so when he says Joseph wrote one in his journal and it had to do with the sermon, again, he’s so cryptic and not very, not descriptive enough for the average person to be able to go find these and look for themselves. So, I think that Joseph’s journal entry is when Joseph recorded on 8th of April 1844, this is what his journal says, 4 p.m. A large collection of elders assembled at the stand, addressed by patriarchyrum Smith on spiritual wife’ system. The first one we hear reporting such stories, we will report him in the time and seasons to come and give up his license. He was decided against it in every form and spoke at length. Then the second

[1:15:14] Michelle: that’s just one thing in this, uh, OK,

[1:15:18] Gwendolyn Wynn: and Whitney, it’s carefully worded, right? He was only talking about a spiritual wife system which is totally different from plural marriage, which they did not even use that term in Novo.

[1:15:30] Whitney Horning: Um, the second piece of, or the second denial, he says, oh, Joseph and Hyer, you know, published something in the times and seasons. This is what they published. On February 1st, 1844. Notice of Hiram Brown being excommunicated for polygamy signed by Joseph and Hirum. This is the statement said, as we have lately been credibly informed that an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by the name of Hiram Brown has been preaching polygamy and other fault and corrupt doctrines in the county of La Pierre State of Michigan. He has been cut off from the church for his iniquity. Didn’t even say he was practicing it. He was preaching, and he uses the term polygamy. So there again, because Keith um Eriksson does make the statement that it was just a spiritual wifery that Joseph was against, but you, that’s very clear, preaching polygamy. The third, um, denial that he mentions, he says, oh, and then there was something published by Hiram Smith in The Times and Seasons. So that refers to the letter to the Saints in China Creek. So, what had happened, a man named Richard Hewitt had done what we We all should do. I, I don’t think we, I, I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t go down to the church office building and say, hey, um, I heard President Nelson was teaching something. I want to know if that’s true. But back in Navo, it was small enough still they could. So Richard Hewitt has been hearing. Um, some stuff that’s troubling him. So he travels to Navvo and actually speaks to Hiram. And years later, Richard Hewitt actually writes a letter to someone that his, um, his time speaking with Hiram, it was so impressed upon him that Hiram and Joseph had nothing to do with polygamy, that he was a believer the rest of his life, that they truly had nothing to do with polygamy. So here’s the letter that Hiram, so Hirum writes a letter for Richard to take back to the saints at China Creek to try and set them straight. And in the letter it says, some of your elders say that a man having a certain priesthood may have as many wives as he pleases, and that doctrine is taught here in Navu. I say unto you that that man teaches false doctrine for their There is no such doctrine taught here, and any man that is found teaching privately or publicly, any such doctrine is culpable and will stand a chance to be brought before the high council and lose his license and membership also. So having many wives, John Bennett, by the way, his spiritual wifery was just adultery. He never count wives. They never married him. He never did pretend ceremonies. He just went and said, hey, let’s have sexual relations, and we don’t need to be married as long as we keep it private. So here again, this denial talks about wives.

[1:18:45] Gwendolyn Wynn: Whitney, can I ask about that? So that letter I think you already mentioned, but that was March 1844. So this is, this is the this is within months of Joseph and Hyrum being killed. This is well after any marriage revelation was brought forward and in that. He in that thing you just read in that letter, the announcement, the notice, it says that they may have as many wives as he pleases. That is the same philosophy that’s in section 132, that a man may have as many virgins as he desires. If he desires another and, you know, there’s these little conditions that are not that hard to meet, then he’s justified. So this is this we’re seeing section 132, that that marriage revelation that was then altered, we’re seeing it right here. It was making its way.

[1:19:35] Michelle: You’re exactly right. That is more evidence that when they try to claim that this was plural wives, it’s impossible. The term plural wives was not used until the late 60s. It shows up for the first time in 1866 and doesn’t catch on for a decade after that, right? And the fact that the 1852, um, revelations. Says the practice and doctrine of having many wives and concubines. And here we are talking about many wives. You can’t make this work. You can’t make this work. So, OK,

[1:20:03] Gwendolyn Wynn: if you’re not if you’re willing to look at the scriptures, and if you’re willing to look at the historical information, it doesn’t fit at all. And that’s why people are up in arms,

[1:20:13] Whitney Horning: yep. And I just want to say, since you just mentioned the word concubines, the LDS Church loves to give the definition of concubines as a wife of lesser social status, but that is not at all what it meant in Joseph and Hyrum’s day. The word concubine was another word for mistress. It meant a woman who was having sexual relations with a man without a legal marriage. And so one of the reasons that, um, the early Mormon polygamists called their, um, extra wives, spiritual wives, is because they had a They said, Well, we’re married in spirit. They would do a ceremony that was for the next life, but they had no way of legally marrying them. It was against the law, so they couldn’t be a legal wife. So they were quote unquote, a spiritual wife or a concubine, because that is literally the definition of concubine. So then Keith says, um his last um denial he mentions as he said, oh, and there were some other men and women who printed something in the times and seasons. So that’s referring to October 1st, 1842. This is, so John C. Bennett, um, gets discovered his, um, shenanigans in May of 1842. And so that whole summer was spent with just, you know, he was the mayor of Navu, he was in the first presidency. He was a big deal in Navvo and in the And so it caused a lot of um confusion, a lot of angst and difficulty. And so from May clear into October and a little later, you see a lot of statements coming out, um, disavowing John Bennett. So this one does specifically, um, disavow John Bennett. But they also re um state the statement on marriage, which had been a law to the church from 1835 and was still the law of the church here in 1842. And they quote it, inasmuch as this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy. We declare that we believe that one man should have one wife and one woman, but one husband. We, the undersigned members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and residents of the city of Navvo, persons of families, do. Thereby certify and declare that we know of no other rule or system of marriage than the one published from the book of doctrine and Covenants, and we give this certificate to show that Dr. JC Bennett’s secret wife system um is a design, a make of his own design. And then there were all these signatures, and Emma being one of those, the women of the relief Society. So those are the four wives and,

[1:23:15] Michelle: and it does specify no other system of marriage being practiced, right? Go ahead. I didn’t, I just that you can’t get around that.

[1:23:25] Karen Hyatt: Right it makes me crazy because they keep saying they were only referring to John C. Bennetts. I was like, do you know grammar at English at all? There are two clauses here. One says that we know of no system of marriage being practiced in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, save the one in the 1835 book of doctrine and Covenants. That’s a full thought.

[1:23:56] Michelle: We have to add that while he is talking about the evidence directly from Joseph, we do have scripture directly from Joseph. It’s called the State on marriage that was in both versions of the doctrine and covenants published that prepared during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and removed when 132 was added. That would be a pretty important piece to include in a presentation on this topic to people who have questions. Right? That’s pretty important that that does come from directly from Joseph Smith and is a denial and a statement of their faith, as opposed to 132. That is not directly from Joseph Smith. Gwendolyn, go ahead. I,

[1:24:32] Gwendolyn Wynn: I just want to say one more thing that’s frustrating me with the way that he’s characterizing this. He says the year before there’s a group of women and a group of men, so we got about a half dozen, and it’s like, this wasn’t a group of women and a group of men. This was the leadership of the church. And The the leadership of the city and the leadership of the relief society. This was the church and this was the city altogether saying this is not part of our doctrine. We’re not doing it and we’re not even doing anything like it. We have one form of marriage, it is publicly taught and we do all of our marriages in public, so there’s no confusion at all, everyone. And he’s just like, Oh, it’s just, you know, it’s just this group of men, group of women.

