Boy, that last episode was some of the worst reading that has ever been in the history of reading, in the history of words, really.
Standard of Truth · Season 4 · Episode 39 · 1:33:12
The Essential Answers to the Most Important Questions Part 1
If God made everything out of nothing and already knew Satan would fall and billions would suffer, then Christian pastors are left with a 'mystery' that the Restoration answers.
Press play above. The page follows along.
The question ·
Why did God create us, and why would an all-powerful God allow Satan and so much suffering?
Richard
Listeners worry about Richard's reading and his PhD, and Carrie, a California probate lawyer, Parker from Sandy and Zeth (who asks why villains are always bald) all get their emails read. Richard then explains why calling it a 'faith crisis' bothers him, and Gerrit says people who leave the Church often never ask the deeper question of what this life is for. The hosts play clips of Protestant pastors trying to answer why God created us and why He allows Satan and suffering. One pastor admits God has left mysteries, and Gerrit respects his honesty while showing how creation out of nothing traps traditional theology. He explains how the Restoration's teaching that we are eternal children of heavenly parents, who chose to come here, answers questions that otherwise end in an endless hell.
Who comes upSatanAdamEveJohn CalvinThomas HobsonJoseph Smith
Now playing · 1:18
Theo was dyslexic
Becky shows Richard a Cosby Show episode, and listeners worry about his PhD.
Chapters
Tap a chapter to jump thereTranscript
239 moments · tap a time to play from thereIntro 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 Well, hello, Gerrit. Thanks for having me back. Boy, that last episode was some of the worst reading that has ever been in the history of reading, in the history of words, really.
Gerrit What tipped you off that it was worse than other times?
Richard My wife lovingly pointed out to me that she believed that I have a learning disability.
Other Is that in a loving way, though? How does someone do that in a loving way?
Richard She played the episode of the Cosby show where Theo realized he was dyslexic. And she asked that I see a therapist, not just like a speech one, but like an actual one.
Other But like an actual therapist, so it's beyond just the fact you don't know how to read.
Richard Yeah. So I reached out to our mutual friend, Andy, and we'll see what we can do there.
Gerrit But we have had numerous eye doctors email the podcast. We are incredibly concerned about you.
Richard Well, they should. It is falling off a cliff. People think it's just old eyes. No, the whole thing is just falling apart.
Gerrit As you know, what other concern people have, we get lots of cards and letters.
Other People are stopping us on the street. We get cards and letters all the time.
Gerrit There is an inordinate, and I'm going to say growing concern, that you're not going to get your PhD. We even had a wonderful, kind woman from Oklahoma, Lisa, email. She had only just barely started listening to the podcast. But I think she heard you reference Stillwater so many times that she had to assume that you lived in Stillwater, which is probably what it feels like.
Richard It does. It does for my wife, who is a long-suffering and patient woman, who has put up with so much for the past four years, as I have been efforting. I am inching ever so much closer to completion. I was able to get my IRB approved on one of my final research project, and so I should be able to get that done in the next couple of weeks.
Gerrit Do you want to tell the folks at home what an IRB is, instead of just whipping that out like your ivory tower self?
Other I mean, the moment they get a little authority, if they suppose, he's using little, he's using acronyms that nobody has even heard of before. Yo, obviously we gotta get the IRB, you know, JK.
Richard It's for the Brothers Wilson, that's who that was for. So a couple people got tortured a couple times doing research projects in the 50s and 60s, and now everything has to go through a review board, through the institution to make sure that you're not, you know, doing bad stuff.
Gerrit Right, so that when you're asking people what they think about implied referrals, you're not holding a knife to their throat while you do it?
Richard I gotta tell you, this has been a long process, and it was really difficult for me to not be really snarky, because the comments back are like, what are you gonna do to, you know, when a person feels that they've been deceived? How are you, I'm like, come on.
Gerrit When a person feels they've been deceived by your question of, are you willing to give a referral to this business?
Richard I gotta tell you, it has been the struggle of my lifetime. I've had to have my dissertation chair talk me down from like, hey, Tom, I'm about to say something really snarky here, help me. He's like, don't do that. You're gonna make it bad. You're gonna make it worse. Just be like, thank you so much. I'll have another. Yeah. You know. So anyway, so Gerrit, I'm so, I'm so, I'm so very close. I've got, I've got this, then the survey, then I, then I get the results, then I write it up, and then it's not going to be what I want. So I falsify the results. Right.
Gerrit Just like we talked about.
Other The best way to get beyond this is falsifying results.
Richard Right. And then, so then I, in this particular case, the dissertation proposal defense is the larger hurdle here. I'm just doing the research the way that they approve for me to do it, write it up, and then go out and defend in beautiful still water, which is, which is lovely this time of year, actually. So it'll be nice.
Gerrit Speaking of falsified results, one of the emails we received actually was in response to one of our podcasts. I might have been on the premium side of the podcast, where we were talking about a historical publication, a book someone published, in which they made a claim about probate records, which to me, as soon as I heard that there was a book on that, I was like, that's going to be the most fascinating book you've ever read. No, actually, the book was about, the person was trying to make an argument that examining probate records or records of people's stuff when they die to not use the ivory tower mentality of who gets your stuff when you die. This person argued that, in fact, very, very, very few Americans actually owned a gun in the colonial and early American period.
Gerrit The whole idea of the argument was, people were trying to justify the Second Amendment means that everyone could own a gun. Clearly, that's not what the Founding Fathers meant, because when you look at the records, almost no one mentions a gun and any of the things that are being passed on to their kids. That's the gist of the argument. As we talked about it, what happened is that the person had ended up falsifying their research claiming that they'd gone to archives that they'd never even visited. When he was demanded of his research, he claimed that there had been a flood that had destroyed all of his research in his office.
Richard Well, first of all, I might have been super judgy there, but we'll see what my results come back with before I give my final verdict on what I think of that guy's research.
Other You're gonna have to wait.
Gerrit Yeah, well, because of that conversation, we had someone email, so I think that's our first email tonight.
Richard It is, it is. It comes to us from Carrie from California. Now, Gerrit, I'm going to try to read this better. I'm going to, I'm, I'm, I'm showing you.
Gerrit He's wearing his glasses. For those of you eye doctors who are, we have, we have, we have a, first of all, our largest batch of listeners are, for sure, law enforcement officers. We, anyone who could put a criminal in the back of a card, force them to listen, they gravitate towards us.
Richard They do.
Gerrit We also have our next level tier is an inordinate number of eye care professionals.
Richard Optometrists, ophthalmologists.
Other Yes.
Gerrit They're all concerned about Richard's eyesight. I don't know if they're just trying to land him as a client, if they need him as a patient.
Richard They, yeah, they see me and they're like, oh, that's money coming, man. That guy.
Other I guess my son is going to Yale, that kind of thing.
Richard This comes to us from Carrie from California. Again, thanks to all those that wrote in to tell me how concerned they were about my ability to read and to speak from the last episode. I very much appreciate your concern and don't consider that in any way hurtful. Subject, probate lawyer reference. Message, hi, I'm writing to let you know this California probate attorney did get even more interested in your latest episode when you mentioned going into old probate records. I, that person, appreciate everything you do. My son who is serving in Pennsylvania Pittsburgh mission, so hopefully Pittsburgh Second Ward, he'll spend some time there and we'd love to hear from him and all of the wonderful things that are in the first ward that was ever established for the church or the oldest ward in the church. Pennsylvania, boy, oh boy, Pennsylvania. Marty's struggling, Gerrit. I'm losing confidence.
Gerrit You know it's a state, right?
Richard It is. It's in the news.
Gerrit I think you thought it was like a person's name. So you're like, is it Mr. Pennsylvania?
Other Is it Dr. Pennsylvania? I'm so used to referring to everyone I see as doctor.
Richard Pennsylvania Pittsburgh mission told me about this podcast. He comes home in just under three weeks. So here's a rare thing where a missionary tells a parent. How about that? There you go. We have-
Gerrit That was our diabolical plan and giving all the premium content away to the hundreds of missionaries who listen.
Other They would become our summer sales reps of getting people to sign up for the podcast.
Richard Just flat brim, vivid reps out there. My other son left to serve in Oklahoma this July. Well, how about that? There we go. Go Sooner State. You know, I'm more of a pokes guy myself, but he enjoyed your podcast prior to leaving. Well, that's, that's not true. Um, that never, never happens.
Gerrit There's no, okay. Well, that's not totally true. Cause we did meet the one missionary, you know, Eli, going to Scotland, speaking Chinese. His calling was obscure enough that he was like, you know what? I'm going to listen to this podcast.
Richard Yeah. Speaking of that, you, you took your son today to the MTC.
