Peter, James, and John

Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Professor Richard LeDuc explore the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the life and teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith. They examine the original historical sources and provide context for events of the past. They approach the history of the Church with faith, expertise and humor.

Gerrit 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 week's podcast, we wanted to talk about the restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood, but before we do, we wanted to read a couple of emails. Our first email comes to us from Elder Whipple, a missionary in parts unknown.

Gerrit You're very wise to keep that a secret from us.

Richard That's right. I'll try to keep this short because it's my P-Day and I have better things to do than to write commentary to you about your podcast. We would agree.

Gerrit First of all, you do. You have much better things to do.

Richard Much better things. I would like to say that I do enjoy your podcast. I did get it approved to listen to it in our downtime.

Gerrit That's important because the last missionary who wrote to us was tasked with eliminating unauthorized media and instead of eliminating us, started listening to us. So, you're one step ahead Elder Whipple. That assistant to the president's coming. It's coming for you.

Richard Your playful banter is always enjoyable and you too often make me laugh out loud. I also have deeply loved the subjects of your podcast so far. I find it very respectable that you would both dedicate so much of your time and talents to helping solve our questions and strengthen our faith in the Prophet Joseph Smith and infinitely more important, Jesus Christ. It might help to know that your podcast hasn't just helped me strengthen my faith but has also helped me be able to better help others solve their own concerns about church history. I think what has helped me the most is Professor Dirkmaat's extensive knowledge of other religions, since we are better able to see where others are coming from and what they're bringing to our conversations and lessons. Well, that's very nice. I noticed that you didn't say anything about my understanding of and my learning on the Contra cheat codes for the Nintendo.

Gerrit Do you have those?

Richard I do.

Gerrit Is it up, down, right, left?

Richard I do.

Gerrit Is it up, down, right, left?

Richard It's up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, or B, A, and start.

Gerrit You know, Super C was a lot easier.

Richard I've always thought that.

Gerrit Super C's cheat code was just up, down, right, left, A, B, select, start.

Richard Yeah, interesting. Interesting. So you didn't mention that, but I wanted to make sure that I got that in there. So a million thanks for myself and others and other tens of missionaries who.

Gerrit We have tens of listeners.

Richard So my son is currently on a mission in Barcelona and he doesn't listen. He says he does, but then when I push him on it and ask him for what he liked about it, he's like, oh, you know, just, you know, all of it. It's really good.

Gerrit I just thought like the whole part where you like talk to and stuff.

Richard Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Gerrit Especially when you mentioned like the church.

Richard It was funny though, when we got to talk with him this last week, I asked him if he got a chance to listen to the latest episode that I sent to him. And he didn't get to it. But John, by the way, did a special fireside for their mission. His daughter is in their mission and did a special fireside. And I'm like, okay, well, actually, you know what? I respect that. I would also rather listen to John, by the way, than anything.

Gerrit Absolutely. So wait, so his daughter's in Andrew's mission?

Richard Apparently.

Gerrit All right.

Richard How great is that?

Gerrit How about that?

Richard How great is that?

Gerrit How about that?

Richard Shout out to sister, by the way, who also isn't listening to this podcast.

Gerrit Well, it would be unapproved, probably, from their mission.

Richard Something, something, fall asleep, I lost my place. All right, here we go. I do have a question about something a friend of ours brought up in church history. We are currently working with a family, and the father talked with the missionaries long ago, back when they used flip charts. That's what we used. So yeah, that's very funny.

Gerrit Long ago, meaning when we were on our missions.

Richard Which he said he liked more than preach my gospel, teach by the spirit method. So great work for your generation. That's a little condescending, Elder Whipple. I'm gonna go ahead and say.

Gerrit Is it possible that we could have both had the charts and the spirit, or?

Richard He told us that he was going to join the church, but then found a video online that someone had recorded of the endowment session. It seemed strange to him, so he asked a friend in the church why there is so much secrecy and also so much similarity to other religious ceremonies. The member, he asked, replied that the reason why it seemed so strange is because, I'm sorry. This is, I'm gonna try and, this was the straight face. It's so strange because in the days of Joseph Smith, the Illuminati, so this was a member that they took to this person's house. The Illuminati attempted to infiltrate the church and steal the secrets and expose them, but failed. He goes on. And that they continue trying to infiltrate the church in order to destroy it. That got my companion and I very curious, I bet it did, Elder Whipple, about the involvement of a Kabbal-esque group, maybe even the Illuminati in church history. I was hoping that you would have some insights on that and would also love to hear your thoughts on conspiracy theories in general.

Richard I know you have touched on conspiracies in the past, but a full-depth episode would be a real treat to listen to. I promise to download it multiple times. Ah, there you go. You understand how this-

Gerrit Yeah, now you know how you got on the air.

Richard Thanks for all you do. Everyone who listens to this podcast comes away better for it. It was very kind.

Gerrit It was very kind, yeah. Wow, I don't even know where to start. I can take that a lot of ways. There are so many responses that I could give to that. But I think I'm gonna throw this one over to Richard.

Richard Okay, so this was several years ago. There was a special conference for bishops.

Gerrit On the Illuminati?

Richard Yes, on the Illuminati.

Gerrit That's how big a deal it is. It's got its hooks into everything.

Richard And so our bishop was unable to attend and I was asked to go in his place. And this was something that was presided over by President Packer and Elder Anderson was also there. And we got a chance to ask questions. And I raised my hand and I asked what I thought was a very thoughtful and deep question about the Melchizedek Priesthood. And President Packer's response was, you know, I've done a lot of these and I get a lot of questions. Some are very difficult to answer and some are very easy. That question was very easy. So I'm going to go ahead and throw this over to, I don't remember who the Area 70 was, but throw it over to the Area 70 to go ahead and answer that question, which made me feel like my question was, you know, so-

Gerrit Not very good.

