So happy for the opportunity to have this amazing discussion with Denver Snuffer. Denver is viewed with fear and suspicion by some, with deep curiosity by some, and with esteem and admiration by others. I loved hearing his thoughts and insights as we discussed, among other things, the gospel, the history of polygamy, and the power and importance of the Book of Mormon.
Sincere thanks to Denver for his time and willingness to engage in this conversation.
Please consider supporting this podcast:
Links:
Denver’s website and blog
10 Talks recommended in comments
Talk 1 – Be of Good Cheer
Direct links for the books discussed:
The Second Comforter
Nephi’s Isaiah
Eighteen Verses
Ten Parables
Come Let Us Adore Him
Beloved Enos
Passing the Heavenly Gift
Transcript:
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy. I feel like this episode needs a little bit of a special introduction. I asked Denver Snuffer to come on the program. And first, I know that makes many people nervous because he is an excommunicated member. And we are kind of programmed to be fearful of that. Um The reason. Well, first of all, I want to say I have spoken to many people of different faiths, many people who are not members of our, of our church. And so I um I hope that we are able to hear different voices without being filled with fear. We’re not afraid to speak to people in different religious traditions, diff different restoration traditions, whether it’s the restoration branches, the community of Christ, the um the string I branches, right? I think it’s useful to listen to the different voices of um of all of humanity, but it’s specifically of the restoration. So I, I want to make that plea first of all. And then I also want to explain the reason I wanted to have him on. I feel like we use excommunication as a way to really science silence people to kind of make them somewhat of a pariah for members. And so I don’t feel like Denver Snuffer at this point has a voice um among church members. But at the same time, Brian Hales, who has the biggest voice for church members has the biggest influence and the biggest say on the church narrative, he continues to sort of punch down at Denver’s never, he repeatedly talks about him and really straw mans his position and goes after him. And I think that is entirely unfair. I don’t like it at all. So I wanted to allow Denver to speak for himself and explain his perspective on his own. I know that for me, I, I think that Brian Hills does not have good footing that like that is the least enviable position to be in is the one that he currently espouses that. Unfortunately, the church continues to believe. I think that Denver Snuffer has a lot better argument to make and I wanted to let people hear it for themselves. So please, I hope that you will enjoy this episode. I hope that those who are members of the church will not feel um concerned or scared. I know I’ll take some heat for having an excommunicated member on. I feel like that’s unfortunate. So, um anyway, I, I don’t even want to have to make any caveats. I am an active member of the church. I’m not a follower of anybody else’s. I think that Denver has a profoundly interesting voice and story. I appreciate so much of what he has done. So I was very thankful that he was willing to come and talk to me and I hope that you will find this episode useful and instructive. Welcome to this conversation that I am having with Denver Snuffer. Denver. I really, really want to thank you for coming. I know this is not your favorite thing to do. This is not your cup of tea. But um I also wanted to explain, well, I kind of explained to my audience a little bit about why I wanted to talk to you. There are so many things I would love to talk to you about for those who don’t know Denver’s story, I’m sure we’re going to go into that. And for anyone who feels nervous having Denver here, I just want to repeat that I have talked to many different people who are not members of our faith who have different journeys and different paths. And I think that we can all rely on the fact that the Lord has given us the gift of discernment so we can listen to what people say and discern truth and error without fear and without needing to just reject people. That’s part of why I wanted to have Denver comments because I feel like his voice has been silenced and other people have been talking on his behalf in ways that don’t feel very fair to me. So, Denver, with all of that being said, I guess I should say Denver was, has been a member of the church, I believe, for 40 years, he was baptized and 40 years later to the day, if I’m getting the story right? Was excommunicated in 2015 for I believe, a book tour. Right? Like a series of lectures you were getting.
[04:08] Denver Snuffer: Yeah. Um, I was baptized on September 10th of 1973 and I was excommunicated on September 10th of 2013
[04:20] Michelle: from 2013.
[04:22] Denver Snuffer: And it was exactly exactly 40 years to the day.
[04:27] Michelle: That is, that is amazing. And I, so, yeah, this is a complicated conversation because I really want my faithful LDS listeners to feel comfortable and welcome and not be afraid. So I’m hoping that people can just listen, but I, I want to tell a little bit about my. So, so I’ve shared before that I was struggling in, in my church membership because I felt like the church was not living up to what I expected it to be if it was the true church of God. And I was reading the book of Mormon and just getting these powerful, strong messages from it, mainly that it was to us and about us that we are the gentiles, we are the ones being called to repentance. And also what I started to see was this pattern of people coming into the presence of God, basically telling us how to do that. It seemed like an instruction manual with part by part and it starts with Nephi telling us everything he possibly can. So the Lord tells him he can’t say anymore and ends with moon. I basically summing it all up saying if you have me, you know, and right before moon, we have Ether. That’s one of the most profound stories the brother of Jared telling us, hey, this is how you come into the presence of God. And then again, Maroni summing it up and I felt so um yeah, I, I just felt like how, what is going on here? How can I dare believe that this is what the book of Mormon is about? Because someone would have told me, how can I think I know more than everybody else or that I know something different than anybody else? I really like. It really was actually quite a bit of turmoil and that was when I was led really by the Lord to this book that I believe is I don’t know if this is the first book you wrote, but it’s the one that I found pretty early on and it is this the first one you wrote. So this is the second Comforter. If I can get it in the screen communing with the Lord through the conversing with the Lord through the veil. And it, for me served as this beautiful second witness. It gave me permission to believe what the Lord was teaching me without feeling like I was all alone and crazy. You know. So, so I want to thank you for that. That really was a, was a gift to me. And, and I want to say also for those worried about Denver, he wrote this book as a fully active participating member of the church, I believe serving on the high council if I’m not mistaken. And, and this book didn’t do anything to get you into trouble. There’s, this book is not unsafe for continued members.
[06:55] Denver Snuffer: No. And in fact, the manuscript for that book was submitted to um Deseret book. And uh they took seven months to evaluate it before uh deciding that they thought the content was um too sacred for them to feel comfortable putting out there. But when they, when they finally decided not to publish it, they encouraged me to find another uh publisher to put it out there. And ultimately, yeah, it got, it got into print. But I, I didn’t want it advertised. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to do book signings. I didn’t want it to uh become something that um a lot of attention was drawn to um because I refused to advertise or publicize or do book signings or promote it in any way. Um I had to bear the cost to get it into print. I had to pay the cost out of pocket for the cover art. I had to pay to get the professional editor. I had to, uh, it took a lot of money to get it into print, but I was hoping it would be a very quiet, um, book. The people for whom it was appropriate would find it and everyone else would just go their way and pay no notice. But the, the uh printer, the month before it went into print, the printer was acquired by the world’s largest bookseller Amazon. It’s a, it’s a subsidiary of Amazon that printed the book. And when a title comes out on Amazon, and anyone does a word search like the title of the book is the second Comforter conversing with the Lord through the veil. If someone picks up and does a search for the second comforter, Amazon has worldwide global reach. And so the um it got more attention than I wanted it to. Um it’s a very personal book, but it’s, it’s personal to the reader. It’s taking the reader on an individual internal journey in themselves. Um But there are vignettes about me. The vignettes illustrate how to get something wrong. And then the chapter that follows the vignette explains how to get it right. And so it’s a, it’s personal in the sense for me that I’m talking about a lot of personal failures and it’s personal to the reader because it’s pushing the reader internal to themselves in a, in a search and your mention of the book of Mormon, I mean, there are three chapters devoted to Nephi um struggle and search because his um his experience illustrates a great deal about the process. And so Nephi figures prominently for three chapters early in the book,
[10:27] Michelle: tell people what those three chapters are so they can go. No, I
[10:30] Denver Snuffer: don’t, I don’t have a book with me and I, I don’t have the index. But if you look at the table of contents, it talks about nei journey and how, how Nephi um came along. I mean, initially, the first thing that NEI did was to, was to struggle and have um a confrontation meditatively and prayerfully with God, struggling to try to believe what his father had said. And it, it begins with something as simple as that. And then it culminates in what happens with Nephi. Um And it, the book of Mormon, I think it intends to um invite everyone every reader to go on that same journey.
[11:22] Michelle: Exactly. Yes. And I just was rereading. Um We were speaking to some friends the other night that we’re talking about it. And in Moro 991 thing that I really also appreciate about your book, appreciated at that time especially was that it seeks to almost um I don’t wanna say normalize but give people permission to have spiritual experiences, to have manifestations and visitations and the things that we have made. They, they seem crazy like I know that at one point, um you know, I had people decide I was schizophrenic if I would share experiences that literally happened, you know, and it’s very difficult for people to um be able to understand that not only do we have the opportunity but almost the obligation to believe that these kinds of experiences, the ministering of angels for, you know, a start are not only possible but are part of what is expected of people of faith. And moon I seven makes it so clear. I hope people will read that, reread it that if angels are, have ceased to minister to, if we aren’t experiencing these kinds of things, it’s not because the heavens are silent. It is due to our lack of faith. And that’s what I think is part of the essential message that all of us are trying to spread is like this shouldn’t, this shouldn’t be so suspect. It shouldn’t be so strange and scary and odd to have communion with the divine. That is the very purpose of the gospel. Like that’s, that’s the message I was getting from the book of Mormon is what the gospel is, is the power to overcome death and hell, which means separation from God, right? And physical and spiritual death. And so instead of saying so I can live with God again someday, which we mean, just live a good life on the, on the safe path. And then when you die, you’ll be in the present. It’s so it’s so minimized and dumbed down when what we actually have is the process to come back into the presence of God, overcome spiritual death. And then eventually the next step, be translated, overcome physical death, which is the city of Enoch, which is everything we claim to believe in. Right? And, and there’s a literalness to all of this that it’s um maybe too great and marvelous, too terrifying for us to be willing to accept and embrace and pursue.