Gerrit I dropped Breitger off at the MTC a few hours ago, which is now a, for anyone who knows, an indicator of when we're recording this podcast. And it's only seconds before it's actually dropped on Apple. Our control systems for quality are, let's just say they're waning. Now you might be thinking, I kind of feel like there wasn't ever any quality control. And you would be right.
Richard So, so Gerrit, when you're on a real podcast, like follow him, who we've sent three listeners to, by the way, they hadn't heard of that.
Gerrit No, there's four of them.
Richard Welcome back, John. Yeah, sure. So when you're there, you start recording like now for episodes that come out in March, right?
Gerrit Yeah, when you go to like what I call real podcasts or podcasts that are funded, they will be trying to record for a podcast that comes out next year. I recorded for the BYU TV series, the Come Follow Up TV series, it's on BYU TV. And I recorded several months ago, I mean several months ago, for episodes that will be coming out next year, because it's the Doctrine and Covenants next year. So they are a year and a half in advance. I am trying to figure out how to get this done before midnight. I'm essentially cinderella at this point. I'm running to the ball, I'm running to the carriage and it's turning into a pumpkin. That's what we're doing.
Richard Well, so Gerrit, a little behind the curtain here, is that we released the episodes at 6 o'clock Mountain Time, or Tuesday next week in Australia. I don't know exactly how time zones exactly work, but we do it at 6 a.m. So that way when a person wakes up, it's going to be near the top of where their podcast will be.
Gerrit What better way to start your day than a discussion with us about BYU's big win over Kansas State, Richard's poor eyesight, and the inability to say the word Pennsylvania.
Richard So it's either Folgers or us as the best part of waking up.
Other The best part of waking up is the Standard Truth podcast.
Gerrit I think now we can be sued. That's unfortunate.
Richard Folgers is very litigious.
Gerrit They have to be because they've lost so much market share.
Other You got all these K-Pod cup things everywhere. How are you going to fight that?
Richard I have always been hesitant in embracing the history of our-
Gerrit This is back to the email, right?
Richard It is. I don't speak this well. I don't speak like an attorney would. I have always been hesitant in embracing the history of our church, always taking a stance of just teach me the doctrine. I was not at all interested in the stories that went with the history. I was worried about how to teach the doctrine of covenants next year in seminary because of my lack of knowledge in this area.
Gerrit I really hope this person is a seminary teacher. Have they told us that they're a seminary teacher?
Richard They just did.
Gerrit Well, I have a profound respect for them.
Richard They're probate attorney and seminary teacher in California. I really appreciate the historical context given as it makes it all easier to understand. I'll be honest, even though I had a grandma who was very proud of her pioneer ancestry, there was a lot of it I thought was just weird. Jokes on me though, they would think the world I'm living in is just as weird, maybe even weirder. She did say she lives in California.
Gerrit Well, I mean, I think, yeah, your great-grandfather crossed the plains, I'm going to be like, oh, probate law, huh? I mean, here's the Sweetwater River.
Richard Also, I really appreciate the info on other Protestant churches. I've always tried to tell everyone how similar we are and have gotten so frustrated with that not working, even with my own extended family who were different denominations. With more historical context and knowledge, I am more comfortable embracing the radicals, sorry, changes, sorry, party, I saw charges.
Gerrit Wait, so-
Richard The N looked like an R to me.
Gerrit Okay, so you said radical charges or-
Richard Or thinking of business?
Other Yeah, okay.
Richard The restoration brought. Thanks for your sense of humor, knowledge, and always bringing it home with a solid testimony, uh, Gerrit. So, Gerrit, how, how, how did I do? Uh, I don't mean to be overly needy here.
Gerrit Well, I don't want to, I mean, you know, you're supposed to give honest feedback, uh, but only to your employees. And since you're not an employee, but a volunteer is being browbeaten every week in order to do this, I think we could be a little bit more honest. Um, we have a contingency plan.
Richard We do.
Gerrit That we're, as a, as a company, that we're putting forward. If your eyesight continues to get worse, we, we need to come up with a way to, to still run the podcast. Um, this is, Becky thinks this is for your own good. Um, but, uh, we have another email, and we're going to, uh, we're going to, we're going to try something new in the way that it's read.
Richard So this, this comes to us, uh, from Parker from Sandy. And, uh, I, I, I did this ahead of time, knowing I'd probably flub on a word like Pennsylvania and change. Those are hard words for me.
Gerrit It almost sounds like you're running a political campaign.
Other Pennsylvania and change.
Richard So I, uh, I worked with the fine folks at Apple, and had my voice put in to the live speech where I, you know, I said like 150 different phrases. And so I, I, I plugged this in and recorded it. So now Parker from Sandy will be read by, uh, the Apple digital version of me. And I think you'll find fewer mistakes. Subject. Your son is being held hostage message. Dr. Dirkmaat and Professor LeDuc, I hope my subject line caught your attention. As you may be able to tell, I do not have any of your son's hostage. However, I do have a favor to ask of you. You see, I was introduced to the podcast by my girlfriend's mother. And since I started listening to weeks ago, I have listened to every episode from the beginning all the way up to more any part to. The very first part to episode ever on Standard of Truth. Now, as you may be aware, part of the courtship process requires remaining in the good graces of the parents. And I would very much like to stay on the good side of my girlfriend's mother.
Richard If you could just pretend like I asked a very insightful and deep question of your own choosing that leads perfectly into the topic of your current episode and shout out that this incredibly insightful and well thought out question that you have invented was from Parker from Sandy I would be greatly in your debt and will promptly subscribe to the premium content and probably buy my girlfriend a subscription as well. To again persuade her mother that I am not some hoodlum from the University of Utah and a well refined gentleman of good Christian upbringing. I am also on the edge of my seat waiting to see if Professor LeDuc gets his PhD anxiously await an update on his dissertation and perhaps a reading of it on the air as he offers his own. Personal commentary. Also, if Richard could give me betting odds on the U of U VBYU football game coming up, I think there is a large interest in the audience for that. Desperately in need of help, Parker from Sandy. That was much better than how I would have read.
Gerrit The words were all there. The words were all there. But you know what it lacked? It lacked the heart. It lacked the personal touch. The unfeeling AIU is not ready to take over for the unfeeling real you.
Richard Well, it was a great email, Parker, and I'm glad that you asked. I think it's a home game for the University of Utah. Boy, they looked tough. But did they beat a ranked team by 29 points? They did not. So there's that.
Gerrit Did they need multiple turnovers in a 93-yard punt return in order to do that?
Richard No, they did not.
Gerrit No, they did not.
Richard But so, Gerrit, do you have a made-up question for Parker?
Gerrit Yeah, I mean, I think-
Richard No, mother-in-law, pardon me. I was way advanced. So way forward, I mean.
Gerrit Parker's hoped to be mother-in-law, right?
Richard Potentially. Who knows where it's going, but at least currently, girlfriend's mother.
Gerrit Yeah, we need her to see his efforts at trying to ingratiate himself with the amazing question that he's going to ask. I think he asked a question that was along the lines of, if people believe in an ex nihilo creation, then how is it possible that an omniscient god would not be part of supralapsarianism in determining whether or not people were going to fall even before he created them? It just seems illogical to take an infralapsarian view.
Richard It's a great question, and actually, we're gonna kinda get to that today. So that's good. The idea of supralapsarian before the fall and intra is during the fall that God kind of like, you know, it's like, hey, you know, God's, he's- Spending a lot of plates.
Gerrit It's the order in which God wills that things happen.
Richard Before or in the middle of.
Gerrit Right. And so if God willed the creation of Adam, and then after God willed that, he willed the fall, then it is God didn't start with the idea that there'd be a fall in mankind.
Richard Ah, I see. And, well, so anyway, great, great question. As always, he's always writing in with great questions like that.
Gerrit I think Parker's girlfriend's mom needs to give Parker another chance. Or if this happens to come out after they've already, after they've already told Parker hit the road.
Richard Based on what we know of Parker, the chances are pretty decent. Yeah, so we do have one more email. And based on how poorly I read the first one and how the computer read the second one, Gerrit, maybe you should go ahead and.
Gerrit Yeah, this this last email comes to us from Zeth. The subject line is, why are the bad guys always bald? Yeah, message, dear perspective doctor and real doctor. Boy, that's first of all, that's a little bit of a shot to Richard, but also a shot to all medical doctors everywhere, calling me a real doctor. While I do have a doctorate, I don't have the ability to help anyone or make any money.
Richard Yeah, friend of the show, Adam is like, yeah, no. Yeah, exactly. You're standing right here, bud.
Other You're not a doctor.