Richard Not, it was obviously terrible.

Gerrit What did you ask a question like, so like Elder Packer, like, do people like get the Melchizedek Priesthood? Or like-

Richard Is it like important, like, for some reason?

Gerrit Do you think it's like important that people get ordained?

Richard That was probably how he heard the question. Anyway, so to that, to answer that, I think pretty simply is no.

Gerrit Yeah. No, there's not a secret cabal-

Richard Illuminati.

Gerrit Group of the Illuminati that is attempting to infiltrate the church. Who is this member is the real question.

Richard Well, so first of all, I will say, we've all had experiences on our mission where we're teaching somebody and we have a member with us who's well-intentioned and so kind to drive us to wherever it was. And then we're trying to teach them about the plan of salvation or the restoration of the church or whatever. And then they're like, elder, elder, elder.

Gerrit Yeah, well, I had that very thing happen. I have two stories that I'd like to share. So if someone wants to hear more of the meat of what we're gonna talk about, you may need to fast forward this. Or probably just click to the end. I don't know. I mean, I don't know where we're.

Richard Gerrit's mom recently complained that it took 15 minutes to get to the topic. So Renee, go ahead and skip in.

Gerrit The reason why that's concerning to me is I'm not sure what else my mom's doing. I mean, I don't know, you know, she has just appointment after appointment after appointment. She can only squeeze in her son talking for 10 minutes at a time. But if I don't get right to the point, that's it. Well, so first, I might've shared both of these stories before, but first story, I was on my mission in Wisconsin. I don't know where Elder Whipple is, but it kind of sounds like Wisconsin because of what that member said. But I was on team ups with a member and no one ever listened to us in Wisconsin ever. So we had a media referral, which was back when we used to give away free VHS tapes to people. And people would see, you know, like a video of the Lamb of God, you know, they'd see a commercial for it and they'd call, would you like representatives to come deliver that to you?

Gerrit And then we'd get the referral and then we'd go knock on the door. And most people just wanted their free Bible and they, yeah, thank you for the Bible, please don't talk to me at all. But this guy was very nice guy, let us inside. And so I was like, well, we have a message we'd like to share with you as well. So already this is better than 99.999% of literally everything that happened on my mission. He didn't yell at us, he invited us inside, he said we could talk. So already, you know, this is, I mean, I'm right. Is it golden, is it golden content? In my mind, I'm already writing my welcome home talk about how I'm gonna mention this guy, how he let us inside, didn't call us curse words. And so I started to teach the, back then, the first discussion. So I was teaching about Joseph Smith's experience. And it's actually very powerful. The spirit's really strong in the room. And I start to tell what Joseph said, that he saw God in Jesus.

Gerrit And this guy is really fascinated. You can tell by his eyes, he's really listening. And he's even like, so you're telling me, you're telling me he saw God. I'm like, yeah, that was this experience. And so we're right in the middle of him asking a follow-up question. The member who's with me in a very loud voice that I'll try not to replicate too much because I don't need everyone to have their car stereos blown out, puts his hand across my face and says, elder, just stop, just stop, just stop. Then he turns back to the guy and he says, patriarchal blessings, that's all you need to know. Patriarchal blessings. And the guy says, oh, what? It's like a fortune teller of your life. That's what it is. If you get baptized, you can have a patriarchal blessing too.

Gerrit And then he asked us to leave. So that's one experience. Should I tell the other one or is this too long already?

Richard Well, not to make Renee mad, we'll push that one off to next week. Is that the day Bernie came inside?

Gerrit The day Bernie came inside. We should make that premium content.

Richard Yeah, that is one of my favorite stories of all time.

Gerrit By the way, I want to thank everybody who has signed up for the premium content. I mean, it is awesome.

Richard Where are you at, Elder Whipple?

Gerrit What? Oh, man, boy, this is what happens when you bring a business PhD onto a free podcast. The next thing you know, you're selling the water cups that you drink the afternoon. Anyway, but we do want to thank everyone who's signed up for the premium content because that is very helpful and hopefully everyone enjoys that. We've got some more American history and church history podcasts coming to people at the premium side as well. But yes, as far as the Illuminati goes, I mean, I'm sure that what's going on is you have a member who is not entirely sure what the answer to that question was. And look, in fairness to the member who said that, the actual Illuminati, like the Bavarian Illuminati back in the 1700s, one of their goals was to kind of pilfer membership from the Freemasonry societies that existed.

Gerrit And so maybe that's what they meant by that.

Richard I mean, I'm fairly confident that that's not what that person meant by that.

Gerrit Well, I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt. But I think this idea, this question, we kind of deal with this on a few previous episodes where we talk about Freemasonry. And that's usually what that question around the temple ceremony surrounds. It is unfortunate that people will take something that's sacred to us and violate that privacy and that sacredness that we have in order to mock and make fun of it. And that's, well, that's kind of par for the course when it comes to the way people treat Latter-day Saints. So, yeah, as far as the Illuminati, wow, no. And in fact, really the Illuminati came to be this kind of catch-all for conspiracy theories. I mean, you ask the larger question about conspiracy theories, and Americans love conspiracy theories. We just do. We always have, in fact. We have a previous podcast that I think it's called American Culture or something where we talk about the Boston Tea Party.

Gerrit This is not premium. This is one of our free ones going all the way back. And it's a really good example of how people believed that there was a conspiracy when in fact, there was just really, really, really inept government. So it's always kind of a catch between the two, right? Is government so corrupt it controls everything? Or is it also that they're actually so bad at doing what they're supposed to do that that's the reason why it seems like a conspiracy, right? I mean, do you think that referee is deliberately not calling any fouls on my team? Or do I think that that 15-year-old referee just doesn't even know what any basketball fouls are because he just got pulled out of the crowd to do it? Conspiracy theories, though, there are several books where people actually chart and look at this because what are conspiracy theories used for? They gain their traction to try to explain things that seem to be an issue, but otherwise don't have a good explanation.

