97: Temples Part 4 — The Endowment: Line Upon Line

Too few of us understand the history and origin of the temple endowment. After watching this episode you will know exactly what sources we use to claim the endowment came from Joseph Smith, instead of Brigham Young.

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Links:
Ongoing Restoration video
Brigham Young April 6 1845 Speech Times and Seasons
Andrew Ehat papers: Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord? (Only available for download, search terms and download papers)
Joseph Smiths Introduction of Temple Ordinances

BYU Journal Papers:
Paper 1
Paper 2

Elder Bednar Line Upon Line
Saints Unscripted video

Isaiah 28:7-31
Isaiah 56:10
Micah 3:5-7

President Nelson Oct 2021
Joseph Smith May 1 1842 sermon (recorded by Willard Richards)
Joseph Smith June 11 1843 sermon (Wilford Richards)
(Recorded by Eliza Snow)
Joseph Smith April 8 1844 (recorded by Wilford Woodruff)

May 4 1842 Original Journal Entry (Use these links to go to the 3rd and the 5th)
Draft
CHL

Heber C. Kimball to Parley P. Pratt letter June 11 1842

Temple Pro Tempe
Feb 15 1884 Deseret news semi-weekly, Lucius Scovil letter to the editor, page 2

[UPDATE: Another source regarding point 4 was pointed out by a listener. I WISH I had seen it in time to include it! There is a claim that Dimick B. Huntington also spoke about decorating the red brick store December 12, 1878. The evidence for this claim is very poor. The only source is from a photocopy someone made of undated notes someone else supposedly made claiming Huntington said this. There is no other record. The photocopy is in “Mary Brown Firmage Woodward papers” collection at BYU.

I will request it when the Library opens on Wednesday, and hopefully record a quick update video.
This supposed source actually strengthens the case against this happening. It includes completely different people and different details than Lucious Scovil included in his 1884 editorial. He claims completely different people were there and his description of what they did is very different. It also contradicts other, more reliable sources, (for example the claim that he had set up the kingdom never to be thrown down or given to another people, when contemporary sources say he said the exact opposite.)]

Joseph Smith Store Daybook
Joseph Smith Jr’s Red Brick Store
L. John Nuttall Journal
July 8 1844 Brigham Young letter to Willard Richards
Saints Chapter 37
Nauvoo Temple Records

Joel 1-3
James 5:16
2 Kings 22

Transcript:

Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy where we explore the scriptural theological and historical case for plural marriage. This is the episode, the long awaited long promised episode on the history and origin of the Temple endowment. This is a big one. This has been maybe more work than any of my other episodes so far. And that is saying a lot. I want to first um as always invite people to please start at the beginning of this podcast and understand where we’ve come from what we have established so far. And um and then come to this one. If you want to listen to this one first, that’s fine. Please listen all the way through and please don’t judge the podcast just by this episode. I also want to request that people who are listening to this episode. Please listen to at least the 1st 10 minutes of my episode part on Temples part three, that I lay out some really important um foundational pieces for people of faith that I think need to be understood. And then I also want to make the request that if you start this episode, please be determined to continue it to the end. Some of the most important things I think come at the end, I also want to invite people who um are like me in the church. People of faith, people who love the temple and love the church, please be prayerful about whether or not to listen to this episode. I I um everything in it is accurate, as accurate as I possibly have been able to find. And um however, not everyone needs to know everything all the time. So please be prayerful to know if this is an episode that you should listen to at this time. And with all of that being said, thank you so much for joining us as we take this deep dive into the murky waters of the temple endowment. There is a lot to get to in this episode and there was, there was so much that I decided to put a slide show together. So I’m hoping this will all go smoothly and be very, very comprehensible without too many hiccups, but we’re going to do the best we can in any case, but we’re just gonna dive right in. So I’ve shared in previous episodes on the temple, how this all happened, how I went to Saint George, right? And had the tour of Brigham Young’s home. So I’m gonna go ahead and share and we’re gonna get started talking about that. So this is Brigham Young’s Saint George Mansion where I got to go on a tour and I talked about how I learned things there that are relevant to the temple. So that’s why we’re starting there. So picking up back where we left off, they talk so much. It’s really an interesting experience. I think anyone who is able to go um to Saint George should go see Brigham Young’s Mansion. It’s, it’s kind of surreal because they talk so much about how poor and frugal and industrious the people were and how they may do with everything. It was very much like if you couldn’t make it yourself, you went without and, and this was very much the theme of everything they talked about. And yet here we are in this lush, luxurious home where you see all of these things. So let’s go through with some of what you see when you go to Saint um the Saint George mansion. This is um Brigham and Amelia. So the same George Match and like the Gardo House was for her. She was his last wife, his last favorite wife as well. So they’re hanging prominently on the wall and you could see his special box piano that it was really interesting because they were talking so much about the sweet sister missionary. She was a um elder like um they’re, they’re a couple, right? And she was telling us about how they made everything themselves. And so I looked at the piano and I was like, how did they make the piano. 00, no, that had to be shipped. That’s a special box. Piano that fits perfectly in a wagon box. So it can be shipped from back east. Oh, so just everyone else had to make everything on their own. Got it, you know, it’s hard to escape what you’re seeing. And so there you can see so much more of, um, these fireplaces I think are all made out of pine and then painted to look like various kinds of stone. This one looks like marble and then there’s Brigham’s, this is a famous part. You see his hat in his hat box. That’s Brigham Young’s very own hat and hat box. And keep in mind these people were, well, we’ll talk about it a little bit more. They were very, very poor. And so, um, going forward, you can just see his desk and there hanging on the wall is also his wives, many of his wives that you will see when you go there. This, I don’t know if this is a picture from um, Saint George or just a picture that someone put together of several of his wives. But, um, let’s see, I, the part that I want, the reason I’m talking about this where I was especially interested was when she took us outside to this little outbuilding I have, oh, let me add it back the day. You have to be patient with me or I have a lot of working parts. I’m trying to navigate to this outbuilding, this little white building. And, um, it’s, it’s a strange sort of building. It’s just off to the side. You can see the mansion right there with the windows and there’s this building here are a few more pictures of it. That one’s, um, an, an older picture. They put the handrails in since then and when she took us out there, she sat us down on, um, they now have in, in that little building. Um um pews, I guess that are from the old Saint George Tabernacle. I believe that they’ve now moved into that building. And so this was near the end of the tour. She took us into this building. And the sweet sister just said how strong the spirit was every time she came into this building and um how much she loved being in there because this is where Brigham Young sat as he and Wilfred Woodruff wrote the Temple Endowment and the Temple ordinances. OK. What I mean? I’m sure my eyes about shot out of my head because other people might have known that I didn’t, I didn’t know that Brigham Young wrote the temple ceremonies in Saint George. And that is what started me down this entire track, trying to learn and figure out what in the world this was all about. So this um sister, she really did a good job. But um I don’t think they’re used to having um historians even amateur historians on the tours, maybe that are kind of willing to have a little bit more of a critical eye because everything, um, kind of made me think a little bit. But, um, I followed her out to, to, well, after the tour I asked her if I could talk to her a little bit and she, um, you know, I was happy to answer my questions and I asked, do you have a book that you use a reference book? And she said, oh yes, we do. And I was like, can I buy a copy? Oh, no, no, that’s just for missionaries? OK. Can I look at it? And she was really sweet and took me out to um their little other office and let me look at her book and I flipped through it a little bit and then saw the um references like the, the footnotes, the um not the index but the um the, the citations at the end. And she let me take my, take a ca take um get my camera out and take a picture. And the main book that was cited was this one called All That was Promised by Blaine Jorgenson. I’m not sure if you can see it. Oh And is backward too. But it’s called All That was Promised by Blaine Jorgeson. And it’s about the Saint George temple and the unfolding of the restoration. So I went immediately and got this book and started my journey. And that’s, that was when I thought I was going to do an episode on the Temple. Four episodes, it has expanded and expanded and expanded and I’ve gone way beyond that. So I just want to give you because I had already done this part for the first episode, just gonna give you some quick highlights from this book. Well, first of all, on the tour, she talked about many of these things that are, several of them are also in the book. But um she, she told us the story of the tower on the Saint George Temple, which is a pretty fun, fun story. So the ever expressive Brigham Young, let me get back. There was pretty disgusted by the finished Saint George Temple because he said that the tower was way too short and squatty and he was quite um quite unhappy about it. And um he, he desperately wanted it replaced to have a taller tower and they knew it was too, too late and too close to the end to the um day that they wanted to dedicate it. So they just weren’t able to do to replace the short and squatty tower as he called it. So he died. Oh, I have it in my notes here. But it was less than a year after the Saint George temple was dedicated. And um and just a little while later, let’s see. And the following year it says the following year lightning struck and des destroyed the tower, destroyed that short squatty tower. And there was seemed to be universal consensus that it was Brigham still thundering at them that when they and when they dedicated the Saint George Temple after so much sacrifice and work, the stories are just painful. It gave me a whole new respect for the Saint George Saints and not saying a lot because me even just being in Saint George for a little while in the summer now with air conditioning is hard, right? These people that lived there, I have never understood how they did it. And then when you understand what the deprivations they experienced also along with being in that incredibly difficult climate, it’s unbelievable. But it, that’s what that when they were dedicating the temple, he um he was dealing with his, he just didn’t feel good. His feet were in pain. He had rheumatism, I think. Anyway, he slammed his cane down on the brand new podium of the brand new temple really hard as he was just railing at the saints and left a dent in it that’s there to this day. And so that was, that was how Brigham dedicated the temple. So when he struck it with lightning, that’s what everybody thought. So it took a few years for them to get to it. But finally they replaced the tower on the temple and, and built it back after it was destroyed by the fire. Um They built it back bigger as Brigham had always wanted it. So, anyway, so we’re gonna go ahead, let me um remove this for a minute and I’ll just start talking you talking to you about what I learned, right? So, as soon as I got this book, as soon as I started reading the prologue, I knew I was in trouble. It was uh not what I expected to hear. And I’ve shared that story before of the stress of like, am I going to be Jonah or am I going to be a bit a bit of die? And I, that’s what I want people to listen to in the last episode. I won’t repeat it here. But i it’s important for people to hear um what answer I had. But just in short, I believe that God honors faith and from the example of Jesus and others, God honors temples, temples, the temple at the time of Christ was built by Herod, right, a corrupt leader. And yet Jesus called it my father’s house and expected it to be honored. And I really, I, I didn’t go into this in the last e in any of the last episodes and I won’t this time either. But there is, it’s beautiful to read the teachings of Jesus regarding the temple throughout the scriptures. I think it’s really good to internalize and recognize that we the temple, right? We are the sacred space that God wants on this earth. And so I I still am. I still kind of believe that idea that temples are a lower law, right? I think that it is important, as I said in the first episode that David the king, after they had the people had gone to a lower law. That’s the first time they ever built a temple. And, and learning that Kirtland was actually the house of the lord, not the temple. And that navoo after they had had something taken away and lost the um opportunity to build Zion. That’s when they build a temple. There’s something to that that I want to investigate. So anyway, a lot to think about. But, but at the same time, I don’t want anything that I say here to invalidate people’s experiences that we have had in temples because God honors faith and that’s what it really comes down to. So anyway, we’ll, we’ll just keep going on from there. So this book is, as I said, mainly about the building of the Saint George temple, which was the first temple in Utah. You’ve learned that from my Salt Lake episodes and it was the only one completed during Brigham Young’s lifetime. And so much of the book is about the incredible sacrifices and hardships that people endured while they were there. And I’ll tell you a couple of examples that um it starvation was a common thing. It sounds like like there were families when you actually, I don’t, I don’t know how many Children died of starvation but it was more than zero. And, um, there were families that had nothing but pig weed to eat every single meal, every single day. If they had something to eat, it was pigweed. I looked up what that was and it was amaranth and something else. Oh, I can’t remember. I deleted it. But anyway, nutritious but hard, hard to live on and hard to eat every day. There’s a heartbreaking story of a big brother who gets to go work and gets fed some actual bread and brings it home because he knows that his siblings have nothing but pig weed anyway. It’s just, just heartbreaking stories. And so, but um but here are a few examples that I thought were interesting um of how like, like people would be called to go live in Saint George, sell everything they had, go live in Saint George and suffer basically. Right? And so it was a calling and there wasn’t compensation or support in the way you would hope that there would be. But um so there was a craftsman named William Henry Thompson who worked nonstop for 2.5 years, including on Christmas Day when Brigham Young kill called him out of the temple and said, Brother Thompson, I want you to go in there and work for nothing and board yourself and stay until further orders. Will you do it? He said I labored without pay until I was down to bedrock, my family, not having the common necessities of life. And these, I think, as I said, um well, I guess I, I haven’t released my interview with my second interview with Barbara um Jones Brown yet, but I will soon. But as I said in that this was in a era where they were really maximizing sacrifice, like sacrifice was the order of the day. So the more you could talk about your sacrifice, the more righteous you were in a way. So I don’t think they were saying these things to criticize Brigham. They were saying it to say this is what I did, right? And so um there was a man named Thomas Allman who was called to take over his architect and super intendent after the last foreman, Miles Romney was unable to continue because of a terrible fall that ne nearly killed him. And I believe he did die afterward of his injuries. And so I’ll quote from the book, Thomas Allman along with many others was in Saint George, serving without pay, moreover, without an income flowing into his home in Provo. And they had multiple wives, right? The pa without income flowing in the past several months into his home in Provo. Since um since he had been sent, his large family had used up their store of food and knew not where to obtain more. And so in his elite position, he was able to partition petition Brigham Young. He was the head architect who allowed his family to quote, have their needs supplied from the tithing office. But he also said to quote, quote, keep a separate account. He told the tithing tithing office to keep a separate, separate account of what is paid. And we will hereafter give you instructions on how to cancel it. So even though he was serving without pay and his family was starving, he was willing to let them have food, but it all had to add up on their account that they would have to pay back later. It’s amazing. And so um then let’s see, it’s similar to the sermons that Brigham gave in regarding the Salt Lake Temple. This was April 8, 1867. I have told you some few things with regard to the temple. We want the Tabernacle finished. And when a man asked to go and work on it, do not begin with to do not begin to make a wry face and say I have got so and I’ve got so much work to do says the men will um he says the men will work wherever they will pay you. Six pence a day more. I will work for the devil as quick as work for the Lord, for the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not say that anymore, whether we get a dollar a day or nothing. It is all the same. Uh Not all the same to the person and their family that’s getting nothing work, whether we get our pay or not or whether we have money offered to us or not. You. And I will find in the end that there is not a man on earth who can give the, who can give the increase to our labors, but it is the Lord who gives it no matter whether you make 50 cents or $50 a day, the gives the increase and what whatever he pleases to give, he will give and whatever he pleases to withhold, he will withhold. That’s, that was the attitude like Brigham who was living in, in so much luxury was telling everyone else. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get paid. Work. Anyway, work for me anyway. And don’t go work somewhere else where you can feed your family. So it’s an interesting attitude, right? And so anyway, and I, I always have to compare it to like the widows. Might you the savior that we, we have mistaken thinking when we think, oh, if we teach people principles like tithing, then the Lord will bless them. That’s kind of what he’s saying. No, the Lord calls on us to bless them. That’s the whole point of the gospel, right? Have you fed the poor? Have you clothed the naked? Have you comfort the comfort of the afflicted, right? And so anyway, ok, so this book also contains, we’re not even getting to the subject matter yet, but this is what I had put forward first. And I think it’s really interesting. So this book has very, a lot of, very interesting tidbits. So I would, I would recommend it if anyone’s interested. But one is this one interesting thing read about is the celebration he held in the Tabernacle. This was at 10 o’clock Sunday morning, Sunday morning, 10 o’clock at the Tabernacle March 5th, 1875. And so at this point in Utah, regular church service wasn’t really a thing. That’s not what they did. That wasn’t the culture. And so this was the day after the final stone stone in the walls was laid. And I should mention that a few of the reasons for settling Saint George that Brigham wanted it settled were to go grow cotton so they could produce all their own clothing. That’s why it was called Utah’s Dixie, right? And to grow grapes so they could produce their own wine, which they did in abundance. If you go on that tour, the Brigham Young tour, they will show tour, they will show you his wine decanter and goblets. And so quoting from page 192 of the book on this. On this Sunday morning, the brass band played and bread and cheese were passed around, the wine was carried in water buckets and brass pitchers. There were bushel bushels of tin cups brought in to drink out of some of the brethren drinks so freely at that wine that they became noisy. Um Brother mcdonald who was the leader said he told the bishops not to serve any more wine as there were some of the brethren that could not take a little wine without drinking so much and becoming noisy and disorderly. So again, Tabernacle Sunday morning, right. It, it was a very different time, a very different culture. Um I think that we tend to think of Mormonism as it’s always been like it is, right. No, that’s not the case. And so um while it does share some of these amazing stories that I find interesting that are eye opening it, the book in overall is what I would call extreme apologetics. That’s um I, I mean, at this point, it starts to feel like spin doctoring when you see that they have these sources and yet this is how they portray them, right? And so um those as always with all of these things, people who haven’t read the sources who don’t know the history will find much of this compelling like reading saints, you know, but when you have read the sources and you know what they’re citing, it’s really, really shocking to see how this is done. And I, I anyway, I think I’m, I think that people hopefully just have the blinders on and aren’t fully aware of what they’re doing because to me it seems crazy. But um anyway, so I shouldn’t be too hard on that book for the most part. I liked it, but it was the prologue and chapter 15 that I was like, oh, my goodness. So if anyone’s really should just read that and chapter 15, but actually I’m gonna give you all of the sources here. So this book was the first introduction, um, introduction I found into the origin of the Temple Endowment. And so that was when I planned to do the episode. But as time has gone on, I have dug much, much, much deeper. I’ve gone into all of the sources it cited. Right. I have read a mountain of academic papers and articles, master’s thesis, some of them, 100 and 89 pages, um journal articles as well as other books on the topic. It, it has nearly drowned me. And so I will share many of these things in the links for anyone who would like to read more. And there are also, I will say there are also many articles by religious thinkers either still L DS or now not L DS anymore. Some divergent, you know, ideas that people have sent me. I just couldn’t even go into those because there was so much I couldn’t get into like temple interpretations or different things like that. So if anyone’s hoping that I can go there, I’m sorry, I can’t in this episode because there’s just too much. So, what I did find through all of this research is that practically every church friendly, meaning apologetic book and paper, which is pretty much what I read because that’s pretty much what there is. Right. They all make identical claims repeatedly. They all claim the same things and that’s what we’re gonna go through. And, uh, frustratingly, historians often seems like almost always cite each other. Right. They cite another book or another paper and I, I just want to know what original sources that they’re basing it on. So I had to follow this, um, like, uh, this, what do you call it? I can’t think of the word I’m looking for scavenger hunt, right? Going here to, here to, here to try to get to the original source, which I finally, I think I was able to do, I finally have, have narrowed down onto the original sources. But let me just show one example of what I’m talking about. I’ll add this back to the screen of kind of this scavenger hunt. So, um, on page eight of Vengeance is mine and I did this interview, that’s the Barbara Jones Brown book that I did. And, and that I read to do the interview with her that I thought was great. And, um, on page eight, it says the endowment was a strictly oral ceremony, believed too sacred to write down that massively caught my attention because that’s exactly what I had been studying. And I had been looking and looking for the source for that claim. It was a claim I had read quite a bit. And so when I turned to the footnote, right? It said, um, number nine, it referenced Jennifer Anne Mackley. I think Wilford Wood Brook’s witness page 168. So knowing that this was a book, I probably needed to read the development of temple doctrine. And knowing that I do way better with audio books because I can do them while I’m running or while I’m doing dishes and, you know, I, I just have a lot more time when I’m sitting and reading, it’s working on my podcast. So anything I can listen to is great. So I ordered the audio book and listened all the way through and listened to where a page, 100 68 should be. It doesn’t have pages, but I could not find anything. So I went and thought I need to buy the book, but it was like $30 for the Kindle version. So I found it on Desert book for $13. But that, and it didn’t have page numbers which was so frustrating and they wouldn’t let me return it. I was like, all I need is the page number to see what I’m missing on page 168. That would tell me why we claimed the temple or the temple. Andrey was too sacred to write down. Anyway, it was so frustrating. And so I ended up having to order the hard copy of this book. I have three versions of it now. Oh, and um finally turned to page 100 and 68. And let