Signs of the Times Part 2

Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.

Gerrit Miracles. Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.

Richard Hello, Gerrit. In this episode, like in the last episode, we kicked things off with the mailbag. Samuel Osgood's family was a little tight-fisted and not willing to pay for naming rights.

Gerrit Well, in fairness, we're recording this before they even heard the other one.

Richard That's true, I believe that it went something like, it was more like the statement they gave is, who are you? Why are you standing in my porch asking for money? As a kayak, go get the gun.

Gerrit We should also probably let people know that we were not able to win our parlay. So we're gonna shut down our sports betting.

Richard Yes, I got in a little bit of trouble for my wife who didn't think it was quite as funny as I did.

Gerrit In fairness, she had dozed off, as our wives do, the entire time we're talking on this podcast. They're behind us asleep.

Richard And then she woke up hearing me say, put your second mortgage on Iran winning the World Cup.

Gerrit And which she thought was an astute bet, but didn't think you should be giving that tip away for free.

Richard That's why she got so mad. Anyway, so that was obviously a joke. We don't do sports betting. We don't endorse betting of any kind. Absolutely not. That said, welcome to the postmaster general, Timothy Pickering's mailbag.

Gerrit Wow, you went with Timothy Pickering.

Richard Of course, absolutely. So here we are. I'm a listener is the title of the subject line. So I guess there's more than Rachel and her mom. I love this podcast. I enjoy both you and the both of you and the fun you have with each other. I learned so much and often listen to an episode more than once. I wish I could listen to all of them more than once. Just nothing stopping you, Mary. That's just the first thing.

Gerrit Are we gonna just drive those numbers?

Richard That also, in case my wife is listening, that was a joke. Mary, thank you very much for listening.

Gerrit I guarantee she's asleep.

Richard She is asleep. I feel blessed. You and all of those that share their talents to help me learn more about our doctrine and history. Oh, and I did go read Bell and the Dragon. So now you know, and now that you have a faithful listener right here in Salt Lake City, thank you, Mary.

Gerrit Well, so first of all, I mean, the reality that we talked about something that made someone go read a book in the Apocrypha. That's how you know that you're making a difference in the world.

Richard That's real reach.

Gerrit If I can just get people to read first and second Esdras, then we'll know.

Richard Although, I mean, you did say it was very, it wasn't interesting.

Gerrit It was incredible if you haven't read it before.

Richard Absolutely. So we have another one here. Hi, Dr. Dirkmaat and General LeDuc.

Gerrit General LeDuc.

Richard That's why I read it.

Gerrit Just so everyone knows, Richard's not in the military. If he were, he wouldn't be a general?

Richard Yeah, what's funny about this, I believe is there's a good deal of fun being had at my expense here. I believe because he's saying, since you're already making up the professor thing, let's just go for it.

Gerrit Didn't we have another listener who said something to the effect of, does he really even teach a class?

Richard That was a Facebook post, and we had your wife delete it because I will not be attacked.

Gerrit We've got to scrub the questioning of whether or not he's actually is a professor.

Richard He actually teaches a class.

Gerrit I teach a master's of business creation.

Richard Yeah, master's of business creation program at the University of Utah, he teaches sales and business development. And if anyone questions, I will send the entire syllabus for the entire year.

Gerrit But he's ABD, so he's working on.

Richard Yeah, I'm actually headed tomorrow morning to Stillwater, Oklahoma for a week long dissertation workshop where I will turn all of my thoughts and ideas into a magical 250 page book that no one will read.

Gerrit Wow, my condolences. Wow, that's the worst thing I've ever heard. But yeah, I think, you know, I like the creative title General. Perhaps maybe you could be Emperor LeDuc or Ambassador Plenipotentiary LeDuc.

Richard I can sign treaties.

Gerrit Yeah, I'd like to see something like Archduke LeDuc. We'd like to have inventive titles given to Richard so that he can feel better about himself.

Richard That's right. Well, so now that we'll get into the meat of this email here. I recently ran into your podcast and I've fallen head over heels with your presentations. I listen to two or one or two each day during my commute. I think I'm caught up and have listened to almost all of them. I love church history and especially learning the in between the lines facts that explains so much. I am sometimes astounded at how disingenuous our enemies can be when trying to throw down the church, trying to throw down the church with bad history. My topic idea is not controversial, so maybe it's not top of the list material. After starting your podcast, I have returned to read volume one of Saints and have refelt how amazing the founding and inception of the restored church is. What never ceases to amaze me is the sending of missionaries almost immediately out into the world. Even during the apostasy in Kirtland and the extermination in Missouri, we're still sending out missionaries.