[13:49] Denver Snuffer: I think that’s, yeah, I think that the institutional uh encouragement is for latter day saints to outsource spirituality to a hierarchy and trust them to then feed you whatever it is that you need to have fed in order to obtain salvation. And the book of Mormon is, is going in an opposite direction in which we all become individually accountable before God and independently uh authorized by God to pursue the path of faith in order to reach the point where we um having been true in all things are uh prepared to converse with the Lord, to the veil and receive further light and knowledge, which is still a preserved part of the LDS temple ceremony. Despite all of the other changes that have been made, um you know, you’re introduced as having been true and faithful in all things and desiring now for further light and knowledge by conversing with the Lord through the veil. And um that that’s a ceremony, but it’s a ceremony that’s pointing to a divine invitation and a, a religious expectation. And the book of Mormon is, is ratifying that in account, after account experience after experience. And, um I mean, why are, why are those uh accounts given to us if they’re not meant to be accepted, trusted and acted upon? And you’re right in uh chapter seven of Maroni, if these things have ceased, then has faith ceased? Also, um It’s kind of an indictment of the institutional position of outsourcing spirituality and trusting other people to tell you what it is. That’s important. Um I think um I think we become uh easily submissive to religious authority and that the temptation always is if you are given a little authority that you begin to want control, it’s, it’s chaotic when everyone is given the opportunity to um believe and trust and act for themselves. And yet, um you do not want and the scriptures do not encourage you to seek order at the price of unrighteous Dominion control compulsion. Um and, and abrogating the agency of man Joseph’s uh teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves. Actually did result in a mess in Nauvoo, in a mess in um far West, in a mess at uh independence in a mess at uh Kirtland. I mean, gathering after gathering group after group um teaching correct principles and allowing them to govern themselves, always resulted in unruliness and the fringes of the folks who were gathered, being up to a lot of mischief and, and engaging in a lot of expectations. But I don’t think that is a poor reflection upon either the Lord’s plan to give us all agency or Joseph Smith’s calling to start a, a rough stone rolling down the hill um to fulfill what Daniel foresaw, what it means is that individually, we’re, we’re just not accepting the responsibility devolving upon ourselves to be peaceable with our fellow man, to be obedient, to be true and faithful, to be something more than the kind of wayward, chaotic self, indulgent, ambitious uh self promoting people that vied for power and influence in Kirkland and then in, in independence and in far West and in Navoo, Joseph never lived to see a group of people who would, who would rise to the occasion that he had hoped in teaching them correct principles that in governing themselves, they became like the people of, of eu. I don’t, I don’t think that Joseph was deficient as a teacher. I just think um Enoch had a better audience. I mean, clearly Christ is clearly the best teacher of them all. And Christ’s audience didn’t become Zion. And, and of all those who heard him throughout his mortal ministry. At the end, the account that were given in um uh in Paul’s writing is about 500 people were there to see him ascend on the mount of Olives. So at the end, after the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands who had heard the Lord minister, the greatest teacher, greater, more intelligent than they all um only managed to make about 500 people really adopt and accept the lesson. It, it wasn’t for want of a good teacher that the people at the time of the Lord’s ministry, we didn’t realize Zion. And so I, I don’t think you can indict Jesus or Joseph Smith. I also don’t think you can laud Enoch. I think you have to take the uh the realization that the people themselves have a say, they all have a say, they all have the opportunity to rise up or to not. And so it’s, it’s not, you can’t point to um the failure by saying the Lord didn’t send someone adequate to the task because I think Joseph was more than adequate to the task. It’s
[20:59] Michelle: just, it was Jesus,
[21:00] Denver Snuffer: right? It’s just that people had um they had more interest in worldliness and the weaknesses of the flesh and the aspirations and ambitions of mortal men. And the consequence was um no Zion. And even now while I think the Lord is fully prepared to permit a group of people to rise up. Um The, the problem remains the same low here in a hierarchy, low there in a, in a faction that practices uh fundamentalism. Um Yeah, they’re chaotic voices, but none of them penetrate to the heart of the, of the, the people living today to allow them uh with deep reflection and with humility to live according to, I mean, it’s, I if you got your doctor in covenant, this DNC section 93 verse one, I mean, right there is the, is the formula that’s what’s required to come to pass that every soul who forsakes his sins and comes unto me and, and uh hearkens to my voice and keepeth my commandments shall see my face and know that I am. I mean that that long uh well, long, relatively short list of things is, is some, the the battleground is internal to the person. It’s not how you get along with other people. It’s how you slay the dragon within then having slain the dragon within. You can live at peace with your fellow man because the turmoil, the turbulence, the disruption, the fear, the anxiety, the, the ambition, the hope, the aspiration, all of those things go away if you can slay the dragon within and be right with uh with God. And um we have, we have far too many people in Joseph’s Day and today who um who don’t get that first verse of section 93 right? Um And, and we’re looking for and we actually want to be, oh, hey, lo here, I’m, I’m good. I’m great.
[23:40] Michelle: Yeah, I OK. There are so many things I want to respond to that you just said because um, oh, there I like, let me, let me start here. I think that it is an individual responsibility and part of the reason that it’s messy like I live in the doctrine of covenants and I won’t remember the section right now. But where it says, if you build a house unto my name, all of the pure in heart who come in will see God. And then right over on the next column, it says this is Zion, the pure in heart, right? True Zion is made up of people who walk and talk with God, which is why. So when those people come together and it is an individual responsibility, I I even I, I even, well, I see God’s hand in this entire thing. God needed the pattern set with the city of Enoch to show the rest of mankind. Enoch had hundreds of years. They, their lives were much longer. God established that pattern. If we see that as a literal story, right? And since then, it’s been um like, like I see the restoration and the, I guess if we want to call it the failure of the restoration, the failure to establish, I end up being um disparate and following under what I consider the covenant curses because that’s what seems to have happened in, you know, to, to the saints in Utah. I see this all in God’s hand because everything God does is good and God is the author. And so all of us, even the leaders of the church are Brigham Young and the continuing leaders are playing their role because there has to be, be this, there’s this necessary um, traction or friction that you have to grow through. Right. I don’t like, I think that all of us want to find this perfect place, find this perfect thing where we’ll all just be in the presence of God without recognizing that, that, that’s not how it works. There has to be the opposition in all things. Even I’ve said before, even in Eden, even in paradise, there was a snake to set this all going, there was a poison tree. You you know, like there’s not going to be this perfect place to escape to. And, and so I think that even our leaders like like the process is internal and, and we come to God however we will in whatever organization we’re in, that doesn’t matter very much. The question is, are we following, following the promptings? We are having the the church structure cannot in any way keep us from God any more than it could bring us into the presence of God as can no other structure or no other leader or just like you were saying, even Jesus and Joseph Smith couldn’t bring the people into the presence of God. All they can do is like the book of Mormon strives to do, give the example, give the instructions and try to encourage and try to promote faith because that’s I does that make sense. And so I think that like the faith is multifaceted, we have to have faith. First of all that, this is a possibility, but maybe the harder step is that it’s a possibility for each of us. I know so many people who are like, well, I can’t, I don’t think God expects that of me. That’s right. That it’s, and then the possibility that God can lead us through that process and that whatever effort we make in that direction is good. It’s, it’s not like a you succeeded or you failed. It’s a, are you striving on this path in whatever um setting the Lord wants you to be in while you are striving on this path? That’s how I see it. So I don’t, I don’t see any church leaders as being obstacles to this journey in some ways. They serve us as um as helpers because everybody, you know, like everybody in our life is a helper for us on this journey. It it so, so so anyway, and then I do think that um Joseph, what he established and where that all went. God knows the end from the beginning. God knew that the whole time. It wasn’t a mistake in the plan or a failure. It’s this incredible opportunity that I feel that we now have to pick up the mantle to begin finding what is still there. It is still there. Absolutely in the book of Mormon and it is even still there, like you said in the temple and in the gospel and in the church we see. Well, I, I guess I should talk your second book. That is the other one that I have of yours. These are the only two books I have of yours. Passing the Heavenly Gift, which I think this was the troubling one, right? This was, this was the trouble book. And, um, and so this, but this does, I remember, it does talk about the embers still being there. You can still blow carefully on the embers and reignite the flame. It is still present in the gospel that we have. And so anyway, so that’s why I wanted to like clarify. I don’t think, I think that people get scared thinking if I go on this path, then it threatens everything. I know. It threatens my family, my membership of the church and, and while, OK, a couple of things and then I, I, I’ll talk, I’ll let you talk again. I’m talking too much but a couple of things because you were talking about the messiness of this path and it is messy because striving to become pure in heart. And I think that there are so many fault spirits and so many opportunities to be tempted from one side to the other. Like I think there is maybe it’s an inevitable part of this path, this sort of grandiosity that this feeling of I’m really important. I’m really special and we as mortals want to put people on pedestals that’s part of what the problem is. It’s not just that our leaders are claiming that they’re on pedestals is that we want to put them on, we want people on pedestals. And as soon as people get disillusioned with the church, then they want to find someone else to put on a pedestal, whether it’s you or someone else that has that, that is um vocal about their experiences with the divine, right? So we want to put people on pedestals and then a consequence of that is we wanna be put on a pedestal as soon as we start, right? I think I said to me that’s part of the problem, right? There is just our desire. Like I think every time we want to be around someone that we think is important, it’s because it makes us more important. And if we can recognize, oh, I’m trying to fill that person in for God, it’s God that I really want to be in connection with, not that person, not. And I don’t want people to glorify and put me on a pedestal. We all, if I’m feeling the desire to have people put me on a pedestal, that also is my lack of connection with God. I think connection with God fills all of those holes and I think all of those holes are what make this such a crazy messy, complicated process for every individual. And so luckily kind of when you’re a little further down the road you can see. Oh, I think they are in that place on the process that I relate to you. You know, not that everyone’s journey is the same but when you see someone being a little bit maybe self glorifying or when you see someone wanting to glorify somebody else, you or somebody else, you can kind of recognize that and just pray, Lord, ok, help them make it through that, that journey on the road. Anyway, do you, does that resonate with you? Do you? Is the truth in that?
