Questioning Scriptures and Frustration with Politics

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, I promise we're going to get through the emails so quick. We're going to get right to the witnesses of the Book of Mormon.

Gerrit I feel like maybe you shouldn't promise anything.

Richard We do have a couple of good emails here that we're going to read that will likely take Gerrit down several rabbit holes. This first email in the Phebe Draper mailbag comes to us from Jordan. Hey, doctors. I know one of you isn't actually a doctor yet, but I believe you'll get there soon. Well, thank you for having more faith in me.

Gerrit What a kind thing to say to you.

Richard Than the state of Oklahoma, my wife, my friends.

Gerrit Yeah. Anyone who knows you.

Richard Apologies for not using names. I kind of spaced them and wanted to get it out before I lose nerve to send it. I'm struggling with faith recently. As many of the things I struggle with as, wait, as I poorly read it. So your faith is actually not founded in the idea of me graduating as I'm poorly reading.

Gerrit I would hope, yeah. I mean, I feel like his faith is misplaced. I think Richard's got this. So he's got hope down. He's got hope down, but you know.

Richard Let me try this again. I'm struggling with faith recently. As many of the things that I struggle with, such as many of the New Testament books possibly being pseudepigraphal, as well as the book of Isaiah. First of all, let me say, one of my favorite things to joke around about, that Gerrit says, now that's not true. He says it every time because I do it a lot. So 2nd Peter is often considered to be a pseudepigraphal work by many academics.

Gerrit Sure. Right.

Richard And so I like to say, sure, 2nd Peter was written two weeks ago, but it's still got some good stuff in it.

Gerrit I mean, yeah, 2nd Peter was, you know, it was written in honor of the swift Kelsey Super Bowl victory, and then put in the Bible.

Richard This is true. So, so, Gerrit, actually, before we go to the rest of the, could you speak to the pseudepigraphal nature of the New Testament books?

Gerrit I think it's probably helpful for our missionaries listening, who probably are anymore, but they're still taking the free content. Yeah, for sure. The references to the fact that, you know, many Latter-day Saints probably don't read a ton of high-level academic New Testament studies.

Richard That's safe.

Gerrit That's a safe. Because, you know, whenever someone tries to point out a discrepancy in the Bible to a Latter-day Saint, I mean, we like, it like doesn't bother us at all.

Richard That's safe.

Gerrit That's a safe. Because, you know, whenever someone tries to point out a discrepancy in the Bible to a Latter-day Saint, I mean, we like, it like doesn't bother us at all.

Richard Oh yeah, sure.

Gerrit If someone's like, well, you notice the Bible says this, and then it also says this, and a Latter-day Saint's like, yeah, because it wasn't translated correctly. It's got all kinds of crap in there. I mean, they don't say that in particular, but-

Richard But they might. I was just reading in John, there was a verse that was very Calvinist in its nature. Then you look down Joseph Smith translation, it's like, nope.

Gerrit Yep, yeah, he's like, yeah, yeah. And no one's gonna be saved at all. Joseph Smith, you know, pass. What, I mean, so obviously we're kidding around a little bit, but for those who don't know that this term, pseudepigrapha means it's a writing, a false, you know, pseudo writing, a pseudo writing, meaning there are scholars who believe that some letters in the New Testament, particularly the ones of Peter and some of the later ones of Paul, were not actually written by the apostles, but were written later. And then, you know, given the name of, you know, a letter from Paul so that they would get a wider audience, so that their views would be held, and therefore they are held as forgeries. Now, for people who are, you know, evangelically Christian, orthodoxly Christian, they hold the Bible to be the absolute word of God and that every word in it is absolute.

Gerrit And so this actually creates kind of a faith crisis for Christians generally, because they see the academic world saying, hey, you know, Third John wasn't written by John, and they say, well, but the Bible is the absolute word of God and every word in it is what God wanted in there. And so it actually, it's a wider issue for Christians who aren't Latter-day Saints. And since, you know, those Christians don't consider us Christians, I guess I should stop making the delineations. Because Protestantism makes the very bold claim that the only truth about God that you can discern is in the Bible. It's sola scriptura, it's only the Bible. The scriptures alone are how you can know the truth about God. Well, once you make that as one of your tenets, and that is a tenet of all Protestant denominations, starting from Martin Luther.

Gerrit Martin Luther says, you are saved by faith alone, you are saved by grace alone, and the only truth you can know about God is by the scriptures alone. Not tradition, not because a pope says so, not because you reasoned it out in your head and it sounds pretty good to you. If it ain't in the Bible, it ain't. Well, once you say that the Bible is literally the only place you can get revealed word of God, then what's in that Bible suddenly becomes incredibly important, because it's the only place you can get the revealed word of God. We have a podcast from, I don't know, eons ago, back when Richard and I were young and free, when we no longer had Becky questioning the image of Richard that we use on the podcast.

Richard Like, that one looks too young, you need to update it.

Gerrit Yeah, the other day, Becky was like, who's this guy? I'm like, that's your husband. And she's like, you need a way more, this picture makes him look like he's young and handsome. I'm like, yeah, yeah, we were going for that, but we need to find an older picture that makes Richard look more ugly.

Richard It won't be hard, we'll get it up there.

Gerrit Let me do a selfie real quick, and we'll put that up there. But we did a podcast on the Apocrypha, which was also the name of a heavy metal band, and we talked about how the Apocrypha became incredibly controversial, because it was in every Bible, all the way up until the 1830s, right when Joseph Smith is going to begin his ministry. And so it was a very controversial thing, because it wasn't original to the Bible, and Protestants said, you know, this wasn't the Bible, and so they eventually excluded it from the Bible. After it being in the Bible for 1400 years. Well, this question of what is and isn't Scripture then, is something that other Christians have wrestled with a great deal. And many people who depart Christianity, they leave for that very reason. They will say, I lost faith that the Bible was actually the inspired and revealed word of God.