Richard My question is, what did the early missionaries teach? Some of the missionaries had only been members of the church a short time. How is it that thousands of people flocked to a nation church based on what the missionaries told them? What is it that they told them? What is the power of the, was it the power of the Book of Mormon? They did have, they didn't have a correlation committee to unify what the elders were teaching. How did they go about converting so many? Again, love the podcast and the depths. You plumb and to teach us what really happened. I also appreciate how you teach us the scientific method of historians and the pains taken to put true story, to put the true story out there. It's amazing to me. Best regards, Dan.

Gerrit Well, that's a very nice email, Dan. And aside from advancing Richard's several pay grades in his rank, he's not even enlisted. It's a really great question that in some ways kind of coincides with the second part of what we're going to be talking about today. Last episode, we talked about, we had a listener question about some of the books that are written about the end time prophecies and how reliable those things could be. And we're gonna continue on talking about that. We finished off talking about William Miller and his movement. And when I say, well, why you're saying, well, how are you tying these in together? How does that, is that relevant? Well, Latter-day Saints are actually fairly unique in the 19th century because they believe in a pre-millennial Second Coming of Jesus. Now, what do we mean by pre-millennial?

Gerrit Well, most Christians in Joseph Smith's time were either post-millennialists or they were a-millennialist, meaning they didn't even see the Second Coming of Jesus and the thousand years as an actuality. They saw that more as a figurative thing, right? Jesus comes in your heart and things like that. But many of them were post-millennialists who believed that the world was going to keep because it was becoming more and more and more Christian, that people were going to keep becoming more and more and more righteous because as you become more Christian, you become more righteous, said only people who've never talked to other Christians. And then eventually we get to the point where we're all so righteous that the world enters into this state of peace and harmony this millennium. And then Jesus would come to the world at the end of that thousand years of peace and happiness that we essentially entered ourselves into because we all started living a Christian life.

Gerrit Post-monalism was a very optimistic view of both mankind and the world. And it followed logically for them. For us today, you're sitting there thinking, wait a minute, what did they believe? But remember, in Joseph Smith's time, there was no reason to think that Christianity wasn't going to be the only major religion in the world in several hundred years. Well, Christianity was spreading everywhere in places like the United States. Membership in Christian churches doubles between 1820 and 1830. And European imperialism is conquering places all over the world. Many of the places that are the central places of Islam, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, those areas are coming under at least the economic control of places like the British Empire or the French Empire.

Gerrit And Christianity is being brought to each of these nations. Places like India, where there's a massive effort to try to convert the subcontinent to Christianity. So you have Christianity spreading places it's never been. And it's backed by the force of European imperialism. That doesn't seem like it's going to be slowing down anytime soon. In Europe, the Ottoman Empire and Islam is on the wane. It's being pushed back further and further every year. And in places like China and in Southeast Asia and in South Asia, British, French, Portuguese enclaves are creating Christian outposts in these places that have never been Christian before. In their world, it's entirely plausible that if we keep converting people to Christianity at the rate we are, eventually everyone on earth is going to be a Christian. And once everyone's a Christian, how could there possibly be any wars?

Gerrit We're all Christians. Already, they could have examined their own European history to realize that there were literally hundreds of wars over Christian religion, especially after the Reformation, at least hundreds of conflicts. At any rate, that was a more predominant view. Very much in the minority is this view that in fact, Jesus isn't coming a thousand years from now at the earliest. Jesus is coming really soon. In fact, he's coming so soon that that's actually how sin and wickedness are going to be driven from the earth. Because when Jesus comes, he's going to smite the wicked and cleanse the world of wickedness. So one thing that made Latter-day Saint Theology unique, I know I've talked about this before, but maybe you didn't listen to the early podcast or maybe you forgot them or maybe like our wives, you're sleeping through those podcasts, also sleeping through these podcasts. But that belief was an entirely different message, one that we don't think about very much, where Joseph is receiving revelations that declare that the Second Coming is soon.