[30:44] Denver Snuffer: II, I think um there’s very little I would quarrel with um it, the purpose of uh a Zion is to have a community that in effect a community that finally lives the sermon on the mount because the sermon on the mount was simply a blueprint for um how a society would, would get along. And it, it really is Jesus explaining to uh people in a sermon, um how he lived, how, how Christ dealt with the law of Moses as um an internal challenge that he was trying to face. Zion is a community and there’s no such thing as an individual sign. I mean, if, if you’re gonna have a sign, you have to have a community, the impediment to the community is the failure of the individual to internalize what the Lord has invited us and commanded us and asked us to do and part of what interferes is, is that very notion about, hey, there’s something special about you because the Lord took note of you. I can tell you that there’s absolutely nothing special about me. And in fact, as I look around at, at Latter Day saints, generally, as I was being baptized in September 10th of 1973 I, I was convicted and convinced that that Joseph Smith was a prophet. The book of Mormon was true and that, that I needed to be baptized. I, I was convinced of that, but I looked at the Latter day saints because they invited me into family’s homes. And um I did not think that I was as good a person as the people in whose homes I was being taught. Some of these were very young, married people with Children who were, you know, in their early twenties, they were still very youthful themselves. And yet they were living chased moral lives with families. They didn’t smoke, they didn’t drink, they did all of the moment things. And I didn’t, I did not believe myself to be capable of living as good a life as the lives I was seeing on display. But I had this conviction that, that I needed to be baptized because I had gotten an answer to prayer. And that if I failed to respond to that, that I would, I would be losing that connection because this connection was important to me and I wanted to preserve it. So I, I went and I got baptized but didn’t believe I was as good a person as the people I was joining. And, and realistically, as I look back on my life, I don’t think I’m as good a person as the, as the latter day saints uh model uh would suggest I, I do think that forgiveness from God is absolutely important in order for someone to be reconciled to God. But the fact that God forgives you doesn’t change that you were never good enough in the first place. But for Christ’s forgiveness, therefore, of what do you have to boast? Is there something about you that makes you better than someone that did not need forgiveness for these errors? And my view is that no, there isn’t. And, and it’s preposterous to think that in a spiritual journey that your stumbles and your falls and your bruised knees and your bloodied elbows are something that you can overlook. When you think about yourself, the Lord may forgive you, but you’re still that weak individual that needed to be lifted, that needed to be forgiven, that needed to be buoyed up by the savior. And, and the idea that now, oh, you get to be a great model and you get attention is foolish. Um I try to do what the Lord asks in the way that he asks for it to be done, using what I’m told to do at the time. I’m told to do it and nothing more. And I I uh believe that anyone that then inserts themselves into the process um cannot be trusted by God. And part of what gets um favor with God is trustworthiness. The desire to give heed and diligence to him and to his agenda and to lose yourself and your ambition and your desire. And, and there are a lot of people who once having a spiritual experience of any kind wants to go out and shout about it and call attention to themselves and don’t stand on a street corner. I mean, I, I did not want to throughout, I did not want to call attention to myself. And even now I don’t like doing interviews um because it, it does seem like you’re, you’re trying to get noticed and get, get uh air time with someone and I don’t like to
[36:57] Michelle: focus on you. I think the focus on you is always a because I struggle with that with my podcast. Like, like I, I feel like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is, you know, but it is a challenge to um not, not want the focus to be on me. Of course, it’s nice when people say nice things to me, I appreciate it, you know, but at the same time, I don’t want to, I don’t wanna drink that. Right? Because,
[37:22] Denver Snuffer: and I don’t, I don’t think the Lord can trust someone who has that within their, their heart, within their ambition. Um And I, I think that the being, being trusted by God is a um is a rare thing. It, it does not happen much in scripture, it does not happen much in life. But if you, if you ever obtain something like that, the last thing you wanna do is betray it. And so I um I, I worry about, I don’t worry about the Lord trusting me because I know what I’m about. However, I worry that that people misinterpret misread and it, and project onto someone else ideas that um don’t belong there. And if they project that onto someone, but they’re trying now to follow a path towards God and they think that that becomes part of that path towards God, then they’re led astray by that. And so you have to be careful about the misimpressions that people uh take into themselves and then hope that they can get over on God employing the misimpression that they’ve obtained from their misread of someone’s motives. And uh I think that happened to Joseph all the time. I, I think as I read um carefully the uh the Joseph Smith papers and look at, you know, what was going on in the contemporaneous material. There’s a lot of people who are throwing on to Joseph, their views of what they think he’s about and then they go about what is in their own hearts believing that if they imitate the projection that they put upon Joseph in their own lives that that will then uh let them get over with God and, and I, I worry that just as the Lord was misunderstood, and Joseph was misunderstood. And undoubtedly, um you know, Peter and Paul and others are misunderstood that anyone who says um I have come to know God will be misinterpreted and that there will be projections put upon them as a consequence of which they are misled, which is one of the reasons why I think the celestial world includes within the list of those who are damned. Those that say I, I am of Cephas and I am of Peter and I am of Paul and I am of Isaias. Because what they’re doing is they’re, they’re, they’re taking, they’re taking someone who was merely employed temporarily to deliver a message and they’re reading into that individual and projecting on to them what they believe to be a useful pattern to, to mirror their own lives. When that is not the case, the one, these are true messengers that are listed in, in those that inherit the celestial world. The problem is that they project onto the messengers AAA pattern that they interpret as being the way to follow the Lord. And so they’ve substituted someone between the Lord and themselves, the messenger ought to listen to, they ought to be heeded. But the purpose is to take that in order to try and draw closer to the Lord and only to the Lord because the, the, the only one that ever got it right. Was the Lord, all of these other people serving as, as delivery boys, but the, the, the cook in the kitchen and the food is coming from somewhere else. I mean, your, your doordash guy is not the, there’s a whole infrastructure behind him.
[41:43] Michelle: He’s not the g the gardener that grew the food. Right? I think this is exactly what it means with cursive. he that put his trust in the arm of flesh because I, I do, I really, that has been my pattern is for first time, I feel so inspired to learn from this person, you know, and I, and I drink up what they’re teaching and then they say something or something happens and I’m like, oh, that doesn’t resonate with me other off on that. That doesn’t mean I reject them as a teacher, but I the spirit is the teacher. What is the truth is the teacher, right? And I’ll learn from this other person and I’ll learn from this other. And so I take the messages from all of these people with messages to deliver. But, but keep the eye on, don’t, don’t, it’s so tempting to want to be in someone’s good graces or in someone’s good favor because it makes you feel more important, right? And that’s, I think exactly what you’re talking about and then when we start having experiences with God, all of a sudden we can start trusting in our own flesh, in our own selves, thinking I can lead these people. And that is really, that’s a real temptation to, to want to be put on a pedestal is as much of a, more of a temptation than wanting to put someone on a pedestal, right? And all of those things are part of this messiness that we have to avoid. Just take true messages, letting the Holy Spirit be the guide, not any individual person. Yeah.