Gerrit And Masons were off in the butt of these conspiracy theories. And in fact, Latter-day Saints are as well. I mean, there was a huge conspiracy theory surrounding Latter-day Saint Danites, that there was a secret band of Mormons that went around murdering all of the apostates and what not. Well into the Utah period, newspapers will report that over and over and over again. Oh yes, the secret Danite mobs are going around killing the people that are... I mean, as Brigham Young pointed out, well, if I had all the power that people claim that I do, then how is it that all these apostates are running around doing whatever they want to do? I mean, the idea that there certainly have been conspiracies throughout time. I mean, there certainly have been conspiracies that have existed. But this idea of this long running conspiracy that controls all business, that controls all government, that never comes to light, that crosses every country border, I mean, there's just not evidence of that.

Gerrit Again, I'm not saying there's not conspiracies. There certainly are. There are things that people, you know, combine together to try to gain power. You know, you can see that with the effects of organized crime. I mean, that's a conspiracy. But the ones you usually hear are things like, you know, that, you know, George Washington was actually part of the Illuminati and he wasn't trying to create America. He was trying to further this secret satanic cult organization. I mean, it's, people are drawn to them, especially when they feel like the world around them doesn't really make sense. And so it's actually easier for someone to believe that there's a malevolent force that is causing things to happen to you that don't work out very well than it is to simply believe that life is really difficult and that people are really incompetent, right? I mean, when you go to the fast food place and they're taking a really long time to get your food, you can either think, you know what?

Gerrit I think that guy back there doesn't like me, so he's slowly making all this stuff because last time I didn't comment on how nice his hat was or something like that. I mean, whatever. But the more likely the reality is, he's just really slow at his job. Now look, that doesn't mean that there aren't actual conspiracies that have happened throughout time. There have been. But the reality is that for most of them, they unravel pretty quickly. The whole point of a conspiracy is you need multiple people involved in order to carry it out. The problem with involving more than one person in your conspiracy... People talk. Well, I mean, it's like the old saying about, how do you keep a secret between three people? You kill the other two. I'm not advocating that. I'm just saying that... Now, that's something the Illuminati would say. Now, Gerrit Dirkmaat's part of the Illuminati.

Richard And I would say as well that possibly one of the things that might have been referenced or thought of rather than maybe the Illuminati is the Freemasons. And that is something that we talked about. Freemasons, part one, part two, that was in March 31st of last year and April 7th of last year. So we know that that's one of the things that does come up as it relates to the temple. And so if you were to go to listen to those episodes, they might be able to provide you some additional context of things that you might be hearing from folks.

Gerrit Anyway, thank you so much, Elder Whipple. And we are now going to move to our primary topic, although I like this. These are both kind of related. They're talking about authority.

Richard Yes, so this one, this one comes to us from Neil. Dr. Dirkmaat, I see that Professor Richard LeDuc is not mentioned here.

Gerrit I think he's really only speaking to me.

Richard Interesting.

Gerrit Yeah.

Richard Interesting.

Gerrit Yeah.

Richard Interesting. I recently found your podcast and I'm hooked. I'm proud to say that I'm your first listener from Minnesota, if what you said during the Mormon Battalion episode is correct. I recently ran into an extreme anti. And by the way, so this goes on, but I will say, so in the pre-show on this is, and by pre-show, you know.

Gerrit We don't have a pre-show. There's no way to download it. But what he means is as we sat down minutes before we started recording to say, hey, which one of these emails should we respond to? That's what he means by the pre-show.

Richard We read the extreme anti and the question is of a serious nature. And we will, we promised to get to that. But it conjured in our mind, what is an extreme anti? And what we came up with is essentially someone who is an anti-Mormon, but also really into X Games.

Gerrit Yeah, and X Games anti-Mormon. That's right.

Richard So we talked about, you know, maybe like he's jumping out of a helicopter to ski down a mountain on a snowboard or board down a mountain yelling, you know, Solomon Spalding or something along those lines.

Gerrit He's doing a 360s off of moguls while he's yelling like, how could we don't know more about the First Vision? You know, that kind of stuff. I mean, we actually were cutting promos for the Extreme Anti-Mormon.

Richard Right, like he's got Tony Hawk on as a guest.

Gerrit Yeah, talking about it like, you know, that, you know, I'm not going to just talk about one Mormon conspiracy theory. I'm going to talk about two. I'm not just talking about three. It's not going to be a 720. It's going to be a 1440. You know, I'm going around four times anyway. But yeah, this idea of an extreme anti.

Richard Extreme anti.

Gerrit It conjured up that image.

Richard It was very funny to us.

Gerrit Sponsored by Mountain Dew.

Richard That's right. We have Gerrit who does the raspy anti-Mormon, who's on his eighth pack of cigarettes on, what else is the church hiding from me?

Gerrit Yep, you know what, they're not gonna tell you about how come we didn't hear about the fact there's more than one.

Richard Right, and now we have extreme anti that's talking about having Sean White on next week to talk about how many guns Willard Richards had. Anyway.

Gerrit Oh man, how many guns Willard Richards have? Let's talk about the Illuminati. I mean, boy, yeah.

Richard The conspiracy runs so deep. All right, so ran into an extreme anti. Trying to claim that the Joseph Smith Papers shows that there is no evidence for the restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood. I don't find him at all credible because he kept trying to conflate it with the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood. However, it did make me think you'd probably know a thing or two about it, and it would be an interesting topic for an episode or two. Keep up the good work, Neil.

Gerrit Well, I'm always a little troubled when people invoke the Joseph Smith Papers to say that, well, the Joseph Smith Papers proved this. It's actually become a real talking point among antagonistic people because that way they feel like they can demonstrate that, oh, I'm not just going to some blog, which first of all, yes, you are, right? Because you didn't read every single volume of the Joseph Smith Papers.