Gerrit And sometimes they will point to things like, well, there's some scholars who believe that this letter wasn't really written by Peter, or that this letter wasn't really written by Paul. Now, I don't have time, nor the expertise, nor the ability, nor the intellectual wherewithal, nor the podcast co-host to go through all of the reasons why some scholars will hold these later letters of Paul, or the letters of Peter and John were not written by those who the Bible asserts their authorship is. And you could easily go to a Latter-day Saint New Testament scholar who could help you navigate those things a little bit better. In fact, the Religious Studies Center at BYU regularly publishes collected works on the New Testament, and they deal with some of these questions about authorship.

Gerrit So let me start off by saying, I'm not an expert in this. I obviously care greatly about it, but I don't know everything. And in fact, it seems like most of the time I don't even know anything. In this case, there are various reasons why scholars place the timing of some of these written books much later and therefore outside of the time period in which the actual Apostle Peter could have written it. There are several main reasons why they make these claims. The first is that the earliest manuscripts that we have of these documents appear to be written in ways that they couldn't have been written by the original apostles. So for instance, the Book of Revelation is written in a type of Greek that makes a person believe, that makes a scholar believe that the author, the original author, the person who wrote it, must have been a native Greek speaker or incredibly fluent in high level Greek.

Gerrit Right? Well, we're pretty sure that James and John are fishermen and poor Jewish peasants. Well, how in the world would they become educated in this higher level Greek? And so the argument would be, well, this can't be John the apostle who wrote this because this is written by someone who's a highly educated Greek, and John couldn't have been, and so therefore, he didn't write it. That's one of the arguments that's made. Now that argument is made, I'm not saying it's a dumb argument, I'm not saying that there's no reason for examining it, but there are multiple assumptions that are made with that, right? First, that John, who Latter-day Saints are well aware, lives a long time, right? We actually have it as doctrine that John is still living, that John never could have gained that level of Greek understanding, that he never could have educated himself, that he never could have come to that himself.

Gerrit So the first assumption is John couldn't have been educated. Now, a scholar would say, well, I find it highly unlikely that he was, but highly unlikely is not the same thing as proof. And that's one of the things that we've covered on this podcast multiple times. When you're dealing with religion, the things that are the miraculous will always be highly unlikely. I mean, we're talking about, you know, what is the authorship of various books in the New Testament? But what we should really be talking about is Jesus was resurrected. You know what's far more unlikely than John learning Greek later in life? A carpenter who lived 2,000 years ago, dying for your sins and coming back to life three days later. And because he came back to life three days later, all of us are going to come back to life.

Richard Yeah, by comparison, John's got Greek on lock.

Gerrit Yeah, by comparison, he's duolinguing Greek every day, and he can figure it out. Now, look, scholars have to make secular conclusions, so I'm not begrudging the fact that they make that conclusion. What I'm saying is just because the most likely scenario is that the Apostle Peter didn't write Second Peter, is not actually proof that the Apostle Peter didn't write it. Let me go to the second point. So language is always a big one. The second point is the doctrines that are contained in it. So one of the reasons why people will claim that some of Paul's later letters aren't actually written by Paul, is because they seem to contradict what Paul taught earlier. So if in Thessalonians, Second Thessalonians, Paul says things that seem at odds with Paul's letter to the Galatians, well, clearly that's not actually Paul who wrote it.

Gerrit Now again, that is a good conclusion to make, right? I mean, if you, you know, since we're, we're talking about politics, right? If you came across, you know, a letter from, from 2024 in which someone was claiming to be Donald Trump and they wrote a letter that said, that said, you know, I don't want to build a wall. I've never wanted to build a wall. I don't want it big. I want, I don't even want one, right? A scholar from 200 years from now would say, I'm not entirely sure that he wrote that letter, right? Now, maybe there'd be other sources or whatever. But here's the problem with that argument. Now that argument is sound. And when you're dealing with ancient sources, here's the real problem. We don't have any. The biggest problem with ancient history is there isn't any. No, there obviously is. But history is the written, the written account of things that happened in the past.

Gerrit Our earliest, our earliest fragment of part of a manuscript of the New Testament is at the earliest 90 to 100 AD. And that's like part of a line of part of a torn paper. When we're talking about the records we have from the New Testament, we are literally hundreds of years removed from the original writing of it. Now, that might make you say, well, yeah, that makes me doubt it even more. Well, what it means is it becomes far more difficult to draw conclusions about who would have written what and when and how they would have written it when at best what you're dealing with is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy and then me saying copy 40 more times.

Gerrit And that's the best case scenario. You are then left with a lot of questions in between that sure can cause someone to say, well, I don't really think Paul would have said this. But here's a different perspective that I have because I worked on the Joseph Smith Papers. Several of the proofs that ancient scholars use, well, scholars of ancient history, like super old scholars. Several of the proofs that really old scholars use, which probably is us at this point, actually.

Richard According to my new picture, that will be on the website.

Gerrit Well, because Becky wants you looking haggard. I think she's probably just a little worried that your new found fame is going to lead to many female inquiries.

Richard I feel confident that that is not her concern.

Gerrit That's not her concern?

Richard I know very confident about that.

Gerrit That's not her concern?

Richard I know very confident about that.

Gerrit I know Angie's worried about that all the time.

Richard All the time.

Gerrit In fact, she occasionally...

Richard She just sighed.

Gerrit You could hear her laugh about it. So I have a different perspective because I've worked on a paper's project of a 19th century historical figure. And look, when you're doing 19th century history, you've got it all over people that are doing ancient history. They have like three sources that are separated by a hundred years from one another, and they're desperately trying to cobble together with both archaeology and with the few sources they have, what most likely happened in the past. And that's what you're always doing when you do history. When you're doing history, you're trying to argue what most likely happened in the past based upon the evidence. Well, for Joseph Smith, I've got 12,000 documents. Sure, we've got archaeological stuff too. We got that. But we have 12,000 documents just from Joseph Smith alone. We have hundreds of thousands of documents that are related to Joseph.