[43:01] Denver Snuffer: Yeah. And that, that is we have to be wary and wariness isn’t confined to the motives or intentions or desires of the heart of another person. Wariness needs to be addressed internally to myself. Um We, we never escape the weak, the weaknesses of the flesh. So long as you’re occupying a body of dust, that body is weak and vulnerable to the appetites of the flesh, the weaknesses of the flesh, the desires of the flesh. We get hungry, we get thirsty. We, we, we feel ourselves um all the time in need of something else and our egos are just as big a problem to be wary about as anything else. Um II, I don’t think we ever escape the, the, the weaknesses of mortality and we fool ourselves if we think that we do. But the, the purpose I think that we best serve if we have something to offer is in teaching others and helping to lift them so that they draw closer to um the divine closer to light and truth and, and in that sense, if you are able to um raise someone else and have them accept more light and truth into their life, that’s all you can do to uh please the Lord and to satisfy your obligation to your fellow man. After that, you don’t get to control them. You don’t get to hide from them. You don’t get to, you know, pay yourself a dividend and you don’t get to, you know, stand up and, and ask for ad you, you, you really um if you see you get
[45:16] Michelle: to become the authoritarian institutional leader, the Lord’s messengers are rarely if ever the institution, the authoritarian institutional leader. That’s
[45:29] Denver Snuffer: the, the, the, the letter from Liberty Jail that Joseph Smith wrote. No power of influence. Can or not to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood is an indictment of church leadership. And all of what follows in talking about the only correct way is by love and fame, gentleness, meekness, uh pure knowledge. All of that is about the church leadership. It has nothing to do with the government and it has nothing to do with individual rank and file members sitting in the pew. It’s about people who claim to have power and authority by reason of the priesthood. If Jesus Christ is the head of the priesthood, if he is the one from whom all priesthood authority is derived through generations, if he’s the head he did not come to be served but to
[46:32] Michelle: serve. And I, I do have to push back on you just a tiny bit for saying it’s an indictment of church leadership because I would, I would say like there are so many leaders who truly are servant leaders in the church. And I don’t want to paint with a broad brush there. Like that is I, I think each of us has the opportunity to be a servant or to be an authoritarian even as a parent when I look at myself with my kids and I like go to bed, stop bothering me because I want my time alone and I right. Am I being authoritarian or am I serving? That’s a question for each of us to ask at all times in everything that we’re doing. And so we can’t, again, we can’t put that off on somebody else when it’s something, it’s, it’s in all of our hearts all of the time. I think whatever authority we have, I’m bigger than you in charge of you. And right, we always can get into unrighteous Dominion or into servant leadership. So anyway, so I don’t wanna like, like I think that’s a question for all of us all the time because how we interact in the stewardship, we have shows us how we will interact if we had a bigger stewardship. If we were the president of the church, our own, a little authoritarianism that would come out with, like, in a way, in a way, the worst thing that happened to Brigham Young is that he accumulated so much power. If he hadn’t had so much power, he couldn’t have done so much mischief and caused so much damage. Right. And so, so that’s the question for each of us. And I think that applies to all of us all the time is what do we do with the authority we’re given? And one example I use like my state president is, you know, at a very, very difficult time. The way he used his calling was he brought the state presidency over to clean my kitchen three weeks in a row when I was going through unthinkable things because he was using his calling to demonstrate the service that can and should be done in our community and that, you know, so I, I really think there is a power to it is possible to be in any position and abuse authority or not abuse authority. So anyway, continue, I didn’t mean to cut you off. No, no,
[48:41] Denver Snuffer: no. I think uh I don’t have any, I don’t have any quarrel with that. Um You know, uh I have met uh some, some of the greatest people I know have been um local latter day saint leadership, the um state president who called me to the high council. Um President Lauren p uh deserves special mention because I, I think he was a uh a godly man and a righteous man. Um We had a uh we had a steak patriarch. Um He was actually the state patriarch before um Lauren Pug. He was released and uh he became the state patriarch and the high priest group leader, um wouldn’t call him to be a home teacher because he didn’t want the state patriarch to be burdened with home teaching or to have to deal with any family problems or issues. And uh uh President Christensen went to the high priest group leader and he said, I want to home teach. I don’t feel like I’m doing my duty if I don’t home teach. So the high priest group leader called me in and said, OK, I’m gonna let the patriarch home teach a family, but I wanna make sure it’s the right family. And so I’m calling you and your family to be the home teaching family that I’m sending the patriarch to because I don’t want him to have to bear any, any burdens or, or be troubled by anything. And so we were called to be the home teaching family to whom the state patriarch was assigned as his single. Um That’s great home family. And he was a wonderful home teacher. He was the um he was the patriarch that came to know my Children sufficiently well that when it came time to get patriarchal blessings, we took uh we took our kids over to uh uh brother Christensen for patriarchal blessings because I thought, um, he certainly would know and understand that we still have a straggler who’s too young. And so she hasn’t, uh, she hasn’t yet gotten a, uh, patriarchal blessing. So maybe I’ll just give her one. We’ve talked to her. But anyway, there have been some wonderful men that, um, that I’ve encountered, uh, who have been in local church leadership and you’re right. There, there are some great, um, there, there are no categorical, there are good people.
[51:51] Michelle: Yeah. So, OK, so I have a couple of different areas. I really want to get into the um the reason I asked you to come on the podcast specifically, it’s not the only thing I want to talk to you about, but is one of the things. So I talked about how you have different people that you learn from and listen to. And I told you what a service, your book, your initial book that I was just miraculously led to, I was online and there was a little link down at the bottom to, to some other page that just like shot. I had no idea what it was clicked on. It took me to some conversation where there was another link that kind of glowed. I clicked on that and it took me to some discussion where someone mentioned your book. That was my process of finding your book, which I had no idea what it was. I just knew that it was the screen was glowing extra bright and I was like, I have to buy that book and I did so. So I do think it worked that the Lord led people to it who needed it. That was my experience. You know. So, hey,
[52:50] Denver Snuffer: why you, why are you talking about that? The second comforter uh Nephi Isaiah 18 verses Beloved in us are all written by me as a member in good standing uh Beelman uh active latter day Saint. And uh and, and they all are um LDS Orthodox. I’ve had a number of people say, why don’t you go back and rewrite the books now that you are on the other side. And my position has always been every one of those were written to reflect what was then uh LDS Orthodox teachings. And I don’t, well, they are, they are an artifact at this point. Um Everyone was a reflection of what the doctrine, what the teachings, what the principles, what the understanding was of Latter day Saint Mormonism. At the time, those books were put into print. And so if something has changed between then and now and some things have changed, I want to preserve what it was like at the time that I was a member in good standing holding a temple, recommend attending the temple with some regularity uh serving on the high council. And um having taught either uh gospel doctrine or uh uh elders farm or high priest group priesthood. For three decades, I understood the, the orthodox teachings of the church. Now, those books are uh in context and exposition of Mormonism as it was when I was a member, active and in good standing and I won’t edit them to change them at this point. Uh And you will see a lot of encouragement to orthodoxy in all of those books. Even passing the heavenly gift uh encourages faith in the restoration and uh fidelity uh to the church. Although it takes some of the varnish off the historical narrative of the church, it doesn’t say you should run and hide from LDS orthodoxy. It’s just saying that the narrative is not accurate, it ought to be improved and uh suggests ways in which it might well be improved. But it was, it was that in the lectures that followed one thing that excommunication did in the lectures that followed was freed me up from what I perceived to be an obligation to pull punches.
[55:57] Michelle: I to be careful to be gentle. Uh huh. Yeah, I I really feel
[56:01] Denver Snuffer: that even even in passing to heavenly gift, I am not, I am not hitting anything very hard. In fact,
[56:11] Michelle: I will say as a member, I felt I love the terms that you introduced in the first one. Like the term institutional pride was one that really, I was like, oh my goodness, that is what the book of Mormon is talking about our institutional pride of we are the chosen people. We have the fullness of the gospel. We are the ones everyone needs to be like us, right? And um, but I, but you, you do hit pretty hard, like if people, you know, like I have a little bit of a softer tone, but I, but I was able to tolerate it. I thought that it was um very useful. I just always, I, I kind of argue back at you a little bit because I have a slightly different from or way of approach. But, but I still think that you were my understanding and I need to clarify a few things. But my understanding is you still were trying to preserve faith and trying to preserve people’s membership in the church, your own. And those who would be your readers. I think that was your goal even at that time
[57:06] Denver Snuffer: it was, it was. And um let me illustrate with one little, one little incident. I had a, I have a law partner who left. He, he had been on a high council. He had left the church and he had actually become Catholic and he’s a lay Catholic minister. He can’t be a fully ordained priest in Catholicism because he’s married and he has a family. But he had left the church. I took a copy of passing the heavenly gift and I gave it to my law partner to read and he read it. His reaction was, well, this is an apologetic book. And I have to tell you if I had read this book before I had left the church, this may have kept me in the church. So, you know, it’s too late now. I’m not going back, but it’s really an apologetic book. That’s in the view of someone who I think is a more objective reader than someone who is a latter day saint and who doesn’t want to acknowledge that there may be some unresolved issues, some fudging on history, some shading of the ground.
[58:24] Michelle: We’re plagued by defensiveness. I think that defensiveness is one of the greatest thing. Like any time I feel defensive. It’s really, I, I really take that as a signal of going. Ok? God, I know this is not from you. Defensiveness is about pride and fear and shame and, and things that are, that are the adversaries tools, not the Lord’s. And so it’s our defensiveness that makes us object to these things. And I think that’s one of the main things we need to get rid of. And, and so, yeah, so that’s, that’s my experience of those books I will say. And I don’t, this is just no, I someone just called me honest to a fault. It’s true. But I read your first book very much inspired by the Lord. Greatly appreciated it. I didn’t feel inspired to read any of your other books. I shared, I shared your book with my sister and she went and bought all of your books and meant went to me and I started reading it and while I appreciated it, I, I wanted to read the scriptures. Do you know what I mean? Like it, like, I, I didn’t get very far into it because I just felt like I’m reading his interpretation of scriptures, but I want to read the script. I, I get my own interpretation of scripture. So it wasn’t anything against it. It was just the Lord saying, hey, you got what you needed now, go back to me, right? That my journey. And um so I, so I never became sort of a follower or you know, which, which I don’t think you even like the term follower from my understanding you, you know, so I don’t think you’ll object to my journey that I, that was the book I needed from you. And, and then my journey has been in the scriptures. But I do that. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about because I don’t know where you talk about this or if I misunderstood. But at some point and I had, I don’t know, I’m trying, I the the the memories are fuzzy, the timeline. But I know at some point I heard you say something about polygamy, which led me to believe that at that time, you believed polygamy was um was of God, right? Because we all II, I, because I believed polygamy was of God, I’m not, you know, like we all grow and learn. But so that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about because I know there was a time where based on all of the information all of us had we believed polygamy was of God. And I think maybe what it was, I have sort of now developed a sort of a maybe unhealthy, maybe not knee jerk reaction to hearing men talk about women’s identity or destiny or purpose. Do you know that? Like, like I, I, that’s, I, I don’t mean to come up with that. It just is how it is for me at this point and it has been for many years. And so maybe you were talking about men and women or something and that’s where I kind of was like, ok, I’m tuned out for a little while because I can’t have any more men get the answers that are mine and my sisters to get and to present does that. That’s my, I’m sorry, I’m a little bit of a feisty, low, low cat, I mean, small case feminist, you know, and so I just kind of instinctively feel that way. So, but I, what I wanted to talk to you about because I’ve gone on this journey of strongly believing polygamy was a God and that it would be Zion and that it would be, you know, very much the Bruce R mcconkie perspective that it would be the celestial kingdom. And it was a, it would be a privilege when we were able to live that I was incredibly naive, went through the journey of learning. First of all, that polygamy was never of God. I mean, I was, I was naive about polygamy. I only saw, I only saw the glowing, you know, top level, not all of the underbelly. And then went through the process of learning that polygamy was not of God. And then more recently have come to this conclusion that has become, you know, how you finally accept truth. And then the Lord confirms it and confirms it and confirms it. So now in the position of not believing that Joseph was the author or any sort of participant in anything to do with polygamy, but he did indeed fight it. And I believe you’ve gone on a similar journey and I kind of wanted to hear your like how you got from point A to point B to point C, what your journey was and what convinced you because I think it’s a valuable people like to write me off. I’m, you know, I’m dealing with a lot of people saying I’m too emotional and I’m too, they, they like it’s, it’s pretty unpleasant. You’re a lawyer, hard nosed guy. Pretty logical. Let’s hear it from you, Denver. Why should people consider that polygamy is not of God? And that Joseph wasn’t a polygamist.