Richard By every single volume, you mean one word.

Gerrit I mean, even, did you even open the front? Did you see the frontest piece?

Richard So they did the same thing with Ruff Stone Rolling, right? They tried to use that as some sort of-

Gerrit Well, and I mean, at least in Ruff Stone Rolling's case, they could say, here's, you know, because it talked about Joseph Smith using a seer stone to translate, right? Which we have multiple podcasts on that. If you're wondering, you can go back to the beginning, we have multiple podcasts, and it was the fact that people hadn't heard of that before was what was being used. The fact that it was not known. But with the Joseph Smith Papers, it's a much more this claim of, oh, you know, even the church is admitting that the church isn't true, that kind of argument. You know, which seems like not the best sell point. I mean, I've had the experience on a couple of occasions, but one in particular, I was speaking at a fireside and someone came up afterwards and pretty condescendingly and angrily, I mean, it was obvious that he was very antagonistic from the, I don't know why he was there. I mean, gotta have something better to do on a Saturday night than that, right?

Gerrit I mean, I don't know. Anyway, you could at least watch the Anti-Mormon X Games. I'm gonna do a 720 mogul off of this while I figure out where Solomon Spaulding's manuscript is. Anyway, he came up and he said, you know, I've just got a real problem with some of the stuff you're saying because, and then he went to quote something and he's like, and that's what the Joseph Smith paper says. The Joseph Smith paper says that this isn't even true. And I was like, well, well, that's not in the Joseph Smith Papers. And he's like, no, it is. It's in there, it's in there, it's in there. And I said, it's not in there. And then he got even more angry. He's like, no, I know it's in there. And so I mean, I kind of had to pull rank a little bit. I was like, well, the volume you're talking about, I wrote. And so I know that it's not in there. So it's not, we can pull it up right now and you won't find it in there.

Richard That's a good flex.

Gerrit Yeah, I feel about even saying it. No, it's so great. Now everybody listening is like, I used to respect Gerrit, now I don't.

Richard No one ever said that. Here's the thing. Here's the thing that I love. So my wife's favorite thing is when Gerrit's irer gets up. Like, she doesn't like passive Gerrit. She likes that now he's been provoked.

Gerrit She likes angry Gerrit.

Richard Yeah, she likes Elijah calling down fire, Gerrit.

Gerrit I don't do that.

Richard Elijah the Tishbite calling down fire.

Gerrit Anyway, well, so he went on to say, he said, no, well, I mean, I know I've read it somewhere. And I was like, I have no doubt that you read it somewhere, but you're claiming that you read it from some authoritative source. And I mean, look, I understand what the argument is that's being made, but that's not the same thing. I feel like one of the more frustrating things for me when I deal with people that are making antagonistic arguments about the history of the church is that they want to have the air of academic, you know, credibility to them. They want to talk about sources, but then they want to draw conclusions that aren't in any way academic. And that's what's really frustrating to me because they will invent a standard and then already knowing that that standard doesn't fit the topic we're talking about, turn around and say, see, I told you it's not real.

Gerrit I mean, you have this with people who talk about the First Vision. I don't know how many times I've heard people say things like, I mean, obviously, I mean, if I saw God and Jesus, I would have immediately written about it and told people about it. Do you realize what's even coming out of your mouth? You're trying to tell me that you know what you would do if Jesus appeared to you right now. Well, unless that's already happened, and I don't really think we have either Phil Davis or Denver Snuff are listening, well, you don't actually know. I know what you think. I mean, to me, when someone talks about what they would have done if they had a vision is like after I had my fourth child listening to someone who's not yet married, criticizing the parenting of other people, right? They're getting married. Like, well, we're never gonna, we've already decided we are never, ever, ever, ever going to let our kids ever do this.

Gerrit And Angie and I would look at each other and be like, huh, you know, we'll see how that works out for you. Okay, can I call you and like, I don't know, the week after you have your first baby? Can I call you and we'll see? Let's compare notes and find out whether that's the case. Anyway, this is a really, this is an important topic, obviously, because the church is claiming that priesthood authority was both lost from the earth. And then the important aspect of this is that it was restored. You certainly aren't going to find anywhere in the Joseph Smith Papers that says, this proves that there was no restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood. So in that regard, that person's being somewhat dishonest. This is where assumption is such a key important thing that sometimes we assume things to be the case, and then we give them an assumed importance. And then what we're really upset by is not the actual event.

Gerrit It's the assumption that was made. And that's a great example with the First Vision. I mean, so I might have assumed that there was only one account of the First Vision, the one I quoted on my mission all the time to tell people about. I had never heard of any other accounts, so it's an obvious natural assumption to assume that he only said it one time. When I learn that there's other accounts, what's the next assumption I make? I make an assumption, well, obviously, every single time that story was told, it was word for word, because that's how I've been memorizing it on my mission. Now that sounds like it's a logical assumption, but it also doesn't follow the historical methodology. Historians do not expect someone talking about an event four, five, six, seven, eight different times in their life use exactly the same words and include all the same information. That's an inaccurate assumption. In this case, one of the assumptions is made is that when these miraculous events happened, that there was a scribe sitting there who chiseled it into stone, a scribe with a hammer and a chisel, chiseled the date into stone, chiseled the event into stone, and that that would be the proof that it happened.

Gerrit Think about this in terms of religious miracles. If the argument is that we don't know the exact date of the Melchizedek Priesthood restoration and therefore it's not true. So the first part is true. We don't know the exact date of the Melchizedek Priesthood restoration. But the conclusion that you draw from that, what if we applied that to the rest of Christianity? Why did you let me know what day Jesus was born? Oh, you don't know? In fact, do you even know what year Jesus was born? When did the angel come to Elijah? No, no, no. Don't give me some estimated year. I want to know what time of day the angel came on the exact day and the exact month. Oh, you don't know that? Well, clearly Elijah didn't even exist. I mean, the standard that someone making that claim is asking you to apply is a standard that they would never apply to their own religious beliefs.