Gerrit Why are bad guys in the animated church videos always bald? Shall I just give up my standards now?
Other Sincerely, Pensive Bald Man.
Gerrit That's funny. Now, while I have noticed, you know, because of, you know, different movies, maybe not animated ones, that there are a lot of bald villains, I think you're leaning too hard, Zeth, on the animated church films. What you need to do is to go do a classic, go crack open, you know, the church history vault and watch the movie Legacy again. And you'll find in that movie that not only are all of the evil people fully headed of hair, they actually have wild hair. They have hair everywhere. And I think, you know, thinking of evil people as Missourians is just more healthy for us psychologically and clearly for yourself. So I don't think you need to, I think you can still stay the course. I'm assuming that there's a couple, if not all of the members of the First Presidency that would agree with the idea that you don't have to be evil if you're bald.
Richard Not necessarily.
Gerrit Yeah, and now you could be. You could be, but it doesn't mean you will be.
Richard So actually going back to a probate attorney, where, you know, talking about history in different faiths. So one thing that is hopefully very important for us is that people understand that when we talk about other faiths, that we love them and we respect them, and there is no bad blood toward any of these other faiths of different denominations. Gerrit's family, my family, full of all kinds of people of Christian, and in my case, not even Christian faith, right? And so it's very important. I wanted to get that in there because we're about to talk about a lot of non-Latter-day Saint faiths. And so I wanted to be as respectful of that as possible. So there's something that I find mildly interesting.
Richard Gerrit, I don't know if you had it. It's something called Hobson's Choice. I don't know if this is something you've ever heard of before.
Gerrit Yes, go ahead.
Richard Okay. Well, so there's a gentleman, Thomas Hobson, back at Cambridge in the day. And so he worked in the stables there. And when people would come in to get a horse, there was a feeling in a sense that they had a choice of which horse to pick, but they didn't. It was just the next one in line. And it's kind of this idea that's still used today, although not that often, as kind of this idea of kind of a false choice. Like you think that there's multiple options, but there's only kind of one option. And I've thought this to be a fascinating thing. And I had, I was looking to have a, I'm responsible to teach the 5th Sunday lesson on Sunday. Spoiler alert. By the way, no one in my ward or stake listens to the podcast, because they're like, if you knew me, you wouldn't either, right?
Gerrit Just your boss does.
Richard Yeah, it's true. Shout out to his son, who's going to the Tennessee Chattanooga Mission. Actually, this one's for you. This whole episode, you're gonna want to-
Other You're gonna want some of this?
Richard You're gonna want some of this. So while we respect Otherface and love all people of all denominations, there is something that happens, and it's a major frustration. I know, Gerrit, I know it's a frustration for you. It certainly is for me as well. Where a person might be having a certain issue, faith crisis is often what it's called. When people say deconstruct, I'm irritated by that because I think it's like a pseudo-intellectual thing, that they're just reading the CES letter to the-
Gerrit When they say they're deconstructing their faith?
Richard Yeah, it's super. It's like it's a trigger for me.
Gerrit I'm not a fan of that terminology either because it makes it sound like your faith is like a, I don't know, like the Taj Mahal Lego bricks here.
Richard And you're- Anyway, I don't mean to be over- Perhaps someone that's listening has, and I don't mean to be overly critical, but the phrase is irritating to me. So people have a faith crisis. People have a faith crisis that are well-intentioned. People have a faith crisis that don't want anything to do with the church. Family, friends, it happens all over the place. And the issue is in this Hobson Choice scenario. And Gary, you've talked about this quite a bit, where a person leaves the church and then goes and still believes in Jesus and loves Jesus and loves the Bible, and maybe they struggle with polygamy, maybe they struggle with a priesthood issue, whatever it is, right? And then they go somewhere else, but they take with them all of the things that they love and they just go to another Christian faith.
Richard And what we wanted to talk about today, and we're gonna try something a little bit different, so we'll see how it goes, but we want to talk about what some of those beliefs are.
Gerrit Yeah, so I talk with people all the time who have faith crises for various reasons. And look, when people say, oh, what causes people to have a faith crisis, or what does survey say? I mean, look, people are individuals. Everyone has a different reason why they believe, or why they feel themselves falling out of belief. And some people are desperately sincere in the things that they believe, and just wanting to find answers. And there are other people who aren't sincere at all, that simply want out, and they want a reason to say why they're out. But when I talk with people who are struggling with their faith, I mean, maybe we would get to this more after what Richard has in store for us here, but it really is the case that while many, many, many people talk to me about issues, struggles, difficulties they have with things that have happened in church history or doctrines that are currently taught, I haven't yet had anyone...
Gerrit Now, I'm not saying this doesn't happen. Personally, in my hundreds of times counseling people on their faith, I'm not a counselor, I mean, in a religious sense, responding to their questions about history. Um, I've never had anyone say, I found this other thing that is more true. It's always a question of why the church must not be true because of X or because of Y or because of Z. And sometimes people believe in, they'll have an alternative. Well, I just think that God is going to exalt everyone no matter what, you know? So they might have an idea like that, that they throw out there, but they don't have any reason why they would believe that, right? When we're talking about religion of necessity, at some level, there's an appeal to authority in this case, it's God, right?
Gerrit I mean, there's an appeal to authority because religion is an authoritative claim about truth, not a logical or demonstrable, you know, we're not logical positivists when it comes to demonstrating why it is what we believe. Religion, all religions require some aspect of faith. Well, how is that faith going to be determined whether or not it's true? Now, of course, for Protestant Christianity, that authoritative appeal to authority is the Bible. And so the appeal to authority is going to be the Bible, the Bible, the Bible. When someone is in a, who's a Latter-day Saint is experiencing a faith difficulty. As Richard said, they sometimes want to take the things they like about the church and then essentially go become a Christian.
Gerrit But there was all kinds of problems with that. The first is, I don't know, when you say I still worship Jesus, who is Jesus? Because what Latter-day Saints believe about Jesus and what other Christians believe about Jesus, namely the Trinity, are pretty, they're pretty starkly different. One's an individual person who is your spiritual brother. The other is part of the Godhead to which you have no relation whatsoever at all in the in the Trinitarian theology. And so you find that people will do this. I've had multiple conversations even lately with people where they're like, well, I just really struggle that, you know, that this ever happened or this was ever taught in the church. And when you try to probe deeper about that, what you find is that a lot of people haven't actually really thought about what the dire consequences are.
Gerrit If this church is not true, if you think it's just a matter of whether or not, you know, you're paying your tithing and going to church on Sunday, and that's the only difference, it's you have not asked deeper questions. You haven't said, why does this earth exist? Why is it so terrible? Why did God create everyone knowing that it would be terrible? And I realize those are deeper questions. A lot of times we're just kind of wrapped up in our own life. I mean, my goodness, I spent five minutes on the podcast today, whining about the fact my son went to the to the MTC and how hard that was for me. So that's a natural thing that you're caught up in your own world. But once you start to really ask the question of why, on a deeper level, to me, what many other Christian theologians present as the answer to that question is at best, utterly unsatisfactory and at worse, horrifying.
Gerrit Horrifying in a way that would cause me to not believe in God.
Richard And so what we wanted to do is, and there's one clip from a person that's a little strident, and I think, so Gerrit hasn't heard these, and so we're going to kind of see how this goes. So we're going to play the clips. And some of them, some of them people are just like, honestly, like we don't know. And we want to talk about the theological implications of that, because again, it's a false choice to say, so I can have everything here minus polygamy. That's not what the situation is at all. It's not. And so, as I know that-
Gerrit Currently, we also don't practice polygamy, just for everyone.
Richard I think it's very important to get that on the record, that we don't-
Gerrit That the church does not endorse polygamy, and if you know someone who is endorsing the practice of it currently, it's time to go have them meet with a local priesthood leader.
Richard So, we're going to play a couple of clips, and then Gerrit will respond to them. Some of them, I think he'll respond to be like, okay, yeah, let's, you know, whatever. And many of these people are very sincere, very kind, very wonderful.
Gerrit I feel like they're trying to goad me into making me angry.
Richard A hundred percent.
Other Okay.
Gerrit I'm going to do my best to resist.
Other Okay.
Richard So, this first one, Gerrit, I think it's interesting just because of the contrast to it.
Gerrit So, these clips are of pastors talking about this concept of salvation and the purpose of creation then.
Richard The purpose of creation, salvation, trying to answer some of these big questions.
Gerrit Why so many people aren't saved, essentially, those questions.
Richard That's, yeah, toward the end, certainly. So, this first one is, it's kind of a soft place, just a point of contrast that I think you might find moderately.
Other Entertaining. Why did God create us? The short answer here is that God created us for His pleasure.