[1:02:44] Denver Snuffer: Well, if, if um let me start by just talking about um the uh the way in which I had understood it at the beginning because as a latter day saint, you accept what uh the latter day Saints tradition tells you. So I began with the proposition that it was of God and true. And section 132 is in the scriptures that I got and I respect it. And if it’s in the scriptures, then um it just as a fact, it’s part of the religion. And so I, I accepted it. Um there was a time when it got called into question. And so while I accepted it, I then became a little more sensitive to the historical source material that um that it was predicated upon. And um it actually became an issue for investigation that I investigated for more than a quarter century. I didn’t, I, I accepted it as true. I began to investigate it. It took a long time before I began to question it. Then when I began to question it, it didn’t arise to the level of doubting it until I, I read enough source material that made that troubled me. So I went back to section 132 and I wrestled with the content of section 132 because it is an internally inconsistent document. It, it, it doesn’t, it doesn’t hold a constant theme. And one of the uh things that I was trying to reconcile is how can this unsteady voice um in a single revelation, make contradictory statements. I began by, by accepting the notion that Joseph Smith had received the revelation early on. Um I found where uh Brigham Young in that five volume set of Brigham Young’s discourses, there is a place in there where he says that the uh revelation was originally received in 1828 while they were translating the book of Mormon. He says that Joseph and Oliver became exposed to that. I became acquainted with a little known history about um Oliver Calgary, one of the first four missionaries going out and one of the ideas that they entertained on that mission was that they could grab Indian squaws. They referred to them as that I’m not being disparaging. This is their view and get them pregnant breed uh with the Indian squaws and produce half breeds. There was an entire section of land on the other side of the um Mississippi River in the Iowa side opposite Nauvoo that was called the half breed section in which uh uh Children that um American soldiers had fathered with Indian women were uh considered, you know, the appropriate landowners in the half breed section. Well, the first four missionaries that went out were engaged in the thought of taking extra wives. Um And can
[1:06:50] Michelle: you clarify that? Are you saying they actually did that or that’s the report that came later?
[1:06:57] Denver Snuffer: No, that was, that was what was part of what motivated Cal in the first trip out West to engage in the missionary work. Uh they got into Kirtland and one of the missionaries converted or started the conversion process for Sidney Rigdon. Rigdon then went up to where Joseph was in New York. Missionaries continued on and wound up in independence. But that’s all of that is a separate issue. It was, it was Brigham Young that put it as early as 1828. And so, so one of the questions about section 132 is, was it a singular revelation? Was it multiple revelations if it was multiple revelations? Is there any way to divide it up into the, the time? And I, I looked at it and I thought, well, they’re, they’re so different in the way that this subject gets treated, it’s so different that this has to be separate revelations. And I parsed it into four and maybe five different revelations while still accepting the notion that it was true. And it, it took some time after that before enough information accumulated that I, I changed my mind and that that was not a, you know, hasty thing. I changed my mind and I concluded that section 132 was not at all reliable. Its provenance was very dubious and its attribution to Joseph is a very suspect in, in um and uh Michael Quinn’s exposition and in uh Brian Hale’s exposition, they acknowledged that there is only one document contemporaneous with Joseph Smith that clearly ties him to the practice. And that one document is section 132. And so section 132 is um suspect because it’s provenance is insufficient that it shouldn’t be trusted. Then we have nothing to tie Joseph to the practice other than the enormous library of material that was generated uh years decades after the death of Joseph Smith, in which they, they attribute back into the NGU era things to Joseph, which um made sense after the 1852 public announcement and the public advocacy that, that went on in the indoctrination and the propaganda that went on. It makes sense that they would feel comfortable um providing these narratives years decades after the death of Joseph Smith. So one of the changes that I thought needed to be undertaken, which I undertook was to look at everything that that existed on uh June 27th, 1844. And before then, as evidence that linked Joseph to the practice and what you
[1:10:36] Michelle: find. So you wanted to limit the search to the contemporaneous evidence because I’m just watching everyone up because what we have, they claim that 132 is contemporaneous. It’s not, it appeared magically out of Brigham death in 1852 which is not contemporaneous with Joseph or when it was received. And then the very first testimonies we have started in 18 69 and then continue on throughout the rest of that century, right? So, so for what I’m hearing you were saying? Ok, we have all of these later documents. Is there any anything that can tie them to Joseph’s life? Is there anything contemporaneous I can find to validate or verify any of these later claims? Is this what I’m?
[1:11:17] Denver Snuffer: Yeah. Um, I,
[1:11:19] Michelle: I, what a good lawyer would do or a good medical figure?
[1:11:22] Denver Snuffer: Yes, I wanted, I wanted anything that I could find that would tie Joseph um, directly that existed June 27th, 1844 or before then. And so in looking at that, I concluded that the overwhelming body of information was Joseph Smith denouncing opposing, holding church courts to discipline anything and everything which uh suggested spiritual library, polygamy, multiple wives. He was absolutely opposed to the practice publicly and in any of the private meetings that were held in church disciplinary proceedings and um even the, the stuff that purported to uh tie him to it, um that um mcclelland letter about uh Emma Smith catching Joseph in the barn in the very act with exclamation points, which was written after the fact. And based upon an interview that mcclellan had with Emma Smith decades after the event and she didnt, she denied Joseph had done that appears to be uh not about uh sex or intercourse or even marriage. It appears to be something about a ceremony being conducted uh in which they were in the bar and that’s it. And what was that ceremony? Because Joseph was in the process of employing a ceiling power in order to link people together, in order to provide for the eternity of marriage. And the only way that you could make the eternal marriage work in a family in the next life was to link them through Joseph to the eternities. And Joseph was doing something which you don’t find it in any of the documents because I’ve looked carefully until October of 1843. When Joseph for the first time mentions the word adoption. And so whatever was going on was designed to preserve a family into eternity. And it included a concept which Joseph finally um employed the vocabulary word adoption to describe. But one of the problems with saying sealing equals marriage and marriage equals sex when it comes to this whole subject matter is that Joseph Smith never fathered a child with anyone other than Emma Smith. Fanny Alger is supposedly someone with whom he had sexual relations and there was some kind of ceiling. Well, she went on to get married to another man and I forget it’s either eight or nine Children. She was fertile and she bore eight or nine Children. She, she
[1:14:50] Michelle: also never claimed to be Joseph’s wife. She never claimed there was anything between them. She refused and, and I, I will push back a little bit against you again if you don’t mind. And you know, like I think that I think bringing quite a bit of speculation to the Fannie Alger situation because we don’t even know if there was any sort of a ceremony happening at all. We like, what we do know is that Oliver said that he had misunderstood. Emma did not hold Joseph accountable was not angry. We know that the wording in that like it, it again is a very convoluted like something happened in the barn that was somewhat misunderstood and that all worked out as soon as Joseph was able to talk to people, people that he was not manipulate, manipulating or exerting power over, he just was finally able to explain. And they were like, ok, I’ve got it. So the reason I get a little uncomfortable, like, and, and Joseph did talk about adoption, but nobody has any idea what that meant or what it was other than we can listen to his own words saying it had nothing to do there, there was no allowance for any kind of ceiling as to anyone as a wife. And so for me, I guess the reason I get a little bit feisty about it is because for me, Emma is my connection to this, you know, like I, I am perfectly happy to defend Joseph, but it’s really Emma studying her that convinced me that this did not happen because to believe this about Joseph, you have to believe this about Emma. And for me, if Joseph did anything, it felt like a betrayal to Emma, then that was a betrayal of their marriage, even if it was some sort of a ceiling that Emma didn’t understand. And so, so for me, if he was doing some sort of ceremony in the barn with Fannie that upset Emma, that’s not ok. Do, do you know what I mean? Like, like I’m not good with that. And so, so, so still there’s so little that we know.
[1:16:46] Denver Snuffer: Well, let me, let me, uh, be clear because apparently misunderstanding, the only source material that we have for recounting the, um, the uh incident with Fannie Alger is the very late mcclelland letter, which again, it’s decades later and it’s filled with exclamation points and it’s intended to be scandalous. But at the time, I think mcclelland felt comfortable in writing it in that fashion because word had leaked out decades earlier about what was going on in Utah. You also have the uh Far West High Council Disciplinary Court involving Oliver Calvary, in which um purportedly Oliver Cry said something about Joseph and Fanny Alger. However, the court disciplined Oliver and uh he testified that uh there was never anything untoward that Joseph Smith had done and that he was unaware of anything that Joseph had done that would violate any of the commandments. And then we have Emma’s statements that are, um, that are uh contrary to the idea that there was something untoward that took place. But the, the, the final piece is the, the, the son of the man who claimed that he performed the ceremony in the barn. We don’t have an account of his father. We have his account and his account is also late. And therefore I question um whether the son’s hearsay comments about what the father did are reliable. So the whole Fannie Alger thing if something happened and, and I don’t think there’s enough to clarify if or what I am fully satisfied that if the answer to if is yes, that the answer to the what question is the ceiling? If it was something that took place, had nothing to do with marriage or intercourse. As I was saying before you uh interjected that last part, she was at the height of her fertility at the time that this encounter purportedly took place. Joseph Smith fathered, I think eight pregnancies through Emma, some of whom you know, died and others miscarried. But um
[1:19:26] Michelle: well, I, I just clarify that as well because now I, I want to interject again. Well, you finish your sentence, then I’ll interject. I apologize.