[1:25:16] Michelle: And we have to include, and we have to point out that it includes Eliza Snow, who, according to later testimony, would have already been married to Joseph Smith by this time. I don’t believe that she was. I think she was honest in this affidavit, right? It also includes both Elizabeth and Noel K. Whitney, the parents of Sarah and Whitney, who supposedly revelation was written to telling Nuel how to perform the marriage. They both signed it. N Newell died before he ever gave any testimony. Elizabeth’s testimony completely contra is all contradictory. The affidavit doesn’t match her own write her own autobiography, which doesn’t match other things like it’s a mess of later falsehoods, fabric. told to try to cover up what was actually the evidence on the ground in Navu. So, OK. Thank

[1:26:03] Whitney Horning: you. Let me just really quick. So he said, you know, half a dozen, and he only names 4. So I just took a couple of minutes and came up with some other denials of Joseph. The entire Book of Mormon. Yes. And the doctrine and covenants, because the doctrine and Covenants in 1835 and 1844 had several scriptures that talk about one man, one wife, and cleaving to your wife and none others. So all of his scriptures, you have

[1:26:34] Michelle: the. Can I just include that the Book of Mormon uses the same terminology as Section 132, Many wives and concubines. It uses it 4 times in the most, um, to decry it in the the most, the strongest terms possible, right? So,

[1:26:50] Whitney Horning: causing a nomination, right? Yes, yes, so then we have the statement on marriage that you mentioned that was in 1835 and 1844. And just to clarify for people who don’t know, was removed by Brigham Young in 1876. So it wasn’t, it was in there for quite a while, I think 41 years or something like that. Then we have the Elder’s Journal of July 1838, where Joseph Lis commonly asked questions, one of them being, do you believe in having more wives than one? And he says, no, not at the same time, but if your spouse dies, then you can. Um, he has, uh, epistle to the Relief Society from Joseph Smith, March 31, 1842. He denounces polygamy, May 26, 1842. He gives another discourse to the relief Society. Um, Hiram Smith, May 14th, 1843 discourse on Jacob 2. Where he says no man was ever commanded to practice polygamy. It’s a stand, it’s a perpetual principle. Um, Joseph Smith’s October 5th, 1843 journal entry, which Karen mentioned earlier where he’s, you know, evening at home, walked up and down the street with scribe, and gave instruction to try those who are preaching, teaching the doctrine of plurality of wives on the law, and the law isn’t the law of the land. The law he’s talking about is the statement on marriage. It is the law to the church. Joseph forbids it and the practice thereof. No man shall have but one wife. Then we got out

[1:28:21] Michelle: section 42 is the law of the Lord. That’s what that was called. That was the law unto the church and 44, I mean 4222 is the one that says, man shall cleave unto his wife and none else, right? as explicit as can be.

[1:28:36] Whitney Horning: Yes. So then we have February to May of 1844. There’s a trial of Orsimus at Boswick for slander, claiming that Hyrum was a polygamist, and they won that case against Orsimus. Then we have March 1844, the voice of innocence of Navu, that spells out adultery and polygamy, wrong, don’t do it. Then we have the April 8th, 1844 discourse of Hiram Smith, where he calls it the damn foolish doctrine of polygamy. Um, the May 1844 trial and testimonies against Chauncey L. Higbe, who was claiming that Joseph was a lygamist. And then we have also in May going on, there was a grand jury in Carthage trying to get Joseph convicted of plural marriage, and we don’t have the records from that court. But what we do have is a May 26, 1844 sermon where Joseph talks about, there had been a grand jury in Carthage, and he says, I will prove them all perjurors. I have, you know, rattled chains before, and then he makes this statement. What a thing it is to be accused of adultery and having seven wives when I can only find one. So those are just a few more strongly worded denials.

[1:29:54] Michelle: Uh, a half dozen 420 somewhere, somewhere in the ballpark. Yes. OK,

[1:30:00] Gwendolyn Wynn: so some people may be thinking, how are there so many polygamy accusations if they weren’t doing it, and I just want to remind anyone here to tell you. That there was a really fascinating thing that happened around this time in America and in England. And this is documented in secular books. Sarah Pearsall wrote, uh, polygamy and Early American History, and she talks about this, and she talks about it in a way of like, what are the chances? But if you’re like a spiritual person who believes that Satan wants to destroy. The covenant, then you’re like, yeah, that would make sense that in America and England there was a polygamy resurgence among Christians. This was not normal in Christian nations. Elsewhere, polygamy thrives. But once you believe in Christianity, polygamy tends to stop for obvious reasons, I think, but it had had a little resurgence in America and in England, and so this was on the mind. There were books published. There was this book, The Leaf of Thora, published in England in 1780, and it then became this big cultural movement. It did not end up changing the laws, but that was the environment that the apostles entered, and they were then separate from Joseph and they together Nurtured, as you can see from Hebrewy Kimball’s journals as, as Whitney referenced, they nurtured this belief that polygamy was part of the Abrahamic covenant. So there’s a lot of very good evidence that this did not start from Joseph, but in fact, was part of the cultural milieu, and as a believer, I’m just like, yeah, of course it was, because Satan is so desirous to destroy the covenant and the most important thing of the covenant is that fidelity between a man and a woman. And if you can destroy that at the foundation, then you, you are really making making good.

[1:31:51] Michelle: Good

[1:31:51] Gwendolyn Wynn: most

[1:31:52] Michelle: Yes. Oh, that’s thank you for pointing that out. Yes, OK, so I think that we have, I mean, again, is it not amazing how he, how he talks about the denials just like the evidence? I want to let him finish. I, I’ve had to cut off so much of these clips. I’m just going to give a little highlight reel right here. Again, I’ll have the full video available for people.

[1:32:12] Keith Erekson: As a good historian, as a good disciple of Jesus Christ. When we look at these denials, what we need to do is read the whole thing in context. So let me show you what to read for. Every one of them refers to. A specific other false teaching about sex.

[1:32:37] Michelle: OK, again, he went on a big huge thing about William Clayton there, and I just, I don’t know. Oh, he,

[1:32:44] Gwendolyn Wynn: he goes on about John Bennett.

[1:32:46] Michelle: Bennett about John Bennett, describing him in all of these extreme terms and, and then, and then says it’s about, again, it’s about sex, right? Not like, not, not polygamy, like Brigham Young’s wasn’t about sex at all, right?

[1:33:00] Whitney Horning: Well, it makes the statement, yeah, that it’s about sex and that the women will get food. Well, I think, well, Isn’t that exactly what the polygamist did? And oh no, they didn’t, because there are a lot of women who are in polygamist marriages who almost starved to death because their husbands did not provide. Yep. So I don’t know how we’re that far different from John C. Bennett, other than that our polygamists in our history at least referred to them as a wife.

[1:33:27] Michelle: Yes, Michelle, I

[1:33:29] Gwendolyn Wynn: wish you could play that whole thing. I mean, maybe I can just read a little bit of what he said because he says just that, that whole

[1:33:40] Michelle: that off. Go ahead, go ahead put

[1:33:40] Karen Hyatt: more in, OK? I’ll lengthen it out. Is that OK?

[1:33:43] Gwendolyn Wynn: Yeah. Do you want me to read? Why don’t I read like you can put this first I will read what he says because the way he says it is so like wow, and then we can respond to it because this is toward the end of that clip. He says what they say is we do not teach John C. Bennett spiritual wifery. He made that up, and we don’t do that. And so on. Plural marriage was not anybody who wants to do whatever they want. Plural marriage was a priesthood ordinance, and it had responsibilities and obligations, and so it was a

[1:34:11] Michelle: different thing, you know what? I think I have it. Let me see. Let me see if I have it please,

[1:34:14] Gwendolyn Wynn: because it’s just because at the end, yes, at the end it’s crazy.

[1:34:19] Keith Erekson: Spiritual wifery that John C. Bennett is talking about. So now, when you go and read the denials, read them, uh, and George A. Smith was later an apostle, young man in Navu, uh, he said, anybody who reads these can see that they were carefully worded denials. So what does he mean by carefully worded. What they say is, we do not teach John C. Bennett’s spiritual wifery. He made that up, and we don’t do that. And John C. Bennett did make that up, and they don’t do that. Uh, and so it was a different thing. So you see what they’re saying. So the person who says, looky, looky, I found this word deny, and Joseph is the author, your answer is, thanks for taking deny out of context. Please, you need to read the full text of the statement, and then you need to understand what’s going on.

[1:35:13] Michelle: OK, yes. Just like, well,

[1:35:16] Gwendolyn Wynn: I, I didn’t find a word deny and Joseph is the author and I didn’t take a word deny out of context like the, the words that he used. Whitney only quoted the tiniest portion. Maybe we can link my, our best story um paper in there because you can just. And

[1:35:37] Michelle: you just gave us the highlights of her book, yes, and

[1:35:39] Gwendolyn Wynn: like, please, I mean, it’s a thick book. These denials, they go on and on and on, and it is, it gets to the point where you become embarrassed that we are defending this because you’re like, there’s no way that this was carefully worded. He’s using every way to describe it down and then we’ve got Hirum who Joseph said has the authority to speak on this, and Hiram’s, I’m gonna, you, you have the authority to wring their nose if they tell you any such thing. This is crazy talk to say that we’re taking a word deny out of context. Again, he’s not using any evidence. He’s not using any scriptures. And then here, here we are just like, here’s one source, here’s another source. It’s just like we’ve got to do better if we want people to stay in the church and not be completely like forced out by this false narrative, then then back it up a little bit and say, yeah, there’s some things that we’re learning that we actually, um, there were some false traditions that got passed down and we’re trying to figure out how to work through that.