Gerrit Okay. So, that is actually a very typical Christian response because it really does, it really is one of the questions. Now, you will sometimes have conversations with theologians who feel like it's not even fair to ask that question, right? Who are you to even ask why God created us? You should just be grateful that God created you at all, which of course you shouldn't have because you were going to become a vile and horrible sinner. But this is actually a pretty standard Christian response to the question. Why did God create us? And the response, God created us for His own pleasure, that doesn't, that's actually kind of old phraseology, you know, and there's a reason why we use it because it's always been said. But a theologian would also be very quick to say, a Christian theologian, God did not need to create us.
Gerrit God wasn't lonely, okay? God wasn't sitting around on his cloud that he hadn't created yet because he created everything out of nothing. And in the beginning, there was nothing but him and said, you know what, I want some friends. And so he goes out and he starts, he starts, you know, I'm going to build an Adam, I'm going to build an Eve, I'm going to build a Richard with poor eyesight.
Other He's not that he...
Gerrit Saying that God created us for his pleasure is simply another way of, it's almost a tautology of saying, God does what God wants to do. Because you don't actually have an answer for the question of, why was it his pleasure? Because if God is completely omnipotent, he doesn't actually need us at all. He didn't create us because he couldn't get pleasure without creating us. So some theologians will say things like, God created us because God is good, and the act of creating us was good. Again, he did not need to create us. God chose to create us. And so because it was God's will, it is God's pleasure that people are created. So a really important part of that then is understanding that for the wider Christian world, we aren't just lower than God because God created us.
Gerrit Obviously, we're lower than God because God created us. We are absolutely, fundamentally unnecessary to God, okay? He did not have to create us. He did not have to build the earth. God could have stayed in his out of time, out of matter, state, you know, forever, and have been perfectly happy. So that's an important thing for a Latter-day Saint to understand. Christians, one of the reasons why it's so offensive for a Christian to hear a Latter-day Saint say something like that you can become like God is fundamental to Christian theology, is that not only are you nothing like God because you were created out of nothing and God always existed, there was no impetus for your creation at all.
Gerrit And hopefully you can understand the distinction, right? God could still create us to fulfill a need for God or a need for the universe and also be ultimately sovereign. But at least all mainline Christian theologians are going to say, we are absolutely unnecessary to God. And that's the reason why I think that statement that God created us for his pleasure is so, it's very weak because when someone says, why did God create me? They're not asking the question of, is God doing what God wants to do? They already know in the words, by saying the words, why did God create me? Someone is already acknowledging that God is doing what God wants to do.
Gerrit I think usually when people say, why does God, why did God create me? They're thinking more on the level of, what is the purpose of this life? And they want an answer that's more than, because God said so.
Other wonders, well, why would the devil even be created? Why would God create someone as wicked as the devil to begin with? Well, first of all, God did not create Satan as we know him today. But again, Satan did not come out as the devil. In fact, he used to be a high-ranking angel, but a chain of events took place that resulted in this wicked personality we know today as Lucifer. As a high-ranking angel, he once was in a place of exalted glory. He was up there in the category of a Michael or a Gabriel.
Gerrit Okay, this one's a little bit more frustrating. Again, so there are some aspects of this that are technically correct, right? And it really is a great question. We're told Satan is evil. We're told God is all-powerful. What is the purpose of having a Satan in a world that God created? And this theologian is responding to a question that he clearly has often asked, why would God create Satan? I thought God was the author of good. Why would God create Satan? And here this person is responding by essentially saying, you know, just like with the fall of Adam, mankind became evil, but they weren't evil when God created them. That the angels were good when God created them, but that they are in Satan's case, that he's this exalted angel. So there's, what are some areas of agreement here?
Gerrit We, along with other Christians, we all believe that Satan is a personage of glory who has fallen. Okay. Now, because Christians don't believe angels are humans, they believe they are separate creations of God. And in fact, mankind is a little below the angels, right? It's not the same theology as, oh, it's a child of God that is rebelled and fallen away. No, it's a creation of God, an angel that is rebelled. But I find that response, shifting the blame, saying, well, God created Satan and he was good, and then Satan fell. I mean, in some ways, you need to stop and think about this. We've got God's creating a lot of things that aren't turning out the way he wants them to. I mean, at some point, Chef Gordon Ramsay is going to blame you for the fact that the souffle fell. No, no, it was Bill.
Other It was Bill who did it. It was Bill. You know, Bill the Adulterer? He keeps opening the oven and closing it, opening the oven and closing it.
Gerrit And at some point, Chef Gordon Ramsay is going to say, didn't you hire Bill? And that's the reality here is that a Christian tries to escape the inherent evil that is the existence of Satan. Because if God created everything, then God therefore must have created Satan. So, God created evil? Oh, no, no, no, as this guy tries to say. God created a good angel, and that good angel fell.
Richard Well, so, Gerrit, I think that that's, at the heart of the issue is that the very nature of God is the part of the thing that it is one of the biggest pieces of the problem. When we say that God is all powerful, we mean something different than what a standard Christian would believe. God can do whatever he wants. Now, there's things where they would say, well, so he can do anything that's logically possible, like, can he make a rock so large that he can't walk? Well, that's not logical.
Gerrit And God built a mountain so high that God can't climb it. Ah, and all the atheists went.
Richard But that's, and we're not making that false claim here, but God can do whatever he wants that's logical, right? So, okay, fine.
Gerrit That's not contradictory in the sense that, right, you know, for God to build a mountain so high that God couldn't climb it, God would no longer be God, because God was building a mountain so high that God couldn't climb it.
Richard Right, so we're not making that false atheist claim, but the problem, though, is that-
Gerrit The Standard Truth podcast has a very strong stance against atheism.
Richard Against polygamy, against gambling, and against atheism.
Gerrit I mean-
Richard All polytrinity.
Gerrit And frankly, a very pro, recently, Oklahoma State Cowboys, very pro-Oklahoma State Cowboys, bent towards us.
Richard Of course. But this causes a major problem. In fact, the next clip, I mean, we're not done here, but the next clip is a little bit longer, and it talks about three main mysteries. And so I ask that you endure through it, because it's a very thoughtful argument that then creates much larger problem.
Gerrit Is this talking more about Satan? Because I want to talk a little bit more about Satan.
Richard Oh yeah, we're not done with Satan. We're never done with Satan. But to say that God is all powerful, but he can do whatever he wants. He's all knowing as part of that. So he knows what's going to happen. He's all good. And because of these things, these create these problems because obviously evil exists.
Other Right.
Gerrit And Satan is obviously evil. And so the problem I find when Christian theology fails to give adequate answers, it's always in this realm of not asking the further question. Because that theologian did a very good job and something that we would all agree with, of saying, God did not create an evil Satan.
Other Right?
Gerrit That a Latter-day Saint would be 100% on board with that. Right. But that's not actually the right question. That's like treating the symptoms of the disease, but not the disease itself. Right? That's the woman complaining that she has a headache. And so you give her some Tylenol, but she has a railroad spike through her head.
Richard Yeah. Or a possible example of, I can't see, so I get glasses, but I also can't read.
Other Blaming the fact that you couldn't read on glasses for years. Since the podcast started, it's like, oh, I need to get better glasses. I need to get better glasses. We had five discussions about LASIK.
Richard But so, and the other issue that I didn't mention before though, is the ex nihilo creation that you joked about with Parker from Sandy, that is also at the heart of it. That none of this existed and he created it out of nothing.
Gerrit So the deeper question, so the surface level question is, did God create an evil Satan? Well, that's easy to throw away like this theologian did, by saying, no, God created good and then Satan threw it. And he says through a series of events, fell. Here is the problem. Remember, no one, no thing is necessary to God. This goes all the way back to the aseity of God that we have talked about before. God is ultimately sovereign in Christian theology and ultimately self-contained and ultimately completely un, he doesn't need to create anything. But God also knows everything, which means when God created the angel that was at one point perfect, that he created out of nothing, that didn't exist before, God knew that that angel was going to fall and become Lucifer.
Gerrit Now, I will say this, there are some Calvinist theologians who will take that to its logical consequence. They will say, God had to have created Satan, knowing that he would fall, because God knows everything. Most of the time, however, you usually have theologians or pastors, preachers who really want to focus on the existence of Satan in the real time. Like, oh, Satan is bad now because Satan made bad choices, and it's kind of an extension of the idea of agency. But God knew. If God is all-powerful, then God knew at the moment the thought entered his mind, I'm going to create this angel. God already knew that that angel was going to fall. So God could have A, not created that angel, or B, since he's building it from nothing, I don't know, put a couple of microchips in there that keep it from falling and destroying the whole human family through temptation.
