SOT LitnerStandard of Truth listener companion
Quakers on the moon, coming up
S3E6 · Men (Quakers) on the Moon
0:00 / 1:06:30
14 chapters
← All episodes
Standard of Truth · Season 3 · Episode 6 · 1:06:30

Men (Quakers) on the Moon

The famous men on the moon were not little at all: the story describes them as nearly six feet tall and dressed something like Quakers.

Press play above. The page follows along.
The question ·
Did Joseph Smith ever say there were little men living on the moon?
Jacob (listener)

After plugging the new newsletter and premium shows, Richard reads Jacob's question about whether Joseph Smith said people live on the moon, a claim both hosts heard on their missions. Gerrit uses it to teach tools for checking claims, then traces the story to Oliver B. Huntington's 1892 Young Woman's Journal article and his journal from the 1880s. That same journal is full of secondhand Joseph stories, like a man flown 500 miles in a night, and Gerrit says there is no record of Joseph himself saying it. He lands on the idea that prophets live in their own time and can hold the ideas of that time, and a testimony should not rise or fall on one journal entry written 40 years later.

Who comes upJoseph SmithOliver B. HuntingtonJoseph Smith Sr.Robert B. ThompsonMercy Fielding Thompson

Chapters

Tap a chapter to jump there

Transcript

180 moments · tap a time to play from there
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're going to talk about a claim of men dressed as Quakers on the moon. But before we get to that...
Gerrit We've decided we're, you know, we're going to the real hot button issues.
Richard Well, so I did get this on my mission, and I know you did as well. And so it's one of those things. So we're going to get to that. Before we do, I'm going to do some shameless promotion. We'll start with the free stuff and work up to the most expensive. So first we'd like to, in the description of the email, both on Apple or Spotify or however you access our podcast, please click on the link to take you to the newsletter. Gerrit is going to be occasionally sending out newsletters at least monthly to start, providing a bunch of additional content and providing links to sources that we say we're going to put in, but never actually put in and never actually have any intent to put in.
Gerrit You're already over-promising.
Richard So that is completely free and we would love for you to sign up to the newsletter. That would be lovely.
Gerrit I think it'd be fun just sometimes to highlight, even if they aren't documents we've been talking about, just some cool documents, you know, here's a letter Joseph Smith wrote about this, you know, for people to read.
Richard Yeah, we got the idea from a listener and then also Gerrit sent that out to people that are going on the tour with us in June around Christmas time. What a perfect segue. We've had a couple of people drop out. We have at least four spots open on the tour and would love for people to join us. I believe it's the first week of June.
Gerrit You don't know when it is?
Richard I don't know when it is. I think it's June 2nd through the 9th.
Gerrit It's important to know that Richard is a vice president of sales, but he decided to make the pitch without actually knowing what it was selling.
Richard I'm fairly confident it's this year. It's in June, it's the first week in June, and we'd love to have you.
Gerrit Unless there's another flood, right?
Richard That's true.
Gerrit I've seen a rainbow.
Richard So we're planning to have it. But it should be a lot of fun. We're going to, starting in Boston, doing a little American history, and then going to Sharon and Harmony and Palmyra and Kirtland. Playing all the hits.
Gerrit Going to some Revolutionary War battlefields as well.
Richard So you can access that at standardoftruth.com. And also we have some premium content. We're so grateful for those that have signed up for it. A little bit of American history there in Condemned to Repeat It. A little bit of the church in chronological order in terms of the restoration. We started with Paul, just to give you an idea of how that's, the pace that that's going to be going.
Gerrit Well, we're going to start with the apostasy. So, you know, no one screams apostasy like, the Apostle Paul? His letters, his letters.
Richard So we start with Paul, and then we quickly jump from Paul all the way to about 70 AD. But we'd love for you to listen to those, as well as sacred places from our, or holy places from our past. I was outvoted on crinkling leaves as the potential topic.
Gerrit Richard wanted to name our premium content crinkling leaves, because we were going to do sound effects behind it.
Richard Like, here we are in a sacred place. Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle. Anyway, so, and that one we've started in Harmony. That's going to be multiple parts. And so we, those drop on Mondays, and we would love for you to be able to join us on that. Spotify for all of those Android listeners, and also Apple has that as well. So those drop on Mondays, and then obviously our free content comes out on Thursday. So that's all the shameless promotions that I could possibly give.
Gerrit Well, I just want to say thank you to all the people that have emailed in and sent questions and kind thoughts. We legitimately could not read all of the emails we received because if we did, first of all, Richard's already run out of names of the Postmaster Generals for the mailbag.
Richard I think we settled on Damien's great, great, great, great, great grandmother who was one of the first Postmasters.
Gerrit As the first female Postmaster from Jordan, was it?
Richard No, it was Draper, oh crud, Draper.
Gerrit Damien's gonna be emailing us. Sorry, Damien, Richard did a bad job in his prep work.
Richard Yeah, shocking. You knew what this was when you picked it up.
Gerrit Well, I just want to remind everyone that while there is paid content, this is still free.
Richard Yeah, yeah, you are getting what you paid for.
Gerrit We also wanted to give a shout out to some of our fun listeners, even though we can't respond to all of them. We just got a, right before we went on the air, we got a great email from Judith, who sent some really kind words, some questions, and we just don't have time to answer all of the questions, and not all of them fit in, and some are much more involved than others. It would require multi-part, which hasn't stopped us before. But we have some things that are in the hopper that we've already decided to discuss. And then we also want to respond to questions that people have. But we really just appreciate everybody who's been so kind to us. I do get some angry emails where I'm informed what part of hell I'll be visiting for the remainder of eternity.
Richard Most of those come on Facebook.
Gerrit Well, most of them come from Richard. To be fair, they're mostly coming from Richard.
Richard On Facebook.
Gerrit Yeah, on Facebook, which is crazy. He could just text me, and he sends me Facebook messages. But, you know, we, our number one, our first premium content listener was Tammy, who has most of her in-laws listening to the podcast. I was reminded again that Lisa is our number one fan.
Richard But I don't believe she mentioned me. I think she specifically said to you.
Gerrit Well, I mean, look, eventually we're gonna start, you know, meeting with people, so we can have one-to-one conversations, and we'll just say that I'm going, but Richard will show up. I think that's, yeah.
Richard You're familiar, in a previous podcast, we talked about the Millerite movement and the great disappointment.
Gerrit Yeah, this is very similar. You think you're going to go meet me. Well, that sounds terrible.
Richard Oh, it's just perfect.
Gerrit I had a great conversation this past week with Dallin and Carter, who are, he has the same name as my brother, Dallin, which I have many conversations with my brother, Dallin, but this is a guy in our stake, who is in our stake presidency, in fact, and he's not anymore, so I can talk about it.
Richard Yeah, absolutely.
Gerrit Yeah. But just great people who've just been so kind with the content, and that's what our hope is. Look, our hope is that we can help people kind of answer some of these questions that we can provide some, again, very free entertainment as we have already demonstrated. But also perhaps give you some tools for looking at things going forward, which actually brings us to this first question we got from one of our very kind listeners.