Gerrit Along with that Second Coming, as we talked about in previous podcasts, is this idea of the city of Zion. And so central to what these early missionaries appear to be teaching is that God has declared that Jesus is coming soon, that the city of Zion has been commanded to be built. Yes, the Book of Mormon is other scripture, and in fact, early missionaries are preaching with it and from it all the time. And that there's this restoration of authority that's taken place. So I wouldn't be able to speak to how every individual missionary is trying to get converts, but it seems to be a pretty standard thing that like other missionaries of other faiths, they go and they tell people to repent. But then as they continue, part of their message is Jesus is coming soon. That would have been a very different message and would have been being shared by Presbyterian preachers in the 1830s.

Gerrit Why do I say that relates to our further question? Well, there is one other very prominent pre-millennial sect in the United States during Joseph Smith's time. And in fact, they become contemporaries of one another. Prior to the founding of the church, a Baptist minister by the name of William Miller felt compelled to seek and study out the second advent of Christ. Whenever you're advent, that means, you know, the coming of Christ. So if you ever hear second advent, it's Second Coming. Miller believed as he went through the Bible, especially the Old Testament prophecies in Daniel, that if you assigned numbers to some of the symbols and phrases that were given in that book, that you could actually calculate with a fair certainty what year the Second Coming of Jesus was going to take place.

Gerrit He calculated out that because, you know, you know, a day is as a thousand years, and the numbers that he comes up with are 2300 days. Well, if it's 2300 days, then that means 2300 years. When we get to the end of that 2300 years, that's when Jesus is coming. The problem with all end of the world prophecies that start with a countdown from the book of Daniel is what?

Richard That they're wrong?

Gerrit Well, first of all, they're wrong. But second of all...

Richard Where they're starting from?

Gerrit Exactly, one of the most important parts of a countdown, if you're doing it by math, is knowing when you start it.

Richard It's the main part.

Gerrit Yeah, it's a pretty important part. I tell my students, look, I know you all want to wait until the very last second to turn in your assignment. This is procrastination 101. The most important part of waiting until the last minute is knowing when the last minute is. Because what you end up happening is people not turning in their assignment at 5 o'clock when it's due and then messaging you at 8 p.m. like, oh man, I thought we had all the rest of the day to do it. Well, you couldn't possibly have thought that because the directions don't say that. The time on it doesn't say that. I sent out four emails saying that it's not that. The only reason you think that it's later than that is you didn't even bother to look to see when it was due. Right? And that's kind of the thing. The most important part of procrastination, you can only wait until the last minute if you actually know when the last minute is.

Gerrit In reverse, then, with William Miller, if you're going to make a countdown, if you're going to create a countdown chain, a Christmas countdown chain of when Jesus is coming, one of the most important things you need to know is when to start counting. And how are you going to know when to start counting? I mean, 2,300 years from what? From Christ's crucifixion? Well, if it's that, then we've still got quite a ways before the Second Coming. What Miller theorized was that that Second Coming time should be placed when Artaxerxes, the Persian emperor, Persian king, when he declared the rebuilding of Jerusalem. So you take that, what, 437 BC time, and then you add the 2,300 years to it, and then what do you end up with? Well, you end up with 1843.

Gerrit Now, of course, the Bible is very clear that people don't know when that day or hour is. This is where Miller would make the argument and end his fall wars that, well, it might say you don't know the day or hour, but what about the year? Ah, you can know the year. Rather than taking the Bible as being rhetorical there, you don't know when this is going to happen, which is funny, by the way, that in that sense, the word day is taken to mean an actual day, even though in every other part of the calculation, the word day means 1,000 years. That's right.

Richard You won't know within 1,000 years.

Gerrit If we were to use it the same way that we use it in the rest of the theory. At any rate, so we calculated it down to 1843. Well, this started to become a very big thing. Millerites, as they came to be called, were excoriated not just because they thought they knew when Jesus was coming, but also because they thought Jesus was coming in power and glory at all. Look, other Christians believe Jesus was coming, but they believed that they were going to have a thousand years of prep time before he came because they would have this post-millennial, they had this post-millennial view where for a thousand years they're living with Jesus and peace and happiness before they get to this point where Jesus returns. In which case the world's already cleansed of its sin. The cataclysms surrounding what we generally think of the Second Coming are not anticipated by other Christians.