[1:19:35] Denver Snuffer: She was at the peak of her fertility. He was at the peak of his fertility. They were young, they were youthful and yet if something happened, it produced nothing. I don’t think that you can say that Joseph had uh 37 or however many they now aggregate to women other than Emma. And there was no progeny produced when most of those women did bear Children. And yet Joseph who according to 132 its purpose is to raise up seed under the Lord, which is a euphemism for, you know, getting them pregnant and having your cattle produce uh offspring. Um which is what Brigham Young did. Uh I mean, you, you look at the pregnancies and Joseph was not engaged in whatever it was that Brigham Young began teaching in the absence of Joseph Smith and that the number of, of plural life pregnancies mushrooms as soon as Joseph is killed. And before then, it’s just, it’s kept on the download. One of the things that I think you have to take into account if you’re examining this whole narrative about the credibility of Section 1 30 32 and its authenticity is the lack of any offspring other than through Emma and the presence of this uh 50 plus offspring from Brigham Young that begins after Joseph’s death. It, the narrative doesn’t match the conduct on the ground. And, and when you’ve got June 27th, 1844 and before then Joseph denouncing it, Joseph convening church disciplinary councils to discipline those who are caught in this process and asking those, where did you learn about this and then bringing in the people from whom they learned it and holding a church court for them. These aren’t public, these are private matters and, and Joseph is doing this in private, in public. He’s giving lecture and discourse and sermon denouncing this stuff. He’s running a denunciations in the times and seasons. He has Emma and he assisted uh publishing a declaration from the Relief Society of Nauvoo and trying to get the sisters in Navoo to cut off these, these wayward men seducing them by saying, oh, Joseph teaches this nonsense in private. I, I went to dinner with uh D Michael Quinn and he had a, um he had a great uh opening line for starting a conversation after we settled in for dinner. He said, uh I think your position on polygamy is bullshit. And I, I said, I said, OK, so let’s, let’s just think about it for a moment if you take June 27th, 1844 as the cut off date and you look at what information we have available to us from June 27th, 1844. And before, if that’s the library you look at and you ignore everything after them, tell me what proof you have that Joseph was involved. And he, he reflected for a minute and he said, well, yeah, the, the Far West High Council doesn’t quite get there, does it? I said, no, it doesn’t. And uh, you know, he, he mentioned two or three other things and then said, OK, I understand your position. You know, it wasn’t that he agreed with me. It was like, OK, if that’s, if that’s going to be where you focus, then you’re not, you’re not just full of bullshit. You, I mean, there’s something there for that. But he and um Brian Hales and others who are proponents of the narrative immediately turned to yes, but you have to believe that hundreds of people were lying in the years afterwards and you can dismiss one or two or three, but you can’t dismiss hundreds of people being liars. And that’s the problem with this whole subject area because a person who wants to support the narrative that polygamy is legit can list off 100 sources in rapid fire and say there, I’ve now proven my case in order then to respond to that position, you literally have to go through every single one of the one by one by one to show it couldn’t be true. They weren’t in a position to know anything, they contradicted themselves elsewhere. They borrowed words from an affidavit that was put in front of them by Joseph F Smith who pre wrote the affidavit. They, they were locked into a system in which polygamy was the law and it was being enforced. And these are vulnerable women who are signing the affidavits and by not conforming to the narrative, they could be put out on the street. And so there’s pressure put upon them. Um There, there are not
[1:25:46] Michelle: only put out on the street, not only put out on the street in this life, lose their entire exaltation. These are the men telling them they have control over their eternal destiny. And so lying for the Lord became part of your way to qualify. It was very much a obedience. I mean, the the preaching of obedience at this time is hard for us to imagine. And the connection between follow counsel or go to hell was profound and your life will be made hell here, your eternal life will be hell. The fear is something we can’t relate to.
[1:26:22] Denver Snuffer: One of the things that I, I tried to, to explain or bring to people’s attention uh in uh passing the heavenly gift was what was really going on during the Mormon reformation. I mean, things are going very, very bad in Utah. And Brigham Young blamed the saints not himself. He blamed the saints for that failure. The home missionary program asked a series of questions that were designed to determine whether you had sinned in a way that justified the shedding of your blood because blood atonement was being preached. And so the intimidation that was going on during that time period was I mean, it was life threatening. If you wanted to be a righteous saint, you had to conform to the system and the system included plural marriage. So the gathering of hundreds of affidavits in an atmosphere that is oppressive and threatening is not something to say, oh, we’ve proven our case with because every one of those has flaws in their credibility in the reliability or even whether they were present at the time, they claim they were present, I mean, or that is rather famous for talking about things that he witnessed when he was in a complete different location and it was impossible for him to be able to testify to something. I mean, if the conclusion I reached is yes, hundreds of people can be lying.
[1:28:08] Michelle: Well, and I wanna also say it doesn’t require even hundreds of people to be lying because even um like, like there are just a few of the women who claim to be. There are a few of the women who have to be lying and a few others. And I guess my question is, how many do we have to show are lying? Absolutely. Like we have turned out so many lies. Even the church has many of these people that claim to be wives, that of Hyrum and Joseph, that the church doesn’t accept, that means the church is acknowledging they were lying, right? And I guess my question would be, hey, do you think that the F LDS before they became this, you know, before that fell apart? Do you think they could get hundreds of affidavits saying that Warren Jeffs was not a pedophile and was not a rapist and was not abusing control. Do you think that, like, that’s this kind of system? We have to get our mind. Anyone who doesn’t think that that absolutely would and could happen is up in the night. And when we recognize that that is what Mormonism was at that time. It should not surprise us at all that we have all of these affidavit everyone was lining up to do. I mean, they were being pressured so much. Every one of these affidavits you see was in response to being asked for it to be pressured to give it in some way or other. We’ve gone through so many and, and more and more all the time saying that’s not true. That’s not true. That’s not true. There is no um like even Helen Mark Kimball, who’s one of the best known, all of her reasons that she gives all, like, none of it is recognizable to anything we would recognize as eternal doctrine. There’s nothing about it in Joseph Smith’s writings anywhere or the revelations. And so it’s bizarre that we say no, these things are all true and God told them that was the truth. Well, where did that truth go then? Right. If we were, if we needed these dynastic ceilings, why don’t we still need them? Like, like why could it? I mean, there are so many, many problems. So I guess that’s what frustrates me is this idea of and it is not hundreds, it’s not hundreds. We have affidavits of people that were free at the time. They wouldn’t know. Right. We, we can, we can prove all of these things so we can prove so many of them automatically false. And then we have a few that are hard to deal with like, like we’re calling the women liars. And my example for that is Elizabeth Smart. You can’t look at a trauma bonded woman and call her a liar. You look at the situation that she is victimized by and go. Are we wise to listen to the words of her oppressor even if they’re coming through her mouth? Is that serving that woman? Well, I,
[1:30:43] Denver Snuffer: I think that this subject is also um extremely problematic for the LDS church and its narrative because the, the official position of the LDS church in the, in the uh essays that they have written on this subject and published on lds.org
[1:31:10] Michelle: and written into their history saints. Now it’s been written into that native form. Uh huh.
[1:31:16] Denver Snuffer: It makes Joseph Smith a liar under the law at the time, an adulterer, someone who disobeyed the marital law at the time that governed conduct and therefore a criminal. It makes him a pedophile because of the ages involved and given the narrative that they’ve adopted about how he solicited them. It makes him a predator. Mhm
[1:31:49] Michelle: For and also a hypocrite because he was disciplining other people for doing what we claim what they claim he was doing.
[1:31:58] Denver Snuffer: Therefore, the people who are bitter angry, anti Mormon, former Mormons who are um vociferously denouncing and fighting against the, the restoration itself are not irrational or ill motivated. They are simply accepting the way that the LDS Church claims that Joseph Smith lived and they’re saying this is abhorrent. If you accept the church’s view of Joseph Smith, I understand why you would throw the restoration itself out. Joseph, the book of Mormon. Everything I understand why you would do that. The reason why I hold on to Joseph Smith to the book of Mormon, to the restoration and to God’s promises that he intends to have a, a shoot come out uh from the dead stump and still live and survive is because I believe Joseph Smith did not engage in hypocrisy pedophilia, predatory, hypocritical adulterous relations. I believe that Joseph Smith was honest in his public denunciations and I believe that God would never deal with a man subject to so many flaws, weaknesses, so much treachery, so much betrayal. My read in the Joseph Smith papers is not that Joseph Smith merely loved Emma, but he admired, respected and deferred to Emma
[1:33:51] Michelle: relied on her. Yes, he needed her and
[1:33:55] Denver Snuffer: she was better educated than him. He respected that he, she was older than him. He, he held her in esteem. She was an elect lady. I think if Emma contradicted Joseph in a discussion that Joseph would not only listen to her, he would give he to and probably surrender his opinion to hers if it was better informed. And very often that was the case. And I, I think you read the letters between Joseph and Emma in the Joseph Smith papers. I don’t, I don’t get any sense that this is a two faced hypocritical dishonest, treacherous husband, betraying a woman that he had little enough regard for that he would consign her to destruction. One other thought that I forgot to include earlier, I mean, section 132 it was written by someone who is not very well acquainted with the scriptures wherein you justified my servants, Abraham Isaac and Jacob in having multiple wives, Isaac didn’t have multiple wives,
[1:35:10] Michelle: right? The very first problem reveals what a farce it is. The very first verse reveals what a farce it is. And then it goes on from there to innumerable. Other my, my podcast is called a 132 Problems. Exactly. There is like, like and we can see, well, I, I have Brigham Young and others were Brigham Young was not familiar with the scriptures, Joseph Smith very, very much was. And, and there’s, there’s consistency in his teachings. He believed them. He tried to carry them out.