[1:36:43] Karen Hyatt: One of the reasons I think that they’re so quick to attribute carefully worded denials to Joseph, and they’re so, like their conscience doesn’t bother them to do that is because Joseph F. Smith gave carefully worded denial. acknowledged by everyone. He told the Senate, right, of the US Senate during hearings. He said there’s been, there have been no plural marriages entered into, um, since the manifesto in 1890. And it was like, yeah, there have, there’s tons. And in the Gospel Topics essay, I think it is on it. They’re like, Well, you see, he was using legal language. It’s crazy. They pretzel themselves and say he was using a carefully worded denial because somehow that made it OK. So they all accept that Joseph F. Smith did that, and they accept that that’s fine. So it’s a small leap to say, I’m sure Joseph did it too.

[1:37:43] Gwendolyn Wynn: You know what, Karen, this reminds me of President Hinckley’s interview with Larry King, where he said that he said, we have nothing to do with polygamy. It’s not doctrinal. He said, it’s not doctrinal. And members, when you try to bring that up and say, look, we have been distancing ourselves, we said our the president of the church who has the authority to proclaim doctrine, said it’s not doctrinal, and members will say, Well, he was talking about the legal part. He wasn’t talking about the doctrine. I mean, of course, that’s, so we actually, you’re right, we are trained in this double speak and um that’s, that’s just what a shame because God is a God of truth and does not lie. So if we’re trying to obfuscate, then we’re not working in the right spirit. We’re working in the spirit of deception.

[1:38:31] Michelle: And can we point out that same law of the Lord Doctrine of Covenants 42 says, thou shalt not lie, the liar shall be thrust down to hell, right? It, it, it’s so, so tragic. And it also does erode trust. Like as Karen and Gwendolyn, you’re talking about this, about this idea that it’s OK for church leaders to use carefully worded denials. It makes us all feel uncomfortable about can we trust them? I hope that’s not the case. We don’t want to. Believe that our church, that our leaders would lie to us, right, or, or carefully word things like, yeah, so yeah, I think,

[1:39:05] Whitney Horning: I mean, I think we all grew up with the the whole statement, you’re lying for the Lord. I mean, that’s so before it turned into carefully worded denials, I was raised on that Joseph had to lie of the Lord, and then they would always give the examples of, you know, Abraham and Sarah in in Egypt or whatever and And, and, and just never really sat right with me, but I think they, they don’t like, I don’t think they like that, that so many people are coming out now and saying, well, Joseph was a liar and a hypocrite, so now they’re saying, well, it was carefully worded denials. Like that that that’s softer than saying he was a liar because a carefully worded denial is a lie.

[1:39:46] Michelle: It is, it is. And like Joseph F. Smith, those weren’t carefully worded denials before Congress. Those were untruths, false things that were said that were not.

[1:39:56] Karen Hyatt: Yeah, and Brian, Brian Hailes when he talks about Joseph’s denials, says, you know how carefully Joseph phrased him, and he says, these are the words of someone trying not to lie. I was like, wow, that is outrageous,

[1:40:12] Gwendolyn Wynn: outrageous. Same with John Taylor on his mission in France when he made this big speech about how, how we were not doing polygamy when in fact he already had, I think, was it 9 polygamist wives by then.

[1:40:25] Michelle: Something like that, yep. And then he later said it was prudent. It was prudent to say that, and he published it. He published and said no, and he quoted the what was in their doctrine and covenants that we believe in one man and one wife, right? And so I wanted to include, I included one more little clip here that I started to play, but it’s, um, so he said every single one of these denials is only talking about John Bennett, right? They’re just denying spiritual wifery. They’re not denying plural marriage. Again, the term plural marriage did not exist or Joseph would have denied it. If he could have been, if he could have had that gift of prophecy to say, oh, in a couple of decades, what are they going to call this nonsense? I’d better say that term too. Right? But this, he also said they were, they were, um, only denying John Bennett, and he goes on to add this.

[1:41:13] Keith Erekson: There’s a guy in Wisconsin who says that uh whatever priest that you get, you can get as many wives as you want. Uh, and so Joseph and Hiram published the denial saying we are not preaching what this guy in Wisconsin is preaching. And so, um, so there we go with some evidence.

[1:41:34] Michelle: OK, that’s that. But that just answered it all. And with some evidence, he’s calling it evidence. He hasn’t provided any evidence at all. But that one slipped past me the first part where he said there’s this guy in Wisconsin saying whatever. I, I was like, Who? James Strang? He’s talking about James String. James String went to Wisconsin. Was it settled in Vorri, Wisconsin, and in 1849, Chang did a 180 on on polygamy and started marrying polygamously. He started practicing polygamy in 1849. OK, wait, let me, and math math is. Hard. Um, what year did Joseph Smith die? 1844. So Joseph and Hiram in 1844, their denials were about John Bennett and James String’s future polygamy. They were like, no, we’re not doing that thing that, that, that James String’s going to be doing in like several years from now. He included that before he did his There’s the evidence, folks done. I, I, I like, I guess I, I, I, we could, we could really take any five minute segment of this presentation and do this with it. It’s like stunning. It’s truly, truly stunning. I don’t know if he, I, I, I guess we, we just need our um church historians group, whoever who like like Keith Erickson and anyone else who thinks like him to have a big massive wake up call. That this can’t happen anymore. People aren’t asleep enough to let this happen anymore. So, um, we have just a couple more things to talk about because we really need to go into his use of scripture now. So I, we have. Several, um, clips, but I’m going to just play a compilation that Gwendolyn wanted to put together, if, if that’s all right, Gwendolyn, so you can kind of point some things out, and then we’ll go into the, um, individual clips.

[1:43:38] Keith Erekson: So let’s just go to the, the, the real question. What is the purpose of polygamy? I like to think about this question in a kind of like a bull’s eye or a target. There’s right at the center and then there’s a a little ring around it. Right at the center is scripture. So let’s ask the question that way. What scripture gives a purpose, states a purpose for plural marriage. You go through all the scriptures, there is only one, OK? The Old Testament tells stories. These people took a different wife and and had children and whatever, tells the stories. There’s not a single verse in the Old Testament that gives a reason, a statement. The one is in the Book of Mormon. It’s in Jacob chapter 2. This is another wonderful verse to take things out of context. So we need to, we need to read the whole thing and, and, uh, in the 21st century, we hate reading the whole thing. We want to scroll fast, click like, move on. So we got to pause, stop scrolling, and pay attention here. In uh Jacob chapter 2, he’s giving a sermon and it’s kind of long and he’s a little nervous. Nephi has just died. He’s the new leader. It’s his first big address and he has to address some major sins. Uh, the people were committing whoredoms and they were trying to justify it by saying, oh yeah, all those people in Old Testament times had wives and concubines, so we can too. So over several verses in Jacob chapter 2 from verse 22 to 35, you got to read all of those. But Jacob starts in and he says, uh, those are whoredoms, that is wrong. Uh, I, the Lord delight in the chastity of women. The law of chastity is right in there. Then it says, uh, marriage is to be between a man and a woman. And uh a man should have one wife, uh, no concubines, Jacob says. Then it gets to a phrase that I, that, uh, is touched on here says, nevertheless, and Jacob is presenting this in the first person word of the Lord, if I will raise up seed unto myself, I will command my people otherwise.

[1:45:54] Michelle: Do you want me to pause there or do you want me to keep going? Can I

[1:45:58] Karen Hyatt: take it.

[1:46:01] Gwendolyn Wynn: OK, once again, let me just mention that we,

[1:46:08] Michelle: I did like the first time you heard that, did you just What? What are

[1:46:13] Karen Hyatt: you do different version? Like, do you have a different version? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can you imagine if it was like, I will command my people otherwise, and then there would be a period and then it would say, they shall hearken unto these things, like all by itself. I mean, this is crazy town.

[1:46:32] Gwendolyn Wynn: Perhaps that is what’s going on. Perhaps there is like a separate set of scriptures that the church historians use, and maybe that’s like been the whole problem all along because this is, this is not what my Book of Mormons says, and it’s not what the 1830 Book of Mormons says. There’s no version that says nevertheless,

[1:46:50] Michelle: there is no nevertheless, you can search the Book of Mormon. It says nevertheless often in the Book of Mormon. Never, never says it in J. Jacob chapter 2. There’s no nevertheless,

[1:47:01] Gwendolyn Wynn: let’s just, let’s just all pull up Jacob 2 for a second here.