me show you what I found is, do I do it here? Yes, I actually didn’t miss anything. It’s the only thing relevant says previously the ceremonies had been passed orally from those who received them under the hand of Joseph Smith to those who officiated in the Nut Temple and then the endowment house. So all it was citing was that they were done orally before they were written down, which I already knew, which is not the citation I needed. I needed to find out why they claimed it was too sacred. So anyway, I, that was a frustrating, right? Not very helpful. Um, scavenger hunt, I went on, but that seems to be how a lot of this goes like why don’t you just cite the source that tells us that. So anyway, as I continue to research, while I was waiting for this book to come, I found several papers by Andrew E Hat. He is the one who, who had access to the um, William Clayton journal and who made the notes that got taken from the BYU office and passed around. So that’s what I was able to find when, when I got, when I found all of Andy E Hat’s papers that was massively helpful because I was able to find where these claims come from. And so that was, that was just anyway, extremely helpful. And so let’s see where I wanna go on from there. Um OK. So, yeah, so that, that, that was just one example I gave you of, of how this research goes because of what they cite. And so one of the claims that they often make, um, well, first here, let me just take this off and talk about this. So again, because this topic is so huge and there and the research was so difficult. I did not know how to structure it. I struggled for a long time, which is why I kept doing other parts. But it goes into everything. This topic goes everywhere. It goes into the succession crisis and succession claims, it goes into the priesthood keys, masonry. Um Joseph’s original ceremonies, the washings and anointings and ceilings, which for Joseph meant sealing the ordinances of washing and anointing, right? And then later meant sealing people to the Lord directly anyway. And then other temple ceremonies, the council of the anointed quorum, the council of friends and on and on. There are so many things. It has seriously been overwhelming to decide where to draw lines and what to include and what not to. And finally, one night in like this burst of inspiration, which now sounds so simple on this side of it. But it really took the Lord’s like showing this is how to do it. I was like, oh, ok. And so what I finally decided to do was to limit it only to the endowment I can do other episodes in the future, covering other temple elements like washings and anointings, which are from Joseph and ceilings, garments recommends 2nd, 2nd anointings, all of those things. We’ll have to wait for a future episode. So I’m just going to do the endowment and I’m only going to talk about the origin of the endowment ceremony, the origin and history and try to summarize the claims made about it, reading some specific examples and then investigate the sources used to support those claims. So that’s what I’ve narrowed it down to which actually I think is fundamental. It really is the most important part of all of this. So as I said, there is a lot to get into. So OK, I’ll share the screen again. So from what I have continually continually seen in all of my research, see what seems to be the ubiquitous explanation for how we got the temple ordinances and why they have changed so much between Brigham and Joseph and continuing on until this day is that God reveals things line upon line. This started with Brigham Young and has continued to do it to do this day. I love this Mormon ad I was able to find I took off a little bit of the other writing just to show line upon line and the temple really clearly, right? And it continues today, I think it’s been somewhat rebranded in the idea of the ongoing restoration. This is a recent video released by the church. And um it talks about things like the name of the church, how that changed with President Nelson home centered church. Remember it’s home centered church supported um And changing all the shortened Sunday um Sunday meeting schedule, ministering instead of home teaching and visiting teaching elders quorum instead of high priests and elders quorum the end of young men’s presidencies and other changes. Um And then there are also other changes not included in this video, but definitely that we have seen like the recent and ongoing changes to the temple ceremony and other ordinances. And so it um it, it’s at the end of it is where President Nelson tells us to take our vitamins because of all of the changes they included that. So this idea of line up online started as early as 18 45 as I said with Brigham Young in the April conference where he corrected Joseph’s error of allowing women and men to be baptized for their dead relatives of either sex that I talk about this. I know in the episode with Whitney Horning and maybe some other times as well. So it’s where Brigham Young publicly taught spiritual wifey to the huge crowd. So that’s, that’s right. That’s what I taught. So you can see some of his quotes. He who gives that law is perfect and reduces it to the capacity of finite beings in order that they may understand it. And then more thus, the infinite being gives line upon line reveals principle after principle as the mind of the finite beings expand I have and then later on, and you have to see, well, I’ll explain in a minute how this is being used. But I have now about got through with my preliminaries and shall occupy your attention with some items in relation to the doctrine of the baptism for the dead. When it was first revealed, all of the order of it was not made known afterwards. It was made known. The Lord has led this people all the while in this way by giving them here a little and there a little by giving them. Um And there a little thus, he increases their wisdom. Joseph in his lifetime did not receive everything connected with um the doctrine of redemption. But he has left the keys with those of us who understand how to obtain and teach to this great people, all the things, all that is necessary for their own salvation and exaltation in the celestial kingdom of our God. So that’s the idea, right? It comes bit by bit. And you can see that this has continued in, in everything I read. In fact, many of the articles were actually this was in the title like Line Upon Line Precept Upon Precept written by um Richard E Bennett. And let me read some quotes from this one. If I can get this to scroll down speaking, sh shortly after Joseph Smith’s death. Brigham Young reaffirmed the neces necessity of this ordinance while admitting to the process of adoption and design. When the doctrine of baptism for the dead was first given. He said in April 1845 that’s what I just read. The church was in its infancy and was not capable of receiving all of the knowledge of God in it and hit the highest degree this you all believe. And he goes on to quote what I just quoted and then he says, as the doctrine of baptism for the dead came line upon line. So too came the temple and the endowment, right? So you can see a pattern emerging. Here’s another one. Line upon line, Joseph’s growing understanding of the eternal family. This says as Joseph Smith continued to learn line upon line, he gained a greater understanding of the importance of people being sealed or welded together both in God’s eternal family as well as with their own individual families. Over many decades, Joseph Smith and his prophetic successors learned and taught line upon line about Malachi’s prophecy, Elijah’s mission temple worship and ceilings. Then he says the process of learning line upon line was clearly demonstrated in Joseph Smith’s line upon line, developmental understanding of the nature of family relationships and eternity. The authority to husbands and wives for eternity was used to perform plural marriage for the living and adoptions to priesthood leaders practices discontinued in the 18 nineties. Since then, prophets have continued to refine the doctrine of eternal families. OK. So, oh, I have continued to refine the doctrine of eternal families. Line up online. Couldn’t leave that last line out. That was important. So, and this is where I want to clarify that when they say he learned things, line up online. What it seems to me they are actually saying is uh let’s see what they actually tend to point to is, is, is that his actual experiences and teachings didn’t fit with what we later claim them to be, right? So he, it seems they’re saying he didn’t really know what they meant. He had these experiences, but he didn’t understand them. It took Brigham Young as mostly Brigham Young, but then sometimes other later leaders as well to fulfill what Joseph didn’t. And to reveal what Joseph didn’t understand um that his revelations from God were really about. So that’s what it tends to mean to me. When I, when as I really dig into line up on online, it’s Joseph had this experience, but he didn’t know what it was about Brigham Young, his and then we, then we retrofit fit that experience to fit Brigham Young’s doctrine, right? And so um let me give you a few more examples. This is um uh uh talk a BYU I address I believe and then a gospel and then a general conference address by President Bednar. So our elder Bednar. So the first thing and he says, I want to. So I’ll quote, I think he first quotes Bruce R mcconkie. Um I want to highlight another example from the history of the rest church. President Joseph Fielding Smith taught the following principle. This work of salvation for the dead came to the prophet like every other doctrine piecemeal. It was not revealed all at once when the angel moroni came to the prophet Joseph Smith, one of the things he told him, one of the things he told him was that the hearts of the Children should turn to their fathers and the hearts of the fathers to the Children. So that when the Lord should come to the earth, when when the Lord should come, the earth should not be smitten with a curse. This is significant. That was the first inkling the prophet had concerning salvation for the dead. And he did not know just what it meant. He had a very vague idea of the meaning of the words of that. I uh that Elijah would come to plant in the hearts of the Children, the promises made to the fathers. And I suppose he pondered a good deal. He pondered over it, a good deal that’s from doctrines of salvation, um quoted by Bruce R mcconkie. And so then, um Elder Bed, Elder Bednar goes on to say that first small inkling given to the prophet Joseph Smith grew line upon line precept upon precept and eventually included the restoration of priesthood keys in the Kirtland Temple. And this I will say is about section 110 of the doctrine and covenants and the idea of the restoration of all priesthood keys. This is one of the things I delved into. I it killed me to have to cut it from this episode. But I, we have to save it for another day and do its own episode on it. And so it, it’s, it’s, I’m so glad I delved into it can include it today. So anyway, he continues the performance of essential ordinances in the nut temple which happened after Joseph’s death. So he’s listing the things that Joseph got line up online, right? And the availability of more than 100 30 temples throughout the world today, truly progress has been made in this eternal i internally important work line upon line and precept, precept. So you can see how this issue in the following conference. That’s the spirit of Revelation. His April 2011 talk. It was different, but it had the similar theme of light coming gradually. He compares it to a sunrise rather than um light switching on with a light switch. So it really was a key feature. This line upon line idea was a key feature in these books as well. And so I’ll read from all that was promised, right? Um Right here, I’m just gonna leave that on. And so the prologue starts by trying to establish through Brigham’s claims that Joseph and Brigham are basically the same. And so, um so my friend who I have someone that I can kind of special order memes from, um at this point which I love and he’s going to come on the podcast soon and he made this meme for me, which I thought was great. And so I’ll read the two quotes, rarely have two men been less alike in appearance and temperament, yet closer mind and heart than Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. And then it quotes Hugh nly saying their teachings are as one as the, as the minds of the saints and prophets have always been one. So I thought that that was pretty great. Um Let’s see. He goes on to say it is, it is unclear how soon the doctrine of priesthood ordinances that were essential for exultation became part of Joseph’s. And therefore Brigham’s thinking, we do not know that the rest um that the reception of the, we do not, we do know that the reception of the doctrine followed the Lord’s pattern of giving Joseph line upon line or moving from one department to another as Brigham described it whenever the knowledge came, this heaven tutored understanding filled the minds of both prophets with a shared vision of the need for temples and temple ordinances. So it really works hard to establish the idea that Brigham Young is exactly the same as Joseph Smith. There’s no difference between no difference between them and so I could have chosen from many different videos to um demonstrate the lens we go to to establish, establish these ideas. But I chose this one that is actually sponsored by the church. And um I think this one should suffice to make the point. So the idea that the endowment ceremony should never change in any way because it was revealed by God exhibits a bit of a misunderstanding of what revelation is and how it is received. Isaiah outlined an extremely important principle. The word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, line upon line here a little and there a little. And we see this kind of revelation all over the place in scripture. The Jared Barges Peter’s revelation about missionary work, Nephi Vision of the Tree of Life. Joseph Smith received the temple endowment through a similar gradual piece by piece process. That process implies a progression of changes, adjustments and modifications. In fact, after the first endowment was administered in May 1842 Joseph told Brigham, young brother Brigham, this is not arranged, right? But we’ve done the best we could under the circumstances in which we are placed. And I wish you to take this matter in hand and organize and systematize all these ceremonies. In other words, Joseph knew from the beginning that future changes would need to be made. He knew things weren’t exactly as they should be and that was fine. That’s how a restoration works. It takes time, you do your best and the Lord keeps you pointed in the right direction. Sometimes I think we humans in many ways are like bowling balls and God sort of acts as the bumpers as we seek to discover his will. Sometimes we wish we could just fly straight down the middle and nail that strike. But in reality, we often follow a jagged path bouncing back and forth between the bumpers until we finally end up somewhere acceptable to God. No. Ok. So we’ll go ahead and stop there and hopefully you got the idea right. There’s, there was a lot there. I want you to remember that quote about, um, Joseph telling Brigham to organize and systematize these things because they weren’t quite right. But it’s like, it’s, it, it, it’s, it’s giving us the idea. I mean, it’s, it’s saying, not even basically saying it is saying that Joseph was basically completely incompetent. He could only throw gutter balls and needed bumper pads to keep from getting everything completely wrong. It, I, I mean, it just makes, we wonder why, why I claim to have profits. What is a profit, right? Like, I don’t even as a nonprofit, wanna throw gutter balls my whole life. I certainly as a leader of any organization don’t want to keep throwing gutter balls and I don’t want someone that’s a prophet of God to be that incompetent and not confused and just wrong about every single thing. So I, I think it’s shocking that this is the way we present Joseph Smith and everyone seems to be fine with that. I, I do not understand it. So that’s what I said. It seems to me that the way that we use line upon line and the idea of the ongoing restoration seems to basically allow us to justify throwing out changing and replacing anything while ignoring any potential contradictions with past practices and teachings, even from Joseph Smith, by claiming, I suppose that the gospel was never fully restored out until now. Like it’s, it’s never fully restored, we can change anything because it’s just, it’s never been fully restored. And so at least that’s the implication I get. So it’s a little bit difficult. So I have to say there is a principle that I think is at work here that human beings seem to be unable to resist telling us exactly what they are doing and following scriptural patterns. It’s just as we discussed in part three about the temple renovation. Um and the foundation, right? This also has great application, I believe with our long standing use of line upon line to explain our, our temple and everything else and, and the changes that we make. So I looked that up in the scriptures and the term from what I can find and people are always welcome, welcome to add or correct. But that term is originally like the first time I can see it used is in Isaiah 28 and I strongly recommend reading the entire chapter. It is really important to understand, but I’ll just read a few, I’ll, I’ll read part of it starting in verse seven. So, but they have air, but they also have erred through wine and through strong drink are out of the way. The priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink. They are swallowed up, they are swallowed up of wine. They are out of the way through strong drink. They err in vision, they stumble in judgment. That verse has a couple of cross references that I also want to refer to um it cross references first to Isaiah 5610. His watchmen are blind. They are all ignorant. They are dumb dogs, they cannot bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yeah, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough. And they are shepherds that cannot understand. They all look to their own way everyone for his own gain from his quarter. Come ye that’s come. Ye say they, I will fetch wine and we will fill ourselves with strong drink and tomorrow shall be as the day and much more abundant. So that’s one of the cross references. Another cross reference is to Mica 35. Thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that make my people err that bite with their teeth and cry peace and he that put it not into their mouths. They even prepare war against him. Therefore, night shall be unto you that ye shall not have a vision and it shall be dark unto you that ye shall not divine and the sun shall go down over the prophet and the dark and, and the day shall be dark over them. Then shall the seer be ashamed and the diviners confuse. Yeah, they shall cover their lips for there is no answer of God. And um this is I, I know I might be getting into somewhat uncomfortable territory, but I just have to say that in 2020 this picture came up in my email and I was really bothered by it. Some of you understand why? And I was led right to that Mica scripture that says that um they shall cover their lips for. There is no answer from God. So that was just an experience I had that really troubled me, right? And so let me continue on and II, I know I’m out on a limb. I do not want to cast aspersions, make claims people will see this, how they want to see it. I know there are some people who have much stronger feelings than I have. All I wanted to do was share my experience. And um and that’s, that’s what my experience was and it was hard, right? So I’m gonna continue now, now that I’ve read those um other um scriptures that were footnoted. So I’m gonna continue reading in Isaiah 28 it. This is now to verse eight. For all the tables are full of vomit and filthiness so that there is no place clean, whom shall he teach knowledge and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? Then that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line here a little and a little for with stammering lips and another tongue. Will he speak to this people to whom he said? This is the rest wherewith ye may be called the weary to rest and this is the refreshing yet they would not hear but the word of the Lord was unto them, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line here a little and bear a little that they might go and fall backward and be broken and snared and taken wherefore hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men that rule this people, which is in Jerusalem because you have said we have made a covenant with death and with the hell and with hell. Are we at agreement? When the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come upon us. For we have made lies our refuge and under falsehood, we have hid ourselves. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. He that believeth shall not make haste judgment also will I lay to the line and righteousness to the plummet and, and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies and the water shall overflow, the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be dis annulled. And your agreement with hell shall not stand when the overflowing scourge shall pass through. Then shall you be trodden down by it and it goes on and on from there. So I, I think you can see why choosing line upon line as our way to explain. This is potentially troubling or I, I don’t know, I I’ll leave that to everyone’s interpretation. I certainly know what it seems to say to me. And so the same idea is also repeated in the book of Mormon. So mainly and in the second Nephi 28. So I’ll read verses 29 through 31 woe be unto Him that shall say we have received the word of God and we need no more of the word of God for we, we for we have enough for behold. Thus saith the Lord God. I will give unto the Children of men, line upon line and precept upon precept here a little and there a little and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts and lend an ear unto my counsel for, they shall learn wisdom for unto Him that receive, I will give more and from them that shall say we have enough from them shall be taken away. Even that which they have cursed is he that put, put his trust in man or maketh flesh, his arm or shall hearken under the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost. And so it’s so ironic. Again, the entire chapter is about the people refusing truth from God because we are too busy trusting in the arm of flesh and being swallowed up by the false traditions, right? We have enough when and we cannot hear God trying to teach us more. And I think that’s exactly the predicament that we have been in um back when the church was polygamous. And since it’s given up polygamy, but just like we do with Jacob 230 I think we take that scripture that is directly relevant to us and twisted on its head to claim it means the exact opposite of what is it is actually saying. And so if we trust God, rather than putting our trust in man, God will give us more and more truth and knowledge, right? And as we, it will be given more and more. But if we shut ourselves down to inspiration because we are so so set on our traditions or our institutional teachings, or we’re too afraid to consider something else, or we’re too afraid of what might happen to us. If we consider something else, we cannot be given more, it’s the exact same thing taught well in many places. But alma 12 is one of my favorites. Just verse 10. I’ll just read that one. There’s a lot more but, and therefore he, that will harden his heart. The same, receive the lesser portion of the word and he, that will not harden his heart to him is given the greater portion of the word until it is given unto Him to know the mysteries of God until He know them in full. And so I, I think it’s a shame that we ignore this true teaching to um twist it to claim that whatever the leaders do is fine because God, it, it’s not telling that God teaches us as individuals line upon line and precept on precept. It says that God leads the church line upon line and precept on precept, right, the institution that it’s like a bowling ball going back. And I mean, I don’t even know how to relate all of that because I don’t think we a we are allowed to say that current profits are getting things wrong and throwing gutter balls, right? But we say that about Joseph Smith. And anyway, it’s, it’s just a really interesting claim that I think we’re better off to go to the scriptures and say what they see what they say about it. There are a few references to it in the doctrine covenants as well, particularly section 98 that I wanted to include. But I’m going to save that for when I feel up to doing an episode on 2020 because I think it has on my experiences during 2020 I think it has direct application. So now that we’ve established these two basic foundations, these two subtle devices. Um claiming that Brigham and Joseph are the same. So that what, what came from one unquestionably came from the other and claiming that God continually restores the gospel to the church leaders line up online now that we’ve seen those and how they are used to justify the Histo history of the endowment ceremony. I want to read another quote from chapter 15 of all that was promised that brings these, these, these ideas together while Joseph Smith was translating the gold plates, he came upon the following passage for behold, thus saith the Lord God, I will give unto the Children of men. Line upon line precept upon precept here a little and there a little. See, we just take it out of context only that one piece. So it was with the Gospel’s restoration. Every blessing or understanding Joseph ever received from the Lord came a little at a time line, line upon line precept upon precept. And it made me think except for those times when the heavens were opened and he spoke to Jesus face to face, to face, to face and received massive outpourings of knowledge and understanding and all of his statements of not being able to tell the people even a portion of what he knew. And the, the teaching, could you gaze into heaven for five minutes? You would know more than you would by reading all that was ever written on the subject. So, you know, except for the things that he said himself about how it worked, he just, it was, it was just a, a slow sun rising, right? And a sunrise all Joseph and then I’ll continue with the quote. It said he received this all line upon line, precept, precept. All Joseph had to do was diligently seek. That’s it was easy, right? Piece of cake. And as he applied himself to what had already come, Moore was added to it almost from the beginning of his and Joseph’s relationship. Brigham recognized this process in his beloved friend and by the time of Joseph martyrdom, it had become so much a part of Brigham’s own nature, his own thinking that we might say it was almost automatic. Nothing better illustrates that it illustrates this than the events of in the fall of 1876 when there began to be a major scramble in Saint George on two fronts. The first was to put the physical structure on the temple in order to in in order so actual um or was to put the physical structure of the temple in order. So actual ordinance work could begin for both the living and the dead. The second was to organize and refine the presentation and administration of the various ordinances and finally commit them to writing. So there it is again, always, it’s universally agreed upon by historians. Like everyone knows, this was the first time that the temple ceremonies were written down within um the fall and winter of 1876. And so, um that’s really interesting, right. And so anyway, it, it also makes it very clear that nothing regarding the endowment ceremony had ever been written down before. Obviously, thus, the entire validity of the temple of the temple endowment rests on the credibility of Brigham Young. And that was something that as someone who has studied a lot about Brigham Young, that made me a little bit uncomfortable, right? So I really wanted to dig in and find out what I could find out. So, OK, so using the foundational claims of line upon line and that Joseph and Brigham are one and the same, it seems a lot of work has been done to make this narrative work to prove that the time endowment ceremony was indeed from Joseph. And to explain why it was never written down to justify that Brigham did indeed have the sacred responsibility to preserve and restore it. And to assert that what he established was not only the same as what Joseph had established, but it was the same as what had been practiced by every true prophet of God in every dispensation of the world throughout time. So I’ll quote Bruce R mcconkie from Mormon Doctrine, all of these ordinances of exaltation are performed in the temples for both the living and the dead. Their essential portions have been the same in all dispensations when the fullness of sealing power has been exercised by the Lord’s prophets. So I, I won’t um and I’m sorry to say it, but I won’t insult your intelligence by going through the list of scriptures he cites um for anyone who cares to look them up, the the scriptures are doctrine and covenants. 128 I 1 24 28 to 41 about the needing to finish the Nabu temple, right? It says nothing about that. It has in no way supports any of the claims that he has made and nor does the historical record. So now let’s dig in to the sources used to support each of these claims that work together to validate our modern temple practices. So from what I have been able to find there, um the entire argument that the temple came from Joseph and that it passed and um that he passed it on to Brigham Young and others seems to rely primarily on a few central historical claims. So let me show them. So first on May 4th, 1842 Joseph Smith administered the endowment to a small select group of men. These are the things we’re going to get into because these are all of the things that work together to give us the um claim that Brigham Young was just continuing on what Joseph started the next day, May 5th, those men administered the endowment to Joseph and Hiram the men that Joseph had in doubt the first day. The reason number three, the reason there is not a shred of contemporary evidence for any of this, not a journal entry, a letter, um an official church record. Nothing is that Joseph told them not to write it down or speak about because it was too sacred. The claim I mentioned before that was so hard to find the evidence for then forth. The previous day, May 3rd, 1842 Joseph had ordered the upper floor of the red brick store to be dressed up to look like the temple. They put canvas between makeshift rooms, right? It was only one room, but they had hung canvas. They had um put plants trees for the creation room. It actually gets better than that as I found out as I researched. So we’ll get into that one. And then the fifth is after endowing Brigham Joseph, after, after that endowment on um the fourth, Joseph told Brigham to organize and systematize his apparently defective endowment. So um that’s what we’re going to get into. So, President Nelson very succinctly included several of these points in his October 2020 2020 one conference talk, the temple and your spiritual foundations will read it until his martyrdom. Joseph Smith continued to receive revelations that further the restoration of the endowment and ceiling ordinances he recognized, however, that further refinement was needed after administering the endowment to Brigham Young in May 1842 Joseph told Brigham this is not arranged, right? But we have done the best we could on the circumstances in which we are placed. And I wish you to take this matter in hand and organize and systematize these all these ceremonies. So you heard that in that little video clip, that is a very important claim that is used all the time. So I looked at the footnote for his talk that he provided that little footnote number 11 at the end there. And to my shock, it, the footnote referred only to Saints, which is the self described narrative history designed to give readers a foundational understanding of church history through the power of a good story, right? So my jaw dropped that Saints is now the definitive source that can be cited in footnotes. So it cites chapter 37 page 455 and I could have saved a ton of research time if I had just started there. But I think that going the way I did, I, I came on this last actually. And so um so I think I gained a much bigger understanding by starting with all of the academic sources and then landing on Saints last. So I won’t take time to read it now, but we will read it at the end. And um we will, in the meantime, we are going to cover every single footnote that is included in Saint as well as any of these other um academic works that I have read. So by the time this episode is over, it’s gonna be a big one, but you are really going to have a thorough understanding of what we are talking about of the um the origin of the endowment and what we claim the origin of the endowment is. So, let’s start with this first claim. That’s the first one we’re going to look to. And that’s um on 4th 1842 Joseph Smith administered the endowment to a small select group of men. So um let me see what I want to show you. Sorry, I said I have a lot of pieces working. OK. So yes, this is, oh, there were, that’s what I, I was trying to figure out what my notes were saying. There were other things I really wanted to include. But again, as I said, those will come at um at a different time and different episodes I had to narrow this down. But there are other sources that I looked into in depth and, and I’m desperately excited to share or eager to share. There are things people need to know. So anyway, this claim, um despite this claim that this first claim I should go back to it, we make this, we claim this despite Joseph’s many teachings that God would not reveal more to the saints until the temple was finished. And his clear testimony that he did not hold secret meetings or give secret teachings but taught the strongest doctrines in public. So, um despite what, what he said about that, we say that Joseph secretly endowed nine men in the upper floor of the red brick store, which you know was the same place that he secretly dictated. Section 132 to Hira and William Clayton a year later and where several other things were supposed to have happened. It seems like it makes me feel like I’m playing clue, right? It’s like Joseph with the y thumb in the red brick store. That’s how it could solve the mystery. That always seems to be the answer. But anyway, we’ll continue on. So, um a few examples of, I want to share a few examples of the many times that Joseph taught that the temple needed to be finished before more could be revealed. So, um on May 1st 1842 3 days before endowing him and, and eight other men, right? The, the, the, the claim Joseph taught that the keys cannot be revealed until the temple is complete when I say him that was according to. So there were several reports of these talks and I want to give people the version of who wrote the talk so that I, I just want people to understand the sources. I’m using because I’m so frustrated by people not doing that. So that was about Willard Richards. So Willard Richards was supposedly in this group of men, a very important participant. And he is the one that wrote three days before he was secretly ordained that um or secretly endowed that the keys cannot be revealed to the elders, elders till the temple is complete. So then um the footnote provided for that and the Joseph Smith papers is fun. This is what it says. While most states, oh, that’s what I was going to show you. So I do need to add that back to the stage. So this is the, that’s what I’m reading the discourse by Willard Richards. And the footnote says, um while most saints did not receive the promised information until the completion of the temple. Three days after this discourse, Joseph Smith met with a small group of men in the upper room of his story and introduced them to the sacred ceremonies which included keywords and signs that were later performed in the temple after its completion, right? So again, nothing that Joseph said is real or valid, right? He gave a talk, but then three days later did exactly the opposite of what he gave what he said in his sermon. And so um let’s see in, in uh June 11th, 1843 sermon a year after this supposed initial endowment meeting. And this was accorded by Wilfred Woodruff. Joseph asked, what is the object of gathering the Jews together or the people of God in any age of the world. The main object was to build unto the Lord and House, whereby he could reveal unto his people, the ordinances of his house and glories of his kingdom and teach the people the ways of salvation for. There are certain ordinances and principles that when they are taught and practiced must be done in a place or house built for that purpose, right? So he’s still teaching this after he’s supposedly given the like, like taking people through these ordinances. Eliza Snow recorded that same um that same sermon and said, he beautifully and in the most powerful manner illustrated the necessity of the gathering of the building of the gathering and the building of the temple that those ordinances may be administered, which are necessary preparations for the world to come. He exhorted the people in impressive terms, to be diligent, to be up and doing th the Tabernacle passover and another people um over to another people and we lose the blessings. And he also taught the same thing on April 8th, 1844 just a little while before his death. This again was Wilfred Woodruff when the house is done, baptism font erected and finished and the worthy are what anointed and endowed and ordained kings and priests which must be done in this life. When the place, when the place is prepared, the elders are to go through all America and build up churches until all Zion is built up. But they are not to commence to do this until the temple is built up here. And the elders endowed then go forth and accomplish the work and build up the stakes in all North and South America. Anyway, I just wanted to give you an idea of how often Joseph did claim that the temple had to be finished before these things could be passed on before these things could happen. So, but despite all of these teachings, every church manual lesson book, church historian universally claims that the endowment was restored, restored by Joseph on May 4th 1842. If you search the church website for that date, you will see dozens of examples. So I’ll read this one from the Joseph Smith edition. Oops, I guess I highlighted it. Let me fix that, try it again. Um This is from the Joseph Smith edition of the teachings of the presidents of the church because the temple would not be completed for some time. Joseph Smith chose to go forward with the temple endowment outside its sacred walls on May 4th, on May 4th 1842 in the upper room of his red brick store in Navoo. The prophet administered the first endowments to a small group of brethren, including of, of brethren, including Brigham Young. So there we go. There’s that claim that just seems to show up everywhere. And I think I have another source I was going to read. And so, um yes, this is so those Andrew E and E hat papers that I read. This is the, oh, whoops, I pushed the wrong thing. This was a really good one called who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord says Quien Reflections on a sacred day fourth of May 1842. And so, um people have some, I saw some papers that read May Fourth be with you, right? Because that’s the the force of the endowment. And so this is what he said. Um let’s see, in April 1845 Elder Richards was ready to write the history for May of 1842. 0, this is a good quote. It kind of shows us how the history was compiled and how the apologetic historians think about and talk about that. So he said Elder Richards was ready to write the History for May of 1842. They, they had to do it afterwards. It may have seemed just like another day, um seemed like just another day of work on the draft manuscript of what would become the history of the church. But like many times before, during this challenging compiling process, his task was to flash flesh out not merely the memory but also the meaning and the message of an event in church history this time. So you get that you, you don’t, you don’t get to just use the source, you have to flush it out. Add a lot to it right this time. However, he had the formidable task of describing and explaining what had happened on May. On fourth of May 1842 the day our holy endowment was first administered as given in our temples today. What did he have at hand? Nothing save a scant entry from the Book of the Law of the Lord, the only contemporary account of the events of that important day. So please pay attention to that important part. The only contemporary count account is what I will show you from the Book of the Law of the Lord, which was Joseph’s journal. We’ll talk about it. It goes on to say while Elder Richards may have had nothing more on paper to aid him in composing the century. He did have it written in his heart. He had been one of the chosen individuals called by the Lord to receive these precious priesthood principles that day. And from the abundance of his heart, he put down in writing the single most sweeping and succinct explanation of the meaning of the endowment in our written literature. So um so OK, you get the idea of how important this is, right? I wanna skip forward and just read one little portion that helps us understand a little bit more about how he talks about this as with many other diary entries that he’s so seamlessly included in the history of the church. He humbly wrote the record as if it contained the words of the prophet Joseph Smith. When he could find a diary containing information relating to the prophet Joseph that was found nowhere else he benignly revised and inserted into the history, the words of others as if they were the prophet’s own that just killed me. Right. He’s, he’s lying and maybe that was the way they did it back then. I don’t know, but he took things and then had them come out of Joseph Smith’s own mouth. I mean, and um Andy e describes that as both humble and benign. I don’t know that I would agree with that interpretation of that though. That that’s humble and benign, right? But, but so it is. And so anyway, let’s look at the entry that we’re going to talk about. This is the um let me, let me get there. OK. So this is the book of the Law of, I mean, the Book of the Law is that the, the book of the Law of the Lord, which is the only contemporary source we have for this May 4th claim, this very, very important day of where our temple endowment came from. And so um this is, let’s see, it’s um oh, while you’re looking at it, I want you to note the erased words. Let me see if I can show you those as we go forward, there’s a close up of them. They were somehow erased for some reason. But um we’re going to go ahead and read it. So all it says is in council in the presidents and general offices with Judge Adams Hiram Smith Newell K Whitney William Marks William Law, George Miller Brigham, Young Heber C Kemple and Willard Richards. Then something erased, right? And giving certain instructions concerning the priesthood, something erased. And on the ironic priesthood to the first, something erased, continuing throughout the day. So you can see those erased words. If you look at the Joseph Smith papers, it’s, there’s something underneath them but they, they can’t see them. I don’t know how they erased if it was done in pencil, if they had some other method. But that’s really strange and that’s all that it says. So that is the only thing it says in council with this group of men giving certain instructions concerning the priesthood something and on the ironic priest to the first something continuing through the day. Right. So there are many ways that you can interpret that if you read it, right? I don’t know that you would necessarily say, oh, that was the first endowment. Like I, I mean, I don’t know, maybe, oh, what I’m going, I’m on the wrong, on the wrong thing. We’ll get to those. I have got to go forward a little here to see where I’m going. So anyway, the next version. So what, what Andrew E hat was talking about that Wilfred Woodruff wrote, I do want you to pay attention to William Marks and William Law and like, try to remember what that actually said because now we’re going to see what it turned into on this. What did he say? It was April 18 4, five day when um William Law was working on it, you can see. So just like the April October 5th journal entry that we all know about, there’s the original journal and that that original journal, we don’t even really know what, what that is. We know it was usually written by Willard Richards, the same Willard Richards, right? But it almost certainly wasn’t written on the same day that it happened, it was compiled from notes and right, so we have that original journal, whatever that is, but that’s the closest to the source, well, which was actually written at least during Joseph’s life most of the time, right? And then we have this revision draft. Um these, these earlier in the story, some of them happened in NAVOO, many of them happened later on in Utah, right? This one according to Andy E Hat happened in NAVOO. And then we have the finalized version that was compiled into the church history. So this is the revision draft and you can see very importantly that um um William Marks and William Law are crossed out and it says leave these blank above it, right? We’ll we’ll talk about that a little bit, but I do want you to pay attention to that because I think it’s very interesting and let’s see if there’s anything else I want to say about that. Anyway, let’s go to the next version. So this is the one that was finalized for church history. And these two, the draft version and the finalized version are pretty much identical. So I’ll just go ahead and read this one and you can see where it said leave these blanks. He went ahead and left them blank, right? So Wednesday the fourth, I spent the day in the upper room of the store ie my private offices so so so called because in that room, I kept my sacred writings, translated ancient records and received revelations and in my general business or lodge room ie where the Masonic fraternity met occasionally for want of a better place. So, right, that’s what that is. Now. It’s the Masonic lodge in council with General um with General James Adams of Springfield patriarch Hiram Smith, Bishop Newell K Whitney and George Miller blank blank. That used to be William Marks and William Law, but neither of them are followers of Brigham, right? And presidents Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards instructing them in the principles and order of the priesthood. Attending to Washings Anointings endowments and the, oh, so did you hear that attending to Washings Anointings endowments and the communication of keys pertaining to the ironic priesthood. So there we get the ironic priesthood piece that lead that worked in there pertaining to the ironic priesthood and so on to the highest order of the Milch priesthood, setting forth the order pertaining to the Ancient of Days and all those plans and principles by which anyone is enabled to secure the fullness of those blessings. When it says the Ancient of Days, that’s actually really important because Brigham, he talked about that a lot. I, I didn’t include the, the um nou temple records that I, that I have found that I think are valid. There are lots that I don’t think are valid will do that in another episode as well. But there are some, but Brigham Young talked a lot about Adam God theory in regard to the