Richard Okay, so this is the Phebe Draper Palmer Brown mailbag.
Gerrit Okay, very good.
Richard That's right, first postmaster of Draper.
Gerrit There we go.
Richard There it is. There it is. Dr. Dirkmaat. I see that I am not mentioned here. Dr. Dirkmaat.
Gerrit This is a real thing for you guys. If you want to be on the top of the mailbag, I'm surprised this one even made it through.
Richard Well, it was an interesting question actually that sparked a couple of conversations that Gerrit and I had laughing about our own missions and this topic coming up. But Dr. Dirkmaat, my question is this. Did Joseph Smith ever say there were little men living on the moon? I have heard that rumor, but haven't looked into it. I am curious on that one if it's just one of those myths. Thank you, Jacob. And so for me actually, I was first made aware of this in Corona, California. Shout out to the Circle City that was part of my mission. And-
Gerrit Do you think Corona, California has like some negative vibe because of the coronavirus? Do you think?
Richard Yeah, they might.
Gerrit Do you think there are people like, man-
Richard I know that the adult beverage Corona took actually a pretty decent hit initially, just based on ignorance and whatever.
Gerrit So there are people who drink beer who are dumb enough to believe that Corona beer could give you coronavirus? Is that-
Richard I don't know that there's necessarily causation, but I know there was a decline in purchase. So perhaps-
Gerrit I would have think most people would be drinking more beer during the coronavirus. Yeah, for sure. Especially with stimulus.
Richard So I remember we had just had a recent convert. It was actually my first transfer. I was sent to Corona, California, and they had just baptized this wonderful gentleman. He was in maybe late 60s or at least 70s in age, and he was our team up that night. We got Book of Mormon referrals, Bible referrals, Lamb of God, Luke 2. The Lamb of God and Luke 2 referrals that we received via fax machine, those ended up oftentimes were pretty good appointments. And look, I'm not saying this is the case for everyone. I'm just saying this is the case for me, that the Bible referrals, as you've mentioned in previous podcasts, they just wanted their Bible in for us to leave them alone. And the Book of Mormon referrals that came through the videos and things, that often they wanted to either bash or-
Gerrit Rob you.
Richard Or bash.
Gerrit Bash or bash or rob you, yeah.
Richard Also, as just a quick aside, one of my favorite things is Gerrit would often get these Book of Mormon referrals in Wisconsin. And where did they lead you?
Gerrit They would often, people had figured out, if you were to go to like 3000 on this particular road, that that would drive you directly into the middle of Lake Michigan. So like, well wait a minute, this is only like 200. And as you keep going, you're like, oh I see. 3000 is about 50 feet into the water.
Richard Yes. Well, but so, in this particular instance, it was a Book of Mormon referral, and we brought this recent convert, just the sweetest man, and he led with this idea of Joseph Smith said that there are men on the moon dressed as Quakers, and that was the first time I was exposed to that. I was like, what are you talking about? But I know that you also received that.
Gerrit Yeah, and I can't remember the full context of mine. I believe I was meeting with someone who had a list of things, but the reason they listed it off, and then the next thing they read was something that was demonstrably false, and so we spent all of our time on that one before they threw us out.
Richard Okay, so kind of an OG CES letter.
Gerrit Yeah, yeah, it was the original gangster, just a shotgun, everything. So I think it's important. So let's talk about tools when people present you with things like this. First and foremost, for us on our mission, look, the internet existed.
Richard I mean, sort of.
Gerrit Yeah, I mean, it kind of existed.
Richard Yeah, it existed.
Gerrit You got mail. Right, that kind of, yeah. Everyone had a bunch of AOL CDs with free 100 minutes on it. They were throwing in there to try to get it. But there was just not very much ability. I mean, this was back when chat rooms were a huge deal, right? Like you'd get on and you'd chat with someone in real time, and you'd get anti-Mormon stuff that way. But where are you from? Utah? Oh, you believe in the wrong Jesus. Especially back then, there usually is some kind of antecedent to what it is that they're making the claim. Now, that there's a source, this is something we've spent a lot of time on this podcast, that there's a source from the past that makes the accusation, and that the source is a good source and should be used to determine whether or not we have a testimony. Those are wildly different things.
Richard Right, because the claim isn't that someone said that Joseph said the thing. The claim is Joseph Smith said this thing.
Gerrit Right, and Joseph Smith is therefore a false prophet because he claimed that, and of course, there's no men on the moon. Now, that doesn't even take into account the nuances of God allowing people to believe whatever it is that they believe until he tells them something different. Right? God does not seem to be in the habit of telling people things that haven't yet been revealed. I mean, there are all kinds of examples of this in the past where prophets don't know everything. They only know what it is that God has revealed to them so far. So, why doesn't God just reveal to Joseph Smith that the thing that's really killing everybody in Nauvoo is mosquitoes and malaria? Why does he have Joseph Smith believing that it's swampy air and a miasma from the water that's causing it? I mean, look, there is connection there. Obviously, that's where the mosquitoes are breathing, but they have this connection, but they don't understand.
Gerrit So someone can always shake their fist back at history and say, well, why didn't God tell the prophet this? Well, I mean, that's a question, but it's now asking something for which there isn't really an answer. So one thing that's always lost in these discussions is that simply because a prophet is living in the world the same way other people are living in the world, doesn't make them not a prophet. And they were wrong about assumptions all the time. I mean, Elijah really believed that there was no one left in the nation of Israel that hadn't worshiped by all. And until God told him, actually, there's thousands of people. Now, did that mean Elijah was a liar? Did that mean Elijah was just an idiot? I mean, like, it meant that Elijah as a man thought he already knew that there was no one left, but as a man, he was wrong. And eventually, God corrected him, but God didn't correct him right away. He waited until Elijah went out storming out of the city and said, all right, it's enough, let me die.
Gerrit It was a while before he had that corrected. So this is something that's very difficult for our Christian friends who have negative views towards our church. They want to try to take our belief in a prophet and turn it into us believing that prophets are infallible know-it-alls who literally know everything at all times, rather than the people God has given the authority and the keys to receive revelation when God deems to give revelation. But there's a great question that no Christian can answer, and that is, when and why does God decide to give the revelation that he gives? Why does he wait to give some revelations? Why doesn't he give it immediately? Why do the children of Israel have to suffer in Egypt for 400 years as slaves? 400 years. Longer than the United States has existed as a country, that's how long the children of Israel need to suffer, live, die, children born, live, die, live, die as slaves.