[1:47:06] Michelle: Go at home. All of you just pull up.

[1:47:08] Gwendolyn Wynn: Let’s open your scriptures and we’re going to do a super fast little run through. We’re going to go to verse 24. He says, Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines. Which thing was abominable before me, sayeth the Lord. Above that, we, we hear why there were some problems. He was saying, the problem is they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms because of the things which were written concerning David and Solomon, his son. So after we hear that this true thing that David and Solomon were truly doing evil, this was an abomination, it was truly an abomination. Then everywhere after that is a building of a case. Wherefore, wherefore, wherefore, for I, wherefore for, for, and for, and behold.

[1:48:00] Michelle: There’s those are pluses. No, however, no, nevertheless, no, but yes.

[1:48:06] Gwendolyn Wynn: So now let’s just look at verse 30. We know that the people were harkening that the people were excusing themselves, wanting to excuse themselves because of the things which were written, the thing which was abominable in having many wives and concubines. And so then Jacob is saying in, in first person, at least he got that one right. He’s speaking in in first person for the Lord. If the Lord will raise up seed, then the Lord needs to give commands. Otherwise, they keep harkening to these abominable things of David and Solomon. And the Lord doesn’t want that to keep happening because he’s seen the sorrow and heard the mourning of the daughters of his people in Jerusalem and in all the lands. And he’s not gonna suffer this. He’s, he’s not gonna suffer it anymore. And honestly, this is the feeling I have when I read this, I’m like, the Lord has done suffering for our polygamy pain. He will take it from us in a second. And he did, from me, from you, from so many women. And so this is one of the biggest I mean, this is why it’s not gonna work. This, uh, go back to sleep, don’t worry about this. Don’t worry, you’re not gonna be stuck in this is because we actually went to God for this knowledge, and God’s the one that healed us, and God’s the one that revealed it to us, so we can look at these scriptures and we’re like, how are you misreading this? He actually, this is, this is in violation of his own code of what to do. He, he earlier was like, don’t just take one word totally out of context. And, and then here he goes, taking this one verse out of context. Someday, so maybe someone else can do this, but someday someone’s gonna do a study. They’re gonna hand out Jacob chapter 2 and 3 to just people who are not raised with this indoctrination. They’ll just have them read it as like kind of a, just like, oh we’re just, you know, seeing how people understand language and they will ask like, hey, do a little survey at the end. Is there any exception and so forth. No one who is not, yeah, no one who has not been indoctrinated into this exception will ever see an exception because it’s not there. Because the things people harken to are the abominable ones, and it happened in our own community, which is so sad, but let’s acknowledge it and let’s move on.

[1:50:26] Karen Hyatt: I do, I have to say, I didn’t grow up in the church. I joined quite late. I was 17. And yes, when I read the Book of Mormon, I did see that as an exception. I did. With goodness. I prove that I have to stick up for the few that, that did, that sincerely saw that because I thought that’s what he was saying if I. Raise up seed because can you see how that would make sense? He’s like, if I want to raise up a lot of children, you know, that’s it. It really is what it sounded like to me. But

[1:50:56] Gwendolyn Wynn: were you told, yeah,

[1:50:59] Karen Hyatt: yeah. If I want a lot of children, I’ll come out my people. Otherwise, they will hearken unto what I was just telling you. That really is how I genuinely read it. So, um, without having been steeped in it. OK. So it does happen. But, but the second someone points out that the next verse says, 4, I have seen that it causes my daughters to mourn. You have to be done. You have to say I didn’t read it right, because That’s insane for God to say I might command polygamy sometimes, for I have seen that it causes my daughters to mourn. That’s mental. That is crazy, and you need to open your mind and say maybe I’ve read this wrong. And as soon as you do that, you see that these things always refers to the bad things, exactly what you just explained. So even if someone sincerely thought that’s what it means, that’s fine. But look at it in context,

[1:52:03] Michelle: Keith. Also, if we go to, um, is it 1st 571, where Lehi is commanded to raise up. Seed and they have to go back and get the wives, right? So they can raise up seed in monogamy. It’s defined multiple times. Also, I think it’s interesting we need to include Jacob I in it because that’s where they’re told that the people were desiring many wives and concubines, which was the beginning of the abomination, which 132 then goes on to say, hey, if you desire many wives and concubines cause it’s Says many wives and concubines, and the only requirement is the man desires to have more versions, right? And so we really, really have a problem here with the claims that he’s trying to make. Go ahead, Gwendolyn.

[1:52:43] Gwendolyn Wynn: I want to add, I want to add one more thing. He said that the only place in scripture where we’re given a reason is Jacob, and we just now have shown that is not a reason. So now the Book of Mormon is 100% anti-polygamy. But he neglected to mention Doctrine and Covenant section 132, which is kind of interesting to me because it says here, verse 63 is talking about a man who has desired more virgins and now he’s got 10 virgins. And if she is with another man. She is committed to adultery, shall be destroyed, for they, the virgins, the plural wives, are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, so on and so forth. And that’s when Michelle, that, that first Nephi chapter 7 verse 1 verse is so key because that clarifies what it means to raise up seed. And you just check that multiply and replenish against the other times it’s used in Scripture, and you’ve got Adam and Eve, Noah and his wife, Noah’s 3 sons and their respective one wife each. And now you have 100% consistency with every multiply and replenish has been done through monogamy, and that’s because you cannot raise up seed to the Lord through an abomination.

[1:53:58] Michelle: Yes. It’s the covenant. Yes, exactly. This was, this was amazing. We’ll go on with his claims. I, we have, oh, it’s so painful. I want to play all of the things that he says about the scriptures, but we’re just gonna have to let people do that on their own. Like, really, you need to have a watch party with your friends and like scream and throw popcorn at the TV as you watch.

[1:54:19] Gwendolyn Wynn: He does, he does, he says, nevertheless, 3 times. He quotes Jacob saying nevertheless, 3 times, which is just.

[1:54:27] Michelle: It, it, it says that 0 times 0. Let’s get this place when we

[1:54:31] Keith Erekson: were writing the saint’s history volume one, we’re just people, historian people, we tried to synthesize that whole long passage into this sentence. Monogamy is the rule, plurality is the exception, and that’s the way we wrote it. We gave it to the first presidency in the of the 12. They said yes, that’s the way to say it, and that’s the way Jacob says it. A man and a wife, uh, they should be married. That’s the rule. Live the law of chastity. Nevertheless, there was an exception in Jacob chapter 2. It came back because, as the Lord says through Jacob and Jacob chapter 2, nevertheless, if I will raise up seat unto myself, I will command my people otherwise. And so he commanded otherwise for about 40 years.

[1:55:21] Gwendolyn Wynn: Nevertheless, I will command my people otherwise, like, whoa.

[1:55:26] Karen Hyatt: That’s, I love, I love how Jacob alerts his people to this secret loophole that the Lord’s not gonna use for a couple 1000 years and for 38 years. That’s cool and handy and totally reasonable.

[1:55:43] Michelle: But remember, it’s only because Jacob’s really nervous. Remember, he tells us, Jacob’s nervous. This is his first sermon. Like, we can, it’s OK that it’s not that good. We can kind of throw it out because Jacob’s like, he’s a beginner prophet. So I, I mean,

[1:55:56] Karen Hyatt: I just for reminding me, even that tiny detail wasn’t true. That wasn’t his first major sermon. He gives one or he’s like, Nephi told me what to say, and I’m telling it to you. He gave him an assignment, a speaking assignment. And so where does he, I mean, I get it. I get he’s just trying to make it sound fun and relatable and modern or whatever. Like, we’re all nervous, I guess, but you, we have to stop sacrificing truth for fun. I don’t

[1:56:25] Gwendolyn Wynn: get it. He, he’s, I think he’s referring to Jacob in, in chapter one where he talks. the great anxiety that he, or no, not in chapter one. I’m sorry. No, I don’t have it in front of me, but he’s talking, yes, his great anxiety. But when you, when you read his sermon, his great anxiety is because these sins are so serious. It’s so serious, and they are going to destroy the people if they don’t give them up.

[1:56:50] Michelle: Yeah. And he doesn’t want to have to talk about this in front of the women, right? Like, you guys are the women are. Now I have to talk about this nonsense when I would rather uplift you instead of decrying the sins of the men, right? Like that’s kind of what he’s saying. So, OK.