Gerrit Newspaper articles, journal accounts, letters that people wrote to each other about Joseph, reminiscence accounts, people talking about Joseph. When they lived, we have, I mean, essentially we have a treasure trove of documents surrounding Joseph Smith that a scholar of Paul just doesn't have. Are there any contemporaries in in Rome that write about the apostle Paul? Nope. Are there are there any early Christians who know Paul and write about Paul? Nope. Right. So, I mean, you do have Polycarp, who is associated with people who were associated with the apostles. You get really close, but you don't have eyewitness accounts of the apostles. Those sources don't exist. Now, why that gives me a different perspective. If we were to apply some of the same standards that New Testament scholars apply to the writings of the Bible, if we were to apply those same standards to Joseph Smith, it would cause all kinds of problems.

Gerrit So here's how you determine whether or not Joseph Smith wrote something. If he authored it, obviously, if it's in his handwriting, great, he wrote it. But like many people from the past, people who are in the position to not write it out themselves longhand, have other people write it. So when Joseph Smith dictates a letter to John Whitmer, and John Whitmer writes it out, and it's in John Whitmer's handwriting, is that still a Joseph Smith document? Is it still a Joseph Smith letter? What would you say, Richard?

Richard I would say yes.

Gerrit Yeah. So Joseph's telling him what to write, and he writes it. Okay. Well, what about Joseph Smith's views of the powers of policy of the government, his presidential platform? In this case, we know very well how it was crafted, because we have Joseph's journal, where he tells WW. Phelps to write his political platform. He meets with Joseph. Joseph tells him what he wants it to be. He comes back with a draft. Joseph tells him what to change, and then eventually Joseph publishes it under his name. Even though the actual words that are written on the page are being written by WW. Phelps, and in this case not just Joseph dictating it to him, the ideas are being formulated. Now, he's talked to Joseph about it, but how those ideas are being presented are being formulated by WW. Phelps. Do we at the Joseph Smith paper say, yep, views of the powers, that's not a Joseph Smith document, that's a WW.

Richard I would say yes.

Gerrit Yeah. So Joseph's telling him what to write, and he writes it. Okay. Well, what about Joseph Smith's views of the powers of policy of the government, his presidential platform? In this case, we know very well how it was crafted, because we have Joseph's journal, where he tells WW. Phelps to write his political platform. He meets with Joseph. Joseph tells him what he wants it to be. He comes back with a draft. Joseph tells him what to change, and then eventually Joseph publishes it under his name. Even though the actual words that are written on the page are being written by WW. Phelps, and in this case not just Joseph dictating it to him, the ideas are being formulated. Now, he's talked to Joseph about it, but how those ideas are being presented are being formulated by WW. Phelps. Do we at the Joseph Smith paper say, yep, views of the powers, that's not a Joseph Smith document, that's a WW.

Gerrit Phelps document? No, and it's not just the Joseph Smith Papers that do that either. When Washington dictates or has one of his subordinates write a letter for him under his name, the people at the Washington papers don't go, well, that's not Washington anymore. Because when someone authorizes something to go out under their name, it becomes theirs, even if they weren't the ones who drafted the syntax or the language. Anyone who's paid attention to presidential speechwriting, especially in the 20th and 21st century, is well aware of this. Do you really believe that George Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden really wrote every word of every speech they ever gave? No, there's literally presidential speechwriters. It's literally their job is to write them. Does that mean that it's not actually their speech, even though they didn't formulate the words?

Gerrit The ideas are clearly theirs. I mean, I'm sure they got it. They could be like, wait a minute, I don't believe this at all. Who snuck this in here? But once they put it out under their name, it becomes theirs even if they didn't formulate the actual syntax of the writing. So how does that apply to the ancient past? I don't know the way. And in fact, here's the reality. Nobody knows the way that the original manuscripts of the New Testament were drafted. You don't know that because you don't have them. You don't have handwriting samples. You don't have 18 different manuscripts that you can compare to one another from 30 AD. You don't have anything. You're 200 years removed from when these things were written before you start to have manuscripts that you can then try to draw conclusions from. So maybe, I mean, the way I view it is with things like that is, first of all, maybe Peter employs a scribe who speaks super great Greek because he's trying to publish it to the church and Greek is the lingua franca of the entire Eastern Roman Empire.

Gerrit Maybe he does employ a scribe who speaks Greek to send his letter out. It would kind of make sense, actually, right? So if I'm going to say, oh, there's no possible way that could be Peter because it's in Greek, well, that's not a very good argument to me. I understand why it's a good argument for people who are doing ancient studies, but we follow a very different set of who is the author when it comes to more modern studies. Second, and I know I spent way too long on this.

Richard Well, so there is actually, so while we have spent a lot of time on this, I'd like to extend the time just a little bit.

Gerrit I would like to yield my time to the gentleman from Oklahoma State.

Richard Well, no. Because one of the things that I think you brought up is part of the point here, is with having modern day prophets, Revelation, the Book of Mormon, some of these things, while they might become questions to other Christians, we have a certain, there's a certain benefit to the position that we're in. So I wanted to share a scripture in John, and then I'm like, when I read it, I was like, ah, that doesn't seem, that doesn't seem right. So it's John, chapter 6, verse 44. No man can come to me except the Father, which hath sent me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day. That's a very Calvinist perspective.

Gerrit It's not only a very Calvinist perspective, it's one of the primary arguments that Calvin makes and all subsequent Calvinist theologians make about conversion.

Richard That no one can come to Jesus unless the Father draws and brings him in.

Gerrit In fact, Calvinists and Arminians will actually have full debates where they debate what the Greek word there draw actually means.