Gerrit Couldn't God have raised up a Moses, I don't know, 20 years into it? When we're talking about God, the answer is always God could have done something different. We don't know why God didn't do something different. We just know that he didn't. So I think it's always important to catch yourself. People who are going to be asking questions about prophets and their fallibility, usually are approaching it from a position of, not even just if a prophet prophesied something that doesn't come to pass, and by the way, what they mean is, doesn't come to pass the way they think that it should have. We've talked about what Joseph Smith's prophecy on the Civil War, how hilarious it is that some people will attempt to nitpick that prophecy to say, well, I mean, there weren't major slave uprisings during the Civil War, so it says that slaves will rise up against their masters, and that doesn't really happen.
Gerrit And you're like, so wait a minute, so you're conceding that Joseph Smith predicted that the Civil War would be bloody even though no one thought it would happen, that he predicted it would last a long time even though no one thought it would happen, that he predicted where it would be even though no one thought it would happen, and exactly what the cause would be even though no one thought it would happen, but you're hung up on the fact that you don't think there were enough slave uprisings to justify the fact that he said there would be slave uprisings.
Richard Not that there were none, there just weren't enough.
Gerrit There weren't enough. I mean, it's such a weird thing to do. And again, I understand all of these arguments when they're coming from atheists. I get it. You don't believe in God at all. I don't know why you're listening to this podcast, but.
Richard Thank you for signing up for the premium content.
Gerrit Thank you for signing up. We do do some straight history in the Condemned to Repeat It podcast, but I understand why an atheist simply dismisses anything that has anything to do with God. I actually appreciated some of my atheist professors more than my more religious ones, because my atheist professors, when I was getting my PhD, they thought I was stupid for being a Latter-day Saint. They thought anyone who believed in God was stupid. But they didn't think that I was any more stupid than someone who was a Catholic. They just thought I was just as stupid as anyone who believed in God. Whereas Christians often apply a very, very different standard to Latter-day Saints than they do to themselves. It's very obvious that the prophets in the Bible, in the Old and in the New Testament, don't know everything.
Gerrit Don't know everything. So why do we expect that prophets today would know everything? I mean, Latter-day Saints don't believe that prophets are infallible. They believe that prophets are the vessel whereby God gives revelation when that revelation comes. So that's an important context for this entire discussion. First and foremost, usually if there's something that you've heard from that long ago, there is some source behind it. So it's rare that someone just simply writes an entire, like, you know, creates out of whole cloth something that's fake. Also, the other thing though is if something is coming from that long ago, like from your mission, it's almost certainly published somewhere. Because I've met a lot of anti-Mormons in my day. You know what they don't do? Go to archives. They want to tell you how much time they've spent researching things, but they don't actually want to actually research things.
Gerrit What they mean by that is I read something that someone else pulled together, and now I know more than most people I know, and that makes me an expert.
Richard In fairness though, to the extreme anti-Mormon, it's tough.
Gerrit From last episode.
Richard Yeah. It is tough to look through microfilm while doing a backside heel flip.
Gerrit Yeah. Yeah.
Richard It's very difficult.
Gerrit If you're going to be doing a trick off of that mogul while you're yelling about Solomon Spaulding, It's very difficult. It's gonna be very difficult. I mean, frankly, it's actually one of my pet peeves, and I know this wasn't what the question was about, but I'm gonna rant a little bit, and if you don't like it, you can go get your own podcast.
Richard That's right, if you're so smart, go get your own podcast about men on the moon, Dress as Quakers.
Gerrit It's frustrating to me because I hear people say things all the time, like, oh no, he's done a lot of studying on this. No, she has just read so much about it. She just knows so, and yet none of that studying seems to be in any way comprehensive, right? When someone says to me, well, I read this in the Journal of Discourses, and it really made me lose my faith. You know, whatever I actually say to the person, what's going on in my mind is, oh really? So you were just reading through all 26, whatever volumes of it, got to the 17th volume, halfway through it, read that, and then was like, wait a minute, I'm troubled by this.
Richard So it's one of those things though, to your point, is that, why does that matter? It's because they're starting from a place where they're not being genuine. You read this somewhere online, or you heard this from some person or something.
Gerrit Who told you what to think about it.
Richard Right, exactly. Not just told you that it's there, but what to think about it. And people don't want to be, they start off at a place where they're not being honest, they're not being genuine. And to your point, almost nothing you say now at this point matters, because they're starting from a place where they didn't do the thing that they're claiming to do. But somehow there's some virtue in not looking at those things and claiming to go through.
Gerrit Well, it's, I mean, I don't know what virtue is aside from laziness. I mean, look, we're talking about the kingdom of God on earth here. Either the claims that are being made by Joseph Smith and the church are true, and this is the most important thing that exists, or they're not. In which case, how are you going to find out? If your grand total of investigation involves less time than you spent binging a show on Netflix this week, well, it must not really be that important to you. I mean, I realize it's not easy, but the ease of researching something, that's not really the determining factor of whether or not it's helpful to you if we're talking about your soul. I get this a lot when people will tell me what they think Brigham Young's personality is. They caricature him. I mean, Brigham Young's easy to caricature. We love to do it in the church. You know, we've all heard little pithy quotes or, you know, oh yeah, bring him this, bring him that.
Gerrit Whenever I'm in a serious discussion with somebody, you know, another scholar or someone who's talking about it, they say, well, Brigham Young this, and it doesn't align with what I have read from him, I always like to ask, well, well, how much of Brigham Young's writings have you read? Well, oh no, I've read some stuff from Brigham. Okay, there are like hundreds of Brigham Young sermons that are publicly available. How many of them have you read from start to finish? Not because someone said, oh man, you've got to go look at what he says about this in here, but because you just read it to find out. Brigham Young's journals are available. How many people have gone and read his journals to get an insight into who he is? You can see how weird it is that we think we know people from the past when we haven't even put in a slight actual effort to find out who they are. Imagine, imagine if someone were to judge you, not by all of the texts in your phone, not by the conversations you've had, not by the lessons you taught at church, but because they got part of a single text that you sent a friend when you were joking around.
Gerrit And they said, that's who you are. And they went around telling everybody that's who you are. We kind of do this with historical figures from the past. We think we know who they are in part because of the way they're presented in movies or in popular culture, but that is not the result of a deep dive into the things they actually said and did. The number of people you meet who've actually spent time doing that is very small. And I don't expect that everyone can. I mean, look, look, I've got a dream job, right? My job is to read church history documents all day long and then publish on them. That's my job. Somehow, I am paid money for this. Now, it's not an enormous amount. I'm sure Captain Professor, you know, you know, Jean Dorme LeDuc over here will forever be more valuable to the world than a historian will be. And it won't even be close.