[1:57:08] Whitney Horning: I want you to talk for a little bit about what he said that they summed it all up and plurality is the exception, which is what we hear all the time. Oh, don’t worry, it’s only for the most righteous. You know, it’s an exception. Like, you know, you’re special if you get to have more than one wife.

[1:57:36] Michelle: I was really happy with his admission that that was crafted by the historians and given to the leaders. That was pretty amazing to hear.

[1:57:46] Whitney Horning: But he then he says, and we passed it by the first presidency.

[1:57:50] Michelle: Yeah, he has to get the stamp stamp

[1:57:52] Whitney Horning: of approval that somehow now they’re crafting it. They did exactly what the first presidency would have done. So now you can trust that statement.

[1:58:01] Michelle: But I think it’s amazing to see that they jumped on it, you know, like we talked about, they’re car salesmen, they’re, they’re, you know, they’re administrators, they’re doing their job, and they need ways to handle these difficult issues. Right? So it’s kind of like, it’s kind of like polygamy. We like to claim that it came from God and God commanded Abraham. But really, Serai was trying Abraham, not Abraham, but really, Serai was trying to solve a problem, right? And, and she said, do this. So here we have the historians trying to solve a problem for the leaders saying, do this. And they’re like, OK, we’ll do that. Right? That’s, that’s the provenance of this claim. And I, I constantly object to it. I’ve had a panel designed for quite a while. With some mental health professionals to talk about this idea that God sometimes, the exception is, I want to hurt my daughters, or I don’t care about my daughters, right? Like, at times, when God wants to prioritize seed, like he didn’t with Adam and Eve and Noah and Lehi and Soraya, and, right, if there’s some other time he wants to prioritize seed, then he doesn’t care about his daughters anymore. It’s incredibly, incredibly destructive. It, it doesn’t

[1:59:08] Karen Hyatt: work. Yeah, in conjunction with that idea of it hurting women, like, play the one clip where the woman and the man come to talk to him about her concerns.

[1:59:19] Keith Erekson: Husband and wife, uh, we’re supposed to meet. All they know is they have questions that they’re worried about, and the husband says, my wife has problems with plural marriage. That’s why we’re here. And then he sits back his body language in the chair is just like can’t even believe or waste my time. We’re just, uh, my wife has a problem. And so I said to her, well, tell me, and so she did and she started to tell several stories about time she’d read a scripture or ideas she’d had or something a bishop told her or a family member and she told me several stories. And I said, OK, it sounds to me like you are wondering. If God has any value, sees any value in you as an individual. And she said, yes, that’s it. That’s it. And that was it. And so here’s kind of the way the the the the false logic goes. Well, I hear these old folk tales about plural marriage that a man is righteous and he gets a bunch of wives. Well, am I just a gift? Am I just a prize? Am I not a person? Do I not even. Have any value, what kind of God would see his daughters that way? How can I have faith in a God like that? How can I pray to a god like that? And I can tell you that’s not who God is. That’s wrong. God loves you, you’re an individual person. He will not give you away as a prize. He will not require you uh to do a thing, and that is really, really clear.

[2:01:01] Karen Hyatt: No Yeah, it’s really clear until you read the doctrine and covenants and it says, I will give them to another and it’s like, yeah, they’re given like prizes and objects and it’s crazy. And guess what? You’re right, he’s not like that because that didn’t come from him.

[2:01:20] Gwendolyn Wynn: The note that I wrote was, should I believe section 132 or should I believe Keith Erickson? Believe Keith. That’s, that’s his main message there. He’s like, trust me, do not think about this scripture. It’s wrong.

[2:01:33] Karen Hyatt: And, and so insulting that, you know, all it took for this woman, sure, she had some concerns. She read some crazy things in the scriptures or crazy places like that. But all she really needed was for her feelings to be respected and that we see her and recognize that she has value. Then all those Crazy little concerns just vanished. It’s so condescending. I can’t, I couldn’t believe that one. That one I like made me physically ill. It’s like, are you kidding me? She’s reading this stuff in the DNC that we treat as canonized scripture. And you’re like, honey, I see you. I know you have worth. And she’s like, Cool, I’m good now. Oh my word.

[2:02:17] Whitney Horning: That his whole presentation started with the idea that people have accused the historians of hiding stuff, right? So here he is again, saying, don’t worry about it. The leaders have said we don’t do that. We have separated ourselves from polygamy, but we’re not divorced from it as a church. It, um, so you’re gonna tell me that if I got to speak with President Nelson today and could say to him, so your first wife passed away, and then you were sealed to Wendy, so which one are you going to choose in the next life? You don’t mean to tell me that he wouldn’t say, well, I get both of them. You know, Ezrata Benson was sealed to his cousin, so he was married, his cousin died, she’d never married. They went to the temple and had her sealed to them in a polygamous marriage. That was in the 1950s. So what do we mean that we don’t still believe in that? Mhm. So, Mac, I do agree with him when he says you don’t have to, if you don’t want to do that thing, you don’t have to. Yeah, I do agree with that we have agency, right? But our church still is very much a polygamist church, and we still very much teach men. That they can have as many, you know, I, I had a neighbor who was on wife number 43 had passed away before we, he was elderly before we met him. He was on wife number 4. When she passed away, he literally stood up in testimony meeting and said, I have 4 wives in heaven. His obituary said that. He is joining his 4 wives in heaven. So we have separated ourselves from polygamy, but we are not divorced from the concept at all.

[2:04:10] Michelle: Wow. Well, this is, this is where I want to go with this. I find it again, astonishing that Keith is saying, Listen to me, not the scriptures. He’s never leading people to the scriptures. He’s saying, Listen to me. And he’s actually making money. My case, I would say our case, it is a travesty that we have the following verses that I want to just go over really quickly in our canonized scriptures. So when he says, Oh, what a horrible thought. You’re not going to be given. You’re not going to be taken. Oh, that I were an angel and I could make everyone stop thinking that women were just treated as possessions by God. And yet in our Canaanite scripture, let me just go over a few of them. Verse 37, Abraham received concubines and they bore him children, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness because they were given unto him. Then let’s go to 39. David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me by the hand of Nathan, my servant. Let’s go ahead to, um, let’s see, I think it’s Um, yes, verse 52. And let my handmaid Emma receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph. Then we can go to, um, verse 61. And again, as pertaining to the love of the priesthood, if any man espouses a virgin and desire to espouse another exactly what Jacob decries, exactly what Jesus Christ decries and calls adultery, um, let’s see. And the first give her consent, and if he espoused the second, then they are virgins and have and have vowed to no other man. I’m trying to fit Polyandry in with this and kind of the wife swapping that happened in Utah, but I’ll just keep going. Then is he justified, he cannot commit adultery, for they are given unto him, for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to none else. Let’s go to 62. And if you have 10 virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit. Adultery, for they belong to him. They are given unto him. Therefore, is he justified? Verse 63 is I think Gwendoline already went to. But if one of the other one or the other of the 10 virgins after she is spouse shall be with another man, she has, she has committed adultery and shall be destroyed, for they are given unto him to To play and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fill the promises which was given unto the anyway, we have plenty, plenty of canonized scriptural evidence to believe that women are are seen as property by the god of many wives and concubines, as Jacob Isbell so aptly points out as the god of 132. If 132 is canonized, Keith, I beg you, please take up our cause. You see the heartache of the women. You see the problem, you ministered to it, and you spoke truth to this woman. The problem is you did it in opposition to scripture. You set yourself up as a higher authority than the canonized scripture. I would say that all of us, the truth of God is the higher authority than the false portions of this scripture. We need to deal with this. We can’t have, like, that he thinks he solved this problem for this woman until she goes to her scriptures again. And reads it again until she goes to the primary children’s scripture stories for primary children and and teaches a primary lesson or sees what her children are being taught. What are we doing? How can we, like, like, we’ve got to get it together on this topic. It is by far the biggest topic that active temple recommend holding members of the church are dealing with. People are seeing the truth. We can’t have any of these things happening. We can’t have the, um, the lesson that we have in Come Follow me this year. We cannot have the scripture story that we have, and we cannot have these kinds of fire sites. This problem is so big and all of these things, like, yeah, we’ve got a flame burning. Stop throwing. The kerosene on it, the gasoline, the motor oil, and the jet fuel. Like that’s what you, they are doing to this problem. The more that they keep handling in these ways. We’re not, I, I mean, I, I, I’m sorry. I’m just sitting here going, do they think, does he think that we’re dumb? I, I, I don’t know. I don’t know how to understand this, but I’m so troubled by it.