[1:35:44] Denver Snuffer: Yeah. Yeah. There’s, yeah. And so I’ve come, I’ve come ultimately to the conclusion that um section 132 is a uh wherever it originated from, it’s not a product of Joseph Smith’s. There may be some internal teachings that reflect what Joseph was teaching, teaching about the eternal nature of the marriage covenant. There may be some uh morsels of truth that migrated into the 132 that originated from Joseph, but 132 did not. I don’t, I don’t think it is authentically something that we can rely upon. And I don’t think the practice of polygamy is uh something that originates with Joseph. Now, I unwilling to look for additional proof. Um But the meticulous search that I have made to this point leads me to the conclusion that um the more carefully you examine the credibility of the authority. Um You know, Jeremy Hoop is trying to put together a, a website and a product that, that gets everything out there and allows people to make an examination for himself. I gave him a copy of a jury instruction that gets used in court about the credibility of witnesses. You can find one witness to be credible and find 10 witnesses that oppose the one not to be credible. And it’s not the number of witnesses that carries the day. It’s the underlying believability and credibility. The church certainly has numerosity on their side. They have uh the LDS church has been effective propagandists and when they take on a subject, they generate libraries of material to support their position. But that doesn’t mean that the library is trustworthy. You can have a single voice crying in the wilderness like John, the Baptist who as Joseph put it, the Kingdom of God was with John and not with the Jews at the time. But John was a lone voice crying in the wilderness. He certainly didn’t have numerosity, but he did have the Kingdom of God with him.
[1:38:25] Michelle: I OK. And I think it is useful to look at the modern day examples. I, I was trying to remember the woman’s name and I won’t remember it. But the one woman they finally got to testify against Warren Jeffs to hold him accountable. Right. They have like, like it was so hard. Oh, and I know there’s a book that the witness were read and it’s her younger sister that, that jos, that Warren married off, forced to be married as underage. And um to get that one woman who was courageous enough and crazy enough to testify against her entire community and the entire community lined up called her liars called her, right? It isn’t the number, it’s the veracity of the testimony. I want, I just want to emphasize that in this modern case in our day that as soon as that one woman was willing to go to trial, it was a slam dunk. It, it’s so obvious what Warren did and then they went in and did the raid and found the tape recordings and found that, you know, then they found much more evidence, but which I believe is what’s happening to a great extent now is we’re getting more access. And that, that’s one thing I said, often, the more we gain access, the more we gain scientific valid verification through things like DNA testing, the, the more information we have available to us, the more innocent Joseph is the stronger the case is in his favor. And that is a really good way to determine where truth is, right? So, to just go by, I believe these women. Ok. Well, then you need to believe all the polygamous women who still don’t believe that Warren Jess was doing anything wrong. You, you need to do that to be consistent and people don’t do that.
[1:40:04] Denver Snuffer: They don’t. Um, by the way, I went down to the, um Colorado City community area and spoke directly to the polygamists um a while ago uh on the subject of uh plural marriage, I don’t know um of any outreach that’s being made by Latter Day Saints. But I don’t, I don’t think you just sit back and criticize people for believing something because there is a, a library of material that justifies their conclusion. I went down there to address them, you know, face to face to uh to discuss candidly with them and to try and uh disabuse them of uh things that, that they need to be, they need to be confronted with and taught about and some effort made to reclaim them. And um you know, I’m, I’m not interested in just sitting back and throwing rocks. If there is a way to help people to overcome something, I’m happy to go and attempt to do that. Don’t know.
[1:41:17] Michelle: I feel like that’s one of the tragedies happening now is the LDS church insistence on keeping 132 and keeping this doctrine continues the abuse. We are complicit in the ongoing polygamous suffering that’s happening. And even the anti Mormons and Ex Mormons insistence on saying it was Joseph also continues this abuse. If people could look at this evidence, honestly, we could actually help men, women and Children suffering under this deplorable satanic system, this abomination. Today, we we can really make it us coming to truth and sharing that can help people today. It’s not just a historical question,
[1:42:01] Denver Snuffer: you know, earlier I mentioned um doctrine and covenants 93 verse one. Uh I believe Joseph to have been a um an honest man and an authentic messenger called by God. I do not think you can be a morally corrupt man and have that kind of assignment given to you by God. And I think that first verse of DNC 93 defines the character of Joseph Smith who cometh unto me and call on my name and obey my voice and keepeth my commandments shall see my face and know that I am is not just a recitation of, you know, AAA laundry list of interesting facts. I think it is a description of the kind of character that is required in order for someone as Joseph did to come into the presence of God and to impute to him, hy hypocrisy and predatory behavior and dishonesty is to completely uh confuse the kind of character that God will deal with in asking for a message to be delivered. I think Joseph was, was um naive and that he trusted a lot of people that he should not have trusted. I think he was uh imputing to others, the kind of character and heart that he had within himself. And so you see,
[1:43:49] Michelle: he projected his goodness onto other people. I’ve done the same thing and gotten myself in trouble. We assume people are the same as us, right? And so
[1:43:58] Denver Snuffer: Joseph did that and he, he trusted a lot of untrustworthy people and, and that I think is his biggest mistake. But I don’t believe that to be a sin to trust someone when they’re untrustworthy doesn’t reflect poorly on your character. It reflects generosity and bigheartedness on your part requiring that they prove themselves to be uh untrustworthy before you assign to them untrustworthiness. And Joseph made that mistake.
[1:44:32] Michelle: If we’re going to be hard on Joseph, then we need to also be hard on Jesus who called Judas, right? It’s, it’s, we can see the Lord’s hand in it or we can blame the individual, which is ridiculous. Yeah. So as we talked about, you did want to stay in the church and you did want to assist people in staying in the church, dealing with this messiness. So my question is for people who are in the church who are coming onto this path. Um I guess it’s a two part question. First of all, do you see anything that you do you ever deal with, um, regret or self reproach? I struggle with those things a lot. Do you ever feel like maybe if I had done this a little differently or do you feel like it was inevitable? And what, what would you tell people who are dealing with that fear today? Of how can I embark on this path without threatening my life as I know it? Or, or do I need to get rid of that fear, fear and maybe threaten my life as I know it.
[1:45:31] Denver Snuffer: Um, I think everyone has to sort that out for themselves. However, I, I do think that preserving marital harmony is important. Um, I, from time to time, look, the LDS church has a great primary program. I have some granddaughters who are benefited by going to, uh, the, the church on, uh, on, uh, Sabbath days to get through the primary program. It’s an occasion for them to actually put a dress on to, to sit and be reverent to, to engage in the kind of personal self-discipline that you only get if you go to church before you go to school. And when my granddaughters go, go to church, they go to the ward I once belonged to because that was where my daughter, uh, and actually my daughter and son in law lived in our basement. That’s where they went to church after they were first married. And I go with them and we go to a local LDS ward. And when the SAC meeting ends, I escort my, um, uh, younger of the two granddaughters. She knows exactly where the nursery is and she runs down the hallway because she’s eager to get there now that they’re through with the Sacrament thing to get into the nursery. And, uh, she and I go down the hallway and I get her safely into the nursery. And, uh, my daughter because, um, you know, her, her Children are in primary and in the nursery and she’s got to stay around. My daughter will stay and attend relief society and my wife will stay and attend relief society with her. And uh I’ll just go home and um I’m welcomed. In fact, I, I keep getting invited to stay for priesthood. But um when they excommunicated me, they did not um tell me that I, that I couldn’t participate. Uh Normally they give you instructions that say you can’t speak up. And so for some period of time, we attended church after the excommunication and I did speak up and, and back then it was gospel doctrine still and in priesthood. And um there was one fellow in particular that, that made uncomfortable. Ultimately, I, I concluded it better off if I don’t make him uncomfortable. So I go to release, I go to Sacrament, but I wouldn’t attend the other meetings. Um I, I don’t think that I benefit anyone by going in and uh answering questions because my questions at this point would be honest. I don’t see a thing wrong with someone continuing to enjoy LDS membership. I think you can believe in the gospel of Christ, the restoration Joseph Smith and attend a Methodist church. I mean, his mind had become somewhat partial to the Methodists for pretty good reason if you read about Methodism and some of their earliest advocates, um I, I think you can belong to whatever church you want to belong to because churches generally are fellowship, uh forums, how you relate to God and being baptized because it used to be latter day saints were rebaptized with some regularity. And I believe today being rebaptized, if you’re going to accept the book of Mormon as a covenant because the LDS church has not done that. And if you’re going to repent and try to accept Joseph as an authentic prophet leader and the version of Joseph that throws out 132 I think you can be re baptized. But after that, I think you can go sit in an LDS church and if you find fellowship and comfort there, I think that’s fine. I know there are a lot of people who are independently fellow shipping. Now, they don’t contribute ties to an organization. They gather ties in little fellowships and then once the tides gather, they look at the needs of the people in that little fellowship so that money doesn’t aggregate and go to some institutional purpose tithing goes to help with the, the transportation, the food, the rent, the housing, the medical bills of the local people and isn’t, isn’t spent elsewhere. Um, people do that. I think that is fine. Um But how you deal with your um, reconciliation with what you’re hearing in the LDS church is an individual matter and I, I wouldn’t encourage anyone to go storming off and becoming an enemy to Mormonism. Even now. I don’t pick a fight with the LDS church. I don’t go around denouncing them or, or challenging them. I try to state clearly and plainly my understanding and if it contradicts a narrative that the LDS church is advancing, I try to explain why I view it differently than does the institution, but that’s not picking a fight. That’s an attempt to give clarity to why I understand what I understand. But I’m, I’m not interested and I, and I do not hope for the ultimate failure of the LDS church. I think Utah and the Mormon Corridor from Canada to Mexico is enormously benefited by what the LDS church offers. I think that the communities all throughout the Mormon Corridor have better citizens, they have better people, they have better neighbors who are latter day saints. And so I don’t, I don’t want the LDS church to lose its members. I, I want them to try and hold on to them and, and continue to make good citizens of them. But uh that doesn’t mean that I think that they uh bear the intra mater of truth and that everything they say is God speaking on high. I think that’s kind of AAA silly notion. But, um but I do think that Joseph was authentic. The book of Mormon is reliable. God was up to something then and I believe that God intends to conclude that vindicating everything that had been foretold to happen. It’s just that I don’t think it’s gonna happen. Uh At this point, institutionally, I do think it’s gonna involve the individuals who rise up and who become a pure in heart before God so that they can become pure neighborly with one another so that there can be a city of peace. I don’t think you can impose that hierarchically. I think the only hierarchy is you get right with God, which will in turn make you right with your fellow man. But I, I don’t think anyone should run away from the church. And I do think that the church has in particular for youth, a marvelous program. I think foreign missions and learning another language. It, it helps people prepare for life, it gives them a leg up on other every other religious community. The programs of the LDS church make people better off the most articulate people in my high school were the Mormon kids you’d almost pick because they were composed. They were used to public speaking. They had gone through the, the primary program the young men and the young women’s program, they had spoken in a Sacrament meeting. And so when they get up to present a paper in class, they were far more polished than the contemporaries. Um, people that go on a foreign mission and come back with the second language they’ve learned, they’re all benefited. One of the guys that I baptized fell away from the church, asked for his membership to be withdrawn, has become an anti Mormon talking to him. He said the best thing that ever happened to him was when he joined the LDS church, it set his life on a new direction that benefited him from that moment. And he doesn’t regret one moment of having been a member of the church. I worry that a lot of people display horrible ingratitude for everything the church has done to personally help develop them into a much better, more polished individual when they discovered that there are problems with the church, be grateful for what you got even if you part ways and you say, oh, it’s, it’s just nonsense. Still, you were benefited. Every one of them were benefited and they ought to. And I’m grateful for what the LDS church gave me. And I’m still, although kicked out, I didn’t leave, I got kicked out, um, uh, still believing in Joseph, the book of Mormon and in the restoration.