Gerrit So Miller, as he begins to preach that Jesus is coming, look, I've calculated it out and my calculations are correct, starts to gain quite a following. And of course, this starts to actually affect the Latter-day Saints. This is actually one of those places where it affects Latter-day Saints directly. Joseph Smith will have multiple conversations with people who are Millerites or about Millerism. The first of these that we have recorded anyway comes in February of 1843. In Joseph's journal, his scribe writes that some eight, sorry, February 12th, 1843, some seven or eight young men called to see me part of them from the city of New York. They treated me with the greatest respect, and I showed them the fallacy of Mr. William Miller's data concerning the millennium and preached to them quite a sermon.

Gerrit I showed them that the error is in the Bible or translation and that Miller is in want of information. The prophecies must be fulfilled. The sun be turned into darkness, the moon into blackness, and many more things before Christ come. So here you have Joseph, who apparently has some Millerites from New York, and this is where Miller really has a ton of followers. He's actually, you know, lives in the area and is born right on the Vermont-New York border. Well, sorry, his house is right there on the Vermont-New York border. So there are a lot of Millerite followers in New York. And so Joseph has this encounter with them in February. Apparently, one of the things that these men convey to him is that they know not just the month that Jesus is going to come again, but they know the exact day.

Gerrit And how do we know this? Well, we know because later in Joseph's journal, on the 3rd of April, 1843, Joseph writes, Monday, April 1843, Miller's Day of Judgment has arrived, but it is too pleasant for false prophets. Where does that coming from? Well, one of the most prominent Millerites, someone who was preaching in New York, was a man by the name of George Storrs. And he was involved in a controversy among the Millerites where he had declared that 3 April 1843 was the date of the Second Coming. Now, eventually Storrs is going to try to push back on that and saying that, no, no, I didn't say that. But the Christian secretary in newspaper is adamant, no, we were at the speech he gave when he said 3 April is the exact date of the Second Coming.

Gerrit Since we're all having this conversation, you already know that Jesus didn't come on April 3rd, something that Joseph is kind of mocking, I guess, in his journal that, well, Jesus isn't here, so guess Miller's a false prophet. Now, many other Millerites actually believe that April 23rd was the day of the Second Coming. Also, spoiler alert, Jesus doesn't come on the 23rd. So then Miller recalculates and figures that he was actually off by a year. Yes, I was right on everything else, but I didn't make, what about the changeover from the calendar?

Richard That seems like a pretty rookie mistake. You want to-

Gerrit Guessing the wrong year?

Richard By saying I was off by a year, you want to say you were off by 20 years, 50 years.

Gerrit Or how about like, yeah, I think, look, if you're in the game of trying to predict the end of the world, I think you want to be off by 110 years.

Richard But the problem is that you're off. I'm just looking at this from, strictly from like a business perspective, like he's going to, is a poor plan for his followers just to be one. I guess it keeps him around for another year.

Gerrit Do you plan to incorporate end of times prophecy into your business classes that you teach?

Richard 100%. That's one of the main things.

Gerrit Yeah, so the University of Utah is all about that.

Richard Yes, the University of Utah cares very much.

Gerrit Loves Millerite prophecies.

Richard 100%. It's just funny. I mean, I guess it keeps him around for another year, but I mean, he must have really, truly believed this, obviously.

Gerrit Oh yeah, Miller is an absolute believer in what he has. And in fact, I don't know that there's anyone more disappointed than he is when 1843 and 1844 come and go. And there's no advent, which he expects that there is now. This is actually such a big deal that Joseph is going to receive letters from people asking about it. Even after the 1843 disappointment, now the Millerites are all very adamant it's actually going to be 1844. It's actually going to be 1844. Well, Joseph receives a letter from a guy by the name of David Orr in June of 1843. So just a couple months after, he said, oh, well, we missed the day of false prophets, right? And he says, after writing this letter, the very end of it, in a note below, he says, have you any revelation with relation to William Miller's predictions or the closing scene of this dispensation?

Gerrit If so, please give us item. He wants that revelation if in fact they have it. So you can actually see that this is actually affecting baptized members of the church. And you can see why would Millerism be so interesting to a Latter-day Saint? Well, Latter-day Saint is already among the few people in America who believe that Jesus is coming soon and that he's going to come in power and great glory, and that it's not going to be after a thousand years, and it's not just a coming in your heart, it's a literal Second Coming. So when Miller begins to calculate out that it's very soon, of course it peaks the interest of Latter-day Saints. Well, as 1844 rules around, of course, as they approach March and April of 1844, because they were just off by a year, right, between March and April, Joseph is going to reference this again.