[2:08:31] Gwendolyn Wynn: Well, one of the things that always comes to my mind first, whenever I hear this, this strong, you will never have to be forced to practice or required and all these things. I always think, what about Emma? Exactly was she? What about Violet Kimball? What about All these women, were they not? What if Emma doesn’t want to have, like, people say, well, you know, if Emma doesn’t want, then she doesn’t have to be with Joseph. And it’s like, no, she and Joseph were married with a covenant of fidelity. That’s actually the marital covenant is that you will cleave to each other. So what if someone wants to keep that covenant with their husband? Does she get to keep that, or I, I guess maybe I won’t mention names, but any of the church leaders, if any of their deceased wives wanted to keep that covenant between them, would they get that choice, or would they then have the choice to no longer be with that husband?

[2:09:30] Michelle: This, this is what I, I, I, ah, there are so many other clips I wanted to play, and maybe we’ll, maybe we’ll talk about a little bit of them cause I know there’s so much. But we have to decide what doctrine we believe in. We have to get done with this nonsense of exception and the rule, because that is not the, the monogamy is the exception. Polygamy is, is the rule, and whatever, whatever the silly thing is that they say, right? It is not consistent with scripture. It is not consistent with the teachings of the polygamists, which, if you’re going to believe polygamist doctrine, you need to listen to the polygamists and what they said. And it is not consistent with what we believe and what we teach today, what Keith is saying. If polygamy is the, is the, um, exception, then how can you say it’s not going to be exceptional again, right? How can you say that? And so I think we need to bring up right now, say, Herey Kimball, right? When we’re talking about if what women will be forced, when he said, My wives wouldn’t follow me, and I’ll go up to Joseph and he’ll say, Where are your wives? I’ll say, they wouldn’t follow me. He said, Never mind. Here are thousands. You have all you want, right? That is a quote from Hebrews or paraphrase from Hebrewsy Kimball. This is how he spoke about his wife. So what we are saying is we need to pick a lane on this topic of polygamy, right? And I think that the lane that is so consistent throughout scripture, throughout the teachings of Joseph, Hiram and Emma, that we can read everywhere, the canonized scriptures, except for the one bizarre anomaly. That was added in 1876 when Section 101 was removed, right? It is a consistent pattern that is also consistent with the spirit of God to the hearts of God’s children, one after another. When we take this to the Lord, it all lines up perfectly, and the truth shines out on it. And it is so interesting how we treat different church leaders and how we talk about them. This comment just astonished me.

[2:11:23] Keith Erekson: Here it is. Many people say they don’t believe Brigham Young was the prophet because of journal entries of their ancestors who were contemporaries where they described him as too flawed to have been chosen by the Lord Jesus to lead this church. One of my own sisters believes Wilfred Woodruff was abusive to his wife and couldn’t be a prophet. And so here’s what Latter-day saints do. Here’s the error. We got to the error. Can you see it? Can you feel it? Um we’re talking about how to think here. We take Joseph or Brigham or Russell Nelson, and we push them into the center. And we say, he has to be perfect. He’s the one. He’s not that. Ask every single one of them. If you find President Nelson on the street, ask him if he’s perfect. He’ll say no. Did you ever notice the doctrine Conis is filled with times where Jesus calls Joseph to repentance? Jesus knew Joseph was a sinner. Joseph knew Joseph was a sinner. Everybody who read the Doctrine of Covenant knows Joseph was a sinner. It’s the people who don’t read it who say, I can’t accept Joseph Smith because he was a sinner. That’s not a secret. We’ve been hiding that in the doctrine and covenant since 1835. So we make these stories like, well, Brigham did this. So therefore, the church that’s just you looking for an excuse, because that is not the way the Church of Jesus Christ worked in New Testament times, and it is not the way that his church works today.

[2:12:50] Whitney Horning: So this seems to be a common thing becoming more and more common now for people to excuse the way Joseph Smith purported polygamy by saying, you know, we don’t need to be perfect, profits don’t need to be perfect. And they kind of use this excuse that, you know, having more wives in one, essentially, you know, cheating on your wife or lying to your wife like Joseph supposedly did with Emma. And now with the evidence has come out that at least with Augusta Cobb, that Bergham Young. Um, would beat her, that, that they can excuse that away because men aren’t perfect. But when I heard Keith saying this, immediately I thought about Joseph Smith losing the ability to translate because he was out of the way with Emma, and that he did not regain that ability to translate until he had gone and apologized and made things right with her. And when Joseph was out of the way with Emma, he hadn’t even laid a finger on her. They just had been in an argument. And so I think that, yes, our profits aren’t perfect. Yes, they are still men who, you know, Joseph Smith even said he still was, you know, he had his native cheery temperament. He liked to tease people. He sometimes, um, there are stories of, um, him kicking, literally kicking a man in the behind to, to kick him out of his house, who was, um, somebody he didn’t want in his home because of his behaviors. And so, While we can look at them, you know, there were men who, um, disparaged Joseph because they saw him doing chores around the house, and they said, oh, that’s beneath the prophet. Those are the kinds of things we’re talking about. But when you did when you make, um, take a man beating his wife and say, that’s OK and excuse it away because he’s not perfect, um, I’m sorry, like here your whole presentation, you’re trying to say, hey women, You know, you’re, you’re, you have value and lygamy, don’t worry about it. And then you turn around and say, but it’s OK that Braggan beat his wife because he’s not perfect. You know, I just the irony of that, but no, God does, God does expect us to use self-control in the way we treat our wives and the way we women treat our husbands. Joseph Smith gave a beautiful sermon to the relief Society. Encouraging the women to be gentle and kind to their husbands and to give them um kindness when they’d had a long day at work. And, and he very much treated Emma the same way. There’s many stories where he was very tender and loving and caring towards Emma. So I just really took exception with this part, especially that And we would excuse the way a man treating his wife in such a manner.

[2:15:34] Karen Hyatt: Exactly. And, and I thought it was really interesting that for a guy that just condemned the binary either or mentality, the woman’s concern was, I’ve heard that Brigham Young was too flawed to be a prophet, and I’ve heard that Willard Richard or Wilfred Woodruff, who would have beat beat his wife, and This is a problem and he’s like, oh, we’re not perfect, you know, there nobody’s perfect. I’m like, if that’s not binary, I don’t know what to say. It’s like, you know what? We know they’re not perfect. That doesn’t mean it’s OK to do this level of sin and still be considered a servant of God.

[2:16:17] Gwendolyn Wynn: That is a pretty incredible position. Either you’re perfect or sometimes you beat your wife.

[2:16:24] Michelle: You’re the

[2:16:24] Whitney Horning: whole middle

[2:16:25] Michelle: area. Well, that’s what I mean, like, yeah, the line between, like, when we say Joseph isn’t. Perfect. I’m like, I don’t expect perfection, but I expect not sleeping with every babysitter and not sleeping with every best friend of your wife, right? Like, and I do expect not beating your wife. I think it is fascinating that we have Joseph and Emma so tender with each other. Joseph Smith III, who was nearly 12 when his father was killed, they were living in very close quarters, especially in those days, and in their little homes, and he testified that they were gentle with each other and even our Arguments were handled in very moderate tones. And yet in Clayton’s journal, we have this claim that Joseph basically beat his wife, that they were on a carriage ride and Emma was out of control, and the only way Joseph could shut her up was to treat her roughly. And so we do seem to get these different stories. I have another document I’ll be talking about at some point of more evidence of Brigham talking about beating women. And, um, and it’s just really, really fascinating to see. I, I would, I would like to see us stop minimizing sin in order to protect the narrative. That’s really destructive to all of us.

[2:17:32] Whitney Horning: Yes.

[2:17:33] Gwendolyn Wynn: Whitney, I wanted to ask you about the, the evidence that you just shared that, that Brigham beat his wife. Is that evidence that’s Later recollection from other people and stories told. Where did, where does that evidence come from?

[2:17:47] Whitney Horning: So the the Wisconsin Historical Society has a, a group of papers from a man named, I think, Theodore Schroeder, I think he was a lawyer who lived in Salt Lake, and he met Augusta Cobbs, one of her sons, and he was fascinated by Mormonism because he lived in Utah. During, um, the time of Brigham Young and whatnot. And so he collected a bunch of, um, a bunch of Mormon artifacts, a bunch of things. And one of the things he collected was a series of letters that Augusta had sent to Brigham Young that somehow came into the hands of her children, and then her children had preserved them. And so Augusta, um, you can get those from the uh Wisconsin Historical Society. They’ll digitize them for you. And Augusta um talks about Brigham um taking a switch to her or something like that, like beating her and that she still loves him even though he’s done that to her.