Richard Of course they will, because they have to, because it's here and they have to deal with it, right? So there's a little footnote, Joseph Smith translation, verse 44. No man can come unto me, except he doeth the will of my Father who hath sent me. And this is the will of him who hath sent me, that ye receive the Son, for the Father beareth record of him, and he that receiveth the testimony and doeth the will of him who sent me, I will raise him up in the resurrection of the just.

Gerrit Yeah, now that, so it went from being like super Calvinist to being the most anti-Calvinist statement ever that you have to do the will.

Richard Super Latter-day Saint.

Gerrit Yeah, very Latter-day Saint. It went from God decides who he is going to save to you need to do the works of God and the will of the Father to be saved.

Richard And what's interesting about that is as I read that scripture, initially I'm like, huh, it doesn't, I'm like that, boy, that's interesting. But I don't have to wrestle with it in the same way.

Gerrit Right. I mean, look, Latter-day Saints have all kinds of things that we could wrestle with, but we should lean into the fact that we have prophetic utterance. I mean, the very fact that there's entire debates about that scripture, like literally there are entire debates between Methodist and Calvinist preachers where the entire debate is on that verse and what it actually means. Well, they both really believe in the Bible. They both really believe in Jesus, and they have come to wildly different conclusions. So that's part of the reason why we want to lean into prophetic utterance, why God calls prophets so that when we have questions about things, we aren't left to our own devices. The other point I wanted to make about the timing of when things are written. Oh, so let me give two more points. The second point about what is being written. So one of the reasons why people say things are a pseudepigraph is, well, here Paul is saying this, and I don't think Paul would have said that because he says this in Galatians.

Gerrit Now again, that's a logical conclusion to make. I don't think this is the type of thing that someone who said X would say, you know, Y 10 years later. And yet, once again, go back to Joseph Smith's writings. You have all kinds of things that would appear to be contradictions. Why? Because Joseph Smith is learning more. He's receiving more revelation and going forward. Someone could easily 2,000 years from now say, well, there's no possible way that Doctrine and Covenants, Section 137 is actually from Joseph Smith because Joseph Smith said with Doctrine and Covenants, Section 76, that you couldn't go to the Celestial Kingdom without being baptized. And now you're trying to claim to me that the same Joseph Smith, four years later, said that you can go to the Celestial Kingdom even if you're not baptized.

Gerrit That's what you're trying to sell me. I kind of went a little extreme anti-Born.

Richard It sounded like Bill Maher ripping the church a little bit.

Gerrit That's not my goal. But you see the point, right? If all you had was Doctrine and Covenant, Section 76, let's say our civilization is destroyed. And all that's left is trees that are contaminated with radiation, drinking water that no one can have, and one copy of D&C 76 and Doctrine and Covenant, Section 137.

Richard That's it.

Gerrit And some alien race, 2,000 years later, comes to this destroyed world, and that's what they find of our civilization. They would draw the exact same conclusion that New Testament scholars draw about Paul's letters. They would say, what's more likely that this Joseph Smith guy, who they probably would pejoratively call Joe, that this Joe Smith guy did an entire huge revelation in 1832 that focused on the fact that you could not go to this highest kingdom, this celestial kingdom, without being baptized, and then later, four years later, did a complete 180 and said, actually, everyone goes. I mean, the logical conclusion for someone who has no other context is, yeah, this probably isn't the same person.

Gerrit Now, this is going to come as a surprise to you, Jordan, but historians don't believe in revelation. This historian does, but in the world of secular knowledge, one of the things that they don't give any credence to is revelation, continuing revelation. And, you know, the weird part about that is, you and I both know, we've seen politicians in our lives say things like, oh, I absolutely, totally agree with this, and 20 years later say, I absolutely, totally don't agree with that, and I never have. Well, let me look back here in the 1980s, you said you did. And so we're actually well aware that over the course of even a secular person's life, their positions on issues change over time, even if there wasn't revelation involved.

Gerrit Again, I understand why the default position is when you don't have any other sources to say, well, it kind of seems unlikely that the same Paul who said this about salvation would say this about salvation. I get it. It's unlikely. But it's not actually impossible. It's not impossible. And in fact, we have hundreds, if not thousands, of examples from 19th century history where we could find someone making a statement and then 20 years later making the opposite statement. When you look in revealed religious history, you find something very similar as well, right? You have the Lord telling his disciples, unto the city of the Samaritans, don't enter it. You don't preach the gospel to the Samaritans at all. And then you have the same Lord appearing to Peter and saying, take the gospel to the Gentiles.

Gerrit Now, that appears to be a contradiction. But it's only a contradiction if you don't believe in continuing revelation. And that's one of the best parts about being a Latter-day Saint. One of the best parts about being a Latter-day Saint is we don't have to be shackled by the strictures of, well, this is what the Bible says, and there's no way of getting around it. You could have President Nelson tomorrow receive further revelation from the Father that changes our perspective on all kinds of things. In fact, we have an article of faith that specifically says God is going to reveal more truth to us. If we really believe that, then that means there are things that are absolutely true that we don't know. And if the way that we're going to decide whether or not they're true is did I already think that, well, then we couldn't possibly receive any revelation.

Gerrit One of the most important parts about being a Latter-day Saint is being completely and totally open to further communication from God. To never rest on your laurels to say, nope, this is what the Gospel is and it can't be anything else. We have giant apostate movements, break-offs from the church, where people do exactly that. This is the truth that I like and I don't like anymore past this time period, so therefore it's no longer God's church after this time period. To be a Latter-day Saint is to believe not only that President Nelson might teach us some things that we love, but he might actually teach us some things that we don't. And that's the reason why God calls prophets. He calls prophets because it isn't a political gamesmanship. This isn't about who you should vote for, even if the guy in your elders quorum pretty much thinks that it is.