Gerrit But still, because it's my job, I spend an enormous amount of time on those things because it's my job. And of course, not everyone can do that. So I'm not saying, oh, you don't get to have an opinion about everything, about anything, unless you've spent all this time. What I am saying, though, is let's take a pause before we decide we do know something if we haven't ourselves spent very much time investigating it. You know, we have this, it happens when it's a doctrine or a story or a belief that really means something to us. We will often make that front and center and without actually doing a lot of investigation surrounding it. And I've done this myself in my own life. Anyway, all that is to say, just as a rule, challenge what your assumptions are about what you know and how you know it.
Gerrit Things like knowing that the Book of Mormon is true. Well, you've probably put in all kinds of time on that. You've probably read the Book of Mormon more than any other book that you own. You've read it a dozen times, two dozen times. Even if you've read it three times, that's more than any other. How many other books have you read three times? And I don't mean like the ones you read to your kids when they keep handing you the same one. No, I want to read this one. No, that will take another 20 minutes, and I just want to go to bed. I mean, like really read the book. So of course, you're going to feel really close to the Book of Mormon because you've spent so much time with it. And so back to this specific question, it was around this antagonistic attack was around when you were on your mission, when I was on my mission, because it was in an easily findable place, and therefore it made for easy fodder for anti-mormons. So let's talk about the source that it was in that was taken from by those people there in Corona while they were waiting to...
Gerrit How did that end up turning out, by the way?
Richard It was actually a great story. He joined the church and became a bishop. No.
Gerrit Oh, I was going to say, wow, that never once happened.
Richard No, no, no, it doesn't.
Gerrit No one ever joined the church in Wisconsin.
Richard But so the way it ended, actually, was this recent convert of two or three months just bore his testimony of the truthfulness of the restored gospel, and we left, and when we got in the car, he said, you know, when I joined the church, I knew that there would be people that would attack it, and that's what I signed up for. And it was actually, to me, who was a brand new missionary, I'd only been out for a couple of months, but it was a pretty impactful experience. So it was great.
Gerrit Yeah, that's better than any experience I had for my mission. Richard's always just shaming me. He's like, well, maybe if you were more righteous.
Richard You should listen to the Gospel of Prosperity, part one, two, and two and a half.
Gerrit The Prosperity Gospels, yep. So the published version of this story, which I'm guessing is where it originates from, because I'm going to just doubt that most people have gone back to the original journal. That's what I'm going to doubt. But it comes from the Young Woman's Journal. So the Young Woman's Journal is a publication near the end of the 19th century. And this particular one is from 1892. 1892, number three, page 263. And there's an article that's published in this church publication called Our Sunday Chapter. And it's written by Oliver Huntington. Oliver Huntington titles this article, The Inhabitance of the Moon. Astronomers and philosophers have from time almost immemorial until very recently asserted that the moon was uninhabited, that it has no atmosphere, et cetera.
Gerrit But recent discoveries, through the means of powerful telescopes, have given scientists a doubt or two upon that old theory. Now, you can already tell that the way he's trending in this, arguing that there is an atmosphere on the moon, is, you know, again, people can't know everything. Nearly all the great discoveries of men in the last half century have, in one way or another, either directly or indirectly, contributed to prove Joseph Smith to be a prophet. So, he's making this argument that, even though most people have always thought that there was no person living on the moon and that there was no atmosphere of the moon, those people are wrong, and the fact that they're wrong actually proves that Joseph Smith was a prophet. As far back as 1837, he continues, I know that Joseph said that the moon was inhabited by men and women the same as this earth, and that they lived to a greater age than we do, that they lived generally to near the age of a thousand years.
Gerrit He described the men as averaging near six feet in height and dressing quite uniformly in something near the Quaker style. So, I think part of the question that he had sent in, said that there were little men living on the moon. Well, I think six foot in height's a pretty good size man.
Richard Well, we do know from Apollo 11 that Buzz Aldrin was 5'10. We know that Michael Collins, who actually didn't step on the moon, right? He was still in the show. He was 5'11.
Gerrit And this is not the same Michael Collins who was the head of the Irish Republican Army.
Richard He was 5'7. And then, that was actually the first thing that came up in the search, so that's how I... And then Neil Armstrong was also 5'11. So right there, Joseph Smith has proved to be a false prophet.
Gerrit Because it's but average. No, they're average, you know.
Richard No one's over six foot, so the average is much lower.
Gerrit Well, maybe there's just an astronaut you don't know about. We landed on the moon several times.
Richard Yeah, we did, sure.
Gerrit But so you can see where this comes from. Now, this is something that he has a personal feeling towards, because apparently the patriarchal blessing that he received, which he continues on. Now, that's not from Joseph, but it's from Joseph Smith Sr. And this is not the exact phrasing of it, but he appears to be paraphrasing it. He says, in my patriarchal blessing given by the father of Joseph the prophet, in Kirtland 1837, I was told that I should preach the gospel before I was 21 years of age, that I should preach the gospel of the inhabitants upon the islands of the sea and to the inhabitants of the moon. Even the planet you can now behold with your eyes. The first two promises have been fulfilled and the latter may be verified. From the verification of the two promises, we may reasonably expect that the third will be fulfilled also. So he seems to really believe he's going to preach to the inhabitants on the moon. So you can see why he has this kind of personal feeling towards it.
Gerrit Now this is published in a church publication, the Young Women's Journal. And so it's widely circulated, and this is where this is coming from. However, if we wanted to go back further, we could get back further into why is it that he's saying this. Now he's certainly referencing back to this patriarchal blessing, but he says that he knows that the prophet was teaching this as early as 1837. So, if we go to Oliver Huntington's journal, which you can get through the BYU digital collections, his journal has been digitized. You can actually read the whole journal in his handwriting. And while it says it's a journal, it really is, a lot of it is reminiscent accounts, some of it's daily accounts. And this is a place where actually it is a collection of teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith that are not necessarily, well, they're certainly not contemporary.
Gerrit I mean, these are all reflections backwards. It comes in his journal in the midst of several other things that are going on. He's going to be giving, you know, a kind of a daily calendar of events like you normally would in a journal. And then it's going to break off into a whole bunch of other reminiscent teachings. Remember when I say reminiscent, what I mean is someone looking back and saying, oh, this is what so-and-so said back then.
Richard So this in the Young Women's Journal is 1892.
Gerrit 1892.
Richard And this journal that we're looking at here with reminiscence and other things is when?