Gerrit And so I feel like answers like that obfuscate what the real question is. Clearly, people can fall from grace. People know everyone around them, know somebody who was at one point very religious and is now not. But that's not the question when we're asking about the omnipotence of God. We get surprised when Bill, the great high priest, becomes Bill the adulterer. God doesn't, because God knew everything from the beginning in Christian theology. So why would God build an angel, knowing that that angel would be the cause of billions of people's torment? To say that God didn't know, is to say that God is not all-powerful. To say that God did know and didn't do anything about it, is to say there must be some purpose in it, or that God is not all good.
Gerrit And so I don't really buy the argument of, well, God did not create an evil Satan. Yeah, sure, in technical terms, He didn't create an evil Satan. He certainly created one that he knew would be evil in Christian theology, unless you want to deny the fact that God's all-powerful. And you're going to find very few Christian theologians who will be willing to accept that. And by few, I mean none.
Richard Well, and this is, I had a conversation with a family member that I love very much, who was struggling with aspects of the restoration, different things, and again, talked about how much they love Jesus in the Bible. And my comment to them was, and I tried to do it in a non-strident way, but I don't think that you know the Jesus that you think you know.
Gerrit Right.
Richard You, the Latter-day Saint Jesus is loving and kind, and not that the Christian one isn't, but when you take it, to Gerrit's point, out a couple of logical steps, it becomes really difficult.
Gerrit I mean, and a lot of this really, a lot of it revolves around the fact that part of the apostasy was the loss of an understanding of the pre-mortal life, which inevitably causes a loss of understanding about the purpose of this world and the purpose of creation. And, and that is, I mean, look, when people leave Christianity, you will almost always hear them say something like, I just couldn't believe in God anymore because there's just so much evil in the world. Now a Christian will scoff at that and say, oh yeah, mankind's fallen. And because you're one of those fallen people, you decide that you're going to fall right along with them. You know, that kind of stuff. But on a very deeper level, if God is all-powerful, God could have created a world where there wasn't war. He could, since he's creating everyone out of nothing, he could have made everyone so that we didn't have the capacity to kill others.
Gerrit He could have made us all so that we didn't have the capacity to assault someone else. And to say that he didn't, because that was his will, well, why? Why is God's will in Christian theology, that there be a fallen world? Now again, you'll find people say, no, it's not God's will. We're sinners and we ate the apple and that's why we're fallen. Now again, not if God is all-powerful and all-knowing. If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, then that means he created everyone out of nothing with immortal spirits that he created, already knowing before he even thought about that creation, whether or not those spirits would be good, whether or not they would suffer, and he did it anyway. So why?
Richard So, Gerrit, this next clip, again, one of the things we also want to point out is, is that these are people that love Jesus and are wonderful people, obviously better than me, but they're wrestling with these significant questions, and they don't have answers to it. And that's one of the beauties of the restored gospel. This next clip is a little bit longer, Gerrit, but I don't think that you'll be upset by this next clip, because the person's coming at it saying, these are difficult mysteries that we're grappling with. But so it's a little bit longer, but a couple of minutes. Bear with us. I think that it will allow-
Gerrit I'm sure people have already left listening to the podcast.
Richard Oh, there's no question.
Gerrit They're already looking up, how do I become a probate lawyer?
Richard It's a very lucrative. I always say though, being an attorney isn't the thing. Being a business person who has a law degree, now that's the key. There's the key. That's the key. So anyway, this one's a little bit longer. Now for Family Night on Sunday, I played the entire 20 minutes of all the clips all together. My family was very kind to me. My wife especially was very kind, but no one liked it. That's why we're breaking it up here. This one's a little bit longer, but it actually hits on three significant aspects here. Would God create people that he knew were going to be in hell for eternity?
Other These are some hard questions, Darren. And in a way, we're asking questions of the mind of God. And sometimes he hasn't fully answered those questions. But, well, here we go. I will answer it. Let me quickly say one other thing. The Bible contains three mysteries, okay? Three. Only three. Three big mysteries, okay? Three big mysteries. Maybe you want to count more than that, but three biggies over against which all other mysteries are pretty insignificant. Two of them are essential for to be safe. Two of them are essential to Christianity. One is that God is the Holy Trinity, that he is one God, but that he has eternally existed in three persons as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And the way the church has handled these mysteries, this one in the early councils of the church, for example, is to affirm the truths, to deny and condemn big errors, heresies, but then to live with the, don't have a good word here, mystery, paradox, antinomy, tension.
Other None of these are great words, but that's the only words I have. So God is three, God is one. Can we fully explain it? No, but that is how God has revealed himself. Another, the other big one is in the incarnation of the Son of God, the fact that he is both God and man in one person, or the Church has talked about him having two nictures, okay? Once again, the Church has affirmed that those truths condemned denials of the same, but in the end, we can't explain how God can become a human being, or how the same person who has always been God now takes to himself true humanity, and forever after, he is both God and man.
Gerrit Well, you're right. I do appreciate the way that he approaches that. I mean, so first of all, I mean, Latter-day Saints don't have an answer to every question that we have. There are mysteries in Latter-day Saint theology. For instance, how is it possible that sealing and marriages are going to work for everyone that is worthy for it in the next life? We know that it's going to work. We don't have a way of explaining how it's going to work. And so the very fact that you appeal to a mystery to say that there are some things that are God's ways and not our ways, I don't think we can, you can ultimately or immediately condemn it. But the question that he's asked, right? Why did God create people that he knew would burn in hell? It's interesting that he says, well, here are the three great mysteries. The first two are, it's a fallback to the early church councils, which we've talked about before.
Gerrit The Nicene Council, and then of course, the Council of Chalcedon or Chalcedon, or however you want to say that, which are talking about the nature of God himself. Now notice Latter-day Saints already have something similar in their theology with Doctrine and Covenants section 93, where the Lord tells Joseph, you know, I tell you these things that you may know how to worship, that you may know what you worship. And one of the things that apparently the Lord wants to get very clear to Joseph is who Jesus even is and who God even is. And Joseph will make this point over and over and over again. When he gives his King Follett sermon, which we will someday cover, but not ever actually cover, because it will be sometime after we do polygamy, Joseph says that if you don't understand the nature of God, then you don't have eternal life.
Gerrit Here, he's arguing that the scriptures contain these mysteries. Now, I think there'd be some pushback on that from Latter-day Saints, that Trinitarian theology is certainly not expressly stated in the Bible, unless you count the added verse that's added in the Middle Ages, that tries to make it expressly stated. Instead, you have a much more opaque idea. And one of the ways you know that it's not self-apparent is that if it was self-apparent that the Trinity was the nature of God, then the earliest Christian fathers, like Origen, would have a Trinitarian theology. But they don't. In fact, these earliest Christian fathers end up having to be corrected, condemned, or expanded upon by later Christian fathers because they don't express a properly Nicene viewpoint of the nature of God.
Gerrit And similarly related to that is the nature of Jesus. How is it that Jesus can be both fully human and fully God at the same time? Now again, Doctrine and Coven, Section 93 answers that for us. So those are two mysteries that through the restoration, you know, Trinitarian theology and the nature of Jesus, Joseph Smith receives an answer that in fact, God and Jesus are two separate beings. And to Richard's point about people who choose to step away from the church, boy, I will guarantee you that 99 percent of them who leave this church and saying, oh, I just want to be a good Christian, still think of God and Jesus as being two separate beings. They don't stop thinking that. Although, you know, I do know some that have become born again Christians who, I guess, have adopted Trinitarian theology. But when I have conversations with them, that's not their main point that they make. So I don't know that that's the driving force for them.
Richard Well, so now, Gerrit, the next clip, it's a little bit longer. And again, he's setting it up as a mystery. But it gets into one of the main problems that exists as I move away from restored gospel light and truth and revelation toward this idea of a God that, again, just his very nature is completely mysterious.
Other Or God is mysterious and truth is mysterious, and so we can avoid things we don't like in the Bible. We can't do that. The third one is not as essential to the faith, and good people disagree. But the Bible also teaches God is sovereign. He is absolutely in control. He's Lord of whatever comes to pass. At the same time, human beings are responsible, all right? Without getting into too many details here, I needed that on the table, because you're asking me about God's sovereign plan, and people end up in hell, and the Bible does speak of it, but even more so, it speaks of hell in terms of human responsibility. I said earlier, when you study the hell passages, the reason people go to hell is for their sinful thoughts, words and deeds, or again, the shorthand is, their sinful deeds, their actions, all right? Sinners go to hell for their sins. Is that true answer? Yes. The complete story? No. The ultimate story? No. Adam's original transgression is more ultimate, although it surely doesn't eliminate or alleviate or take away, remove the culpability of sinners for their own sins, because that's what shows up in the hell passages, but a more ultimate answer is Adam's original sin.