Gerrit This is in a sermon that he's giving that's recorded by Wilford Woodruff in the Wilford Woodruff's handwriting in his journal. He says, I have asked of the Lord concerning his coming, and while asking, the Lord gave me a sign and said in the days of Noah, I set a bow in the heavens as a sign and a token that in any year that the bow should be seen, the Lord would not come. But there should be seed time and harvest during that year. But whenever you see the bow, withdraw. It shall be a token that there shall be famine, pestilence and great distress among the nations. But I take the responsibility upon myself to prophesy in the name of the Lord that Christ will not come this year, as William Miller has prophesied. For we have seen the bow. And I also prophesy in the name of the Lord that Christ will not come in 40 years.

Gerrit And if God ever spake by my mouth, He will not come in that length of time. And Jesus Christ never did reveal to any man the precise time that He would come. Go and read the scriptures. You cannot find anything that specifies the exact time that He would come. And all that say so are false teachers. There are some important things concerning the office of the Messiah and the organization of the worlds, which I speak of hereafter. May God Almighty bless you and pour out His Spirit upon you as the prayer of your unworthy servant. So there's Joseph only a couple of months before he's murdered referencing this Millerite controversy again. Now, when the great disappointment occurs, and in fact, well, Jesus does not again, you know, spoiler alert, the dates finally moved from March and April to October of 1844.

Gerrit And there are people who are so, even though there have been some hiccups along the way, there are people who are so adamant that this really is the time, October 22nd. This is really when it's going to happen. There are people who start selling their homes and giving their money away to the poor. They start preparing themselves to leave this world with nothing.

Richard You said, you know, that no one was really more disappointed than Miller about this not coming to pass. Challenge accepted. I went and I took a look. There's a website, Mass Moments. It's a daily almanac run by historians in Massachusetts. And so there were a pretty good number of Millerites in Massachusetts, and they talk about some of the things that happened with them there. It said, as the year of the expected apocalypse neared, believers in the prophecy began to give away their belongings, abandon their crops and sell their land. In the town of Harvard, one man sold his cows at a great sacrifice because there would be no one to care for them when he was gone up. Women in Worcestershire spelled completely differently because they can't pronounce Worcester. Worcester.

Gerrit Worcester.

Richard Worcester. Worcester. Worcester.

Gerrit Worcester. Whatever you do against the Yankees. Oh my goodness.

Richard Women in Worcester area cut off their hair, removed the ruffles from their dresses, threw or gave away their jewelry, and in some cases everything they owned. Others broke up all of their furniture, declaring that they would no longer have use for tables or chairs or beds. Wanting to be suitably attired for heaven, Millerites made long white garments for themselves that they called their ascension robes. I imagine that those people were also fairly disappointed.

Gerrit Well, and in fact, there is a mass apostasy from Christianity among Miller's followers.

Richard I would imagine.

Gerrit There are many of them who just have nothing to do with God anymore because, you know, they were so certain of this and then it didn't happen. And maybe that's partially instructive of the reason why we bring up Millerism, that Joseph was dealing with this idea. You know, as Latter Day Saints, we live in a kind of a tension. We know that the Second Coming is coming, but it's also because of that, it's easy for people to rile us up into thinking that we're not doing enough to be prepared for it, that we don't have enough of, you know, that that I need to have more ammunition and more guns, that I need to have more solar panels and a generator and whatever I think it is that I can make it through the apocalypse. And I think that's part of one of the dangers of however well-meaning some of these YouTube videos or books are, that one of the dangers is that the people who view them are, you know, they, if they're convinced by them, they go the next logical conclusion that the the Second Coming is coming tomorrow and maybe I need to stop paying my mortgage.

Richard I would imagine.

Gerrit There are many of them who just have nothing to do with God anymore because, you know, they were so certain of this and then it didn't happen. And maybe that's partially instructive of the reason why we bring up Millerism, that Joseph was dealing with this idea. You know, as Latter Day Saints, we live in a kind of a tension. We know that the Second Coming is coming, but it's also because of that, it's easy for people to rile us up into thinking that we're not doing enough to be prepared for it, that we don't have enough of, you know, that that I need to have more ammunition and more guns, that I need to have more solar panels and a generator and whatever I think it is that I can make it through the apocalypse. And I think that's part of one of the dangers of however well-meaning some of these YouTube videos or books are, that one of the dangers is that the people who view them are, you know, they, if they're convinced by them, they go the next logical conclusion that the the Second Coming is coming tomorrow and maybe I need to stop paying my mortgage.