Gerrit What day was it, day, month and year, when Jesus appeared to Paul or to Saul on the road to Damascus? Well, if you don't know that, then that means it didn't happen. Now, maybe you're dealing with someone who's an atheist and they say, yeah, yeah, it didn't happen. But if you are dealing with an atheist, there's some great questions to ask them too. Okay, so you can only believe in things that you can prove. Yes, okay, the only things you can believe are things you can prove. All right, wonderful. Explain to me dark matter and dark energy. Well, I can't, okay. But literally, the theory of your universe does not exist without those things existing. These two things that you can't measure, that you can't isolate, that you can't replicate, that you can't explain, but the universe would not exist at all if it didn't work. I mean, like, the reality is, whether you're an atheist, a Christian, or you're a Latter-day Saint, there are beliefs that you have to take on some type of faith that you can't prove them.

Gerrit And we talked about this before, about how we can know what happened in the past, back to our early, original podcast, in fact. And so miracles are not able to be proven or disproven on the basis of whether or not, I mean, let's ask the question another way around. Do you think the extreme anti, as he went over another mogul and did a 360 shouting, Melchizedek Priesthood, do you think if we have the exact date of the Melchizedek Priesthood restoration?

Richard That's the thing that's keeping him back.

Gerrit Do you think then he would be a believer? That he's like, oh yeah, gold plates, I'm all in. Angel appearing multiple times with Joseph, absolutely. John the Baptist, of course, because we have the date. Oh, we don't know when Peter, James and John came. I'm out. Yeah, I mean, it's actually, it's in many ways, I feel like it's a very manipulative claim, right? Because the argument makes it sound like this is such a big deal. That's the reason why I don't believe when in fact, it obviously isn't. He doesn't know the dates of any of the major miraculous events in Christian history. And that doesn't stop him from believing in Christ. Doesn't have him going to a Baptist church and making videos about how they're all worshiping some false Jesus. Because they don't know when he was born. So it's important to understand that. Now let's talk about what we have and why this is a controversy. So in order to do this, I'm going to have to get very boring.

Richard Yeah, that's kind of, it's on brand.

Gerrit Yeah, so when I say I'm going to have to get...

Richard Yeah, that suggests that we haven't been for the last 34 minutes.

Gerrit Maybe I should tell that story at this point. Okay, so it's important to understand that much of what we understand about church history as a laity, as a general membership of the church, especially before the Saints volumes came out, much of that stems from what we knew from the history of the church, right? You know, those multi-color little paperback ones, probably your grandpa's got them on the shelf there. So it's important we understand that source, I think. But even that source, right? That's not our source for when John the Baptist came to Joseph Smith. Joseph doesn't write down when John the Baptist came to Joseph Smith. Joseph doesn't say, oh, here's the exact date. We know it because later, Oliver Cowdery wrote a letter to the church in which he stated the day that John the Baptist returned and gave him the priesthood. That's how we know that it's May 15th.

Gerrit Now, of course, what if Oliver Cowdery was wrong? What if it was a typo? What if he actually said 11 and they wrote a 5 down? All kinds of things like that are possible, but that's how we know that date. But we don't have in the history of the church, we don't have an account of there we were and then Peter and James and John came and they gave me the priesthood. So I think that what they're making as a reference is the history of the church does not specifically describe that experience of Peter, James and John coming and restoring the Melchizedek Priesthood. Well, there's some good reasons to understand that. Let's talk about what the history of the church is. I know I've talked about this before, but this is such an important concept, especially when you're dealing with someone who's claiming that your history is flawed or that you don't know your history. You need to know what the source is that you're even talking about. After the debacle in Kirtland and at the beginning of the debacle in Missouri, there's a reason why Joseph Smith history in your scripture starts out with owing to the many false reports, especially after the violence that was enacted in Missouri.

Gerrit It became even more clear that Latter-day Saints needed to tell their own story, that we couldn't simply rely on other people to tell our story for us, because those people were not going to be honest purveyors of that information. In fact, you might say that that's the reason why we're even doing this podcast, is because our friend Brady essentially said, well, you need to do this because we need to get our own story out there. I know that there's many other wonderful Latter-day Saints doing podcasts to try to do the same thing. But in the absence of getting your own story out, what do you get? You get guy going down the moguls claiming, I bet he couldn't even have lifted the plates as he's going over, doing a 360. And so they decide, we've got to get our own story out. They've tried multiple times to write a history of the church, and it hasn't turned out very well.

Gerrit John Whitmer is assigned to be the church historian, and he will write a history, but he will actually apostatize before that history is published. And in fact, the church will ask to have it back because he wrote it under the auspices of the church, and then he refuses to give it back. And so another person, John Coral, writes a history. He also apostatized. There's kind of a theme here. It seems like these historians...

Richard Yeah, we're on our way out.

Gerrit Interesting.

Richard I'm a business PhD.

Gerrit It doesn't say anything. You know what? I don't know of a single business PhD from the Joseph Smith era who apostatized.

Richard Neil K. Whitney? Solid as a rock.

Gerrit Well, it wasn't a business PhD.

Richard Well, but he was a businessman.

Gerrit Oh, we're just going off a business man? I know lots that apostatize, man. You've jumped, you really overshot it. Yeah, yeah, jumped your shark. Anyway, so they start to craft another one. This is sometimes called the 1838, 1839 history, because that's when they start working on it. And it is a comprehensive thing that's primarily compiled by different scribes. Eventually, eventually, Willard Richards is going to take over the primary role of compiling this history and then starting to get it ready for print. And they're going to start publishing that history in 1842 in the Times and Seasons in Nauvoo. So they're working on this history and then they start to serially, which sounds better tasting than it is, they start to serially publish it in the newspaper, every issue publishing portions of that history.