temple. We’ll get to that a little bit later as well. So it’s interesting that it’s worked in here, right? And then um let’s see, um this to, to secure the fullness of those blessings which have been been prepared for the church of the firstborn and come up and abide in the presence of the Elohim in the eternal world, eternal worlds in this council was instituted the ancient order of things for the first time in these last days. And the communications I made to this council were of being spiritual and to be received only by the spirit minded. And there was nothing made known to these men. But what will, what will be made known to all the saints of the last days, so soon as they are prepared to receive and a proper place is prepared to communicate them even to the weakest of the saints. Therefore, let the saints be diligent in building the temple and all houses which they have been or shall hear after be commanded to commanded of God to build and wait their time with patience in all meekness, faith, and perseverance unto the end. Knowing assuredly that all these things referred to in this council are always governed by the principle of revelation. Wow, that’s really big and really different than the original entry. And as I said, Andy E had said that happened in 1845 I think he said in April of 1845. And I would need to dig that out more to find out um when that was actually written, I I’m trusting His word, you know, but that is very, very different than what it said in the little draft that we read, right? So that’s that first claim that is the single solitary source that is cited for that idea that on May 4th, 1842 Joseph Smith gave the endowment to be I’m using the language like they would use it, right? Like I’ll talk about it later, Joseph Smith. Uh from what I have seen, he talked about the endowment of something that came from God, right? That God would give us an endowment of power that would enable us to go and spread the gospel and preach the gospel. That’s really how Joseph Smith seemed to talk about it. It seemed to change into something that one man gave to another man. Right? Like you, you, like, I grew up hearing people say you get your endowment, right? Did you have, you have, uh they, they went and got their endowment, right? So it’s a different usage and a different way of looking at it. But anyway, it’s important to recognize that is the source, the one and only source we have that initial, I’ll go back and show you really quick that initial journal entry right there. That’s what it says. And then Willard Ritz, JDS altered, it, revised, it changed it, we could say forged it. I don’t know how people want to look at it like it depends on how much you trust Willard Richards, right? If you fully trust him, then it’s valid. That’s, that’s all it comes down to. And we end up with that version. That is the first claim. So anyway, ne now let’s go on to the second claim, right the next day. Um So, so this one really depends on the first one, right? You have to already really accept the May fourth claim to accept the May 5th claim that those men administered the endowment to Joseph and Hiram the next day. And this follows the exact same power um pattern, a very limited and potentially questionable sources So here you can see this is the book of the Law of the Lord. Um On Tuesday, the fifth Judge Adams left for Springville, the others continued in counsel as the day previous and Joseph and Hiram were erased, eligible, right? Something was erased. And so again, the footnote says, Willard Richards notes of this meeting indicate that Joseph Smith and Hiram Smith having officiated in the ordinance the previous day for others were endowed on this date. And then it gives us that same source we just looked at, right. So that’s what we have Joseph of Smith were oh, erase that because we have to make our new version, which there’s above is the draft history and below is the finalized, they both say the same thing. Um Five Thursday, the fifth General Adams started for Springfield and the remainder of the council of yesterday continued their meeting at the same place and myself and brother Hiram. So it’s remember it’s Willard Richards writing on behalf of Joseph Smith, but he’s doing it just to be humble and it’s benign, right? And myself and brother Hiram received in turn from the others the same I had communicated to them the previous day. So that’s what we have for our claim on the fifth. So now let’s go on to the next claim, which is that the reason there is not a shred of contemporary evidence for any of this is that Joseph told them not to write it down or speak of it because it was too sacred. That’s the one I referred to a little earlier that I was trying so hard to find a for. And so I do want to reiterate that not only was the endowment ceremony not written down. There really is not a single shred of contemporaneous evidence for it. There’s, there’s nothing, there’s not a letter to a spouse, a letter to a, to a family member. No, nothing that at all and not a journal entry. Nothing that would show that this happened. Even with Joseph’s secret polygamy, we at least claim to have um William Clayton’s journal, right? And uh I maybe we don’t have that page. I don’t know, we’ll have to find out what happens when, if it’s ever released. But I just want to again point out Joseph’s insistence on record keeping, right? It was a big deal to him. And so as one example of that, I want to show you this source that I think is fabulous and fascinating. This is the elders and the Kirtland elders quorum record and I’ve just shown you the first page and the last page I believe it’s 87 pages or something like that. It’s a fabulous record that I cannot believe is not included on the Joseph Smith papers. At least last time I checked it wasn’t, I have absolutely no idea why it’s not included. It’s referenced at times, but it’s not included. Um and the um community of Christ archivist is wonderful and very willing to share it. So I hope that it will be at some point because I do not understand why it’s not there. It’s really important. But um it, it’s just another example of how careful Joseph was about keeping records. This has detailed records of washings and anointings and ordination of washings, anointings and ceilings. As I said, they would seal the washing and the anointing and of ordinations and of people being brought into different forms. It, it was very important to them to keep records. And in addition, we also know section 128 right that I’ve referred to in another episode where Joseph said, the way we seal on earth and seal in heaven is through our records and our record keeping that baptisms for the dead had to be redone if they hadn’t been correct, um correctly recorded. So it’s very strange to claim that the endowment ordinance, the ceremony was done and no record was kept. That’s just as strange as claiming that all of these ceilings were done and no record was kept. But this too have been spun into the narrative. And so from the, I’ll read again from the Andy E hat paper. He says, why did none of the nine present write in their diaries on of the events of this glorious day. The prophet Joseph Smith had asked each participant not to record the specifics of what they had heard and seen that day six weeks later in a letter to his to his fellow apostle Parley P. Pratt. So here’s the source, right? I finally found it finally after so much looking to um to his fellow apostle Parley B. Pratt Hebrew C. Kimball wrote that these favored few had received quote, some precious things through the, through the prophet on the priesthood that would cause your soul to rejoice. However, he added, I cannot give them to you on paper for they are not to be written. Ok? There’s the source, I finally found it, right? They, they, the reason there’s no record is because it’s just so sacred and this is where it comes from this letter. So let’s look at it. Let’s look at this letter. This is the letter to Parley P. Pratt from Heber C Kimball who was in Nou written June the 17th, 1840 1842. So it is important. I just kind of went over that quickly. This was six weeks, a full six weeks after this endowment happened that this letter is coming. It does not give us any indication of what it’s talking about, right? And it doesn’t say Joseph asked us to not write them down. It just says there are things that Joseph taught us that I can’t tell you about. I, I mean, that can’t be written down. So come home so I can tell you about them. So I suppose that it is possible that, well, you know what, we’re gonna go ahead and read the letter. That’s what I had wanted to do. So let me scroll down to find where it is. OK? Here we go. Here’s the letter. We’ll read what it actually said. So it said, I wish it was here. So as to feel and hear for yourself, we have received some precious things through the prophet on the priesthood that would cause your soul to rejoice. So we’ve received some things from Joseph about the priesthood that would cause your soul to rejoice. I cannot give them to you on paper for they are not to be written. So you must come and get them for yourself. We have organized a lodge here of Mason since we, since we obtained a charter that was in March and it goes on from there, right? So that’s just thrown in there talking about. Anyway, this is really interesting. How would you prove what this is talking of? Why was it written six weeks later? So that’s, that’s a pretty big deal to use this source. This is, I guess I’m just saying an incredibly weak source to try to use to justify the fact that there are no good sources for your other incredibly weak source, right? We use that will that um Willard Richards altered journal to claim that this happened. The reason there is absolutely nothing about it is explained by this six week later letter that doesn’t say anything about it. So it’s just difficult like to see that this is what this is how we build it, this is how we do it. So I would like to humbly propose a different, alter, an alternative possibility, right? Hebrew C Kimball. So this, you’ll remember this letter was written. What was it? June 17th of 1842. So by this point, Hebrew C Kimball who would ultimately marry 43 women, although many didn’t stay with him that included um a teenager that he married when he was 56 and did have five Children with so lovely. But um so the Hebrew C Kimball by June of 1842 was deep into polygamy and you’ll remember his letters that he was writing and his journal entries, he was writing to Violet about it from um England talking about this principle that we have embraced, right? It’s called and um and he we have his journal where they were washing their feet and going to bed, right? Whatever that might mean. He al already at this point had a pregnant wife, Sarah Peak Noon gave birth to Heber’s child sometime in 1842. So in June of 1842 she was either pregnant or had already delivered a baby. So this was the situation with Heber C Kimball, right? Um However, Parley p Pratt seems to have not known about polygamy and certainly didn’t take his first wife who was Elizabeth Brotherton until 1843 the following year. Right? So what might this sacred secret teaching that he claimed that he, that um Hebrew claimed came from Joseph Smith. But that couldn’t be written down b what could that possibly be some about the priesthood that would cause your soul to rejoice? Right? Is it, is this possibly evidence of Hebrew C Kimball starting to groom parley p pratt into polygamy? That is certainly what it looks like to me and it at least seems like a far more likely claim than talk than saying that he’s talking about the six week earlier Temple endowment that we don’t have any good evidence happened, right? And so anyway, I think that that is a very valid question to at least consider. And yet this letter is the only evidence we have to support the constant claim that it was too sacred to write down, which is used to justify the complete lack of any sort of evidence, any sort of record of this actually happening. One thing I need to mention here, there seems to be a pattern when we want to claim Joseph did something, but there is a complete lack of evidence for it. Instead of acknowledging the reality that there is no evidence, we try to explain it away when there is no evidence for polygamy, we claim it had to be kept secret because it was just too dangerous for any records to be kept when there is no evidence for the temple endowment, we claim it had to be kept sec kept secret because it was just too sacred for any records to be kept. Strangely, this only ever applies to Joseph. Nobody has explained why all the other nave polygamists left plenty of evidence and nobody has explained why the temple endowment was no longer too sacred to be written down 35 years later. Should we really always ignore all of Joseph’s own teachings and statements, including his insistence that he always taught the strongest doctrines in public and never in private. Should we always ignore the actual historical record in favor of decades later claims by notoriously unreliable and heavily motivated sources using Ockham’s razor. Can we not acknowledge that it is far simpler and more likely that whenever Brigham and company wanted to claim Joseph was doing something that he wasn’t doing, they claimed years after his death when he was not there to defend himself that he had taught it to them in secret. So, OK, that’s good to know. That’s our second claim so far. I am not finding these to be terribly convincing. So now let’s go to the next source. We’re on the fourth one, right? The previous day before the um first endowments were done. May 3rd, 1842 Joseph had ordered the upper floor of the red brick store to be dressed up to look like the temple canvas hung between um areas to make makeshift different rooms, plants and trees, brought, brought in for the creation room, et cetera. So this claim is also woven seamlessly into all the narratives of the origin of the endowment. Um Just one example again, from the teachings of the presidents of the church. This is from chapter 36. In response to the, from Joseph Smith’s the one I showed you before. In response to the Lord’s command, the prophet and the saints moved for, moved forward as quickly as possible to begin building a house of the Lord. But the prophet realized that the construction would take years and he knew that the saints needed the full blessings of the temple. Consequently, on May 4th 1842 even though the temple was not complete, Joseph Smith administered the endowment to a small group of faithful brethren. The group met in the large upper room of the, of the prophet’s red brick store which had been arranged representing the interior of a temple as much as the circumstances would permit. Ok. So we are going to go through these claims. Now, this one is, there’s quite a bit to get through, but it’s actually pretty fun. I’m gonna read another version where this is talked about. Let’s see also is quoting um Lyle G Brown’s temple pro TEM he said, and all again, these sources will be linked during the 18 forties. It was literally the no, the center of Nabu society, the Red brick store. While no contemporary description of this upper room prepared for administrating, administering the endowment exists. One retrospective account indicated that it was quote arranged representing the interior of the temple. As much as the circumstances would permit. This quote arrangement consisted of dividing the hall into small compartments using canvas partitions. Nonetheless, Smith recognized recognized the limitations of this modest facility. So, ok, so unlike the the claim, the previous claims, right. Well, the, the um yeah, the first three claims we’ve went through which at least have a piece of somewhat contemporary evidence, however weak, it might be. This one is based solely on a single newspaper editorial written 42 years later. In response to the RL DS claims that like polygamy, the temple endowment was also a creation of Brigham Young, not Joseph Smith. So that’s what we’re going to get into. It was written. OK, let me get to my next slide. This was the newspaper article right here, the higher ordinances. And you can see it was, I’ll tell you all about it was written in January 2nd, 1884 by Lucius and Scoville. And so that is what we are going to get to. So let meet Lucius Scoville, he was the worshipful master of the Navoo Masonic Lodge. Don’t know why that’s in lighter writing. It’s not meant to be so ignore that. So he was the architect of the Navoo Masonic Hall. He was a Nabu polygamist and interestingly he was also the Nou Baker, his bake shop, the Scoville Bakery has been restored and is still in Nou, which I think is great fun. So, um let me see what I want to tell you about Lucius Scoville. Well, here I guess I’ll go to this next slide which is him when he would have written the article. So he was 78 years old at the time that he wrote it. It was 42 years after the event, after the event that he’s talking about and he had nearly perfect recollection talking about it. We’ll talk about the one thing that he’s not certain of. And I just have to point out, um I just had to call my mom this week to ask her for there, there were reasons but to ask her something about when I was born. And um I knew it was a long shot, right? It was over 40 years ago, just like this claim. She could not remember a single thing about my birth. And this is not to criticize my size, my mom, I don’t know how much I can remember of each of my children’s births. And that was a lot less than 40 plus years ago. Right? Try to think of something over 40 years ago, some random thing and see how, well you can remember it. If, if he, if he had some sort of a journal he could have showed us, then we could have at least said, oh, ok, there’s some evidence but he is claiming this very, these very specific things over 40 years later. So we need to really consider that when we decide how to look at his um at his claim. So I’m going to go ahead and share my screen so we can read this editorial together so you can see the Desert Evening news. It was published in the newspaper on February 11th, 1884. This one was really hard for me to find for some reason. So I was thrilled that I finally found it. Oh, and in the process of looking for this, I found some other things that I wanted to share and how to cut. So you can look forward to those. But this is page two. You can see right there where it says the higher ordinances. Let’s go ahead and zoom in. We’ll have to go back over to it. Ok. Let’s just read this entire editorial together because I think we need to because massive claims are made solely on this. We give space to the following communication for the reason that it attempts, that attempts are being made by the leaders of the society, commonly known as the Joseph, fights the RL DS to make it appear that the Sacred Endowment were not authorized and administered by the prophet Joseph, but were invented and added by the, by President Brigham Young and others. Also that such ordinances as the prophet Joseph taught were not to be administered, stirred anywhere under any circumstances except in a temple. That’s funny too right there. Like, anyway, it’s really interesting. So there, the, the RL DS early on Joseph Smith the third really was right on. So many things. So this is Springville, Springville January 2nd, 1884 editor deseret news. I noticed an article in the deseret news of Ju January 25th, 1884 in relation to church doctrines, I can testify that on the third day of May 1842 Joseph Smith, the prophet called called upon five or six. The Shadrack Shadrack Roundy Viz is that you said, I think I said it wrong. Viz, Shadrach Roundy Noah Rogers Dimock B Huntington, Daniel Cairns and myself. I am not certain, but the Hosea Stout was there also the one thing in this whole thing that he’s not certain of. So remember, this is 42 years ago. He knows exactly the team that was assigned to do this except for maybe not. This one guy can’t remember that for sure. Anyway, we’ll continue to meet with him, the prophet in his business office, the upper part of his brick store. He told us that the object he he had was for us to go to work and fit up that room preparatory to giving endowments to a few, um, a few elders that he might give unto them all the keys of power pertaining to the ironic and Melchizedek priesthood. Do you recognize how much language comes from that Willard Richards entry that he wrote in the church history? Right. It’s good to keep that in mind. We therefore went to work making the necessary preparations and everything was arranged, representing the interior of a temple as much as the circumstances would permit you see where it’s quoted everywhere. He being with us dictated everything. So Joseph was there with them the whole time on the third and into the fourth, telling them exactly how to it. He gave us many items that were very interesting to us, which sank with deep weight upon my mind, especially after the temple was finished at Navoo. And I had received the ordinances in which I was among the first as I had been called upon to work in the temple as one of the hands during the winter. So there was a lot there. So right, is not only there directing everything, but also teaching them all of these profound things that he was able to understand as soon as he had his endowment. And he was one of the first that gives us a really good insight into the potential motives to get to um to write this. Right. Let’s see where I was. Um as I had was among the first, as I had been called upon to work in the temple as one of the hands during the winter, some weeks previous to the dedication he told us that we should have the privilege of receiving the whole of the ordinances in due time. The history of Joseph Smith speaks for itself, but I can and do testify that I know of a surety, that room was fitted up by his order, which was finished in the forenoon of the said fourth of May 1842. And he gave us to understand that he, he intended to have everything done by him that was in his power while he remained with us. Again, these anachronisms seems that he’s, you know, that were part of the story now that he’s applying to this earlier time. He said his work was nearly done and he should roll the burden of the kingdom upon the shoulders of the 12. That’s one of the sources that killed me to cut out. Sorry, I’m just, I know so many of these things where they come from. So there will be future episodes on things like the succession claims and the keys. That’s an important one. Um Let’s see upon the 12, I am the only one living that I know of who helped to fit up that room except Josea Stout if he was there. So now we know why he’s not certain if Jos Stout backs me up on this, he was there. If he doesn’t back me up on that on this, he wasn’t there. Isn’t that an interesting one piece? Information? Everyone that’s dead. He’s certain about the living guy who may or may not chime in. He’s not sure if he was there or not. I think that was pretty funny. I am most respectfully your brother in the covenant Lucius and Scoville. So, ok, I will stop sharing my screen. I’m sorry if I’m being, um, I, I don’t mean to or want to be snarky. It’s just incredible to see these things and read these things that we make these certain claims and these huge claims and this is what they are based in. I don’t know what to do with that. Right? And so that is the Lucious, the um Scoville claim and that is the one and only source we have for it. That’s it. So it’s a couple of things that I think it’s good to know about Lucius Scoville. Um As I said, well, here I’ll go ahead and share the screen again. Um Right. He was a very dedicated mason, right? He was very, very dedicated to masonry. So he was probably very dedicated also to the temple endowment. He was a dedicated, no, um Polygamist dedicated Mormon Polygamist in Utah. Right? He had, I believe it was eight wives can’t see where I wrote it. But um yes, I think it was and the most important thing I think to know is that his testimony directly contradicts Joseph