[1:55:37] Michelle: Ok. I love that. It sounds like we’re kind of on the same page. My desire is that people as many as possible. I feel it, their path can be in the church but not of the church is the way I describe it. I think that even even aside from the kind of um utilitarian benefits of the church, there also is the training to listen to the spirit, the training, to pray, to believe in God, to like all of the um all of the seeds of the path that we, we believe in and that we walk are taught and, and nurtured in this church. And there is a way to I for many people. I hope a way to try to be elevated while in the church and as a process be part of elevating the church. That’s, that’s my hope. But um but Denver, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. I didn’t give you much time to kind of share some of your experiences or share a testimony. Is there something some encouragement or guidance or testimony you wanna share? Just as we’re wrapping up? I think
[1:56:40] Denver Snuffer: Joseph Smith understated, um who he was and what, what exposure he had gotten to um things beyond veil. And I think that when you underestimate um Joseph Smith, you make a grave mistake, you would be better off pay careful heed to, to everything that we got from him and realizing that he could and would have offered a great deal more if the people had been uh prepared to receive it. And the, um, the problem that existed in 1820 to 1844 while we had him here is not a problem that, that reflects on Joseph Smith as, um, as having failed. It’s a reflection on the people who live contemporaneous with him, who, who underestimated and who went off with exaggerated self importance simply because they got close to the man. It’s, it’s, it’s about penetrating our own veil of darkness because our flesh is the veil and the weaknesses of the flesh are what alienate us from God. There’s a great deal of truth out there to be found anywhere and everywhere and some of the most profound teachings that echo and mirror what Christ was teaching and what Joseph was trying to get across to us can be found in all of the world’s great religions. They all have some truth or they wouldn’t have any adherence. You find truth in Judaism. Um They translated in the I think it’s a cart project down at BYU some of the Islamic text. And there’s a, there’s a teacher, Al Thabi who’s whose teachings resonate with light and truth um that, that were preserved in uh Islam at a time when Christianity was so oppressive from the Catholic dominance that everyone was darkened in their mind and, and God was still preserving truths there. Uh Taoism and Buddhism and Hinduism have a fellow who went to India to learn from the Maharaja in India, in the sixties who uh upon the death of the Maharaja came back here and rediscovered in the Doctrine and covenants truths that he had learned in Hinduism and was excited about the possibility that um Mormonism was really every bit as transcendental as what he had been studying over there began to teach transcendental meditation here in Utah. And he read the second comforter and looked me up and said, how did you find this? How did you find this without a trip to India? How did you find this without going first through Hinduism? Uh He said, I didn’t, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t realize it was there until I had taken this other path. Joseph Smith restored to us phenomenal wealth of information he could have given us more. We just weren’t ready at the time to accept it. So if, if God starts up things again, we really have to be careful about the heat and the diligence because we, we have in the past wasted opportunities and without individually reconciling ourselves to God’s work, uh we can forfeit opportunities again, which is generally what mankind does. I mean, we only had Zion in uh ei time and then melts uh who was shen that used to be a teaching people, doubt it now. But nevertheless, uh reckoned from before the flood and he had the covenant, he had the promise that it could be translated and he lived through the flood and he was here until Abraham. After generations of apostasy got gotten fully endowed in the Holy order. And then Melchizedek acted on the covenant, which was really derivative from before the flood and belonged to Enoch. Mel Kick realized it too. And there was a second city that got taken up. That’s a big story and beyond the scope of this. But um twice now Enoch and then derivative from Enoch milks, D two cities have gone up the next time. The, the, the prophecies tell us the city isn’t going up. But the c there is a city returning and there needs to be people here to welcome them so that we can fall on one another and we can kiss each other’s necks just the way that it’s put in the scriptures. We will fall upon one another and kiss each other’s necks and the welcoming return of Jesus and his 10 thousands. Enoch with his 10 thousands with Jesus as he returns in glory, all of those prophecies are going to be vindicated. It’s gonna happen. But the question isn’t uh will it happen? The question is we’re gonna have 10 thousands falling on two dozen or are we gonna have 10 thousands falling on 10 thousands? And uh it, it’s just, the numerosity has never been a big deal. Jesus managed to get 500. Joseph got about 18. Um That is another discussion. Um And, and the question is, what, what if anything can we do and um expectations need to be modest.
[2:03:20] Michelle: So what can people do to try to be among that, um, the residue, the small portion? What, what would you tell people
[2:03:30] Denver Snuffer: take very seriously the book of Mormon? It is the keystone of our religion and a man can get closer to God by heeding its precepts more so than any other volume. And that’s still true today. Just take the book of Mormon seriously. And if you have a real problem understanding or parsing the book of Mormon in a way that, that elevates your view, that was the purpose of the second Comforter Nephi Isaiah and 18 verses. Every one of those well and beloved eus every one of those books is simply parsing the book of Mormon trying to get people to look at it. The book of Mormon is a shallow book read by a shallow person. The book of Mormon is a profoundly deep, deeply meaningful book. If you bring enough with you to the party, those books are intended to help someone bring more with them to the party because the book of Mormon is very serious stuff and it doesn’t have much good to say about us. It doesn’t have much good to say about our churches. It doesn’t have much good to say about our superficial religion these days,
[2:04:50] Michelle: but it does offer us a tremendous amount of hope for those who will allow the skills of darkness to begin to fall from their eyes because we can’t just read it as we’ve always read it through the lenses that are provided to us through only the scripture, mastery verses or the lessons we have, we have to read it as a vehicle to, to come to know God. And with God’s mentorship as we like, we should always approach it asking God to help transform us through its pages.
[2:05:21] Denver Snuffer: That scripture reminds me, it made me laugh at the time. There was a talk in general conference. It was quoting from the book of Mormon, something about Christ. And the quote in the book of Mormon was from Sham the first anti-christ. And I, I looked, I looked it up to make sure because when I heard it, I thought, well, that’s the wrong source. And sure enough, there was in general confidence that anti-christ being quoted with favor. But that’s, that’s,
[2:05:52] Michelle: that’s why we need to do on our own. So we can discern that’s why we can’t take these people as our guides. We need to take the spirit and the book as our guide because often the same general conference is filled with false doctrines and false attributes to scripture and, and false rotation. So II, I shouldn’t say it’s filled. It has plenty of it though. So it’s up to us individually, us, you and God, right? Every individual person
[2:06:17] Denver Snuffer: that’s where it belongs. All right. Well, thank you.
[2:06:20] Michelle: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I hope to talk to you again sometime. All right, I want to again, thank Denver for taking so much time out of his day to have this conversation. I do think that um if anyone feels inspired, there are many books on this topic. Um This Denver’s was the first one that I found. There are many others for anyone who feels inspired to pursue this further. I do want to share, um sorry, share my testimony of the truthfulness of these things of the purpose of the gospel. The purpose of the Gospel is to bring us back into the presence of God. And it is a purpose that we can have faith in. And I hope that more and more of us will choose to step into that. I know that God is quick to answer those prayers, those invitations come and the directions come and if we will give ourselves over to this process, then it will bear fruit in our life. That is very, very valuable, very delicious. So anyway, I hope that this was an instructive conversation for many of you. And I thank you so much for sticking with us and I will see you next time.