Gerrit In the last great, you know, idea that the, that the, the COVID had ushered in these end time prophecies, there were certainly people who really believed that we were not going to make it out of 2020 or 2021 without Jesus coming as a Second Coming. And in fact, that, that was all over the, the internet, multiple different people who, you know, again, affirming that they were faithful Latter-day Saints were trying to demonstrate in a very Millerite way, I've calculated out exactly when it is. And I think that's actually one of the major problems that I have with not just this book, but any book like this. The, the reality is we have a profit and that profit tells us what it is that we need to be preparing for.

Gerrit This isn't a secret. It's not just going to be a rich person's only club. It's not just going to be those lucky few who had happened to attend a seminar who learned more about how to get prepared for the end of the world. If the profit deems it necessary for us to take certain actions to prepare, well then the profit will do that. Now the response, of course, from people who run videos like this or write books like this would be, well, yeah, no, the profits have spoken and we're just not even listening. Yeah, but one of the things we're apparently not listening to is what the profit himself is actually saying right now. Is President Nelson holding a special address to church members and saying the end is coming in the next couple of years, you have got to prepare yourself? Nope. Well, if he's not saying that, then why exactly would I think that someone else who's not the profit and in many cases isn't even a biblical scholar has somehow figured out exactly how long it's going to be.

Gerrit Let me give you an example of some of the conjecture that stands to reason as Jackson put out, but really doesn't stand to reason, but it's conjecture, especially when we're trying to place it in the time of when this the Second Coming is going to happen. It's been prophesied by many. This is from the book, including the Savior himself that most of society in North America referred to as Gentiles. Now that is not prophesied by the Savior in the Book of Mormon. You'll actually notice that the word North America isn't in the Book of Mormon. They don't use that terminology. So why do you think the author said North America? Because it's what he knows his readers expect. Now, look, the author himself, I'm sure believes that. But that doesn't actually excuse the fact that he just said the Savior said North America.

Gerrit One thing you're never allowed to do is to say that Jesus said something if Jesus didn't say it. You kind of have to be really careful when you're writing. What you should write is Jesus taught and then quote the scripture. But if you're going to say that Jesus said North America, well, then you better find a place where Jesus actually said North America. And it's not good enough to just say in this land because this land doesn't say North America. And as we've talked about, Joseph Smith believes that all of North and South America is Zion. And it's such a big deal that Brigham Young sits up and takes notice and makes a special note of it, that all of it is Zion. When we are so desperate to prove that the only place on earth that is beloved by God just so happens to be inside the contiguous borders of the United States, talk about not following what a prophet says.

Gerrit The prophet says, Joseph Smith, the prophet, our founding prophet, said all of North and South America is Zion. Now I don't know what you want to do with that. You want to say, well, but I don't really think so. Okay, but then let's stop pretending that we're following every single thing that the prophets say because we're not. We're just picking the ones we want to believe. Look, there are apostles, there are seventies in the past who have been pretty forthright with what they think about certain aspects of this. And that's part of the reason why the church has stated the doctrine of the church is not based upon a single statement by a single general authority. They might be very well reasoned thoughts, but it doesn't constitute the doctrine of the church simply because one person said it. The doctrine of the church is consistently taught.

Gerrit The doctrine of the church resides with the entirety of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the First Presidency. You don't get the doctrine of the church from a seventy who visited my ward when I was thirty who told me blank about the Second Coming. That's not the doctrine of the church. It might be interesting and honestly, it may very well someday be true, but it's not the doctrine of the church. There's only one person who gets to declare the doctrine of the church and his last name is Nelson. So if you're not President Nelson, then you have to be really careful when you declare what the doctrine of the church is. But you also have to be careful when you begin to make historical arguments to prove the point you want to make theologically. Because when you're doing history, you don't get to just leave things out because they don't fit. As this goes on, that it's been prophesied by many, including the Savior himself, that most of society in North America will not only reject the fullness of the gospel, but also forget the God of the land, Jesus Christ, and become extremely wicked and therefore subsequently be destroyed from off the land.