Smith’s journal, right? And so here we have those three stages again, the original journal, the History draft and the final history of the church. So you remember Lucius Scoville very clearly wrote in his um his editorial, that’s the word that Joseph was there with them all day directing everything because I think he had to include that because how would Lucius Scoville know how was it, how a temple was supposed to be set up? Right? Like he’d never been through one. So he would need to include that. Joseph was there telling him exactly how to do it and teaching him all of these wonderful things, right? But here we see Joseph’s journal Monday and Tuesday the 2nd and 3rd with his family. That’s the original. Then the history draft. Um I, I think there’s Tuesday the third, mostly with my family. Tuesday the third, mostly with my family. So it changes from with his family to mostly with his family is that to give it a little wiggle room. I don’t know, but his own journal says he was with his family. And yet in this case, although we think the journal is really important on the fourth and how it’s fudged to be changed later on. We completely ignore it for the third because we like Lucious Scoville claim better, I suppose. So as I said, I, I don’t know that we can be completely clear on what Brother Scoville motives may have been. But I think we got that little indication when he said I was among the first. It seems that he did. Maybe, I, I mean, I, I don’t know, he could have been asked to do it. I’m not trying to, you know, I don’t have to tell you what his motives were for sure. But I think it is interesting that he seemed to have a desire to feel important and it worked. He’s cited in every church manual and in every history that talks about this topic, we know his name. Right. And if he hadn’t written that editorial, we wouldn’t remember him at all. So as it is, he did become extremely important because he is the one and only critical essential source to make this claim that Joseph had the red brick store dressed up like a makeshift temple. So, um, that’s, I, I think we can already see how, I mean, hopefully that you guys agree with me that this is really quite weak but still I wanted to see more, I mean, not only just weak, but it contradicts the journal that we think is important, but I still went through all the records to see what I could find all of the records in the Joseph Smith papers to see if I could find anything to support this claim or that would shed any more light on it. And I didn’t find a whole lot, but I did find, um, Joseph Smith’s store Daybook and this is really interesting. This is the day book that they, this is like the record of the store. It’s really a cool source to look at and it tells us what was bought and sold, right? What was happening in the store? And it’s this particular page I’m looking at this is June 18th, 1842 which is where Lucious Scoville is mentioned. And it’s really interesting. It lists, um, it, it tells us not only what was ordered and how much it cost, but it also tells us if it was just an individual getting it or if it was someone on behalf of an organization, right? It reminds me of when, when we used to have to go to the c store for our church callings at the local coffee store, at least in Utah. This is how it was. Our church would have an account and I would go tell them I’m, this is my name I’m with primarily or I’m with, with enrichment night or whatever it was and I need to print these programs or, you know, they would just bill it to my account. It kind of reminds me of that. If that’s how it was or not, that’s how it looks to me or how I think of it. And so anyway, I want to list, um, several of the purchase orders from this particular day. It says George W Thatcher bought £8 of sugar for a dollar James Henry Rollins bought £2 of butter for 16 cents. Interesting. His name will come up again later. Um, three orders for the N House, Philander Colton for $1 Miles Wilson for 63 cents and lower down the page. Lucian Worth charged 2 $2.50 for one small hat. But those were all under the navoo house. Right? So, I guess Lucian Lucian, is that how you say his name? He needed a hat to work on the NAV house. But then we get down to the bottom of the page and there are two more orders you can see there. It says Temple Committee, that’s Elias Higby. Um, bought a pair of suspenders for 38 cents. And last, but not least for this page on behalf of the Nabu Lodge, that’s the Masonic Hall that Lucius Scoville was um, the architect of I assume, right? He bought four spools of thread which were 10 cents a piece. So 40 cents and six skeins of silk yarn for 38 cents. So we have that written in the store day book. And what that made me think about was they, he had no notice for this, right. Joseph came to him on May 3rd and said deck out the upper room of my red brick store. And it made me think, where would he get those yards and yards and yards of canvas that he would need to hang up as partitions? Where would that come from? Where would all of the other supplies that they needed come from? Right. And the red brick store is where it would have to come from. That’s where he, the supplies he needed later on for the, um, Masonic Lodge. It seems so. That was another interesting thing that made me think that would be hard to get all of that gathered and there’s no record of it anywhere. I don’t know that anyone had these, like, miles of canvas just hanging around. Right. They, they hadn’t been ordered in advance, like they would be later for the um for when Brigham set up the nave temple. So anyway, doesn’t disprove his claim. But I think it’s another element that’s interesting to consider and this um store Day book will become important later on in later sources. So III I have thought I was finished with this episode so many times, I’m ready to record it. But just yesterday as I was finalizing it, I went through Saint and realized they had two new sources for this claim that I had never seen before. I didn’t see them in any other writing. So they seem to be brand new that Saints um ordered them. I mean saints added them. So I think we need to cover them because I just spent the last two days digging these out. So the first one is this book, it’s called Joseph Smith Junior’s Red Brick Store by I think it’s called Lanius and mckiernan is how I was told to pronounce them. And so this was an interesting book. In the world was this. It’s really this short little book. I think it’s only something like 87 pages. Oh, this is the one that’s 87 pages. Uh The Kirtland Record book must be a different amount. I was thinking about this. But um and I, and I couldn’t understand what it was. It doesn’t even include, as you can see, it doesn’t even include a year on the title page like they left the year off. So I had to search it to find out that it was written in 1985. And um I, I was able to find it online, but it wasn’t until I talked to the people at the restoration bookstore was able to talk to um people who talked to Pamela Price and asked her some of the questions I had that they actually weighed in on it and told me and I should have recognized the names that Lanius and um Lanius Lo I can’t remember Lanius and mckiernan were actually very liberal dedicated. They were members of the RL DS church that were leading this charge to go liberal to go away from Joseph Smith, right? So when there was that big division, they were ones that were very much on that side and that becomes apparent as you look through this book because while I was trying to figure it out, I, I thought it must, must be written by Anti Mormons back in this 85 time. Period, you know, I could, couldn’t figure out what it was. And so anyway, I will show you what it says. So here is the pertinent paragraph that is cited by um the by Saints, the book Saints on this claim of um of Lucius Scoville, right? That Joseph to have the red brick store decorated. Sorry, I told you I’m trying to do too many things at once. So let’s read this paragraph on May 3rd, 1842 Joseph Smith prepared the assembly room of his store for the introduction of temple of secret temple ceremonies. These religious ordinances Smith believed were a restoration of celestial law of God on, on to the earth. Five or six men aided Smith. So see, it’s, it’s just from that Lucius Scoville claims he doesn’t know for sure if that one guy was there. Jose is out five or six men aided Smith in preparing the room for his for this ritual. Lucius and Scoville, one of these men recalled that the prophet explained that the object he had for us was to go to work and to fix up the room preparatory to giving endowments to a few elders. That’s that footnote just gives us that same desert news editorial that we just read. Then James Henry Rollins, remember we just read about him in the um Store Day book, James Henry Rollins, another who assisted in preparing the assembly room, remembered carrying water and other commodities to the room above the store afterwards, I found out it was to give endowments to some of the brethren. So that’s what he claimed. So, ok. Footnote 5949 because I hadn’t seen that before. So I was like, oh, there’s another source, but I didn’t know about. So we’ll look at what Footnote 49 is, right? There’s Footnote 48 that just that same deseret news article and then Footnote 49 is quoted in Hiram L and Helen May Andres, they knew the prophets um which was printed in, printed in 1974. So it’s so interesting to see even clear back in these years. Um The RL DS are quoting from so from L DS sources, but here’s that book, right? They knew the prophet. This is by the addresses and page 77. So all it is is a book of like remembrances about Joseph Smith and they compiled them. So on page 77 it’s talking about this James Henry Rollins and I wanna read the pertinent paragraph that is giving us support for the fact that on May 3rd 1842 Joseph wanted the temp the upper room prepared to be a temple. It starts by saying during the spring and summer of 1844. Previous to his death, the prophet told me to assist in carrying water and other commodities to the room above the store. Afterwards, I found out it was to give endowments to some of the brethren. So can you see how massively dishonest? Now, I I like this source too because throughout this entire book, that Saint, I cannot believe Saint cites this out of print book, but this out of print book, Lanius and mckiernan are also massively dishonest because they cut out that beginning part, telling us that it was two years over two years later and just include that part to try to claim that um, he, there’s another witness for this claim of the red brick store. So I think we can eliminate that footnote as not a good one. And then we’ll go on to read the rest of it right now. We’ll do the next footnote. This is, but it continues with the men apparently prepared the room by painting a mural of a pastoral scene in the northwest corner and by arranging several sprigs of cassis casing. I don’t know how you say it. Olive branches, cedar boughs and other evergreens about the room. This pastoral setting paralleled the garden room and later Mormon Temples and was probably the model for such later buildings. OK. That was a lot, right? So um no 50 actually gives us three different sources that go in order for each thing that it claims. So um the the third one, the House of the Lord by James E Talmage. That one, I’m we’re not going to dig into it. It quotes several pages. I think it’s page 152 to 168. I read a lot of pages. There was, it’s just about temples. So all that they are citing there is the claim that this was the model for later buildings with a garden room and right, it’s just describing later temples. So we don’t need to go into that one. If anyone wants to read it, please still free, but it doesn’t apply to this. Um May 3rd claim that we’re looking at. But let’s look into these other two sources, shall we? Because I did not know if there’s anyone that’s like less trustworthy, anything less trustworthy than maybe L DS historians. And apparently as these are L DS historians. So let’s look into these sources. I tried. So this first one, this archaeological investigations at the Joseph Smith Red Brick store. I spent hours on that today. That’s the source that I called the restoration bookstore. I was able to find some information from them about it was very difficult to find. I should have just from the very beginning. Well, the only place I could find it online, the only place that came up was benchmark books. So that was the only, um, hit that any kind of search gave me. And so I called benchmark books and Brian Buchanan could not have been nicer and he told me that this actually was an RL DS book. And so I quickly emailed the archivist, the RL at the RL DS library and asked, do you have this. And then in the meantime is when I went all these other directions trying to find it, trying to find any way to substantiate these claims. And luckily because I went through so I spent hours on this today. It was ridiculous. But the amazing community of Christ archivist came through in a huge way and sent me the pages and, um, I’ll, I’ll read to you. I didn’t think I was gonna get it. I thought that it was this completely out of print book that I couldn’t possibly find. I cannot believe that Saints is using these sources that you can’t even find to cite, right? And so this is what I had written before I got it. I said in any case, even the author of the book that was this Jo Joseph Smith Junior’s Red Brick Store, they felt this source was unreliable enough that they wrote. Apparently, apparently there was um he painted this mural, right? Yeah. This mural painted, that’s, that’s what I think this source was trying to tell us because I know what the other things are. So it said that there was this pastoral scene painted this mural, right? And I was trying to find why in the world they claim that because I’ve never seen that claim. But, and I also am wondering because that’s what we read in Saints. That’s what they claim as well. Is that there that Joseph had this mural painted? And I was like, first of all Ws and Saints quote directly to this book instead of going through this intermediary book. Right. That’s out of print as well. Why don’t they just quote the actual source that they want? I can’t figure out that because that’s the only part of it that they’re, that they seem to be taking. But in any case, we are saying that on this one day when Joseph said to Lucious Scoville, this day, I want you to decorate this room this one day. Oh And by the way, paint a mural on the wall of a pastoral scene. Like who was the artist among this group that in, in one day, like with no notice, no time to design, no anything painted a beautiful pastoral scene on the wall to be the garden room in the makeshift temple, right? Like I’m like, what is going on going on? This idea is ludicrous and wouldn’t that be like Lucius Scoville said absolutely nothing about that. Wouldn’t that be a big thing to mention? Like, not only did we decorate it up, we painted a mural on the wall. Everyone would have seen it, right? You know, the mural on the wall, do you know what that was for that was for the creation room or the garden room? Isn’t that something you would at least mention? But we ignore all of that and, and add this in somehow. So I already had thought that, you know that we could just eliminate that source. But when, um, when I read the actual source that quotes this, I don’t think it’s an actual book. It’s a paper from the, um, scans. I got, it looks like it’s just a paper and its pages 73 and 74. I laughed out loud when I read it. So, let’s read it together because it’s quite fun. So, sometime after the original construction and painting of the walls, a mural or Fresco was done in water colors on the north half of the west wall on the second floor. Unfortunately, not even the general nature of the subject matter could be determined. The soft browns, blues, yellows and gray greens would seem to indicate a landscape or pastoral Stal subject. One sample has a whitewashed over blue on red, another has blue on red and several have gray blue on red. These are all from the second floor west wall and were part of the mural. It appears that part of the of this wall was a basic red as well as whitewashed and unpainted. The Mormon period colors were red, unpainted and whitewashed. The mural was sometime later. So pause on that when the Mormons were there, it was painted red or unpainted or, or whitewashed right in the different areas. The mural came later after the Mormon period. It has been suggested that the mural was done by David Smith who lived in the store for a time and who is known to have been a painter. Oh my gosh. So this mural was known to have been done after the the saints left NAVOO. And they are claiming it not only that source for 1818 44 but now this, this mural that was done, I don’t know, decades later, they’re claiming that it was there in 1842 as evidence for this temple claim. Now this is the part that just floored me. You can see that um that it has been suggested, right? That is a personal communication from Stoa to mckiernan. The same mckiernan who um wrote the historical introduction in this book. So this mckiernan who himself knows this was David Smith, right? And knows that the mural was not there and who wrote the introduction of this book so knows it’s in this book. Let me just go back and point out it’s the same mckiernan who wrote this red brick store book. He was blatantly lying. It was he himself who had the communication that said that the mural was done by David Smith. Like that’s for anyone who doesn’t know that’s Joseph Smith. Joseph and Emma’s son, right? That was, I think that the son that she was pregnant with at the time, David Hiram Smith, he knows perfectly well that that mural was not there when the Saints were there. And yet he includes it as a source in his book. And then Saints um uses that as a footnote. II, I am floored by this whole thing more than I can tell you. So that’s one of the new footnotes that was added in Saints and I hope you are every bit as shocked and surprised as I am because I do not know how we possibly can begin to justify that. Like at this point, I, I don’t know, I, I don’t even know what to think. Like anyway, it’s inexplicable to me. So now let’s go on to the third source that is claimed in this book that Saints quotes, right? We’re going so Saints cited this book and this book cited three sources for their claims. So that was the first one and now we’ll go to the next one which just happens to be good old John Bennett, right? C Bennett is the source that they use and he’s the one that tells us also that the um upper room of the red brick store was decorated to look like the temple. So we already all know hopefully that John C Bennett, he was known in his day to be one of the worst liars ever, right? He has absolutely no credibility but for fun. I’m just going to go ahead and read this entire page. So you can see what it is that not only only the RL DS are citing, but what Saints is also citing too, right? So let’s read John C Bennett. The ceremonies of initiation are in perfect keeping with the general absurdity of the new dispensation and with Holy Joe’s mission for the restoration of the Ancient order of things. The large room is carefully prepared and consecrated and from 12 to 24 sprigs of Cassia olive branches, cedar boughs or other ever evergreens are tastefully arranged about it. Remember we read that? So that’s what they’re citing. That’s the part that we read in the, in the book, the original little book. Um Let’s see, these are intended to represent the inter, the eternal life and un mingled bliss which the celestial kingdom will be enjoyed by all who continue in full fellowship with. Um Let’s see. I don’t know why it says order lodge. The aspiring candidate for Holy Orders obtains admission into the sanctified body. In the following matter, he is stripped naked and blindfolded. He is then brought into the lodge room and in that state is conducted round so that all the members of the lodge may be satisfied by personal inspection that he is a fit subject for their August association and that he possesses the qualifications required in Deuteronomy 23rd chapter. And first verse, look that up. It’s worth it. It was too good to miss. So I looked it up for you, Deuteronomy 23 1. He that is wounded in the stones or hath his privy member cut off shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord while the candidate is passing around the room in this ridiculous and degrading condition. The most excellent grandmaster is repeating, I will bring the blind by the way that they know not, I will lead them in past that they have not known I will make darkness light before them and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them and not forsake them. When the candidate has passed satisfactorily this queer examination, he is brought to the oh, sorry, he is brought to the altar, but for which he is made to kneel while he is in, while in this posture, the following oath or obligation is solemnly administered to him by the grand master or his representative. It goes on from there, right? This is this source that we are claiming, I mean that we are citing and can I just in addition, point out that John C Bennett was already massively out of favor. He fled navoo just like I think two weeks after this was supposed to have happened, he was never in any way claimed to be associated with any ceremony or temple ceremony or anything, right? And so why we think that he’s valid when you read through all of that? Nothing has like it also shows how good people can be at lying like it just making stuff up that has no basis in reality whatsoever. If anyone thinks that sounds familiar from the any temple experience that they have, you know that anyway, I guess I am just beside myself to see that these are the sources used by Saints. They had to add an additional source and this was the first one that it was, was this book and I just went through the sources they used. I do not think this is credible. I I OK, so now we’ll go on to the one other source that Saints claim. So at first claimed that book, Joseph Smith Junior’s Red Brick Store. This is the other one. It says a house for the most high um by, by Matthew mcbride. And it tells us to see um page 100 note 10. So we’ll go to the screenshot. I grabbed, you can see down here at the bottom. It says page 100 note 10 says IBID. OK. So we can go see what note 10 is talking about. And um this is what it says that leads to footnote 10. Once the position and dimensions of the temple had been determined and marked excavation for the foundation began on February 18th, the on February 18th, the brethren began to dig the cellar. I have no idea what this has to do with what we’re talking about. Like completely fluid. So let’s go back and read footnote nine since it’s IBI. It’s the same right work at the temple site itself began in mid February according to William Clayton’s record. Enter Alpheus Cutler. Oh Elder Alpheus Cutler, assisted by Elder Reynolds Cohoon and others laid out the foundation of the temple? Ok. So what does that have to do with the red brick store being decorated on um May 3rd? I don’t know. So there’s the IBI it’s um the intimate chronicle, the journals of William Clayton and it tells us page 527. So can you see how many books I buy? I had another version of the journals of William Clayton, but I needed to know what that was talking about on page 527. Go to that. Now this is, remember this book, this house for the most high, I’m sorry, I’ll go back to is written by Matthew mcbride. Let’s remember that name, right? And it’s quoted as it’s cited in saints. It’s, it does say c also so this is the least important one. But what in the world could it be talking about? So I turned to page 527 and it’s talking about May 7th, 1852. What does that have to do with? 1842? I don’t know the closest I could get on. I actually searched for pages and pages thinking maybe the citation was just off. It