Gerrit He's not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And he might be a very well-meaning guy. You know, Jordan, I feel your pain, man. Over the last couple of years, after nearly every fireside I've ever given, I've had someone come up to me afterwards and tell me that I'm actually an apostate and that I am driving people out of the church and that I clearly don't really have a testimony because I'm teaching things that are found from the Joseph Smith Papers that President Nelson himself is teaching surrounding Joseph Smith, surrounding the Book of Mormon, surrounding the translation. And yeah, it is hurtful. I understand that pain in the sense that a well-meaning person, who I'm sure really believes, is willing to castigate me.

Gerrit And I got to tell you, I'm a lot of things, but an apostate, I am not.

Richard I'm going to stop doing that. I'm going to stop doing that.

Gerrit It's always Richard. He does it every time. He's like the reverse hype man. You come down off the podium like, dude, that was awful. Like I had a testimony, and then truthishly, I heard you speak, and I no longer have one.

Richard I'm going to stop.

Gerrit But my point is, Jordan, is that here's what I would counsel. Whether or not Joseph Smith saw Jesus Christ is really the only thing that matters here. Because it's not surprising that feelings on politics can get messy and that people feel one way or another. I don't really have to be a 19th century American political historian to say that people are sometimes idiots about their politics.

Richard And I should say, we hadn't read the rest of the email, but to that point that he wonders if he has a place, he struggles and is frustrated with... Yeah, why don't you go ahead and read that portion?

Gerrit I jumped the shirt.

Richard Well, I should have finished reading it. So the pseudepigraphal thing has caused him some reflection, caused him to search a lot. He says, I've been trying to study and find faith again, but it hasn't been easy. It doesn't help that many members of the gospel use the gospel to confirm their politics rather than let the gospel inform their politics. And not to say things in the... And not say things in church they shouldn't. It's made me feel uncomfortable, like I no longer belong in the church. And so, I mean, he goes on to talk about how, you know, this is a struggle for him. It's a frustration for him. He's turned to the podcast as he enjoys the content and that he's enjoyed that in hopes that we kind of keep it up. But that has been a frustration. So I just wanted to kind of communicate that point.

Gerrit And look, anyone who's a member of the church has gone to church on a Sunday and had someone say something that is like ridiculously not true. I mean, imagine when you are a church historian and all you've done is study things from the past and you teach religion to hear someone make a blanket statement. Yeah, well, you know, Joseph Smith really believed this. And I'm sitting there thinking, nope, there's like literally, we've got 12,000 documents of Joseph. Not one of them does he say that? You know what I mean? And sometimes it is because they're reflecting their own personal beliefs and their own ideas. But that's where I think, you know, if you feel your faith coming out of focus, because, you know, I just don't know about some of these, you know, pseudepigraphal writings in the Bible. And it frustrates me when, you know, Bill the Adulterer in elders quorum, you know, starts spouting off on his, you know, constitutional law party beliefs or whatever.

Gerrit I don't know what's going on, right? None of that changes whether or not Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith. Because if Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith, then this is Christ's true church, even if we can't figure out what level of Greek the writer of Second Peter used. Even if it doesn't make sense to us, and even if we can't piece everything together, if Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith, then this is God's true church. Now, that can be frustrating when we have people in places that we live who make us perhaps feel unwelcome because of political beliefs. But however unwelcome I feel politically, can't change whether or not Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith. So one thing I would say for people who are struggling with things, especially when it's secular things that are surrounding you, I can't handle the way that this person's clinging to closing their testimony in the name of thy son.

Richard I need to get over myself.

Gerrit Whatever it is, you can't allow that distraction to pull you away from what the essential message of the gospel is. Because either Joseph Smith had gold plates or he did not. Well, he certainly seems to have had gold plates. Either he translated the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God or he did not. But I'll tell you what, there are really, really, really terrible secular arguments that people make about where the Book of Mormon came from if it didn't come from Joseph Smith. Anywhere from, oh, I'm sure he just wrote it on his own. Uh-huh, go read literally anything else Joseph wrote. Oh, oh, it's like wildly different. Well, he probably like copied it from like something like Sidney Rigdon did even though Sidney Rigdon wasn't even there, but maybe he was there.

Gerrit And that like at some point, there isn't a good secular explanation for the text of the Book of Mormon. There just isn't one. There's Unisom anti-Mormonism, which is what I call things that anti-Mormons say to help themselves sleep at night, but they're not good arguments. The reality is the secular world doesn't have a good explanation of where the Book of Mormon comes from. You know how you know that? Because you have secular, atheist, Presbyterian, non-Latter-day Saint historians who are still wrestling with the question of where did the Book of Mormon text come from. So if it was obvious where the Book of Mormon text came from, I'm pretty sure that the professor at the University of Santa Barbara would say that.

Gerrit Why don't they say what's obvious? Because it's not. The Book of Mormon is the refuge to hide in when you're struggling. Because there isn't, there is not a good secular argument about where that text comes from. And then we can just turn to the spiritual. We all know how we feel when we read the text of the Book of Mormon. The Holy Spirit speaks to us and tells us these words are the words of God. I know this is going to come as a shock to you, Jordan, but people who have had conflict with one another about politics in the church didn't start this year. In fact, it was always a problem in the church. It was always a problem because what are the things that people care passionately about?

Richard Religion and politics.

Gerrit Religion and politics. And so, of course, anything that people feel religiously, it will start to merge into their political beliefs. This became a pretty big deal, and I've told this story before, but I'm going to tell it again. It became a pretty big deal in winter quarters in Council Bluffs, Iowa, actually. After Brigham had already led the first several groups of people to Salt Lake, he had left behind Orson Hyde as a leader of the church there, as well as several other people, to organize the more Latter Day Saints who are moving and coming, and they'd stop there in winter quarters, Council Bluffs area, and then they would move on. There was a large number of Saints continually passing through there. Well, at the time, Orson Hyde had shifted his political allegiance from the Democratic Party to the Whig Party, the other major political party in 1849.

