A friend sent you a link, a meme, or the CES Letter? Litners (that’s what the show calls its listeners) have been sending in the same questions for years. Here are 12 of them and what Gerrit said back on the show, with the minute so you can hear him say it.
Gerrit’s answers are copied word for word from the episode transcript. Nobody, and no AI, rewrote them. The transcripts are made by computer, so a word here and there can be off; the play button always has the real thing. A “…” means we skipped ahead in the same episode. The heading on each card sums up the listener’s question in a line or two; tap “Hear the question” to hear it asked on the show. When the Church has written a Gospel Topics Essay on the topic, it comes first on the card, ahead of what we think.
Start with the Church’s answers
The Church has written Gospel Topics Essays on the hardest questions: race and the priesthood, the Book of Abraham, plural marriage and more. In 2016 Elder M. Russell Ballard asked teachers in the Church Educational System to know them “like you know the back of your hand.” Read the Church’s own words first.
“And it's this cobbling together of all of these various arguments that have been made over time, presented very matter of factly, presented entirely out of context, surprisingly presented with horrific source material. … And there's nothing new in it. … This is just a collection of everything that had already been posted, but it's put into one nice, easy place.”
“I can research and do history and I can say as a historian, there's overwhelming evidence that Joseph Smith used a seer stone as part of the translation of the Book of Mormon. Overwhelming evidence that the way he translated was by placing either the Urim and Thummim stones or the separate seer stone into a hat to block out the light.”
“That's where new scripture always is in a no-win situation among people that are biblical literalists. Because if you make the new scripture or if God delivers the new scripture exactly the same, in exactly the same words as the Bible, the King James Bible, well, then you're just copying the Bible. This isn't really from God. You're just stealing this from the Bible and just repeating the words. If it's totally different, well, then it can't be true because it's different than the Bible. So you see, in both ways, there's no way to win however those words are delivered. I don't know why God had the particular words appear on the seer stone that he did in Joseph's translation. But my guess is because God knew that all of the early people who were going to be getting the Book of Mormon were King James Bible reading Christians, that God rendered those words, which I'm sure were spoken in some kind of Nephites language so that they could understand it when Jesus spoke to them, that he rendered them to be the same as the King James Bible in order for people to understand the unity between the two, that it's the same Jesus who appears in the New World that was the Jesus of the Old World.”
“When Paul has his experience on the road to Damascus, and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven. And he fell to earth and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutes thou me? And he said, who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutes. It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what would you have me do? And the Lord said unto him, arise and go into the city and it shall be told thee what you must do. And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. … I don't know why it is that Joseph's brothers didn't wake up as the angel spoke to him. But I do know that some of those same brothers are saying that they lifted gold plates and they hefted them and they know for assurity that the said Smith has got them.”
“Well, it is true that this account of Elijah appearing, which is Doctrine and Covenants section 110, is written at the end of Joseph's Journal. And it is written in the handwriting of one of Joseph's scribes, Warren Cowdery. How do I know that this was not written in the 1850s in Joseph's Journal? Because Warren Cowdery is only going to be a member of the church for approximately another maybe 18 months, depending on when this was written, before he apostatizes. … Warren Cowdery is not in the church after 1838. So someone saying that it was only written down in 1850 has literally no idea what they're talking about.”
“So the allegation is first made by John C. Bennett that Joseph was committing adultery with women whose husbands he had sent off on preaching missions. Now, there are some real problems with this claim. First of all, we know the women who were sealed to Joseph who were in legal marriages to other men. None of them, save one, are on missions for the church at the time that those sealings take place. So we know that this part of the argument is patently not true.”
The one exception is Marinda Hyde. In the next episode Gerrit shows no one knows whether that sealing came before or after Orson Hyde got home: S2E42: Is It Season 38 Already? Part 2
“I think because, you know, this is of all the deep things that Joseph Smith taught that are at least well known to Latter-day Saints. This is, it's essentially the deepest thing. … Now look, this doctrine from the King Follett Sermon is something that Joseph himself says that it will take a long time after you are dead before you can understand it. So when you say, well, there's parts of the King Follett Sermon I just don't really understand, the answer is, yep. Because Joseph is telling the saints in Nauvoo, you actually can't have a full understanding of what I'm teaching you. And you won't even have it when you die. It will take a long time after you're dead, before you fully understand this idea of becoming like God.”
“Anyone who thinks that you just grab a letter and you can type that and throw it up on the internet in five minutes and that's fine, is doing a pretty shoddy job, right? There's a lot of work that goes into it. … You've got one or two men or women trying to do the work of 30 people. No, they aren't getting to everything, right? And to think that they just should is ridiculous. The Joseph Smith Papers were made possible by enormous financial contributions from the Miller family. And that's the reason why they were able to hire so many professional archivists, professional historians, so many volunteers that help with the text and with research and with photographs. It was so much money that was spent to do this.”
“So if the argument is, oh, it's just all taken from Masonry, well, it's not a very good argument because it's not. … But even if there are things that are similar, just like our baptism is similar to Baptist baptism, just like our confirmation is similar to Catholic confirmation, they mean something entirely different. … But I think the most important thing is to recognize that our covenants that we make are with God.”
“Now notice the original story does not actually say that it's Joseph Smith. The original story says, a Tragical story of a Mormon preacher is given by the editor of the Independent Messenger, which is another newspaper, which becomes defunct very quickly. Okay, so we're already, look how far removed we are already, okay? The following story is given by the editor of another newspaper on the authority of a gentleman from the western part of the state of New York. … But if there's a Mormon preacher in a town and he's been there for a while and a bunch of people have been converted by him and he drowns in a mire pond because he was trying to walk on water, he's going to have a name. People are going to know that he's dead. It's pretty simple to figure out whether or not someone is dead in that circumstance. And of course, we don't have a name because we don't have a body, because we don't have a death, because the story's made up.”
“To me, to say that faith is a cop-out, I understand why someone who's disenchanted with religion says that. I also think that they are overplaying their hand. I think that they don't realize that the things that they blindly believe in, they don't have any explanation of either. For instance, you could ask someone who does not believe in God, why does anything exist?”
“It is rare and like all conversions, it is miraculous. I recall once having a conversation with a woman who wanted to have her name removed from the records of the church. … And then I felt the spirit speak to me that I should shift the focus to what are the things she wants to believe in. As we did that, I felt the spirit powerfully come into the room. And she felt it too. And she in that moment changed from wanting to get out to wanting to believe. … Faith is a choice. Belief is something that comes through faith, and it comes because you want to believe, and the Holy Ghost testifies to you. You can read every book there is on earth, and it won't give you a testimony. You gain a testimony of Jesus and of the Book of Mormon and of the Church being true by the Holy Spirit. But I watched her change. And so I know that it happens.”