[2:18:45] Gwendolyn Wynn: Sounds like that’s very close to the event, um, and the person is as well. That’s, that’s the person involved herself and she was writing that letter during their relationship.

[2:18:57] Karen Hyatt: Wow.

[2:18:58] Michelle: And it’s not about, it’s not about trying to defame anybody or bring out, you know, it’s just about, we need, I, I’m really, really struggling always with the effort to throw Joseph under the bus in defense of Brigham. It’s what it feels like we often do. And, and I just, we just need to let people be who they are and let the truth be told. I, I really think that that’s important.

[2:19:20] Gwendolyn Wynn: I really feel for him too, and I know that, that you all do too, because he says, I have 4 daughters and he gives their age, age range, and they’re right at that age where they’re just about ready to, if they haven’t already, start figuring this out for themselves. And he has sisters, and also he’s a paid employee of the church, which puts him in a very difficult position because what is he going to do? Say, we’re totally wrong about this. Uh, he’s really in a hard spot, so I feel for him. But we are saying that, um, if you’re asking for humility, then, then let’s have humility be extended all the way around. If we’re saying, hey, you need to be humble and accept that maybe you don’t know everything, I agree, I don’t know everything. But I would ask that. Anyone who, uh, doesn’t totally understand polygamy, I know a lot of people feel most comfortable saying, we’ll figure it, the Lord will help us figure it out in the next life. I don’t really understand it. It’ll make sense in the next life. The time to prepare to meet God is today. We don’t want to procrastinate the day of our repentance, which is to change our mind. We don’t want to believe things which are false. So today is the day to find out what’s true. To have some humility and to accept that we could be wrong, even on this massive level, and God will still exist, and Christ still has the power to redeem us, even if as a church, we literally were led astray and engaged in abominations in the temple. God is still there and Christ is still standing with his arms outstretched for us. So, um, I hope that we can have some humility on both sides.

[2:20:59] Michelle: I. I. I love that so much. So one other thing I want to point out, and I won’t play the clip, but he talks about, um, this is just one that I dug out, so I want to address it because of the gaslighting and they just listen to me, not to what any other source, all of the, all of the sources say. He really mocks people. Who think that polygamy is part of the restoration of all things. Do you remember how he says that? You’re wrong. You might have thought that, you’re wrong. No, it’s not the restoration of all things. And he accurately points out, did we restore everything? Do you eat pork? Do you, you know, can you wear different Fabrics like, do we, did we restore the entire law of Moses? A point I have made repeatedly, I’m sure all of us have, right? It’s silly to claim that this one random thing had to be restored. Why didn’t we also need to restore slavery, right? And all of the rest of the weird cultural practices, not even to mention. That polygamy is no part of the law of Moses. We could restore all of those other things more than polygamy and don’t even bring up love at marriage because that is so weak and silly and just dumb. Stop, stop, stop. So anyway, he brings that up and really mocks the idea that it would be the restoration of all things. And if we had time, I would share the 8. Sources currently on LDS.org that I found within like 10 minutes of searching, I’m sure there are more, that currently in manuals say that polygamy was part of the restoration of all things, including the essay on Kirtland and Navu polygamy that he references. He also says he also says that there is no scriptural evidence for it. And yet those sources that include it, they, they cite Doctrine and Covenants 132, 40 and 45. Can I really quickly just point to, well, I guess I won’t take time to read them because we’ve been, I’ll let people go find it. And also they say it’s a fulfillment of Acts, Acts chapter 3, 19 through 21. Let people read this on their own, and I can put the links below. But we, this is ubiquitous. Also, if you go to the Journal of Discourses, I just pulled out one talk. This was Charles C. Penrose. There are a dozen I could have chose. I just chose this one because the title of the talk is The Work of Restitution of All Things. That’s the title of the talk. This was in 1879. And he goes on with many, many quotes about this is part of the restitution of all things. I think this is maybe from the Gospel Topics essay. what is the, I just wanted to read a little bit of it. This doctrine of celestial marriage that creates such a stir in the world is only one of the doctrines believed in and practiced by the ancients, and that too under the immediate sanction and direction of the Almighty. That God has commenced to restore in the latter days. I bear my testimony that God Almighty has revealed this doctrine of celestial marriage or marriage for eternity, including the doctrine of plurality of wives. That is in his talk, The Restitution of all things. Then I’ll just cite one more thing. There are, I, I, I have a dozen sources here, so it won’t take time, but this is too fun because this is from the Gospel topic essay on. Polygamy on plural marriage, they, I, I, they have to stop calling it plural marriage. It’s anachronistic, but plural marriage and and avvo. This principle principle was among the most challenging aspects of the restoration. Few Latter-day saints initially welcomed the restoration of a biblical practice entirely foreign to their sensibilities. Latter-day saints understood that they were living in the latter. Days in what the revelations called the dispensation of the fullness of time, ancient principles such as prophets, priesthood, and temples would be restored to the earth. Plural marriage was one of those ancient principles. Uh, like, it, it’s, it’s shocking and almost everything he says is like this. You just, you have to catch it because he’s so, he just throws it all out there like that. But is that on, this is his, I mean, he, he can’t be allowed to. do fire sites anymore.

[2:25:08] Gwendolyn Wynn: OK, go ahead. Did you read this? Maybe you read this. There were so many sources. Did you read Indoctrine and Covenant section 132 verse 40? I am the Lord thy God, and I gave unto thee my servant Joseph an appointment and restore all things. This is in section 132.

[2:25:27] Michelle: That’s, that’s and then 45 says, for I have conferred upon you the keys of the power of the priesthood wherein I restore all things and make known unto you all things in my own due time. But again, don’t listen to what the scriptures say, just listen to what he says in that moment and He says something else in a different moment, right? Well,

[2:25:45] Whitney Horning: you see they’re, they’re caught in a rock and a hard spot, right? Because they, they’re working so hard to shore up their, um, story, their narrative that Joseph was the one who introduced polygamy and he practiced it. But If they admit that and if they say like this, you know, the restoration of all things, then they run the risk of people saying, well, no, we do need to bring it back then because aren’t we the restoration, right? Like we need to preserve the restoration, we need to move it forward. So they’re in this rock and this hard place. They’re trying to keep all of us not entering into polygamy. But yeah, and to and to justify why they started excommunicating people, right? But then they also then needed to make sure that we all know it really came from Joseph and, you know, he’s the founding prophet, and so they’re kind of in this rock and a hard spot and I guess for me, I would just ask. Stop making up the narrative. Like, just, you know what you could do, church brethren and historians, you could just put the documents out, take all your footnotes out, all of your commentary where you’ve created the narrative, and you could just put the evidence before the people and let us read it and let us decide for ourselves. Like, wouldn’t that just be a wonderful thing? And, and maybe my neighbor would decide he, he looks at all the evidence and he says, oh, Joseph did do it. And then the neighbor on the other side looks at all the evidence without anybody’s narrative, nobody telling them what they believe and like she could read it and go, you know, I believe Joseph, he didn’t do it. Right. Like wouldn’t that be wonderful if we could just have the evidence laid before us? No commentary, no making up and creating new stories out of it, no creating new little one-liners, you know, monogamy is the rule, but polygamy is the exception, and let us just read the material ourselves and choose for ourselves.

[2:27:50] Karen Hyatt: He, he get an amen.

[2:27:52] Michelle: Yeah, amen. You can get an amen.

[2:27:55] Gwendolyn Wynn: He paraphrased, again, didn’t quote any scripture accurately, but he paraphrased a specific scripture two times, at the beginning and at the end. And it was Joel chapter 2, verse 28. He talked about that, and, and afterward that I will pour out my spirit. I’m, I’m actually reading it. I’m not. Paraphrasing it, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. And he, when he paraphrased it, he left the women out. He just paraphrased and talked about, talked about the, the male. Old

[2:28:29] Michelle: men and the young men.

[2:28:31] Gwendolyn Wynn: The the fulfillment of that from the men. And when I’m listening to all this, Karen, your, your documentary and that phrase that the that the savior used, woe unto you, scribes, just keeps coming to mind. And I don’t mean it in a condemning way to condemn, but just how tragic that this is what’s happened. Because that, that phrase you use, that is prophetic, right? You are one of the daughters who prophesized that this is so sad. What has been done to the restoration by people who are trying to craft the best narrative and then they’re like, here, church leaders, how do you like this narrative? And then the church leaders say, this looks good, let’s use it. I mean, this is not how, how, um, This is not how the savior asked us to do things. This is, this has actually been pronounced as a woeful way to do things, to be led by people who are crafting a specific narrative. We should not be doing this.