Gerrit So how do they create that history? Well, as Mormon might tell you, in order to create a history, you need documents. Like unless you're just going to go off of oral interviews, which you certainly can, and you can create an oral history, you need documents. Let me give you an example of how different the documents are from the early Joseph Smith era to the later Nauvoo era. Documents volume one that myself and Michael McKay worked on, along with some others for the Joseph Smith Papers Project, that covered all of the earliest documents of Joseph Smith. And it spanned a time, including the introduction, those documents of 1827 to mid 1831, all in one volume. Why? Well, because there's not very many documents from that period.

Gerrit There's just not very many at all, which means the further back you get in Latter-day Saint history, the fewer documents there are to write that history. I'm assuming that Mormon had a few more records on his current war with the Lamanites than he did with Nephi's first war with the Lamanites, right? Because over the course of time, things might be lost. We know that some things were not readily available to Mormon because of words of Mormon, right? After he's already done abridging the first part of the Book of Mormon, he then finds Nephi's small plates and must have slapped his head and like every historian who finds something after they've already published, great. But it's already in pre-production. I mean, he's already etched these things.

Richard He's got the Book of Lehi, so I'll just throw it in.

Gerrit I'm like, I've already got my part, fine, but I'll just put it with this other part. So we know that, look, it's not just some easy thing that he's collecting records and that means he's at the mercy of whatever records he has. It's very obvious that in the early portions of the history of the church, that they don't have very many records. In fact, the primary record they have is the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. If you read the early history of the church, it kind of, it's like a, almost like a little Doctrine and Covenants commentary. It jumps from, from revelation to revelation to revelation at times, leaving out months at a time. You don't have those kinds of jumps in the later church history. In the later church history, you're getting an almost daily rendition of what Joseph's doing.

Gerrit Why? Well, at that point, Joseph has a journal and they're using his journal. Joseph has dozens of letters and they're using his letters. There are newspaper publications and so when they want to put in a report about how Orson Pratt's doing on his mission, they put in what he wrote to the newspaper. But early on, they don't really have very many documents. Now clearly some things were dictated by Joseph. I mean, that's how you're getting the First Vision accounts. I mean, I'm pretty sure that nobody has any idea what the angel said to Joseph except Joseph, right? So there's some places where you can only get that from Joseph. Nevertheless, there are many, many events in early church history that we know happened because we now have other sources or because people like Lucy Mac Smith will talk about it that aren't actually in the history of the church. Now that history was compiled and then, like I said, they began to publish it in Nauvoo.

Gerrit And that history, it was originally history of Joseph Smith, and then it continued on with the history of Brigham Young. That would eventually all be published as the history of the church. And that's the BH. Roberts compilation that you all have. So Joseph Smith history, history of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young history, history of the church, they're all the same document. They're all this collection that was, this history that was created in 1838 and 39 and then continually being written on even up until Joseph was murdered and then continued to write on it on into the Utah period, trying to catch up to those time periods. Because they were using the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants as a kind of as a guide as their primary document, there is a big gap in that early history. That gap comes between July of 1829 and March of 1830.

Gerrit Let me just demonstrate that for you by going to the manuscript history of the church. Now, there aren't exact dates that are even written in here, even in the manuscript history. But this is the last thing that is written concerning 1829. Meantime, our translation drawing to a close, we went to Palmyra, Wayne County, New York, secured the copyright and agreed with Mr. Egbert Grandin to print 5,000 copies for the sum of $3,000. So that's clearly the negotiations to print the Book of Mormon. We know that that happened in August of 1829 through multiple other sources, including Martin Harris' mortgage that he mortgages in order to pay for the printing of the Book of Mormon, that he mortgages to Grandin. He mortgages his farm. So that's August of 1829. And it's, all right, we're working on the translation. It's time to print the book. What is the next entry? Now, there is a, Joseph has a little aside there because he's talking about the printing of the Book of Mormon.

Gerrit He says, I should here state, and he begins to talk about where the title page of the Book of Mormon comes from. But that still all seems to be in that same August 1829. The very next narrative entry is this. A commandment of God and not of man to Martin Harris given Manchester, New York, March 1830 by him who is eternal. So we went from the Book of Mormon, not even, they haven't even started printing it yet. We just talked to Graham and, hey, is there any way that you can do this? Fine, I'll charge you a lot of money. To the Book of Mormon's published and Martin Harris, because the way this was couched was originally that Martin Harris was upset that he couldn't get the copies of the Book of Mormon to sell. Now, I should incidentally say that's D&C 19. And that has now been redated because we have other sources that date at 1829 that they weren't using to write the history of the church back then.

Gerrit So even the fact they jumped back in in March of 1830 is because of this revelation that's actually misdated. But it's also in the Book of Mormon's available for publication. Now, does that mean that literally nothing happened between August and March? August 1829 and March. Well, we know a lot of things happen. We actually know that Joseph Smith received revelations that aren't published in the Doctrine and Covenants. We know, I mean, one of the greatest stories of the translation, which we know is a big deal, is that they're printing the Book of Mormon in Grandin's print shop. And they only work on the regular days and they certainly don't operate it on the Sabbath because that would be violating the Sabbath. Well, Abner Cole, a local justice of the peace and a local lawyer, he's advertised quite a bit in the Palmyra Register for his legal services.

Gerrit He starts his own newspaper called the Palmyra Reflector. He uses as a pseudonym Obadiah Dogberry, which-

Richard That's quite the gnome de plume.