Other Is that the ultimate answer? No. The Bible's ultimate answer is, and it's mysterious along this third-level mystery, if you will, that is God is in charge of every human being's faith. And I don't delight to say this, Darren, but Romans 9 is the clearest place, but 1 Peter 2, John 10, Romans 11 also teach that God stands behind the fate of people who end up in hell.
Richard I really appreciate his perspective here. This is something that he struggles with. It is something that for him, there is no out. He references several verses that we are also familiar with. He knows no other way around it. He's struggling with the idea that this is both the fall of Adam, but in the hell passages, as he describes it, we have the responsibility for that. So there's this dual piece to that, that we are a sinful person, certainly because of the fall of Adam, but then at the same time, we're held responsible for the wicked things that we do. And he's trying to get his grasp of it and can't, and doesn't want to excuse the things that he says that God says, while also saying, I don't understand any other way. And I appreciate his candor on it.
Gerrit Yeah, and he calls it a mystery for that reason, because when someone says that there's evil in the world because of the fall, okay, that's great, except that why was there a fall? And if the answer is, well, because Adam and Eve ate the fruit, okay, why was there fruit? Well, because God willed it. Why did God will, creating fruit that was forbidden, when God knew full well that Adam and Eve were going to eat the fruit? If you say that God didn't know that Adam and Eve were going to eat the fruit, then God is no longer all-knowing. He's no longer all-powerful. So I do appreciate the fact that he's wrestling with it and wrestling with it honestly, because what he didn't say expressly, you know, he said, I'm gonna be careful about how I say this, is that ultimately God does decide who is going to go to hell.
Gerrit Right? Because he said that God stands behind their judgment. But taken to the next level, it's not just that God stands behind the fact that someone is judged, that they go to hell. Look, on a lower level of this, when you just first ask a pastor, why does someone go to hell? Very often the first response you're going to get is, well, because of their sins, which is kind of what he said. You're in hell because of sins. But in the next breath, they'll also tell you that because of Adam's transgression, all of us have a sin nature that is in, we cannot escape it. Martin Luther, the founder of the Reformation, will say everything we do is mortal sin, everything. But there wasn't a possibility of me not sinning after the fall of Adam. That possibility doesn't exist.
Gerrit That you are a sinner because of the fall. Now, granted, I'm going to crank it up to 90 and sin way more than I needed to sin to go to hell. You know, and then I've become a Mormon. I mean, it's just all kinds of things. But there was no ability for me to escape sin in this plan. When God created Adam and Eve, God knew, again, in Christian theology, that when he created me out of nothing, however many years later it was, that I would be born with a sin nature that was inescapable. That yes, I would commit sins, but there was no ability for me to not commit sins.
Other Why?
Gerrit And that's where he stopped short and said that it's a mystery because, you know, he did admit God is ultimately the one deciding who's going to hell. The next level question is why? Why is there a hell? Why did God create a world where the consequence of two people being tricked by a snake and eating a wrong apple is the abject destruction of billions upon billions upon billions of people?
Richard And why did those people that didn't exist before, why did he give them an immortal soul?
Gerrit Why certainly didn't have to. That's not creating everyone out of nothing. And he's already and again, if you say God didn't know that Adam and Eve were going to fall, well, you don't believe in an omniscient God then. You say God's all powerful. He just lacks the power to know what's going to happen with things that he created. I mean, that's not all powerful, right? Of course he knew that. And again, because God's all powerful, let's just game it out and pretend, what if God didn't realize that Adam and Eve were such fruit lovers? Okay, so already we've got a problem because God doesn't know about the being that he created. And also that he created a fruit tree of knowledge of good and evil, right? But if God is all powerful, does not God have the ability to intervene and stop the consequences of that fall from destroying the world?
Gerrit Okay, Adam and Eve, burn them in hell forever. I get it, I get it. They like fruit, they like snakes. It would have been much better if they'd have eaten the snake.
Other You know, if they, instead of, I had a friend say that to me, it would have been much better if they'd eaten the snake rather than the apple.
Gerrit But God, because God's all powerful, did not have to make the consequences of the fall the condemnation of all mankind. Why did he do that? Now, someone will, you know, legalistic people will say, well, because God decreed that that's what would happen if they ate the apple. Okay, wonderful. Thank you for your opinion. Why did God decree it? Because you're going to get a why after every one of those questions. Why did all powerful God decree that 20 billion people were going to suffer in abject horrors on this earth, and then nearly all of them burn in hell? Why did God decree that? And I think that's why he kind of hemmed and hawed at the end, because he doesn't really have an answer. You might be thinking, why are we spending time on this? Well, first of all, Richard surprised me, so I didn't know what you were spending time on. But second of all, if there are things that you're wondering about, if you really struggle with, I just don't know, I don't know how God could have commanded people to practice polygamy, I just don't understand why God allowed there to be racism in the church or priesthood restrictions.
Gerrit I don't understand why God didn't do X or God didn't do Y. Those are all really good questions. And we don't have answers for God's timing on a lot of them. But however poor those answers are, they're a lot better than the answers that you are forced to deal with if this church is not true. If Joseph Smith did not see God, if none of Joseph's revelations are in fact truth, well, we've got a lot bigger problems right here in River City. We have to come to terms with the fact that a God that we claim, and it's just lip service, we claim is all loving, created billions and billions and billions of people, knowing as he gave them immortal spirits, that they would suffer in un-describable, indescribable horror and pain forever.
Gerrit And we can convince ourselves all we want. Well, you know, it's because of the fall. That's because of agency. If you don't ask the next question, which is why, why does a God who is sitting in the midst of nothing, nothing exists but God, not even time and space. Again, Latter-day Saints are always envisioning God like floating around in the cosmos with, you know, asteroids going by and that God's like, you know what? I'm going to build an earth. No, nothing exists in Christian theology, just God. And then God, for his own will and pleasure, because that's the other mystery he did not bring up. Why did God create anything at all? And if God is going to create anything all, because again, nothing is necessary to God's crea- God already has all happiness. God already has all power. God already has everything. He doesn't need us to have glory.
Gerrit He doesn't need us to be fulfilled. He doesn't need us because he's lonely. He is complete. Why then did he decide to create time and space knowing as he created it that billions upon billions upon billions of people would not just suffer in this mortality, which all of them would, some of them, most of them, horrifically so, starvation and plagues and war and brutalities of every kind, but also that they would all burn for eternity in hellfire? Why did a good God do that? Why? I submit to you that only Latter-day Saints have an answer for that.
Gerrit In fact, most Christian theologians won't even get to that fifth level of why. They'll just be stuck right there on the fall of Adam and agency. Fall of Adam is a big deal. I get it. But Adam didn't spontaneously combust. There was an all-powerful creator that created Adam, knowing exactly what he was doing. So why did he do what he did? Why did he cause there to be the consequences that he did? This is where knowledge of the restoration is so powerful and so precious, and we treat it sometimes like garbage. We want to have arguments with people on a subreddit about just exactly how many discrepancies there are in the various versions of the Book of Mormon.
Gerrit And we're not asking the question that ultimately matters, and that is why does anything exist at all? Only Latter-day Saints have an answer for that. We all existed with God, with our heavenly parents, in fact, which is already a whole other blasphemy.
Richard I didn't see him bring that one up.
Gerrit Yeah, you'll notice not a lot of people are like, let's talk about Heavenly Mother. Which again, back to our whole point, there's no doubt people listening to this podcast, or at least stop listening to this podcast, and maybe later we'll come back and listen to this podcast, who struggle with the fact that we don't know more about our Heavenly Mother. I'm sure there are people who are like, it's really hard on me that there's only a few women mentioned in the Book of Mormon, that we don't even know who are Heavenly Mother. I'm not saying those are not valid concerns. What I'm saying is, the moment you allow them to hurt your testimony, well, you don't have a Heavenly Mother anymore. You not only just don't know anything about her, she doesn't exist. Because the only reason she exists is because Joseph Smith and the Restoration taught you that she exists.
Gerrit So back to the wider point that for us, we lived already with Heavenly Parents. We are eternal beings. We are the same type of being that our Heavenly Parents are. And God created this world because it was the only way that we could progress to become like our Heavenly Parents. The purpose of creation of anything was so that we could become like God. Now, a Christian theologian might say, oh, are you saying that God just couldn't make us like him? First of all, you're the one Christian theologian who doesn't think anyone can be like God. But second of all, that's exactly what we are saying. Exactly what we are saying is that there apparently are some powers that God does not have.