Gerrit Well, it's sometime between, at least apparently, 1880, October of 1880 and in 1881, because the last entry you have, so you have an entry that's like a daily entry, and he's going through things. He's like, December 22nd, Sister Hall was endowed for Lydia Huntington and sealed to Joseph Smith Sr. So he's going through this daily list of events. And then he's going to get into 1881. So it's going to be between January 10th of 1881, right? So he has this in here, January and then January 13th. And then after that, you have a bunch of stories that are going to be entered into the record. Now, one of them is a letter that he copies in that's from St. George, February 17th, 1881.
Gerrit So even though that's not a daily entry, you got to figure, okay, what he's copying in is after February 17th, 1881. But as you go further forward, you just start getting a whole list of things that people have said that Joseph Smith taught. And let me give you an example of that. He is going to give an example of someone who gives an account of when the Melchizedek Priesthood was restored. Something he's heard from a man by the name of Addison Everett. He's going to start giving some Joseph Smith teachings that we do have other records of. For instance, I heard Joseph Smith say in the year that Jesus made his second appearance, there would be no rainbow. That is something from Joseph's other teachings. MacDonald tells, but from what authority, I don't know, that on a certain occasion, there was a piece of work or business that needed to be done immediately in order to keep advantage out of the hands of our enemies. And the matter was talked about in council one evening where Joseph the prophet presided.
Gerrit It was then decided that it was necessary that the work be done that same night. The prophet said that it must be done that night and turning to a young man said, I want you to go and do it and return before morning. And asked him if he would do it. The young man said that he would and he testified that he did do the job, although he had to travel 500 miles to do it. 500 miles there and 500 miles back. I do not doubt that if Joseph Smith required such a thing to be done, and said it must be done, and delegated a man to do it and who was willing, that it would be done. And that that person would be wafted through the air by the power of God equal to translation, whether the person went in body or in spirit, whether the distance was 500 or 5,000 miles, it would all be the same. If he required such a thing, it would be because God required it, and all things are possible with God. That is my faith in the prophet Joseph Smith. So you can already see that this is him sharing, first of all, stories that are told to him that he sees his faith promoted.
Gerrit Now look, Oliver Huntington is a great faithful member of the church, and he is a dedicated believer in the prophet Joseph Smith. And because he's so dedicated, when someone tells him that story, that's not his story. He's not saying, by the way, I'm the person was wafted 500 miles, right? He's saying someone told him that story. And his response to it is, if that's what God wanted to have happen, God could have happened. So he has this faith that God can do anything, which is a faith that all Christians have. But it's clear that he's not telling something that Joseph told him. He in fact says, this is something that this other person told him. And at the very least, it has to be a story that is 40 plus years old, because it's 1881 and Joseph dies in 1844. So maybe it's only 36, 37 years old, but that means you're pretty far removed from when Joseph ever would have said this thing anyway.
Gerrit So that's an example. There's just kind of a list of things. He then gives a list of something that is an odd fulfillment. I mean, so here he gave a couple of stories about how, you know, even if God commanded it, this guy's flying 500 miles through the air, like his body's translated, in order to fulfill whatever the prophet said. And then he gives a story about how Joseph told WW. Phelps and his wife that they should never taste of death. And the way he describes that happening, because both have passed away, is that, you know, WW. Phelps had lost all of his mental faculties before he died. And so because of that, he didn't taste of death. And that his wife, you know, died instantly by being struck by a flying board, and a gust of wind. And so she didn't quote taste of death because she died instantly. So it's very interesting. You have this kind of fluctuation back and forth between, well, the literal fulfillment of this prophecy or this statement, you know, was carrying someone through the air.
Gerrit And now here, instead of a literal fulfillment, it's a figurative fulfillment. So we already know that Oliver Huntington is, he's presenting things in this list of teachings and ideas. Some are literal, some are figurative. Some are things that he is claiming to know about himself. Others are things that he's clearly getting from someone else. Now, why does it matter that he gets, if he gets something from someone else? Well, because if he's not the one who actually heard the thing that's being said, well, then he doesn't actually know if it's being related to him the same way that the person heard it. I've shared on this podcast before that there are multiple times that I have people misinterpret things that I've said. I mean, I think it's probably just because I'm a bad speaker, actually. This kind of reflects on me, right? Yeah, it's your fault. It's happened multiple times.
Gerrit For sure. But it happens. I mean, honestly, even when we did our, when we dipped our toe into the raging torrent. That is questions about plural marriage, most of the email responses we received was people completely rejecting my giant caveat I made at the very beginning where I said, look, this is only one case. I realized there are many other cases of plural marriage. I understand that they're, you know, and I went through that whole thing, setting it up, saying your impetus is going to be to want to email me and say, well, what about this? I'm telling you right now, I'm not going to talk about those other ones because I can only cover this case. And what did I get? I got a flood of emails of people saying, why didn't you talk about this?
Richard We have never received such negative feedback, not on how it went necessarily, but that you didn't do this, and you didn't do this, and you didn't talk about this. It's the reason why it's season 38.
Gerrit Yeah, because I'm gonna retire in season 37.
Richard A lot of the feedback we get is very good, and not that we don't, we understand that there's criticism for how things are done, but we have not received any feedback as negative as was that.
Gerrit Right, and so when we try to cover these more difficult topics, the problem is the topics that are difficult and the topics that are sensitive, people feel like they already know the answer to. And when it comes to plural marriage, people feel like, well, well, that's not the way it was for my great grandmother. Well, there are literally hundreds of thousands of people that participate in plural marriage families in some way. So I don't have the ability to, in any comprehensive way, unless this entire podcast was called the, let's talk about every single polygamous marriage that existed that we have records of, podcast, which, you know what? Maybe that should be premium content. You know, premium content, the polygamy podcast. Oh boy. I mean, so I don't have the ability to do that. So all you can really do as a historian is talk about generalities. The problem is when it's something that people really care about, even when you say, I am only talking about this in general, or I'm only talking about this specific case, someone who has a personal connection to it immediately goes to, well, yeah, but that's not what my grandfather said.
Gerrit I know it's not what your grandfather said. And his experience might have been very different than many other people's. And so it's important to understand that, that we have a tendency to when we feel strongly about something to make what we hear all about that thing. I'm always surprised when I meet with members from different parts of the country, that even the questions I get in Utah Valley differ from the questions I get in El Paso. Now, some are going to be similar, but there are others that are different. Why? Because people have different questions based upon what's affecting them in their life at the time. And so I think what Oliver Huntington is doing here is he's listing off some things that he's heard that demonstrate that Joseph Smith is a prophet. He sees this as a very faith promoting thing.