Gerrit Yeah, oh yes, if anyone would like a gnome de plume, Obadiah Dogberry is now available, I think, since, although I'm sure on some anti-Mormon website, there's a ton of people that are Obadiah Dogberry. You know what, I'm gonna check that out as soon as we're done recording. He decides that one of the ways that he can really gin up some sales for his nascent paper is here he is in Granite's print shop. He's there on nights and weekends, and all around him are the drying sheets of the Book of Mormon that's being printed there during the day. Well, everyone's anticipating this. I mean, this is something that's been in the neighborhood. People have been talking about for years now, and now they know that it's really being printed because Grandin's actually doing it. And so Cole decides he's gonna capitalize on all of that, all of the excitement surrounding the publication of the Book of Mormon.

Gerrit And he begins copying some of these drying pages into his newspaper and then printing them. So the first printed words of the Book of Mormon that many people saw were actually in this antagonist newspaper. Well, it's actually a great story, I believe I've told before on the podcast where Hyrum Smith feels uneasy about something and on a Sunday goes down to the print shop, even though we all know how bad that will look. I mean, already you believe in that gold Bible and now you're out of the print shop on a Sunday. They find Abner Cole stealing these portions of the Book of Mormon and they confront him and he refuses to do anything about it. Well, Lucy Mack Smith explains in her book that they send for Joseph and Joseph immediately comes up, takes a stage to come up, which is really expensive, to get up there to challenge Abner Cole to say, hey, I have a copyright for this. You can't just print this.

Gerrit So now we know this all happened. In part, we know it happened because we have copies of the Palmyra Reflector that are, we have those. They exist that are publishing portions of the Book of Mormon. We have Lucy Smith who's talking about it saying, this is what happened. It's a really big deal, something that nearly derailed the entire publication of the Book of Mormon process. And there is not a word of it in the history of the church, because it happened in probably January of 1830, and there's nothing that's covered between August of 1829 and March of 1830. They go to Canada to try to secure a copy of a copyright for the Book of Mormon in Canada, and they do that in the winter as well. There's no mention of that. The reality is the entirety passes over in silence.

Gerrit You go from August 1829 to March. Now, why did I make a big deal of saying that? Well, it's incredibly likely that that was the time period in which Peter, James, and John would have appeared, and given Joseph Smith that authority. Now, again, the antagonist is going to say something like, well, don't you think they would have written that down? Well, again, you're now arguing from the absence of evidence and that it stands to reason. They would not have thought that they were leaving out the story of Peter, James, and John. Why? Well, because what is in the history of the church? The entirety of Doctrine and Covenants Section 27. And that's not the first place that Peter, James, and John are mentioned, of course, because what's recorded in the history of the church is the words of John the Baptist and that experience. And John the Baptist says that he's acting under the authority of Peter, James, and John.

Gerrit So there you get the first introduction of Peter, James, and John right there in the history of the church. And then they will eventually copy in the entirety of D&C 27. And I'm just gonna read a portion of that where it says, I will drink of the fruit of the vine with you on earth and with Moroni, whom I have sent unto you to reveal the Book of Mormon containing the fullness of my everlasting gospel, to whom I have committed the keys of the record of the stick of Ephraim, and also with Elias, to whom I have committed the keys of bringing to pass the restoration of all things, or the restorer of all things spoken of by the mouth of all the holy prophets since the world began, concerning the last days, and also John, the son of Zacharias, which Zacharias he, Elias, visited and gave promise that he should have a son, and his name should be John. And he should be filled with the spirit of Elias, which John, I have sent unto you, my servants, Joseph Smith Jr. and Oliver Cowdery, to ordain you unto this first priesthood, which you have received, that you might be called and ordained even as Aaron.

Gerrit And also Elijah, unto whom I've committed the keys of the power of the turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, that the whole earth may not be smitten with a curse. And also with Joseph and Jacob and Isaac and Abraham, your fathers, by whom the promises remain. And also with Michael or Adam, the father of all, the prince of all, the ancient of days. And also with Peter and James and John, by whom I have sent unto you, by whom I have ordained you and confirmed you to be apostles and special witnesses of my name. And bear the keys of your ministry, and of the same things which I revealed unto them, unto whom I have committed the keys of my kingdom, and a dispensation of the gospel for the last times, and for the fullness of times, in the which I will gather together in one all things, both what you're in heaven and what you're on earth.

Gerrit And also with all those whom my father hath given me out of the world. Wherefore lift up your hearts and rejoice. So that's a pretty full account of that experience. You get an explanation that Peter, James, and John have come and what that ordination was, that they were ordained and confirmed to be apostles and special witnesses to bear the keys of the ministry. And what are those keys? The keys of the kingdom, the dispensation of the gospel for the last times, the fullness of times in which God will gather all things together. I mean, this is a pretty, it's actually more expansive than the explanation we get about John the Baptist. I mean, what he's giving us.

Richard And this is in August of 1830?

Gerrit Well, this is in the history of the church when they put into this revelation, which is D&C 27, that's where they place it in the history of the church. So you have that revelation being copied in. And so it's speaking after the fact. So I gave you this. Now, very interestingly, one of the apostate groups that would form after Joseph Smith was murdered, I know people want us to do a whole thing on this.

Richard We received a lot of emails on succession.

Gerrit Essentially, I don't know if it's because everyone's looking for a better option or I don't know what's going on, but we've had a lot of people say, hey, can you talk about the succession crisis? And we plan to do that. We will at some point, should I commit to this?

Richard You should. This one is a very popular topic that people wanna understand after Joseph Smith passes away, what happens in that gap.

Gerrit Okay, so we'll talk about the succession crisis at some point in the future, but it is important to note, Brigham Young is going to refute the idea that this other apostate group, it's actually William McClellan, he's going to claim that, well, he has more authority because he was ordained to be an apostle first, and then before that, he was ordained to the high priesthood, and I don't even know if Brigham Young was ever even ordained to the high priesthood. I mean, it's this whole, you know, I hate to break it to you, but apostates make similar bad arguments than as they do now. So it's, they're all in the X Games, let's put it that way. And Brigham Young is going to state, well, Joseph had to be ordained an apostle before the church was founded, because only an apostle can confound Christ's church, right, as this idea. And that's exactly what they are called to do.