says all the lots are adorned with young firs and other varieties of trees and shrubbery that’s talking about the city in 1852. And that’s the closest I could get to saying something about the temple being decorated somehow to look like. Anyway, I like, I, I have no idea what that is supposed to be referring to. So let me get back to see where. Ok. So anyway, I just, I have to say like I found this shocking, these are the new sources that are in Saints. Now, remember President Nelson used Saints to justify his claims. That’s why his footnotes go to are, is the book Saints and then the Book Saints added these new footnotes. Now, II I really, I spent a long time. I, I feel like this footnote was like gaslighting me because I was like, what’s wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I make any sense of this? I like, I thought I must not know how to search footnotes and maybe that’s true. There is definitely a chance that someone’s going to say Michelle, this is what you did wrong. And I will feel like a complete idiot and come on and say, OK, I got that wrong. That is definitely a possibility that it hasn’t generally been my experience. I, I’ve done this quite a bit and I haven’t run. I like, usually know how to know use footnotes. So I, I don’t know what’s going on. But the first thing I found that I did find interesting is that Matthew mcbride is the director of publications at the church history department. So maybe that makes a little bit more sense. This is Matthew mcbride’s book the footnote in, it seems to be really bad. And then Saints, which he’s in charge of uses it for a footnote. So that’s the first sense I can make of this. If someone else can tell me what’s going on, I would love to hear it because I am shocked honestly, like, I think any teacher of history worth their salt would fail a student who used footnotes like this, right, this huge massive team of L DS historians. They’re literally like the best historians, money can buy. And maybe there maybe in like maybe there’s a literalness to that, maybe they really are the best historians, money can buy because that seems to be what’s going on. I I feel bad being so hard on them, but this was shocking and it doesn’t seem to be getting better. So, ok, those were the new sources added by saints. Don’t seem to be strengthening the claim from what I can find. But let’s look at one more thing. I want to also remind everybody about the red brick store, right? So let’s go back here and look again at the red brick store. We covered this in one of the expositor episodes and I’m sure we will again. So here’s the little red brick store, right? And that’s the assembly room is the room we’re talking about that would have had the canvas partitions that decades later had a mural painted on the wall. And then there’s Joseph Smith’s little office, right? And um I just want to talk about the culture of this red brick store, right? And what have been go what would have been going on? So this again was a massively busy place, the center of town, like we’ve said, this is where all of the historical work was done. This is where all deeds had to be filled out. This was some, this was also used as the bank, this like everything, everything was happening here all of the time. And so, um this was the year before the school started because I looked into that, but that just started the day before. Um William Clayton claims that um section 132 was written down. So that wasn’t yet going on, but it was still outrageously busy, busy. And I was able to find some very interesting things that um church website. I mean that Joseph Smith papers has a very useful source that’s called the Calendar of Documents. I think that’s how I found the Hiram Smith um deed that I think is a really big deal. But so anyway, they include in that all of the things that were that, that are recorded on that day from this nou period. And one of those things is the um oh, let’s see. I guess I need to go back. They keep track of thankfully all of the elders licenses. So remember you had to get an elder’s license to go preach the gospel and those had to be filled out. And then luckily they were recorded in books, most of the elders licenses that the elders would take with them. We don’t have anymore, but we do have the record book that shows that on this day when, well on these days, I think this is the 4th and 5th. Yeah, I think it’s you can see the fourth and the fifth, seven different elders journal, um elders licenses were filled out and recorded. So that would have to be happening in this little office, right? That Brigham Young and others claim was being used by Joseph Smith and and these men for their endowment. So that was happening at the same time. And then we can also go to um the again the store daybook entries and you can see on these three days the third through the fifth, there are a full eight pages of entries in Joseph Smith’s Daybook. So I guess my, I mean, I mean, in the in the store like this place was hopping and happening, right? So what I find so interesting there, there was no like partition between upstairs and downstairs, there was no sound proofing. It seems to have been really pretty open access. So there was a lot going on, right? And what I am trying to envision is how the upstairs was completely not only out of commission but really a sacred space, right? First of all that, no one would notice there would not be a single testimony of what’s going on at the red brick store, right? Like what are all of the, what’s that mural about? Right. What are those canvas partitions about in this? So what I find that f is that when Joseph spent so much effort saying we need a temple so that there is a space prepared, finished, consecrated and dedicated, right? So that God can give us these things. Not only was there not a space prepared, it wasn’t dedicated. When was this space dedicated? And it was in the middle of like, like everything happening. They were in the middle of a store, like they went to Costco in the middle of Costco, hung up some curtains and did the temple endowment. That’s what we have to invent vision that is happening here. Just Willy nilly on a Wednesday in the busiest place in town. We’re gonna do the temple ordinances for the first time. How, how does this make sense to us? So that really is what’s going on here. So, ok, I think we’ve thoroughly established these first, several claims that, uh, I think we can eliminate them, right? 123 and four. I don’t know. You, everyone can decide for themselves. I’m not convinced. I’m sad that this is the, um, ah, kind of it hitting me. I’m sad that this is what it is. I’m sad with this reality. It’s kind of hard to realize it, but that’s the best that there is. That’s what it is. So, now the last claim is after endowing Brigham Joseph told Brigham to organize and systematize his apparently defective temple ceremony done in the middle of Costco, basically. Right. That’s kind of what’s going on. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be a downer just I just I want us to do better and I want us to be better. And it makes me really sad. So this is the last claim that we have to cover and we will look into this one. So this claim also has one single source. So let me introduce you to John Nuttle who may very well be a really good guy. This one I do not think is his fault. So we’re going to talk about him a little bit. So the claim, right? Is that, well, I guess I can go back to that claim, but the we’ll just leave John Nettle there for a little while. He’s a good looking guy. So OK, the claim is that and, and you, yeah, did I already say you saw it in the video? You see it everywhere. It’s in every record is that Joseph ceremony just wasn’t right. It’s not arranged quite right. So he needed Brigham to fix it and he charged Brigham to fix it. Now, we have a lot of things that we have to talk about here. Let’s first before we look at the source for this source. There’s one, let’s just look at it logically. So Joseph taught repeatedly. I’ve said this so many times that the temple could only be built when God commanded it through direct revelation and that God gave specific instructions of exactly how it should be built. Right. So um he demonstrated this in his relationship with William weeks, if you remember in that episode where he insisted that the windows be full circles as God had directed. And so it goes, it goes on and yet and yet it just wasn’t right. Right. Like Joseph just couldn’t get the temple right. He didn’t have the separate rooms for the celestial creation, the garden room that um the ceiling rooms. Um he didn’t even have built in places for partitions, those had to be added later, right? And he couldn’t even get the makeshift version done, right? Which he had done two years earlier. So, so two years before the temple, before he died, when the temple should have been done within that time, he was like, you know what? I just don’t think we’re gonna get it done and I’m gonna do it now and then I’m gonna wash my hands of it and say, hey, Brigham, I just couldn’t get this right. Will you please take it and fix it like this whole thing looking at it logically just does not work. And so he so yeah, two years before his death, he completely gave up on it and he just couldn’t, they couldn’t fix the design in the temple like, oh, maybe we should change that. So it works better. Nope, build the temple, we have to build the temple. So God gives us this. But you know, I don’t know what it’s supposed to be like. So you fix it. Brigham. That’s basically what we’re saying. Like he said this to Brigham, the traveling mission, that missionary who had only gotten back to NAVOO rather recently, right? And was never a member of the first presidency. He didn’t say anything to Hiram about it. He did not because basically, remember Hiram was kind of an idiot. Anyway, he was a good guy. But but Brigham had to really put him in his place a lot. I’m I’m this is all based on Brigham’s claims, right? All of this is based on Brigham’s claim. So the fact that we believe this narrative. So anyway, so now let’s look at the sources. So John Nuttall, he was nine years old and living in England when Joseph and Hiram were murdered. He was baptized in England in 1850 arrived in Utah in 1852. So he is not a witness to any of this, right? He was also a committed polygamist with five wives. Interestingly, his second wife was John Taylor’s daughter, Sophie Sophie Taylor. So he was definitely connected and in the know he served in several high callings. Let’s see, including the Kanab State president, the Saint George Temple recorder and he was the private secretary for John Taylor and Wilfred Woodruff. So he was brought right in as soon as he got to Utah, right, he right into the game. And so as part of his calling as the temple recorder, I believe he and the clerk, he kept a detailed journal where he recorded an informal small gathering in Brigham Young’s Saint George mansion. So at the beginning of this episode, I talked about Brigham Young Saint George Mansion. It was in that mansion. And after serving in the newly dedicated Saint George temple for the day, Brigham waxed eloquent on several topics having to do with the temple. So this is a very extensive journal entry. Let’s see if that’s, yeah, you can see um how many pages it is. This is all this one journal entry from John Nettle um February 7th, 1877. So it was less than six months I believe at before. Um less than six months before Brigham died. This was right near the end of his life and he had finished his temple. These men had been serving in it all day. They gathered at Brigham’s home and Brigham talked and talked and talked right about many things. And as I said, the main thing that he talked about is actually the Adam God doctrine that he was so committed to. So that’s the main thing you’ll read about in this long um journal entry. And I, I again, I really wanted to read that, but there’s just too much going and there’s too much, this is already too long. So we’ll save that for my episode on Adam. God, I’m glad to have found this source. But, um, that, that I have a long list of things we need to cover. There’s no way I, I did start out thinking maybe I’ll do 100 32 episodes. Oh, no, it’s just, there are more than 100 32 problems. So there are gonna be more than 100 32 episodes. So anyway, it goes on and on and on. But in any case, we’re going to go ahead and read this journal entry. I think it’s interesting that we rely so heavily on this journal entry because again, it’s the only source and it’s used you all the time cited everywhere in every discussion in everything about the history of the endowment, right? But we completely ignore everything about the Adam God doctrine. So again, we cherry pick this little part of it, throw the rest of it out, but this part is reliable. You can take this to the bank. So I’m going to start reading and you can follow along if you’re able to after supper. A after I have a transcript just I don’t want to make it sound like I’m really good at reading this difficult writing. So after supper, went to President Young’s President um present President Young W Woodruff E um Evan. Um that’s uh Erastus Snow. Brigham Young Junior, and then these guys, I don’t know ig bleak em green and myself works in the temple. Being under consideration, President Young was filled with the spirit of God and revelation and said, when we got our washings and anointings under the hands of the prophet Joseph at navoo, we had only one room to work in with the exception of a little side room or office where we were washed and anointed. So remember that little side room or office where seven elders licenses were being filled out and who knows what else? That’s where they were being um washed and anointed and had their garments and had our garments placed upon us and received our new name. And after he had performed these ceremonies, he gave the key words, signs, tokens and penalties. Then after we went into the large room over the store in Navoo, Joseph divided up the room, the best that he could hung up the veil marked. It gave us our instructions as we passed along from one department to another. Ok, I wanna interrupt myself here. I apologize. But I just realizing I just want to point out that Scoville testimony, the um editorial in the newspaper came after this. So Brigham Young was saying this first, this record was cited first and then that came later to back it up. So, so he said, Joseph divided up the room the best he could, right and hung, hung it all um hung the veil marked. It gave us our instructions as we passed along from one department to another, giving us signs, tokens penalties with the keywords pertaining to those signs. And then, um, here you can keep reading along. Let’s see if I need to go to the next page. Thanks for being patient with me this episode. Ok. Hopefully, the information is worth it even if it’s a little clumsy. So you can start reading here. And after we had got through, brother Joseph turned to me, President Brigham Young and said, Brother Brigham, this is not a range strike, but we have done the best we could under the circumstances in which we are placed. And I wish you to take this matter in hand and organize and systematize all these ceremonies with the signs, tokens, penalties and keywords. I did so and each time I got something more so that um when we went through the temple at Nabu, I understand and knew how to place them there. We had our s ceremonies pretty correct. So it goes on from there. So, ok, I hope that this is all coming through clear what the source is for this. This is Brigham Young kind of being a blow hard a bit talking again saying what Joseph said, right? Which is what he was very apt to do. So I have to apologize in advance for this meme, but it was too good not to use. I have had this image in my mind so often when I have read about Brigham telling us what Joseph said. It’s this little puppet, right? He’s a oh, anyway, and so I, this was the special meme that I special ordered and I love it. And I think it’s perfect and I think I should have been using it this entire time in this podcast. So anyway, this is what I think of this claim. It’s terrible and we ignore everything else, but we use this because it tells the story that we want, want it to tell. So I’m going to go ahead and remove this for a little while. So it’s not gonna get me into too much trouble because I know that that’s a little bit extreme, but honestly, that it just makes me upset. And so that is, that is what we have. These are Brigham’s imaginative self glorifying musings to this group of admirers gathered in his Saint George mansion six months before he died. That’s exactly what it is. Those are the sources we have now covered all of the sources used to claim that Joseph Smith is the originator of the temple endowment. This is now, now this is, let me, let me say something. I can, I am not intending to set out to prove that that’s not true that the endowment is not of God or that Joseph isn’t the originator of it. That’s not. I’m looking at this purely through a historical lens. And saying the historians, the scribes are trying to use historical sources to make these claims and their sources are terrible. The historical case for this claim for Joseph Smith being the originator of the temple endowment is absolutely terrible. It is there is terrible, terrible evidence for it. And I think it requires a lot, lot of either wishful thinking and motivated reasoning or outright dishonesty to claim that we have the sources to write this as even a narrative history in saints or in all of these other sources. It’s the story. Nobody, nobody would ever look at these sources and go oh, the picture is becoming clear, Joseph had the room decorated on the third and then in doubt these on the fourth and then he was, he and I were in doubt on the fifth. Oh and he asked them to not talk, but nobody would look at these sources and come to that conclusion. We have these conclusions and we are desperately going through sources trying to find something to try to hopefully back it up, right? And I know that some historians will say that’s how you do history. Well, then we need better historical practices because that’s not a good way to find truth in any case. And so so again, we have a 42 years, they claim this claim from Brigham Young is 35 years after the fact. And we have covered everything you now know, you know it all you know, every source that is relied on and I will go through and show you that. And you would think with all of these obscure sources that the church historians are able to find like these out of print RL DS book booklets, right? You would think that they could be aware of, which I think they are aware of. They could choose to include things that they have in their very own church history library that they are charged that, that they have written, you know, that they have to keep track of that. They have to write about that. They have to catalog they have anyway, I’m going to show you a source that came to my awareness. Thank you so much. The people who found this and who shared it. Clark and Steven who shared it with me. You guys are awesome. This is huge. This is a huge source that has been completely ignored and omitted from our church history. And so let me show you what this is because it could not be more important. I think the people who found it might even not have understood yet. Well, I haven’t talked to them but I’m hoping they’ll understand even more just how important it is. This is a letter that was written from Brigham Young to Willard Richards, right? I it was written on July 8th 1844 less than two weeks after Joseph and Hiram were murdered. And um Brigham Young I believe was in Pennsylvania from reading the letter. And um he was there after not returning to NAVOO, despite Joseph and Hiram both writing to him telling him to return during those very fraught and dangerous days with the expositor and the threats of the mob and all of that happening. And they, they wrote to Brigham to come back and then they wrote to Brigham to tell all of the 12 to come back and he apparently is in Pennsylvania oblivious of the fact that they’ve both been murdered still at this point on the eighth. So I think this is a really interesting letter that I would love. Well, I would love someone to dig into more and more and to try to figure out what’s going on because I don’t know if there’s something fishy going on or not. But it’s, it’s really interesting. The reason this is so incredibly important, so relevant and crucial to our discussion is because these are the two most um foundational or crucial members of that supposed endowment group, right, Willard Richards is the one who created the only record we have of it. And Brigham Young is the one who claimed to have been charged to organize and systematize it. These are the two central figures they’re writing and there’s a letter between them on July 8th. This should be absolutely central to everything about this claim of the temple endowment. And so we are going to read part of this letter. It has kind of a fun. This is, this is upside down on the front page. It says I have not time look over this letter, take it as it is overlook mistakes, you know. So here’s the letter, right? You can, I kind of had to overlap it. It’s three pages. I have a transcript that I can send anyone that wants it or that I can post somewhere. And this one line right here is the crucial line that we are going to look at. And so let me zoom in on it and let you read what it says. I pray we may that we may finish the temple and get our endowment. That is what is written by Brigham Young to Willard Richards on July 8th 1844 after Joseph Smith’s death. K do let this settle on you for a minute, right? How cred critically important this is, let me just restate Brigham Yang, the man who in who instituted the endowment center ceremony in Navoo and in every temple since then, who claimed Joseph endowed him and told him to fix the flawed endowment ceremony. He had done writing to Willard Richards, the author of the only source we have to claim that this endowment ever happened. This is a letter a week and a half after Joseph Smith’s death admitting in no uncertain terms that neither had received their endowment that neither had been endowed. However, we want to say it. Neither one of them had gotten their endowment yet our church historians who again have possession of this letter who are completely responsible for it and who can find all these other sources completely omit this. I like at the very least acknowledge it and write it into your sources. Find a way to explain it way if you must, but at least acknowledge it and include it. It is infuriating that it’s those of us who have to, you know, go find these things. I’m so thankful. I’m not the only one. I’m thankful that there are people, awesome people finding awesome sources working hard, right? So OK, that’s, that’s where we are. This is exactly what we have. This is what um what we rely on. We ignore this letter. I just do this last little offensive video slide that I already did, but we completely ignore this letter that is contemporaneous firsthand, right? Central players. We ignore it for the sake of this 35 year later claim 2nd 3rd hand by I’m sorry, and someone who does not have a great track record of making good claims. So that is the situation that we are in. We are to the end of the sources. That’s all of them. We’ve covered them. So I want to go ahead and now from chapter 37 of saints, we will prove them. It’s the one that includes these claims and we are going to talk about what it. Um Well, I, I guess I’ll just read through their narrative history that they say is factual, right? That is now cited as the authoritative source and you know, every single footnote that they have included, we’ve gone over them. So now you can understand it with your eyes wide open, knowing what they’re talking about. Here we go. On May 4th, 1842 I’ll go. Yeah. Ok. On May 4th 1842 Brigham Young Heber Kimball and Willard