Gerrit But they are clearly not all equal. Some he's saying that he heard Joseph say. Some he's saying he heard that someone else said that Joseph said. Some he's saying without giving any attribution about how he knows. Now, that doesn't make any of them false, but it certainly means we are very far removed from Joseph Smith himself saying it. And so in part of this list, that's where you get his reference to this. The inhabitants of the moon are more of a uniform size than the inhabitants of the earth. So it's very similar to his, he probably uses his journal to create the article that he writes 10 years later. The inhabitants of the moon are more uniform in size than the inhabitants of the earth. Being about six feet in height, they dress very much like the Quaker style and are quite general in style or one fashion of dress. They live to be very old, coming generally near a thousand years.
Gerrit This is the description of them as given by Joseph the seer. And he could see in quotes, whatever he asked the father in the name of Jesus to see. I heard him say that he could, quote, ask what he would of the father in the name of Jesus that it would be granted. And I have no more doubt of it than I have that the mob killed him. So again, he's presenting this as a demonstration that Joseph is a prophet, because he believes that eventually they are going to find that there are inhabitants of the moon. And so Joseph as the seer saw them.
Richard By the way, as you're transitioning, nine men walked on the moon, average height of those men, five foot, nine and three quarter inches. So obviously this has proven very false.
Gerrit I like the fact that we've transitioned from giving betting lines on NBA and football. We haven't even talked about the Super Bowl.
Richard No, we have. Well, this will come out before the Super Bowl. Hit Kansas City hard. Go Andy Reid, go Mahomes.
Gerrit What's our line on that?
Richard You know what? I'm going to look into it. I'll get our crack staff on it.
Gerrit Let's get our staff on that. So you've got to get a sense for this. Now he is saying that Joseph said it, but he is also not explaining when or where, and if Joseph is saying this in public, well, we don't really have that. Now, if Joseph had said it, it would not be that uncommon a thing in the 19th century for people to believe it. I mean, there are people who are believing those things, you know, in the 19th century, that people are living on the moon or there's atmosphere on the moon. In fact, the son of a great astronomer, Herschel, is actually going to perpetrate a hoax in which he claims he found all kinds of cities on the moon and people print it all over the country and say, oh, look, yeah, I found cities on the moon. So it is not an uncommon thing for people to think it.
Gerrit The problem is, as a source goes, I don't have any contemporary source from Joseph Smith where Joseph Smith says it. Now, first and foremost, had Joseph Smith said it, I would imagine that rather than him prophesying it, he was simply saying something like, hey, Joseph, do you think there's people living on the moon? Sure, yeah, there could probably be people living on the moon. I mean, that's not the same thing as a prophecy. But I don't have any context of this. I don't know if this is a question Joseph is being asked. I don't know when this was. I have no other sources that say this. And so, look, is it possible Joseph said something about it? Sure. It's especially possible because Latter-day Saints, unlike most Christians, do not believe that this is the only world that has any living inhabitants on it. It's actually a pretty big deal for many Christians who argue that the only place that God created us on is this earth.
Gerrit But Joseph Smith, of course, is going to be taught that there are worlds without number that God has created and that the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters of God. We believe very much that there is a limitless world, in fact, to the point where they cannot even be numbered unto man. So whatever that number is, however high that number is, we actually don't have a number that can equal the number of worlds God has created. And apparently with that description, that he has created inhabitants of those worlds. So we're already pretty far off the Christian beaten path, right? For a Christian, it's actually just as problematic as that we believe that there are trillions of worlds that are inhabited by children of God, as it is that Joseph might have thought people lived on the moon.
Gerrit But in this case, we are very far removed from Joseph himself saying it. It appears to be something that's given second, it's at very least second, but possibly third hand, and it's simply repeated. And it's also a personal opinion that Huntington has. Later in his journal, in the 1890s, he is going to provide some other information for us, which you might find quite interesting, Richard. February 16th, 1895. I am willing to state that the names of the three Nephites, so I thought we didn't know who they were. I almost feel like people were constrained. Maybe you could share that, Richard.
Richard Okay, well, it's 3 Nephi 28, 25, and 26. So this is Mormon writing. Behold, I was about to write the names of those who were never to taste of death, but the Lord forbade. Therefore, I write them not, for they are hid from the world. But behold, I have seen them, and they have ministered unto me.
Gerrit Absolutely believe in the three Nephites. But he is going to say, I'm willing to... This is his 1895 journal. I'm willing to state that the names of the three Nephites who do not sleep in the earth are Jeremiah, Zedekiah, and Kumenonhi.
Richard So, I mean, in fairness, he's got a pretty decent, a 3 in 12 chance.
Gerrit Because they list them all off.
Richard That's right. A 1 in 4 chance, essentially, of hitting on that.
Gerrit Well, so he goes on to say...
Richard Or at least one of them, right?
Gerrit Yeah, well, one of them for sure. I guarantee one of them is named one of those names.
Richard Broken Clock can pick a third knee fight.
Gerrit What are the betting lines on picking third knee fight?
Richard I don't have that. I do have Chris Stapleton at the over-under of 121.5 seconds. So that is going to be just over two minutes. And the average national anthem is about a minute 56. So the question you have to ask yourself is, is Chris Stapleton really going to hit some of those notes and really lengthen them out? Now, as a country singer, I would guess yes. I would hit the over.
Gerrit Okay. Well, I know that you're a degenerate gambler. If you are betting on the length of the national anthem being sung at the Super Bowl, that's how, if you are that person, I need you to seek help. I need you to find loved ones, get people on your side.
Richard This, by the way, this betting moment is brought to you by a good friend of mine, Ken Golightly. Thank you, Ken.
Gerrit Ken, a consummate gambler in his own right?
Richard No, he just got a kick out of it the one time we did it, and I told him I got in a lot of trouble, and he thought that was even funny.
Gerrit Yeah, in fact, the only reason we're mentioning it now is both of our wives are no longer in the room, and so we can get away with joking around about it. Anyway, back to 1895 Journal, he says, it's my opinion, and I am sanguine in it, that the assertion of astronomers is erroneous, where they say that the moon and larger planets have no atmosphere. What nonsense. You can see he personally feels like that the scientific discoveries, because by 1895, it's becoming much more readily thought that, well, there's no atmosphere on the moon, that he thinks it's just a bunch of puppycock, right? And so he has a personal investment in this as well, and maybe it's because he really thinks Joseph said what Joseph said. So he thinks he's defending Joseph Smith. And in which case, I love Oliver Huntington. I love somebody who's desperate to defend Joseph Smith. But I will say in relation to our initial question, did Joseph Smith really say that?