Gerrit They are called in D&C 27, they are called to be apostles, by whom I have ordained you and confirmed you to be apostles.

Richard One thing that is interesting, I know you brought up before, the idea that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery would understand fully what it is that is even going on here as it relates to the Melchizedek versus the Aaronic Priesthood.

Gerrit Yeah, and they likely aren't even using those terminologies. I mean, you'll notice here that they're even saying this first priesthood, and then you get this second infusion of power, right? We have a very codified understanding of all these things. We are the product of another 200 years of revelation of prophets being able to clarify, oh, well, this power goes with this. Even Joseph, I mean, you think about this, when D&C 27 is revealed, talking about all of those keys that God has restored, well, there are bishops yet. Bishops haven't been created in the church yet. That's how early it on it is in the church. So back to the original question, well, this person's claiming that the Joseph Smith Papers prove that there's nothing that says that Peter, James and John came. Well, that's obviously not true. Doctor and Covenants Section 27 is part of it.

Gerrit Now, Doctor and Covenants Section 27, in that fuller extant version, the earliest we have, the earliest copy we have is 1835. Possibly late 1834, but that's the earliest copy we have. So I could see someone say, oh, oh really? Very convenient that it's not written down before that. But again, we're already dealing with the fact that Joseph Smith had a First Vision that we don't have written down for another, or we don't have any records of it for another 12 years. So it's really just one of those, it stands to reason arguments. And I always go back to the fact that we are talking about a miracle here. Whether or not Peter, James and John came is not dependent on whether or not the scribes compiling the history of the church created a narrative for it. Just like whether or not Jesus is the Christ is not dependent upon whether or not the apostles gave enough details about how exactly that stone got rolled away.

Gerrit That's great, it's nice. It'll be wonderful for some Bible trivia when you go to your next divinity school, but it is not the essential aspect of the Lord. In this case, this is a miracle. I can't, as a historian, replicate Peter, James and John appearing to Joseph. I can only say that Joseph Smith said that it happened. It apparently happened at some point before the church, before the church was organized, in this window of time for which our history is essentially silent. Now, Joseph's going to refer to it again. It's not the only time Joseph will refer to it. As you all know, in Doctrine and Covenants, Section 128, Joseph will again refer to the fact that Peter, James and John came and committed to them the keys of the kingdom and gave them this apostolic authority. So the argument that someone is making is essentially it's back to the same First Vision argument.

Gerrit If they don't have a record of this being said, when I think they should have made it, and by me, I'm just saying, well, I just decided, well, then that proves that it's not true. What can someone say as a historian? A narrative account of the appearance of Peter, James and John to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery does not exist. They don't write out all the things that happened and what that was like, but they certainly are publishing accounts. One of them being a revelation from God explaining that Peter, James and John came and gave them, made them apostles and gave them that authority. So, I mean, if we look back at our past with an eye to, if I don't have a document for X, that means everyone's lying to me. But, you know, talk about the Illuminati, right? I mean, the reality is, even if we had a document that says this is what happened, people might not believe.

Gerrit In fact, I would guess that extreme anti-Mormon, you know, after he lands on the 720 from the mogul, my guess is he doesn't accept Joseph Smith's vision of Moses, Elias and Elijah in the Kirtland Temple. Now that's written in Joseph's journal. Does that mean that that absolutely happened? And if he does accept that as evidence, that as long as it's written down at the time, that makes it true, well, then I guess Joseph's a prophet and you have to listen to what he says when he writes the letter saying Peter, James and John appeared to me. The reality is it is a specious argument, in part because the person making it doesn't even believe the parameters of debate that they have set up for themselves. The reason why you don't believe Peter, James and John brought the Melchizedek Priesthood isn't because you don't have an early date for it. It's because you don't believe. And if there were 17 different sources stating exactly the date of it, you wouldn't believe it.

Gerrit Or do you believe that John the Baptist restored the Aaronic Priesthood? Because we have a date for that. So I guess that makes that one true. I know that those things sound like, and the reason why they're effective is they, they're shocking to people. And so if I can shock someone, then they're like, well, what do you mean it was never written down? And then you do it, yeah, don't you think you, don't you think you'd write it down? I mean, don't you think if it was that important, you'd write it down? I think that the don't you think and it stands to reason arguments are arguments that first and foremost start without any faith. We are talking about miracles. We are talking about the Savior of mankind being resurrected and saving every person on this earth. Prove me that, show me that. Before you demand evidence for your miracles, you should probably first realize what the implication of that is.

Gerrit Are you okay claiming that Jesus is not really the Messiah because you don't have a document dated the day he walked out of the tomb? My guess is most Christians aren't willing to go that far. So thank you so much for joining us and we will talk with everyone 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.

Peter, James, and John

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Elder Whipple, missionary email

Brigham Young on the Danite rumors (source not named on air)

Neil, listener email

Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling

Oliver Cowdery's letter giving the date of John the Baptist's visit

Joseph Smith-History 1:1

John Whitmer's history

History of the Church (Joseph Smith's 1838-39 manuscript history, serialized in the Times and Seasons from 1842; later B. H. Roberts's edition)

The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Volume 1

Words of Mormon

Manuscript history of the church, last entry for 1829

Martin Harris's mortgage to Egbert B. Grandin (August 1829)

D&C 19

Palmyra Reflector (Abner Cole, as "Obadiah Dogberry")

Lucy Mack Smith's history

D&C 27:5-13

Brigham Young's response to William E. McLellin's claim to authority

D&C 128:20

D&C 110

What does Richard know by heart from his childhood?

Then and now

From 1827 to 1842

Money said on air

Percentages said on air

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words