Gerrit Would it not be true to form for the Lord to cause the few righteous to follow the living prophet, and in this case, the Quorum of the Twelve as well, to go into a place or places of safety for a time while the Lord performs this cleansing? The title of this chapter is Places of Refuge Tensities in the Last Days. Now the idea that that could be a thing, okay, but that's not how it's written. It's, you notice how it is, it follows that when someone says it follows that, what it means is they don't actually have evidence of what they're saying. It's just how they think of it. Again, why is this a problem? Well, it's a problem because the people you're quoting, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Wilfred Woodruff, John Taylor, Jedediah Grant, they all already believe the United States is a fallen nation. For many Christian nationalists, they look to these kinds of end of the world prophecies as way of talking about how the United States was this great and holy country that is headed into decline because of sin and that that's what's going to bring about the Second Coming.

Gerrit That very well may be true, but that's not what Brigham Young is thinking about when he talks about America being sinful. He's not talking about the fact that there'll be arguments over abortion in the 20th century. Brigham Young's talking about the fact that they murdered Joseph and Hyrum and drove tens of thousands of saints out of the country and a thousand of them die in winter quarters. He's talking about the fact that they deliberately manipulate the laws to persecute the Latter-day saints, that they eventually make part of Latter-day saint religion illegal. They then try to take away voting rights and jury rights. They try to take away property rights. They take away probate rights. Brigham Young doesn't need to see whether or not they allow R-rated movies to be shown in movie theaters to decide that America is in decline. So when you read a quote from Brigham Young about the sinfulness of America, he isn't talking about 2022.

Gerrit He's talking about 1852 because they already believe that America has sacrificed its promise. And that's why they believe that the Civil War is this great chastening thing brought about by the sinfulness of the nation. And in the aftermath of the Civil War, they certainly don't believe the United States has suddenly become wonderful and virtuous. As the United States sends hundreds of federal agents to Utah to persecute, arrest men and women who are involved in plural marriage, the Latter-day Saints see the federal government absolutely as their enemy. But not because it was going to come out of the Victorian era in a perfect sense of sexual modesty and kindness. And then as sinfulness came in, they headed down the line. The reality is Latter-day Saints already thought they were there. Now that changes over the course of time. Our attitudes towards the United States government change once international communism becomes such a threat.

Gerrit And the only defense against it seems to be the United States government that combined with a more or less acceptance of Mormons in the United States, although you could argue even today it's not. And there were eight Latter-day Saints church buildings vandalized a couple weeks ago. Do you know how many reports I saw claiming that it might be a hate crime? Zero. Yeah, a grand total of zero. Even when you catch the person, and this has actually happened multiple times, where they catch someone who says, oh, I was angry with the church. That's why I went and started a fire there, which is by the way, the definition of a hate crime, right? I hated the church, so I went and started their church on fire. Even then, when people try to call it a hate crime, what do you have? You have people saying, well, that's different. Because our society takes anti-Mormonism so lightly that when there actually is physical violence against church buildings or against people, people say, well, well, they kind of deserved it.

Gerrit Well, I guess maybe you shouldn't have been teaching about that gold Bible. That kind of thing that wouldn't fly were it a mosque that had been vandalized or were it a synagogue. Well, obviously, those things happen too. There's hate crimes against Muslims and there's hate crimes against Jews and far more than there are against Latter-day Saints. I don't want to in any way make them equivalent. But the reality is the United States has never fully accepted the Latter-day Saints. And anyone who lives in the United States in an area where there's not very many Latter-day Saints or anyone who's gone to the Book of Mormon musical, all of them know that Latter-day Saints are not considered the same as other Americans. Now we've tried hard. Oh, we were desperate. We want to wave as many flags as we can. No, trust us. We promise we're Americans. But there's always that, that, well, except you're not though, right?

Gerrit And you could ask Mitt Romney when he was running for president, how normal were the investigations into his faith? There's a considerable number of people who wouldn't be able to tell you what George W. Bush's faith was. He was president for eight years in the United States and people wouldn't be able to tell you what religion he belonged to. You're hard pressed to find anyone who follows politics at all who can't tell you the religion of Mitt Romney, right? Somehow they know. Why does it matter more what his religion is than, say, you know, George Herbert Walker Bush? Do you know his religion? It's not the same as George W. Bush, just so you know, dad and son kind of split religiously. Anyway, the other aspect of this is when people are presenting themselves as a kind of a light to the world, they often justify what they're doing on the basis of, well, they're helping so many people.