Gerrit Now, Latter Day Saints had been almost universally Democrats. I mean, there are some elections where there's like eight votes for the non-Democratic candidate in Nauvoo and like thousands for the other. I mean, it's ridiculous, actually, how block voting Latter Day Saints were, and it actually led to criticisms from their detractors. Oh, you Mormons all just vote for whoever the Prophet tells you to. No, us Mormons just always vote for the person who's not actively trying to kill us in the moment. Now, they still hate us, but they're not as active in their attempt to try to drive us out with mob violence. So, look, minority groups often vote in blocks because they perceive that they need protection, and so they end up voting in blocks because the other side is not offering any protection. That's very standard in political history. However, after the Democratic Party, Democratic Governor Ford, Democratic Governor Lilburn Boggs, Democratic Governor Reynolds, Democratic President Martin Van Buren, after multiple Democratic leaders had rejected doing anything to really help the Saints, there was a shift where the Latter-day Saints decided to back, or at least the leadership of the Church decided to back, the Whig candidate for president in 1848.

Gerrit And Orson Hyde really leaned into this. He became a die-hard Whig. And there were lots of Latter-day Saints who had been Democrats their entire lives who struggled with that. I mean, while I'm thinking of it, there's even one conference report where Joseph F. Smith, who was an early Republican, so the Republican Party was a thoroughgoing anti-Mormon party when it was first created. It was created to eliminate the two twin relics of barbarism in the territories, slavery and polygamy. Well, it's not very hard to figure out where they stand on Mormonism. They published multiple tracks against Mormons. They debated whether or not to publish copies of the Book of Mormon, to distribute them over the country, to keep people from becoming Mormons. I mean, and they passed multiple anti-Mormon laws directed at members of the church.

Gerrit So in the early 20th century, one of the few Republican leaders of the church was Joseph F. Smith. And so many of his fellow apostles were Democrats, that at one point, while he's up on the stand speaking in general conference, they catcall him from the benches behind him. He says, you know, I can't remember exactly. He says something like, well, you know, he struggled. And one of them yells, that's because you're a Republican. Now, obviously, it was done in good fun and in jest. But back to our Orson Hyde story, Hyde is in charge of this, and he starts publishing a newspaper that helps, you know, talks about the saints, you know, moving, spread some of the gospel ideas, but also is very wig in its politics. Well, the other person who was there in Council Bluffs, who was a long time church leader, was Almond Babbitt.

Gerrit Almond Babbitt was a diehard Democrat. Almond Babbitt was so hardcore in his politics that I can only imagine he was the kind of person who no one ever invited to a party, because they'd be like, hey, have you tried the roast beef? And it devolved into their feelings about some political issue. Right? The second one, hey Almond, how are things going? I don't know with this government, like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, asking about your family. Well, my family's struggling because of this government. I mean, Almond Babbitt seemed to be so over the top politically that when he gets elected as the territorial delegate for Utah territory, he goes back to Washington, and other Democratic leaders of the Democratic Party will write to Brigham Young and say, you got to replace this guy. He is so partisan in his politics, he's hurting your chances because he is just so over the top with everything he thinks.

Gerrit Now, Almond Babbitt had served as a state representative, as a Democrat. I mean, he was a hardcore Democrat. Well, what do you think happens when you put Orson Hyde with Whig allegiances and Almond Babbitt into the same little community? Well, fireworks ensue. Almond Babbitt, unhappy that Orson Hyde is publishing a newspaper that's pro-Whig, himself starts to publish a newspaper attacking Orson Hyde and his paper. And here you have two leaders of the Latter-day Saints in the midst of the state of the Gentiles there in Iowa, publicly attacking one another and besmirching one another purely over this political disagreement. Well, eventually Orson Hyde decides that Almond Babbitt has gone too far. And look, Almond Babbitt does go pretty far. I mean, if you read his paper, Almond Babbitt is not a shrinking violet. He's already been disfellowshipped from the church multiple times in his life.

Gerrit And you actually have condemnation of him in the Doctrine and Covenants. But he always comes back, and he must be such a great administrator that it's like, well, we want it done, we can put Babbitt in charge. We're gonna have to disfellowship him in a couple of years, but we'll put him back in charge. Anyway, so eventually Orson Hyde decides Babbitt's crossed the line, and he disfellowships him from the church. When Brigham Young finds out what's going on, he writes a letter to Orson Hyde, and does not kindly rebuke him. He writes a letter strongly rebukeing him. This is what he says. Now, we don't care a grote about your political differences. A grote is a worthless English penny. So Brigham, who served missions in England, he's trying to say, we couldn't care less at all about your politics.

Gerrit It's meaningless to us. We don't care a grote about your political differences, but we wish to say to you to not allow trivial matters to influence you in the least. And never, no never, no never, drag the priesthood into political Gentile warfare. Let no religious test be required or the holy influence and power of the priesthood be brought to bear in any political question. If the intrinsic merits, the intrinsic merits of all such matters will not furnish argument sufficient for all necessary purposes, then let them go. For it is better for the whole political fabric, corrupt as we know it to be, that it should tatter and go to destruction than for one saint to be offended over politics. How do you really feel Brigham? I mean, the reality is for Brigham Young, the only thing that matters is the kingdom of God on earth.

Gerrit And sure, the church and throughout the territorial period and even before are going to engage in politics. They're going to invite people to participate in politics. They're going to use their elective franchise. But they can't ever get to the point where they miss the point of what this life is. This is the kingdom of God on earth. And if our political viewpoints cause us to say, well, I don't think President Nelson is a prophet anymore because he said something I politically disagree with, well, it's time to start doing some soul searching for anyone. Are you a Democrat or Republican or a Green Party member or a Libertarian first? Or are you a member of the kingdom of God on earth first? And here's how you know where your love really is.