Richards found the upper room of Joseph Smith’s store transformed on the wall was a newly painted mural. Remember that? Ok. On the wall was a newly painted mural, small trees and plants stood nearby, suggesting a garden setting. Another part of the room was sectioned off with a rug hung like a curtain. That citation right there included the um the Lucius Scoville plus those new, those two new citations that we just went over. So that’s what we have there, right? Joseph had invited the three apostles to come to the store that morning for a special meeting. He had invited his brother Hiram and and William Law as well. Both members of the first presidency and two of his closest advisor. Now remember William Law had been crossed out. So we’re adding him back in apparently also in attendance were bishops Newell K Whitney and George Miller and NAV um NAVOO state President William Marks again deleted but added back. And church leader James Adams just a random church leader. For the rest of the afternoon, the prophet introduced an ordinance to the men. Part of the part of it involved washing, washings and anointings similar to the ordinances given in the Kirtland temple and the ancient Hebrew Tabernacle, the men were given a sa sacred undergarment that covered their bodies and reminded them of their covenants. Some of these um sources are scriptures, right? So if it’s a, if it’s that kind of a source, I didn’t cover it because it’s not a historical source. Joseph called the ordinance, the endowment and trusted the men not to reveal the special knowledge. They learned that day, like the endowment of K of Power in Kirtland, the ordinance was sacred and meant for the spiritually spiritually minded. Yet it was more than the outpouring of spiritual gifts and divine power of on the elders of the church. As soon as the temple was finished, both men and women would be able to receive the ordinances, strengthen their covenant relationships to God and find greater power and protection in consecrating their lives to the Kingdom of God. And you’ll remember the one source for this. He trusted them not to reveal it was that six weeks, six later letter from Heber C Kimball to Harley Pratt that I think it’s about polygamy. Um When the ceremony was finished, Joseph gave some instructions to Brigham. This is not arranged, right? He told the Apostle, but we have done the best we could under the circumstances in which we are placed. And I wish you to take this matter in hand and organize and systematize all of these ceremonies, you know, very well. The one so um source we have for that as they left or that day, the men were in awe of the truths they had learned from the endowment. Some aspects of the ordinance reminded Hebrew C Kimball of Masonic ceremonies in Freemasonry meetings, men acted out all acted out an allegorical story about the architect of Solomon’s temple. Masons learned gestures and words. They pledged to keep secret, all of which symbolized that they were building a solid foundation and adding light and knowledge to it by degrees. Yet the endowment was a priesthood ordinance meant for men and women and it taught sacred truths not contained in masonry which Hebrew was eager for others to learn again. You know, the source for that we have received o’hare quotes that we have received some precious strings through the pop prophet on the priesthood that would cause your soul to rejoice. Hebrew. Hebrew wrote Parley and, and Mary Anne Pratt in England. I cannot give them to you on paper for they are not to be written. So you must come and get them for yourselves and that’s the end of it, right? So that’s the situation we are in. The more I have read and studied like, like trying to go what is going on I think the more, the more I’ve realized that I think I understand what is happening maybe or what has happened. I think the only people doing this work reading through all of these documents full time are those paid by the church and charged with, with supporting the narrative that the church wants supported. Right? II, I don’t think they’re actually free to see what things say and to try to learn what is really happening because I think the narrative has already been provided for them and their job is to just just find sources, cherry pick things to justify that narrative. So I think the problem is that there are now those of us crazy enough or called by God who do this work without being hired without being right. And, and thankfully, we have the resources. Now, I am so thankful for the Joseph Smith papers. It’s so helpful. I’m thankful for the internet. I’m thankful for archivists and his and um librarians that will help us because I want now you can see even more why we need the sources, not the narrative, right? Like we need, we just need sources, we don’t need narratives. That’s that would be a new tag for, right? New tagline. And so anyway, I think that that’s that is what’s happening is that those of us who are doing this work without being paid for it are the ones that are able to bring these things forward. Maybe there’s something to that. Maybe there’s something about priest craft in that somewhere. I don’t know. But this is what I see happening and this is the best way I can explain it. So this is the end of our slide show, right? I think we’re to the end of the episode, let me go ahead and remove this. And so I can just talk to you a little bit more. We’ve already spent so much time going through all of these sources that are used to make this case. So I won’t spend much more time on this because I think we’re all probably exhausted. But I feel like we should, I should at least mention some of the many problems with the narrative. All I’ve done so far is go through and show you what the narrative rests on and why they can’t support the narrative, right? But now I want to make a little bit of the opposite case saying these are why this narrative can’t exist anyway. So first of all, as I said, um before the temple was given by complete and was given, I was commanded by God with complete instructions given to Joseph Smith, right? And yet it was not built to accommodate the endowment that Brigham gave. It was built according to God’s plan and Joseph’s plan, but it didn’t work for Brigham’s plan. So again, quoting from Brown’s Temple, Pro TEM, it’s, he says the temple mirrored the Kirtland temple, two large meeting rooms on the ground and second floors and attic office rooms as well as a finished basement. Prior to the temple’s completion, young indicated that the first floor mezzanine rooms with their large circular windows would be used for the endowment. But when he had men prepare for prepare the temple for the ritual, he adopted Smith’s method of using canvas partitions to subdivide a small meeting in the temple attic. The method he claimed Smith said was, oh, then I wrote that that’s the method he claimed that Smith said was not right, right. That he wanted Brigham to fix this arrangement included all the rooms associated with later Utah temples, even using the same nomenclature, creation room, garden room, world room, terrestrial room, celestial room, ceiling room and even a holy of Holies. So again, do you get this Brigham Yang and the Nabu temple had to canvas partitions to create all of the rooms that he wanted, which later when he built temples in Utah, he built into the temples. And yet when God gave instructions to Joseph Smith to build a temple, it didn’t include any of those rooms, right? And, and Joseph just never could get it right. He he even when he tried to do a makeshift version, it wasn’t right, let alone the temple being built right for God to be actually able to give them the endowments they needed. So that’s the first claim that I think is really problematic that someone needs to explain second and I should say while I’m going through this, this is by no means a comprehensive list of the problems. It’s just the first ones I came that came to mind really fast. There are so many more. In fact, I would love people to add other things that you see and like, like I always learn more after doing these episodes from the comments that people make. So I hope that people see other things that I just am too exhausted to include. So the second line, we know that there were oaths of vengeance in the early endowment. People vowed rather violent oaths to avenge the blood of Joseph Smith. And so that obviously could not have been introduced by Joseph Smith and could not have been what Joseph Smith knew was not arranged just right. Right. That could not have been part of the temple ceremony that Joseph Smith introduced. And if anyone, I won’t take time to cite sources because I’ve already quoted many, there are um multiple sources on page eight of mind as well as many references anymore online for anyone who would like to investigate further. Ok. And the third point that I think is important to make here, if Joseph Smith gave the endowment, if that’s how they did it or endowed or did the endowment ceremony for Brigham Heber Willard Newell, along with James Adams and George Miller, why did they need to be endowed again? In the Navoo temple. So this is the same question I asked about Joseph ceilings, right? If he was the one mighty and stronger, if he was the one on earth at a time with the keys, why were his ceilings not valid? And why did they have to be redone? And if he thought that the temp that if he thought ceilings could be done outside of the temple, why did they have to be redone in the temple? And how were they valid at that point? And if he thought that the endowment could be done outside the temple, why was it not valid? And why did it have to be redone? So this is a problem that I think people need to think about a little bit deeply. So I um I wanted to show you that, that Brigham and Hebrews and Newell at all of their temple ordinances were done a second time when the nut temple was unfinished, when they were using the Navoo temple, though, when the upper room was dedicated. And so um I have been most like at least two or three times both at the Provo library, the family search library and at the Salt Lake Family History Library. I have looked through the actual books of the Navoo Temple. Well, they’re copies of them, but you can see the actual like copies of those original Navoo Temple records. And so I knew from looking at them that Brigham Young went through with the first group. I think that, um, Hebrew C Kimble did as well on, um, December 10th, 1845. I spent a lot of time today trying to get those records. I didn’t have time to drive downtown to look at them again. And downtown. It’s weird. I had to show my temp recommend to look at them at the, at the BYU library was able to just look at them and then let me take pictures. Unfortunately, they were on my old laptop that died. So I tried to get them again. I couldn’t, but I will include below this Nou Temple endowment name index for anyone who to do research. And you can look up names alphabetically and find out everything you want to know that’s in those records. And from having seen them, I can substantiate that this information is correct. So you can see right here, Brigham Young went was um his endowment date was the 10th of December 1845 according to the Nut Temple record, right? And so all of these men were endowed a second time which I think was actually them just being endowed the first time because this story developed later on after, after this time. But um let me go ahead and show you what I think is interesting because the other question is again, if, if um Brighams and Hebrews and Willards and Newell um endowment need to be needed to be redone. Why didn’t Joseph and Hiram. Right? And so I went on family search and you can look up their ordinance date and you can see right here. Endowment completed fifth of May 1842 right the day after the others. And then you can go and look up both Brigham Young and Hebrew C. Kimball. You can look up all the rest as well and this has their endowment date listed fourth of May 1842 because that’s the narrative even though the Nut Temple records, which are what we should go off because there were no records for that 8, 1842 endowment. They list very clearly. That was that it was December 10th, 1845. So there’s another problem that we just have not managed to work out yet and I think needs to be addressed and dealt with, contended with honestly. So anyway, we’re almost done. That’s one more point. Is there anything else? Oh, yeah. And then just the final point I’ll make, is that nothing? This is my research again. Anyone feel free to show me something I haven’t noticed, you know, but nothing to do with the endowment. As introduced by Brigham Young is found anywhere in scripture that I have seen. Um Joseph Smith, like the scriptures focused heavily on the first principles and ordinances of the gospel faith, repentance, baptism by water and baptism by fire, right? He focused heavily on those things and spoke of the people receiving an endowment of power from the Lord. He also spoke of coming into the presence of God. That that’s, that’s the trajectory we’re going on. But, but the endowment and um being blessed with the, with the presence of God, those weren’t saving ordinances, those weren’t things you had to gain in order to be saved or even to be exalted, right? That like we really have taken like I, I read those scriptures last time. So I want this time too. And um there’s a lot to this to take things that are extra and build them on and make them necessary. There’s, there’s something not quite right about that. And I’ll let people investigate that on their own. And again, these are ideas that need that deserve, deserve their own entire episodes. So I won’t go into them in depth here, but I cannot find any idea of endowment ceremony or ordinance in Joseph’s teachings or in the scriptures that aligns with what I think it came to mean with Brigham’s ceremony. So this is the end, right? This is we again, here we are. And so the giant question again is what do we do with this? What does this mean for us? How do we go forward and I’m honestly grappling with this myself, those of you, you know, I know some get frustrated with me that I am so deeply committed to the church and, and I do not feel at this point that I’m told not to go to the temple, right? I don’t feel like it’s evil. If I go to the temple at all, I am, I still am recovering from 2020. So it’s not a question I’m facing right now. I’m just letting God direct me and I’m willing to be patient and see where that leads. I have had many beautiful, profound experiences in the temple. It used to be a place of serious communing with God and revelation for me and I have had beautiful experiences there. So I know for a fact that that can happen and does happen. And so um I, you know, I I’m trying to, I know also that I have had many profound experiences outside of the temple. So I am by no means claiming that you have to be in the temple to have profound experiences. But I think that if someone feels inspired to go to the temple, they should go to the temple, right? I, I like, like I think that like as I said, I think that our relationship with the temple should be mediated by our relationship with the God, with God and not the other way around. So I’m not telling anyone what they need to do with any of this information other than hopefully go to God and let God tell you what you should do with this information. But I did say earlier in, in I think the first episode, I thought there would only be one and then I thought there’d only be two. Please listen all the way to the end because I had, as I was starting to work on this and trying to figure out I, I spent a lot of time, you know, just with the Lord going, what do I do? And I had, I was directed profoundly to some things. I’m hesitant to say that because I never want to make it sound like. Oh yeah, yeah. You know, I, I just, I do want to just say that I felt very profoundly led to these references that just brought some. So I, in my opinion, this is the most important thing I have to share and I hope that people are still listening or that people will just share this, this um part. The important part of all of this is God’s continual everlasting invitation to repent, right? We’re never done. It’s never a game over. It’s never too late, I guess until what is it that they’re ripened in iniquity and worthy of destruction? We’re not there. I know for a fact that we’re not there because we’re not there. And you know, God is telling me that we are not there, that we always have the opportunity to repent. And so some of the scriptures, there were three particular scriptures that I was just led directly to. One of them is Joel, the book of Joel. Um chapters 123 are this perfect chiasm right, the first um chapter and the first half of the second are the destruction descending pattern. And then the second half of chapter two and the third chapter are the redemption and ascension pattern. So that middle part is the crucial part, right? It’s the the center of the chiasm. That’s so important. And that’s what I want to read because that shows us how we move from this descending destruction part into the ascending part. It’s the part we need to focus on. Right? So Joel two verse one, blow ye the trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm. I just had to include that about the trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm in my holy mountain. Let all the inhabitants of the land. Trouble tremble for the day of the Lord cometh for it is nigh at hand. Now we’re going forward to verse 12. Therefore also now say the Lord turn ye even to me with all your heart and with fasting and with weeping and with mourning and rend your heart and not your garments and turn unto the Lord, your God. For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness and repenteth him of the evil who knoweth if he will return and repent and leave a blessing behind him, even a meal offering and a drink offering unto the Lord your God. Um blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast call, a solemn assembly, gather the people sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the Children and those that suck the breasts. Let the bridegrooms go forth of his chamber and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord weep between the porch and the altar and let them say, spare thy people. Oh Lord, and give not thine heritage to rep, to reproach that the heathen should rule over them. Wherefore should they say among the people? Where is their God? Then will the Lord be jealous for his land and pity His people? And you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord. When you, when it says you shall eat in plenty, I think of that like they search everywhere for something to satisfy them, right? We will have true doctrine. Um and you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord, your God that hath dealt wondrously with you and my people shall never be ashamed and ye shall know that I am the midst and I am in the midst of Israel and that I am the Lord, your God and none else. And my people shall never be ashamed and it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance as the Lord hath said. And in the remnant, who whom the Lord shall call OK, I think that Joel is profound and speaks directly to us and it is that I, I just remember exactly how I was told to go to it and how profound it is and what we are talking about and how much the Lord means, what the Lord is saying. Right? And so I want to just read a couple of other. This is James. Well, James 516, for those of us who are wondering what should we do? I just love this scripture, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man aileth much, right? Let’s remember that. And now the other source that I want to read is Second Kings 22 which is paralleled in Second Corinthians 34. And this is an incredibly important but often neglected chapter. It’s one of my favorites and has been since I discovered it. I think it has extremely important insights on both of on several fronts. But one of them is one of the things we talk about, which is polygamy, right, which erases the feminine in the most profound way. And I think we need a restoration of feminine presence as well as everything else. Iii I don’t need to get in trouble as a feminist. I’m I’m actually not a feminist by that term. I think we need the masculine and the feminine. I don’t think that our doctrine allowed for that. I think that it disappeared far too much and it needs to be brought forth for us to have more. And I think that this chapter does it beautifully. It’s really amazing. And so it goes together both of these, both of these things, both the truth that we can find in our temples and the restoration of understanding the feminine as well as the masculine, right? So see how profoundly this applies to what we’re talking about. First. It gives the king’s um ancestry like it does the begats, but it does it through the matriarchal line, it tells us his mother and grand. So it’s about Josiah rebuilding the temple. Josiah was eight years. So I’m reading, yeah. Second kings. 22 verse one, Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign and he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem. And his mother, mother’s name was Jedaiah and the mother and the daughter of Aaya of Bosk. So, right, it gives us his genealogy through the feminine line. That’s so interesting. It says that the temple, it tells us the temple was in dis disrepair. So he used the temple treasury to restore the temple and in the process digging through the ruins, this is also applicable, right? They found the Book of the Law and the truth we are trying and that’s the like the truths we’re trying to dig out of our ruins, right? So this is the crucial part. Again, the center of the chapter, just like the center center of Joel that we read before and it came to pass when the king had heard the words of the book of the law that he rent his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest and he and several others including the scribe, go ye inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that is found for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book to do according unto all that which is written concerning us. So he he the priest and the others went unto Hoda, the prophetess. Now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the college and they communed with her. I love that because again, it’s we just neglect the prophetesses in the Bible. And there are prophetesses in the Bible. So I love this that when the king told the priest to go get the word of the Lord, the priest went to the prophetess and she said unto him. Thus, saith the Lord God of Israel. Tell the man that sent you to me. Thus saith the Lord and she warns of cursing the cursing of disobedience that will come on them but says, but to the king of Judah which sent you to inquire of the Lord. Thus, shall ye say to him? Thus, saith the Lord God of Israel as touching the words which thou hast heard because thine heart was tender and thou hast humbled thyself thyself before the Lord. When thou heards that I, what I spake against this place and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse and has rent thy clothes and wept before me. In other words, because you repented when you learned the problems. I also have heard thee saith the Lord and goes on to promise that he will live out his days in peace and no evil will befall his people during his lifetime. So the critical parts I wanted to draw attention to through those are the patterns, the pattern that emerge of recognition of false tradition, followed by repentance and then seeking inspiration and re rebuilding in full submission and obedience to the Lord. Just as Josiah did, just as Joel tells us to do that is what I believe profoundly. God is calling us to as well. We have that exact same opportunity, both individually and collectively as a church and as a people. So thank you again for joining me for this long episode, have a wonderful Christmas and I will see you next time.