[2:29:26] Karen Hyatt: That’s a great point. It’s, it’s woe unto you. You’re bringing sadness inevitably upon yourself by holding to these things. Oh, that’s great.

[2:29:36] Gwendolyn Wynn: Can I talk about the JST quickly?

[2:29:39] Keith Erekson: So the question is, why don’t we use Joseph’s inspired revisions of the Bible? Why do we still have the King James Version? So the short answer is, Joseph didn’t revise the whole Bible, uh, he didn’t have time.

[2:29:52] Gwendolyn Wynn: OK. OK. So when I heard that, I was aghast. Let me just share an article with you that was published in the BYU religious Educator perspectives on the Restored Gospel Journal. This was published in 2005. When was the Joseph Smith Translation finished. It is often heard in the church that Joseph Smith’s Bible translation was never finished, an assumption that stems from 19th century when we had no access to the manuscripts and virtually no institutional memory about the translation. But careful study of the manuscripts and early historical sources teaches us otherwise. It was not finished in the sense that things still needed to be done to get it ready for printing, but the translation itself was finished as far as was intended. We know that because the prophet said so on more than one occasion. At the conclusion of the Old Testament, where the translation ends, the following words are written. Finished on the 2nd day of July 1833. After that, Joseph Smith no longer spoke of translating the Bible, but of publishing it, which he wanted and intended to do as soon as possible. So when I heard him say this, I was shocked because I know that he knows the history, and so you You can’t do this now. We have too much access to information. When you tell people something like this, and then they read the actual information which has now been been available for 20 years, it breaks trust in a way that is maybe impossible to repair. And the reason why the Joseph Smith translation is important is because it is a further evidence and testimony that Joseph did not institute polygamy. In fact, he changed verses to demonstrate that having many wives and concubines was quote not righteous. This just, this was like that was really where I was like, I am gonna lose my temper here because you can’t lie to people. Sorry to use that word, but it’s we really need to truth.

[2:32:06] Michelle: It was stunning throughout for me. This, like, this was the capstone of like, like it happened for me again and again and again, like the restoration of all things, the Joseph Smith translation, the, I mean, I mean, it just, it just, the mountain meadow, it just kept happening from beginning to end. And it is. That’s the problem, credibility, right? Like he says, it’s a conspiracy theory. They’re hiding things from me. And then he goes on to do this presentation. I, I don’t know what the goal was here. I don’t know what the expectation was. I don’t know what he thinks. I completely agree with you, Gwendolyn. Throughout the, the, here’s here’s the fact. If Joseph was using the Old Testament to justify polygamy, that would show up in his translation, right? He would show us where God commanded Abraham. He could have written that in. And it is very telling that the the leaders after Joseph and Hiram were killed, tried. So desperately to get it from Emma. And if they couldn’t get it, they wanted to burn it. And from the pattern that seems to be that it either needed to be rewritten or destroyed, right? And it, what a blessing. Like, praise Emma’s name again and again, the, the, the sacrifice that woman paid from day one to protect that Bible, crossing the frozen river with that hidden in her skirts, holding her babies, one in each arm and one holding each side of her skirt. To save that record for us, facing her house being burned, threatened to be burned down multiple times so she could save that record for us. That is a sacred record. We don’t get to ignore it. And you’re right, Gwendolyn, we don’t get to tell falsehoods about it. And it’s, and it falls in line. So I just, I, in closing, I do want to just present something that to me feels delicious to my soul, and I want to just see if people can understand. What it is that we’re hungering for. Cause I, when, um, when we were talking about the Thanksgiving feast, and I was like, anyone who’s actually hungry feels like they just had like a giant bowl of Sour Patch kids shoved down their, their throat, right? And we’re just sitting here like sick to our stomachs, right? But what if A historian who’s in charge of the church history library came to a presentation with a slideshow and started showing documents and said, This is something we have discovered. This is a document that was changed. There’s a lot of interpretation for this. This is why some people are starting to think that Joseph didn’t originate polygamy. These are some of the reasons we think that he did or that I think that he did. Let’s go through. Oh, did you have a question? Oh, yes. What about the April, the October 5th journal entry? Oh, well, let me show you this. These are the different revisions of it. Yes, this is how I interpret this. This is how some other people do. Why be a church historian if you can’t do that? That is exactly what we are. Can you imagine how filled we would be? And, and we might have questions, we might have confusion, but we would be invigorated and we would have actually been nourished with truth. Truth at this point is not conclusions necessarily. Like, I don’t sit here and say, I’ve had my answer. Polygamy isn’t of God and Joseph wasn’t a polygamist. I go carefully through the documentation, the scriptural case. Whitney, in your book, you went through it. Gwendoline, and you all of your videos, you go through it bit by bit. Karen, in your video, you outline it perfectly and concisely, right? That is exactly what we are doing and people are Being filled both with knowledge and also with truth and the confirmation of the Holy Ghost. And if there are things we’re getting wrong, please correct us because we are trying so hard to get the things right. But my gosh, we could use your help. Historians, the director of the church history library, who’s now involved in outreach. This is the outreach. If He could go to, like, I just desperately want to see another presentation where Keith Erickson goes with documents that he can show that he can put in context for people, that he can show, like, that is, that is the picture I have in my mind of what a church, the church, we through our tithing and are paying the salaries of these church historians. They should be doing their job of, if it’s outreach, bring the history to the people. We are begging you. We are begging you. And if, uh, like, like, let the pieces fall where they may. But the worst thing you can do. I make people feel further gas lit, further lied to, further demeaned, further divided, because we’re protecting a false narrative which we have all just seen how thin that veneer is. That was that was an awful presentation. And when you consider what it could be, it, like, like I just feel to beg. Please start treating us with respect, like grown-ups with brains and spirits. Like the Book of Mormon teaches and God teaches, each of us have the light of Christ, and each of us have the gift of the Holy Ghost. We all are capable of learning both by study and by the Spirit. Please aid us in that path, rather than stomping it out of us and trying to make people. Tell us that we’re just filled with pride and that we’re fear, we’re and we’re, you know, whatever it may be. That’s my plea. Anyone else last words.

[2:37:51] Karen Hyatt: That’s fantastic, Michel. That’s so good. And just if anyone’s wondering, I did contact him in his, on his contact form online where he said, contact me if you want to talk with me, and I will get right back to you. So I did that a couple of days ago. So I, you know, I’m waiting. I specifically told him I had this for him and wanted to put it in his hands and explain why I did it. So we, yes, we, we, we’ve reached out to him and uh and 12 others, you know, lots of other people. So here’s hoping, you know, here’s hoping that what you’re seeing in your head will, will happen.

[2:38:30] Michelle: And I, I should have said that at the very beginning. Before we, before I took a step into this, um, video, I did message Keith as well and ask him if he would be willing to come and have a conversation. I would love, I would still welcome that conversation. I just, I’m just, my heart is yearning for honesty, for truth, the. People that are working at the church and heading the church, I want to be able to respect them. I want to be able to trust them. I want to see them as having credibility. I don’t want to feel lied to anymore. Part of the reason I also wanted to do this was to help people understand why it is that so many of us are feeling lied to. So yes, let’s, let’s, let’s all pray that we can turn over a new leaf, that, that things can go a different direction because they have to. OK, you guys are awesome. Thank you. Thanks for letting me have all the last words. But thank you so much for coming and joining me. I just, again, these women are incredible. This is a powerhouse panel. I really appreciate you guys coming. I so appreciate all of you. You that stick around and watch with us that are engaged in this journey with us, that are engaged in the documents in the search for truth, in the quest for to to bring truth forward to as many as care to listen. Thank you so much and let’s all carry on. I’ll see you next time. My most sincere gratitude to these three dear friends of mine for coming and spending this time with me. I went to bed after this conversation just feeling so thankful, filled with gratitude that I get to talk about these topics with amazing people who are invested in them, that all of you and all of us are on this journey together, digging into things and trying to bring forward truth. It really feels good and it feels important. To me. As I said, I didn’t, we didn’t get to play all of the clips that I wanted to play. And even then, there’s so much more to this fire site. So it will be linked, um, below, and it will be out for the, a few weeks on my channel. So if anyone wants to keep it, be sure to download it before I take it down. But anyway, thank you so much, all of you for being along on this journey where we are seeking for truth and hoping for better things to come. I’ll see you next time.

132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

154: Response to Keith Erekson — No Sir, That’s NOT History

Transcript

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