Gerrit And if they ever are kind of called to account, they simply obfuscate the fact that they're called to account. I was in a conversation once with someone who was really adamant about the fact that we need to be faithful to the church, we got to follow the church, we're going to follow the prophet, to which I was like, Amen, brother, I am. And then the same person who was going on and on about how we've just got to start following the prophets kind of launched into a tirade about how wrong the church was for publishing the Gospel Topics essays that those essays were actually going to destroy faith and the church would eventually realize what a terrible mistake they'd made. And I thought, what an fascinating thing. Here is someone who's devoted their entire life to building up the church and kingdom of God, who have you asked them, is it important to follow the prophet? You wouldn't even have the words proff out of their mouth before they were saying yes.

Gerrit And here they were telling me this this lifelong defender of the church that the prophet was wrong with the publication of those essays. I had another lifelong member of the church tell me that the prophet was wrong with the decision to publish the Joseph Smith Papers, that those Joseph Smith Papers would lead to more destruction of faith and that the prophet had been tricked by academics into doing it. You can see the problem, right? Rather than adjusting what it is you say and believe to what the church is teaching, when the church comes down against you, you simply say, well, the church is misinformed. The people who are still adamant that they are that the most important part of the gospel is knowing where the Book of Mormon took place. Even though the church has made a statement saying we don't know and it doesn't matter where it took place, that those people, what do they say about that statement?

Gerrit Well, they're making that statement because academics have confused them and made them made them think that's the case. So now you're saying that our prophets just super goable, right? This actually was a controversy. We talked earlier about the translation of the Book of Mormon, but this is a controversy that played out online when President Nelson did a video explaining how the process worked with the seer stone and translation. Now President Nelson has long been someone who has talked about Joseph Smith using the seer stone to translate by placing it into a hat. In fact, one of our earliest modern publications of Joseph Smith translating that way, coming from a prophet or apostle, comes from President Nelson in an Enzyme article from 1993. In which he quotes David Whitmer that Joseph Smith placed a seer stone on the hat and looked into the hat. And that's how he translated the Book of Mormon. Well, what did people who refused to accept that Joseph Smith used seer stones, even though Joseph Smith history says that he did?

Gerrit What do they say about that? Oh, well, the President Nelson was wrong. He was given bad advice from these academics that are trying to undermine faith. I submit to you that whenever your argument includes, well, here's where the prophet was wrong about this, that it's probably not the best argument to be making. So thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to talking to you again next week.

Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

Signs of the Times Part 2

Chapters

Transcript

Quote board

Source shelf

Mary in Salt Lake City, listener email

Dan, listener email ("General LeDuc")

Saints, volume 1

Daniel 8:14 (the 2,300 days)

Joseph Smith's journal, February 12, 1843

Joseph Smith's journal, April 3, 1843

Christian Secretary (1843)

David Orr to Joseph Smith, June 1843

Wilford Woodruff's journal, Joseph Smith sermon of 1844

Same sermon, on false teachers

Mass Moments (Massachusetts historians' daily almanac)

As a Thief in the Night (from the previous episode)

Gospel Topics essays

Russell M. Nelson, Ensign article (1993)

Episode quiz

What new title did a listener give Richard?

Fun with Numbers

From 1820 to 1993

Percentages said on air

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words

More from this episode

Claim check

Take it to class

Banter bin

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Go deeper

Signs of the Times Part 2

No sports betting

Mary in Salt Lake City, listener email

Dan, listener email ("General LeDuc")

Saints, volume 1

Daniel 8:14 (the 2,300 days)

Joseph Smith's journal, February 12, 1843

Joseph Smith's journal, April 3, 1843

Christian Secretary (1843)

David Orr to Joseph Smith, June 1843

Wilford Woodruff's journal, Joseph Smith sermon of 1844

Same sermon, on false teachers

Mass Moments (Massachusetts historians' daily almanac)

As a Thief in the Night (from the previous episode)

Gospel Topics essays

Russell M. Nelson, Ensign article (1993)

What new title did a listener give Richard?

From 1820 to 1993

Percentages said on air

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words