Gerrit Do you change your otherwise held political beliefs because the church takes a position on something that's opposite of your beliefs? If the answer to that is no, then maybe politics have become our God, right? I know that's really tough because, look, I'm well aware. I get many, many, many emails. I'm well aware that for many people, there is nothing more important in this world than politics. I'm well aware. But Jesus wants nothing to be more important to us than Jesus. Nothing. Any man putting his hand to the plow and looking back is not fit for the kingdom of God. That's really, really, really hard because people who care about politics really believe that what they think is the only true thing that exists.

Gerrit But whether they're right or whether they're wrong, the only thing that really matters is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because in the next life, whether someone was a good Republican or a good Democrat or whether they had the right views on one thing, that won't really matter. But the Lord Jesus Christ will matter in the next life. And so politics are, as Brigham Young said, it's political gentile warfare. And sometimes Latter-day Saints can be drawn in by it. Always try to fix yourself to the prophet. Now there's one more point I wanted to make on this topic, and I know that essentially we haven't discussed anything.

Richard Well, so now, like I said, we want to get right in to the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, so we're just going to hit this email real quick, and then we'll get right into the witnesses.

Gerrit Yeah, we even had another email. At this point, I feel like Richard tricked me into this podcast in order to push his political views on me.

Richard It was a good email from a litner, and I appreciate that you discussed it. You know, because I know that you also want to... There was one other...

Gerrit There's one more point that I want to make.

Richard To this particular email.

Gerrit About ancient pseudepigraphic claims or timing claims, because there's one other...

Richard Well, so there's another email. So again, we want to get through these emails real quick.

Gerrit We're going to burn through these emails. We're at the 55th minute. Rex's elders quorum president can just de-subscribe.

Richard So this is...

Gerrit Unsubscribe, de-subscribe.

Richard He's de-subscribing.

Gerrit He's de-platforming and unsubscribing.

Richard This email comes to us from Jed. There's a longer email to it, but at the end, his question is, I was listening to the Civil War episode. Like many thought it was neat, but maybe a little predictable. In the podcast, you say it really wasn't, and I was wondering what other reliable historians say about it and how they explain it away.

Gerrit Well, so the point I wanted to make, and this is a really good one, because one of the reasons why the dating of the New Testament letters and certainly the Gospels, one of the primary ways they date things is based upon what things have that we know secularly happened. So one of the major arguments for why the Gospel of Mark was written after AD 70 is because the Gospel of Mark, believed to be the earliest Gospel, talks about the destruction of Jerusalem. And so historians say, well, what's more likely that Mark just so happened to predict that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed and the temple was going to be destroyed, or that after the temple was destroyed, Mark was like, hey, yeah, I'm pretty sure Jesus also said that, kind of like Richard's sports picks, where he's like, no, no, I had...

Richard I had Kansas City.

Gerrit I had the Lions with more than 10 wins, and then we had to have a listener let us know, no, you didn't. Yeah. I mean, it was like, oh, I've been heavy on the Texans all year.

Richard Well, I did make my predictions on the Australian Football Championship, and I feel very confident.

Gerrit When do we find out the results of those? Wendy wants to know.

Richard June-ish, July. I think season kicks off in a couple of weeks. Very excited.

Gerrit I feel like we should go to Australia to watch it.

Richard I feel like we should.

Gerrit We're going to need some outside help. So, the, again, I understand the logical reason that someone makes that conclusion. It is certainly far more likely that someone after the fact says that Jesus said something that happened to come to pass than it is that someone prophetically predicts what's going to happen in the future. But likelihood is not the only measure of whether or not something happened when we're, especially when we're talking about miracles and in this case, the Son of God, right? That something is more likely is not actually evidence that a religious miracle didn't take place. And why I use the Civil War prophecy, so in answer to this question as well, first of all, it will probably come as a surprise to you that there's not a ton of Civil War historians who spend a lot of their time trying to determine whether or not Joseph Smith's prediction panned out the right way.

Gerrit So really, in answer to your question, it is well established among historians of the time period leading up to the Civil War that the expectation that there would be a war and that it would be as horrible as it was is not in the public consciousness. This is something that Abraham Lincoln himself says at his second inaugural address just weeks before he's murdered. No one thought it would be this bad. No one did. And I don't think Lincoln is just playing to the crowd. You can tell just by what the initial enlistments are from the various places, how long they get soldiers in the army, that no one thinks it's going to be that long.

Richard So despite Abraham combing through the Book of Mormon, reading it and the Revelations, I feel like Richard's mad at me today.

Gerrit No, he's the one that makes me mad.

Richard You're saying that he still didn't know.

Gerrit Yeah, so yeah, that's a tongue in cheek reference to an earlier episode, Abraham Lincoln and the Book of Mormon, is that what we...

Richard Something along those lines.

Gerrit You could probably find that with our poorly indexed, non-indexed stuff. So let's say again, civilization is destroyed. Alien civilization comes 2,000 years from now. I like how all of these end in civilization being destroyed. Because we are talking about politics. So I mean, the eventual end is civilization being destroyed, right? So 2,000 years from now, let's say this alien civilization finds an 1876 Doctrine and Covenants from our church. They find no other earlier documents. You know, the Church History Library is incinerated. You know, all of my writings somehow weren't saved, which is stunning given that, you know, you'd think we were trying to keep all intellectual preciousness alive, but no, that's how bad the destruction was. All they find is an 1876 Doctrine and Covenants, and they also find an 1835 Doctrine and Covenants.

Gerrit Wow, we found them. Two Doctrine and Covenants is these crazy Mormons who probably caused the destruction. I don't know what the aliens think about us, honestly. Well, they read the two books, and they compare them, and they go, wait a minute here. Look what these Mormons did. In the 1876 version of their book, they put a prophecy in that this Joe Smith guy said that there was going to be a terrible civil war, said that it was going to be over slavery, said that it would terminate in the deaths of many souls, said that it would start in South Carolina. But guess what? These Mormons didn't happen to include that revelation in the 1835 version of their book. This claims the revelation was received in 1832.