Gerrit Well, those are the sources. Is it possible that he said it? It is. Should it be a matter of faith destruction if he did? I would sincerely hope not. I would hope the fact that he didn't know what malaria was would be a bigger issue to you than whether or not he thought that there might be people living on the moon. But honestly, I would certainly not write Joseph Smith taught that people were living on the moon. At the very best, I would say, many decades later, one inhabitant of Nauvoo claimed that they had heard that Joseph had said that the moon was inhabited. Oliver Huntington believed this and repeated it multiple times in multiple venues. Now, that would be correct, but that wouldn't demonstrate that Joseph, in fact, that he taught it.
Gerrit One of the reasons why you have to be really careful of sources where you only have a single person saying it is you don't know whether or not they got the information correct. And so, I mean, when we're dealing with prophetic utterance, we don't just take a single statement made by a single 70 in a single general conference and say, oh yeah, that's now the doctrine of the church. Church doctrine is set out by the prophet, the First Presidency, the quorum of the 12 apostles, and in conjunction with one another. I don't know whether or not Joseph ever said anything about the moon. I know that Oliver Huntington sure seems to think that he did, but I also don't know what his source really is. And so, you know, I think when you come across things like this, you think, well, maybe, but also does it even matter?
Gerrit I think that's why it's so important to, and look, our listener who wrote in was in no way challenged in their faith by this. They thought it was ridiculous, right? So it's not a faith challenging thing for them. But it is just important to know whether or not you have felt the Holy Spirit speak to you to tell you that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that Jesus is your Savior. Because once you have that power, that witness of the Spirit that Joseph Smith indeed was a prophet of God, then that means he's still a prophet of God, even if he doesn't know how malaria works. It means he's still a prophet of God, even though he didn't discern that John C. Bennett was going to become a horrible traitor to the church. It means he's still a prophet of God, even if he at times was a sinner.
Gerrit Joseph's very open about the fact that he's not perfect. It's us looking back on him who seemed to not really be willing to tolerate the fact that he's not perfect.
Richard Just as a quick aside on not being perfect, I got my facts wrong on the national anthem. I just want all the listeners who have already called Sal, their bookie, to place it. The average is a minute 23. Houston had it at a minute 56. By Houston, you don't mean... The Super Bowl that was at Houston.
Gerrit I thought you were referencing the Apollo landing again.
Richard Hit the under. I would feel terrible if Ken lost his home based on faulty information. I am also not a prophet.
Gerrit I think you should know by now that once bookies take a bet, you can't change it.
Richard That's right. Send your emails and a copy of your slip-in, and I will reimburse you.
Gerrit No, we will not. You know, one last thing I didn't mention is that there's a cup. There's some evidence in this list of reminiscences that he has that Huntington is not quite getting everything right, that he's remembering parts of things, but that things are becoming somewhat jumbled. For instance, he writes, wine was used at the sacrament in Kirtland, and one Saturday, Joseph the prophet sent someone to the store to buy wine for the next day. Joseph started then to go home, and on the way, an angel of God met him and told them to buy no more wine of the enemies for the sacrament, but use water until they should make wine new themselves, for their enemies would try to kill the saints with poison in the wine. Now, something like that story does take place, but it takes place in Colesville in New York. This is where you get section 27 of the Doctrine and Covenants. It comes in 1830, not later, in 1833, 1834, whenever they're saying they're doing this.
Gerrit And also, water outside of this source, we don't think is used in the sacrament until much, much, much later. So you can see how there's some parts of that that are accurate, but then there's other parts that are completely inaccurate. But while we're on the subject of drink, let's tell one last story that he has in here. Robert Thompson was a faithful just clerk for Joseph Smith. Now, maybe there are some of you who are solid enough listeners of ours that you remember listening to our Mercy Fielding episode. Does anyone remember that one?
Richard Yeah, great unsung heroes.
Gerrit Unsung women of church history. Robert Thompson was her husband. Right, she was Mercy Fielding Thompson. Robert Thompson was a faithful just clerk for Joseph Smith, the prophet in Nauvoo, and had been in his office steady for quite two years, for nearly two years. Joseph said to Brother Thompson one day, Robert, I want you to go out and go on a binge. Go get drunk and have a good spree, and if you don't, you will die. Now, of all of the things that Oliver Huntington wrote, I desperately want this one to be true. I desperately want it. Robert did not do it. He was a very pious, exemplary man and never guilty of such impropriety as he thought that to be. In less than two weeks, he was dead and buried. Now, here's a great example of correlation not really being causation. Robert Thompson, by all accounts, is absolutely faithful and is absolutely devoted to Joseph, and Joseph loves him.
Gerrit I mean, they are very close to one another. But Thompson dies not of not going out and getting drunk enough, but of tuberculosis, which however much alcohol you consume is not going to kill tuberculosis, right? I mean, it's still a major killer in the world today, as we talked about in that podcast. You can see that the tenor of all of these reminiscent ideas are things to prove that Joseph was a prophet. Joseph was a prophet because of this. Joseph was a prophet because of that. He was a prophet because of this. And that actually goes back to the question that we had earlier, and that is, you know, sometimes I feel like these things are just, you know, that there are stories that people use to try to prove things. How do we know what's true and what's not true? Obviously, we use the spirit to help discern, but again, none of our testimonies should be turning.
Gerrit They should not be hanging in the balance. They should not be rising or falling on the basis of a single statement somewhere in someone's journal 40 years after the prophet's murdered. That's not where your testimony should be. Because even if Joseph thought people lived on the moon, you tell me where the Book of Mormon came from. You better have a better answer for that than Joseph might have thought people lived on the moon because someone said that he said that he said that he did 40 years after the fact. I mean, that sounds like a great argument. It's just not a very good argument. So I think that's our constant plea on this podcast is, look, we want to learn things. We want to be engaged in learning about these things. At the same time, we need to learn things with patience in all patience and faith, right?
Gerrit Just because we learn a source that we didn't know before does not necessarily mean that our entire worldview or our testimony needs to change. And that's why it's so important that everybody listening really receives that witness of the Holy Ghost, that this is God's true Church. Because I don't believe simply because of the history that I've read. I believe because the Holy Spirit has told me that this is God's true Church. I believe that Joseph Smith is a prophet because I believe God has told me that he's a prophet. And that is what matters. And so hopefully everyone can build that as their foundation. And then as we expand out to these other questions, even if the question isn't answered the way we want it to be, even if it's a topic that we hadn't heard before, in the end, we are still secure in our testimony that Jesus is the Christ, that Joseph was his prophet, and that this is God's Church on the earth.
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.