Gerrit And I'm not talking about building a rock so heavy that God can't lift it. I'm talking about how it is that we become like God. How do we progress? And apparently, we have to have a mortal life where we have agency, where we're subjected to all kinds of the thorns in the flesh, and then are redeemed by a Savior Jesus Christ. In Latter-day Saint theology, Jesus is not the way God decided to save us. In Latter-day Saint theology, it was literally the only way we could be saved. And that was part of the plan before we ever came here. We knew when we chose to come to this horribly fallen world, we knew that we would sin. We knew that we would use our agency poorly.
Gerrit God knew that we would use our agency poorly. And instead of Christian God who is saying, I know that you're going to use your agency poorly and tough rocks, welcome to hell. Joseph has revealed to him, I know you're going to use your agency poorly. That's why there is a savior. Because you need to be able to repent for your sins that I already know you're going to commit. But I'm not going to make it impossible. Now, look, every Christian will say, anyone who embraces Jesus is going to be saved. That's wonderful, that's lovely, and also almost no one's a Christian, percentage wise, in the history of the world. So why did God create the billion people in China? Why did he do that?
Gerrit Why did he create the billion people in India who don't believe in Jesus? Why didn't he just either not create them or not give them immortal spirits? And yes, they'll throw a verse out to you like, well, all the things denote that there's a God, so everyone should just know. Of course, they cleverly forget what it is that Paul said that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. For all the talk that if you just look outside and you look at the stars, you'll know God. Well, knowing that a God exists is not considered salvific to a Christian. You have to have faith that Jesus Christ is your Savior. In fact, maybe I'll share a little bit of a sermon here from Joseph Smith. You know, just because he kind of knows things. Talking about work for the dead, Joseph Smith is waxing pretty eloquently on it.
Gerrit He says, the great Jehovah contemplated the whole of events connected with the earth pertaining to the plan of salvation before it rolled into existence. So, first of all, Latter-day Saints are affirming, God already knew everything before he'd started doing things. Okay. All right. We're equal with Calvinists in that point. The great Jehovah contemplated the whole of events connected with the earth pertaining to the plan of salvation before it rolled into the existence, or ever the morning stars sung together for joy. The past, the present, and the future were and are with him one eternal. He knew of one eternal now. They're all now to him, the past, the present, and future. He knew of the fall of Adam, the iniquities of the antediluvians, the people before the flood, and the depth of iniquity that would be connected with the human family, their weakness and strength, their power and glory, apostasies, their crimes, their righteousness and iniquity.
Gerrit He comprehended the fall of man and their redemption. He knew the plan of salvation and pointed it out. He was acquainted with the situation of all nations and with their destiny. He ordered all things according to the council of his own will. He knows the situation of both the living and the dead and has made ample provision for their redemption according to their several circumstances and the laws of the kingdom of God, whether in this world or in the world to come. The idea that some men form of the justice judgment and mercy of God is too foolish for an intelligent man to think of. For instance, it is common for many of our Orthodox preachers to suppose that if a man is not what they call converted, if he dies in that state, that he must remain eternally in hell without any hope. And then he quotes a poem from one of these theologians.
Gerrit Infinite years in torment must he spend, and never, never, never have an end. And yet, this eternal misery is made frequently to rest upon the merest causality. The breaking of a shoestring or the tearing of a coat of those officiating or the peculiar location in which a person lives. May be the means indirectly of his damnation or the cause of him not being saved. I will suppose a case which is not extraordinary. Two men have been equally wicked who have neglected religion, and both of them are taken sick at the same time. One of them has the good fortune to be visited by a praying man, and he gets converted a few minutes before he dies. The other sends for three different praying men. A tailor, a shoemaker, and a tin man. The tin man has a handle to solder onto a can.
Gerrit The tailor has a buttonhole to work on, some coat that is needed in a hurry. And the shoemaker has a patch to put on somebody's boot. They, none of them, can go in time. And the man dies and goes to hell. One of these is exalted to Abraham's bosom. He sits down in the presence of God and enjoys eternal, uninterrupted happiness. While the other who was equally as good as him, sinks to an eternal damnation, irretrievable misery and helpless despair. Because a man had a boot to mend, or a buttonhole of a coat to work, or a handle to solder on to a saucepan. The plans of Jehovah are not so unjust. The statements of Holy Writz so visionary, nor the plan of salvation for the human family, so incompatible with common sense.
Gerrit At such proceedings, God would frown with indignance. Angels would hide their heads in shame, and every virtuous, intelligent man would recoil. If human laws award to each man his deserts and punish all his delinquents according to their several crimes, surely the Lord will not be more cruel than man. For he is a wise legislator, and his laws are more equitable, and his enactments are more just, and his decisions are more perfect than those of man. And as a man judges his fellow man by law and punishes him according to the penalty of that law, so does the God of heaven judge according to the deeds done in the body. To say that the heathen would be damned because they did not believe the gospel would be preposterous.
Gerrit Think about that. Talk about a shot across the bow of Christianity. To say that people who don't believe in Jesus would be damned is preposterous. To say that the Jews would all be damned that do not believe in Jesus would be equally absurd. For how can they believe on him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can he preach except he be sent? He's quoting Paul there. Consequently, neither Jew nor heathen can be culpable for rejecting the conflicting opinions of sectarianism, nor for rejecting any testimony, but that which is sent of God. For as the preacher cannot preach except to be sent, so the hearer cannot believe without he hearing a sent preacher, and cannot be condemned for what he has not heard. And being without law will have to be judged without law.
Gerrit When speaking about the blessings pertaining to the gospel and all the consequences connected with disobedience to its requirements, we are frequently asked the question, what has become of our fathers? Will they all be damned for not obeying the gospel when they never heard it? Certainly not. They will possess the same privilege that we hear in joy through the medium of the everlasting priesthood, which not only administers on earth, but in heaven and the wise dispensations of the great Jehovah. Hence, those characters referred to by Isaiah will be visited by this priesthood. They will come out of their prison upon the same principles as those who are disobedient in the days of Noah, who are visited by our Savior, who possess the everlasting Melchizedek Priesthood, and had the gospel preach to them. So, I mean, I could go on, but notice instead of mystery here is great clarity.
Gerrit I don't understand how it is that so many people burn in hell. That's because they don't. I don't understand why God created these heathens to have them burn in hell. He didn't. Well, yeah, but people have to accept Jesus to go to heaven. Yes, and God, through a prophet, a modern prophet, gave revelation that explained how that apparent contradiction is actually no contradiction. Because we believe that we have the ability to accept the Lord in the next life. And in fact, frankly, the contradiction is even less because believing that we have a pre-mortal life is believing that we all already, every single person who has ever lived on this earth, already chose Jesus or they would not be here.
Gerrit Why is it that we believe in a higher, more exalted realm of even most wicked people on earth? Because they don't remember it. They have used their agency horribly. But at one time, they stood in the presence of Jesus Christ and God the Father, and they pledged their loyalty to Jesus. While the spirits that followed Satan went banished out of the realm. So I do feel very strongly that when people walk away from the gospel, it's not because they're asking questions. In some cases, it's because they're asking the wrong questions. They're not asking the wider, deeper questions that have plagued Christians from the beginning of time for which they will say, we just don't have an answer. And to me, why is nearly everyone burning in hell for no reason is too big a question to not have an answer to.
Gerrit I don't know how God will accomplish some of his things. They're miracles. I don't know how God will sort out ceilings in the next life. I don't know how God will recompense everyone for the suffering they've had in this life. But that that's a question of me not knowing the operation of how those things will work out. Christians, they don't even know why there are operations to work out. So we probably have gone on a little too long on this. Maybe we'll have to join another episode if we want to do more of those.
Richard Yeah, we do have actually several to play that will make you upset. These were all the nice ones.
Gerrit So on part two, it will be upsetting Gerrit as Richard surprises him with theologians that Gerrit hasn't heard yet.
Richard And we will put a link to that, that beautiful teaching from Joseph Smith in the description as well.
Gerrit Thanks so much for joining us.
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 lineI'm essentially cinderella at this point. I'm running to the ball, I'm running to the carriage and it's turning into a pumpkin.
The unfeeling AIU is not ready to take over for the unfeeling real you.
While I do have a doctorate, I don't have the ability to help anyone or make any money.
Against polygamy, against gambling, and against atheism.
I don't think that you know the Jesus that you think you know.
And we don't have answers for God's timing on a lot of them. But however poor those answers are, they're a lot better than the answers that you are forced to deal with if this church is not true.
The purpose of creation of anything was so that we could become like God.
In Latter-day Saint theology, Jesus is not the way God decided to save us. In Latter-day Saint theology, it was literally the only way we could be saved.