Gerrit Uh-huh. Sure, sure it was received in 1832. And you just happen to not put it in the 1835 version of your book, and then magically after the civil war was over, you were like, oh, and by the way, Joseph Smith also said this. Now, these aliens are a little bit condescending. These aliens, yeah, they're up in your business, aren't they? Well, what do you expect from an alien?

Richard More, I expect more. I expect some level of courtesy.

Gerrit Yeah, why are they so condescending? I'm sure they're light years advanced over us, but they don't have to be condescending about it.

Richard They're British.

Gerrit All right, we just lost all of our British listeners. All three of them, one of them is Becky's sister-in-law.

Richard No, they're like, no, no, no, he's right.

Gerrit Well, so all of those conclusions that they would have come to would be illogical. They would follow the facts that they have on hand. They would make the most sense. And they would be completely and totally wrong. Because not only do we have early manuscript versions of Doctrine and Covenants, Section 87, from 1832 and 33 and 34, we have it copied into different people's journals from those early days. And we actually have it published in the original Pearl of Great Price. In the 1851 version of the Pearl of Great Price, one of the things that Franklin Richards includes is Doctrine and Covenants, Section 87. But in our, you know, alien scenario that we created, the only documents that the aliens had was the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants and the 1876 Doctrine and Covenants.

Gerrit And so the logical conclusion is, well, what's more likely that this Joe Smith guy prophetically predicted the worst calamity in American history up until the destruction of our civilization anyway? Or that his followers, after the fact, went back and just pretended that he predicted that the coming of the Civil War was going to happen. That's one of the things I would say to Jordan, as far as when you're approaching things from ancient history, Biblical history, the very fact that something is likely doesn't mean that it's definite. So we don't know exactly how the Bible is put together and when those things are written, and secular historians can debate different things like that. But we do know when we got the Book of Mormon. There's no question about when it was published. There's no question about the fact that it comes from Joseph Smith.

Gerrit So I would say in our moments of, boy, I really just don't know, we lean into the Book of Mormon and the revelations Joseph Smith received. Because there's no doubt about their origin, and if they are the words of God, which they are, the Holy Spirit is going to speak to us and speak peace to our minds. Do you belong? Everyone belongs. He calleth all, rich and poor and bond and free, male and female, white and black, all or alike unto God. That means the Communist Latter-day Saint living in Vietnam is just as welcome as the Libertarian Latter-day Saint living in Northern Idaho. At some point, every one of us will have to shed our beliefs that don't align with the Lord Jesus as every one of us bends the knee and confesses that Jesus is the Lord.

Gerrit Now, whether that happens in this life or the next, I've made it my rule in my life to strictly follow what prophets currently teach. And if it's what I agree with, it's easy. And when it's what I don't, politically or personally or socially agree with, I still follow it because that's the reason why God called prophets. And the whole point of having a prophet is to be led through these difficult ideas and difficult times. And that's why it's so essential to gain a testimony of the gospel so that you aren't questioning every time a prophet says something that you don't agree with. Instead you say, I don't understand that. I don't know why he's saying it the way he is. But that's not my job. My job is to sustain the prophet and to follow him. Until some point, I may find it out.

Gerrit I may get that knowledge I'm looking for. I apologize to everyone who thought we were going to talk about something else.

Richard Next week, Gerrit. Next week we're going to get right through the...

Gerrit Let's stop promising it. Let's just say, you know what, we're not going to ever do it.

Richard No, next week, more witnesses...

Gerrit I feel like this is Apostles, Apostates and Apothecaries.

Richard We have that part two coming up next week.

Gerrit We have part two coming up sometime in 2027. Thanks 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.

Questioning Scriptures and Frustration with Politics

Chapters

Transcript

Quote board

Source shelf

2 Peter

Religious Studies Center at BYU, collected works on the New Testament

Book of Revelation

Joseph Smith, Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government (1844), drafted by W. W. Phelps

John 6:44

Joseph Smith Translation, John 6:44

D&C 76

D&C 137

Matthew 10:5 and Acts 10

Articles of Faith 1:9

Joseph F. Smith, general conference address (date not given on air)

Orson Hyde's pro-Whig newspaper at Council Bluffs (not named on air)

Almon Babbitt's rival Democratic newspaper (not named on air)

Brigham Young to Orson Hyde, about 1849

Luke 9:62

Gospel of Mark, prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem

Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (1865)

D&C 87

Pearl of Great Price (1851), compiled by Franklin D. Richards

2 Nephi 26:33

Episode quiz

Which New Testament book does Richard like to joke was "written two weeks ago"?

Fun with Numbers

From 1832 to 1876

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words

More from this episode

Claim check

Take it to class

Banter bin

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

In General Conference

Go deeper

Questioning Scriptures and Frustration with Politics

We'll get right to it

2 Peter

Religious Studies Center at BYU, collected works on the New Testament

Book of Revelation

Joseph Smith, Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government (1844), drafted by W. W. Phelps

John 6:44

Joseph Smith Translation, John 6:44

D&C 76

D&C 137

Matthew 10:5 and Acts 10

Articles of Faith 1:9

Joseph F. Smith, general conference address (date not given on air)

Orson Hyde's pro-Whig newspaper at Council Bluffs (not named on air)

Almon Babbitt's rival Democratic newspaper (not named on air)

Brigham Young to Orson Hyde, about 1849

Luke 9:62

Gospel of Mark, prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem

Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (1865)

D&C 87

Pearl of Great Price (1851), compiled by Franklin D. Richards

2 Nephi 26:33

Which New Testament book does Richard like to joke was "written two weeks ago"?

From 1832 to 1876

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words