Quote board

Make a share card from any line

It's important to know that Richard is a vice president of sales, but he decided to make the pitch without actually knowing what it was selling.

GerritBanter

So one thing that's always lost in these discussions is that simply because a prophet is living in the world the same way other people are living in the world, doesn't make them not a prophet.

GerritInsight

It is tough to look through microfilm while doing a backside heel flip.

RichardBanter

you know, when I joined the church, I knew that there would be people that would attack it, and that's what I signed up for.

RichardInsight

So right there, Joseph Smith has proved to be a false prophet.

RichardBanter

If you are betting on the length of the national anthem being sung at the Super Bowl, that's how, if you are that person, I need you to seek help.

GerritBanter

I would feel terrible if Ken lost his home based on faulty information. I am also not a prophet.

RichardBanter

Now, of all of the things that Oliver Huntington wrote, I desperately want this one to be true.

GerritBanter

Because even if Joseph thought people lived on the moon, you tell me where the Book of Mormon came from.

GerritInsight

I believe that Joseph Smith is a prophet because I believe God has told me that he's a prophet.

GerritInsight

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
Joseph Smith taught that little men dressed like Quakers live on the moon.
If a prophet held a mistaken idea of his time, he can't be a prophet.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

Before accepting a claim about what Joseph Smith said, find the source: who recorded it, when, and whether they heard it themselves.

The moon story comes from one man, Oliver Huntington, writing about 40 years after Joseph's death, in a journal full of secondhand faith-promoting stories.

Prophets live in their own time and know only what God has revealed so far; that doesn't make them any less prophets.

A testimony shouldn't rise or fall on one journal entry. Ask instead where the Book of Mormon came from.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
Episodes promised, never madeThe new newsletter will hold the links "we say we're going to put in, but never actually put in" (1:00).
Richard's sales pitchA vice president of sales pitching the June tour without knowing the dates (2:33-2:47).
Crinkling LeavesRichard lost the vote on the premium show name, sound effects and all (3:53-4:18).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagRichard has run out of postmaster names and forgets it's Draper (4:53-5:27, 8:23).
Angry emails from RichardMost of Gerrit's hate mail comes from Richard, on Facebook (6:27-6:36).
The Extreme Anti-MormonMicrofilm research while doing a backside heel flip (21:22-21:37).
Lake Michigan referralsFake Book of Mormon referral addresses in Wisconsin (11:06-11:16).
Apollo heightsRichard checks every moonwalker's height and declares Joseph a false prophet (32:45-33:16, 48:11).
Betting lines with a conscienceSuper Bowl picks, the Chris Stapleton anthem over-under, and Richard's correction so Ken doesn't lose his home (48:30, 53:42-54:37, 59:15-59:54).
The crack research staffRichard sends the staff to find the Super Bowl line (48:42-48:46).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
Read Oliver Huntington's journal yourself in the BYU digital collections and sort his stories into firsthand, secondhand and unattributed (34:25, 46:27).
The moon hoax Gerrit mentions, and what Americans of Joseph's day believed about life on the moon (48:46).
Worlds without number: how Latter-day Saint teaching on inhabited worlds differs from traditional Christianity (50:47).
Robert B. Thompson and Mercy Fielding Thompson, from the earlier unsung women episode (61:44).
SOT Litner · S3E6.