I don't understand how it is that so many people burn in hell. That's because they don't.
Source shelf
20 sources cited on air · verses link to the scriptures, Joseph Smith’s documents to the Joseph Smith Papersother
The Cosby Show, the episode where Theo learns he is dyslexic
Richard's wife plays it for him after his reading in the last episode.
book
The peer-reviewed book on early American gun ownership and probate records (title not named on air)
Gerrit recaps the falsified-research scandal from the last episode, which drew in a California probate attorney.
other
Carrie's email to the mailbag (California probate attorney and seminary teacher)
I'm writing to let you know this California probate attorney did get even more interested in your latest episode when you mentioned going into old probate records.
Her son in the Pennsylvania Pittsburgh Mission told her about the podcast.
other
Parker from Sandy's email, read by Apple's Live Speech version of Richard
Your son is being held hostage
Parker asks the hosts to invent an insightful question to impress his girlfriend's mother.
other
Zeth's email: Why are the bad guys always bald?
Why are bad guys in the animated church videos always bald?
Gerrit recommends rewatching the Church film Legacy, where the villains have wild hair.
other
Hobson's choice (Thomas Hobson, Cambridge stables)
Richard's picture of a false choice: leaving the Church but keeping everything you like.
other
Pastor clip: Why did God create us?
Why did God create us? The short answer here is that God created us for His pleasure.
A typical Christian answer that Gerrit calls almost a tautology.
other
Pastor clip: Why would God create the devil?
God did not create Satan as we know him today.
The pastor says God created a good angel who fell; Gerrit says that avoids the deeper question.
other
Pastor clip: Would God create people he knew were going to be in hell for eternity?
The Bible contains three mysteries, okay? Three. Only three.
A pastor names three mysteries in the Bible and admits God stands behind the fate of people in hell; Gerrit and Richard respect his honesty.
record
Council of Nicaea and Council of Chalcedon
The early church councils the pastor falls back on to define the Trinity and the two natures of Christ.
revelation
D&C 93
that you may know how to worship, that you may know what you worship.
Gerrit says the Lord tells Joseph these things so he may know how and what to worship, answering two of the pastor's mysteries.
sermon
Joseph Smith, King Follett sermon
Joseph taught that without understanding the nature of God you don't have eternal life; Gerrit jokes they'll cover it sometime after polygamy.
book
Origen and the earliest Christian fathers
If the Trinity were self-apparent in the Bible, the earliest fathers would have taught it, but later fathers had to correct them.
scripture
Romans 9; 1 Peter 2; John 10; Romans 11
Romans 9 is the clearest place, but 1 Peter 2, John 10, Romans 11 also teach that God stands behind the fate of people who end up in hell.
The pastor's verses for God standing behind the fate of those who end up in hell.
book
Martin Luther on sin (source not named on air)
Gerrit paraphrases Luther saying everything we do after the fall is mortal sin.
scripture
Romans 10:17
faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
Gerrit says those who claim nature alone shows God forget Paul's teaching.
sermon
Joseph Smith on the plan of salvation and work for the dead (source not named on air)
the great Jehovah contemplated the whole of events connected with the earth pertaining to the plan of salvation before it rolled into existence.
Read at length to show the Restoration's clarity where the pastors see mystery; Richard promises a link in the description.
other
A poem quoted by Joseph Smith on endless torment
Infinite years in torment must he spend, and never, never, never have an end.
Joseph quotes it to mock the idea that the unconverted dead are damned forever.
scripture
Romans 10:14-15 (as quoted by Joseph Smith)
For how can they believe on him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can he preach except he be sent?
Joseph uses Paul to argue that no one can be condemned for a gospel they never heard.
scripture
1 Peter 3:19-20 (identified, not cited on air)
who are disobedient in the days of Noah, who are visited by our Savior
Joseph points to the Savior preaching to the disobedient of Noah's day.
Episode quiz
Pass to stamp your passportQuestion 1 of 8Score 0
What TV episode did Richard's wife play for him after his rough reading?
Fun with Numbers
This episode, counted from its transcript1:33:12long
23.5 minbefore the topic starts
20sources read or named
5scripture passages
0different years mentioned
0dollar amounts said
Percentages said on air
Putting numbers to words
All 13,410 words of the automatic transcript, counted against a word list for each theme. It shows how much a theme comes up, not what was said about it. See the lists
What this episode talks about more than usual
- Death and the afterlife32 mentions, 1.6 times the show’s usual rate
- Faith and prayer24 mentions, 1.5 times the show’s usual rate
Names said most
Joseph counts any Joseph.
Satan 29Jesus Christ 27Joseph 12
Signature words
Said often here and in few other episodes.
probate 9mysteries 11bald 5eyesight 4willed 4parent 6
More from this episode
Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.
Claim check
What critics say, and what the episode foundSomeone who leaves the Church can keep everything they love about it, Jesus and the Bible, and just go be another kind of Christian.
Satan's existence is no problem for traditional theology, because God created a good angel who later fell.
Anyone who dies without accepting Jesus is lost forever.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.
Take it to class
Ready to copy into a lesson or a textBefore you trade the Restoration for 'just Jesus and the Bible,' ask the deeper questions: why does anything exist, and why would a good God create people he knew would suffer forever?
Latter-day Saints believe we lived with heavenly parents before this life and chose to come here; the purpose of creation is that we can become like God, and a Savior was the only way that could happen.
Joseph Smith taught that God foresaw everything and made ample provision for both the living and the dead, so no one is damned for a gospel they never heard.
We don't have every answer, like how sealings will work out in the next life, but not knowing how God will do something is very different from not knowing why anything exists at all.
Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.
Banter bin
The running jokes, for people who skip aheadRichard can't readHis wife plays the Cosby Show dyslexia episode, eye doctors write in worried, he stumbles on 'Pennsylvania' and 'changes,' and Apple's digital Richard reads an email instead (1:18, 9:11, 14:37, 16:29).
Richard's PhD, any day nowListeners worry, Lisa from Oklahoma assumes he lives in Stillwater, and the IRB nearly brings out his snark (2:08, 3:58).
Officer R's peopleGerrit says the largest batch of listeners is law enforcement, anyone who can put a criminal in the back of a car, followed by eye care professionals (7:26).
The only true missionCarrie's son in the Pennsylvania Pittsburgh Mission told her about the podcast, a rare case of a missionary telling a parent (8:16, 9:25).
Probate recordsA California probate attorney got even more interested when the hosts mocked probate records (8:16).
No quality controlGerrit dropped his son at the MTC hours before recording; real podcasts record a year ahead, this one runs like Cinderella (10:31, 11:18).
The best part of waking upEpisodes drop at 6 a.m., so it's Folgers or the Standard of Truth, and Folgers is very litigious (12:55).
Supralapsarianism for ParkerGerrit invents a deeply theological question for Parker to impress his girlfriend's mother (19:27).
Bald villainsZeth, 'Pensive Bald Man,' asks why bad guys are bald; Gerrit says the Missourians in Legacy have plenty of hair (21:20, 22:14).
Bill the adultererThe souffle fell, Chef Gordon Ramsay blames whoever hired Bill (42:24, 50:19).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag
Your question could be next week’s episodeQuestions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
General ConferenceGeneral Conference talks that cite a scripture read in this episode.
In General Conference
Talks from the latest General Conference that cite a scripture this episode reads or names on airOctober 2026 General Conference · cites D&C 93I Am a Child of GodElder Hutch U. FaleElder Fale teaches that every person is a beloved child of heavenly parents, illustrating God's unearned love by showing his children their baby pictures: they did nothing to earn their parents' love and can do nothing to lose it.October 2026 General Conference · cites John 10The Gospel of Jesus Christ Is for AllPresident Dallin H. OaksPresident Oaks testifies that this is Christ's Church and that the way through every struggle, including doubt, is to draw closer to Jesus Christ through daily prayer and scripture study, with patience for others and for ourselves.
Summaries, themes and lessons for every talk are on What Did They Say?
Go deeperWhere to read more.
Go deeper
Deep dives the episode points towardThe Council of Nicaea, the Council of Chalcedon, and why the earliest Christian fathers like Origen don't hold a Nicene view of God (59:03).
Supralapsarian and infralapsarian views in Calvinism: in what order did God will the creation and the fall (19:27, 49:05)?
Read Joseph Smith's full teaching on the dead, the tailor, the shoemaker and the tin man, and how it shaped temple work for the dead (1:21:08).
What the Restoration teaches about Heavenly Mother, and why Gerrit says she exists for us only because of Joseph Smith (1:16:55).
SOT Litner · S4E39.