Peacemakers Needed

Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Dr. Richard LeDuc explore the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the life and teachings of the 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, Richard LeDuc. What, I'm not even gonna call you doctor anymore? What happened?

Richard Well, we don't have time, Gerrit. We have so much we have to get to.

Gerrit I'm joined by my friend, Dr. Richard LeDuc. We kind of are interrupting our regularly scheduled discussion about Whigs and Democrats in the 1840s. We'll get back to that.

Richard As important as that is.

Gerrit I know everyone's hanging on every word. I need to know which presidents are condemned to hell. I need to know it. But we thought we would take this time to reflect a little bit on the death of President Nelson and then some of the, you know, the horrific events that took place in Michigan. So we thought we'd take a little bit of time and talk about that. President Nelson passed away. And I know that there's all kinds of far more fitting tributes and reflections on his life and legacy as a leader of the church than we could possibly offer. But we just thought we'd join the chorus of people honoring him and share some of our thoughts and feelings. I had, lest anyone think that I have any kind of import whatsoever outside of this podcast, which is only important to Richard.

Gerrit I mean, so, I mean, it's really important to me. My mom, Rachel's mom, several moms, Rocky and his cop car. I mean, there's a few things that are important, but I had the opportunity of interacting tangentially. Now, please understand, I am not trying to say to everyone listening, hey, guess what? I like, I was like pretty close with Profit. And you know, he like came over to my house and stuff. And you know, there was a few times when I was like, hey, you know what, Russ? What if we talked more about being peacemakers? I'm not trying to do that. In fact, it's one of the things that's the most, one of the most frustrating things to me is when people claim a special kind of knowledge through some kind of tangential relationship.

Gerrit And so after expressing that, let me now share that knowledge. And it's because my work on the Joseph Smith Papers project. Now, I did not go meet with President Nelson, okay? I did not go meet with President Nelson. I wasn't sitting at his office. I wasn't asking him if he like, mustered on the sandwich I was getting for us as we went to lunch together. I'm sure he had no idea who I was at all. And frankly, he shouldn't have had any idea who I was at all. I was simply an historian working on this massive project. But when I came to the Joseph Smith Papers project, the project had been kind of going in fits and starts for quite some time. And my good friend Jeff and Ron Espland, they kind of spearheaded a reorganization of how the project was running in order to make more deadlines and to get more things put out.

Gerrit And so they got more people on board, and I was one of those people that was hired back in 2010. So it kind of gives you an idea of how far away I'm talking. So I'm fresh out of graduate school. I had just left the University of Colorado, you know. I'm sure I finished completing a Bleep the Mormons chant at a Colorado BYU football game.

Richard Oh, there you go. Yeah. That was a nice win over the weekend, wasn't it?

Gerrit Yeah, it was great. When a lot of people I know went to that game, and then a lot of them were stunned. All of them that asked me beforehand, like I was like, it's going to be bad guys. And a friend of the show, Gerrit, he was like, oh yeah, hey, I'm going to the game. You know, what can I expect from the fans? And I'm like, there's going to be a foulness in the language you are about to hear that would make a sailor in San Pedro go, hey guys, hey, let's, can we clean it up a little bit?

Richard It's not just Colorado, actually. I went to the Oregon BYU game. It was there. It's, it's, it's everywhere.

Gerrit Well, the chant is everywhere because people are bigots, but there are some that have just a special level of foulness.

Richard Yeah. University of Wyoming and University of Colorado are especially aggressive.

Gerrit You know, and I was telling someone about this. I was like, you know, honestly, Colorado has a, a long history of anti-Mormonism. And I know that given the events of the weekend, it kind of feels like everywhere has a long history of anti-Mormonism. And that's because it does. But Colorado has a special long history of anti-Mormonism. And it's a little bit related to what we're talking about on the free podcast. You know how we started a series on the president's being dead in hell. And it's going to take me some time around maybe Christmas before I'm done. Someone touched a nerve and I started to provide context and nine hours later, I'm still like, so after the Constitution was formed, I mean, but Colorado especially had this antagonistic anti-Mormon history.

Gerrit Look, I'm not saying everyone in Colorado is anti-Mormon. What I'm saying is culturally, it is a little bit different than other places, because Colorado was actually broken off of Utah territory. Most of it, not all of it, but nearly all, about half, more than half of Colorado was formed out of Utah territory. And as a result, as people were making the arguments to break away and become a separate territory, their territorial leaders were vociferously anti-Mormon as the justification for the reason why they needed to break away. And so, as a result, when I was in Colorado, I was surprised. Now, I went on my mission to Wisconsin, okay? I'm well aware that Mormons aren't loved, okay? But frankly, most people in Wisconsin, most people in Wisconsin didn't really know anything about Mormons.

Gerrit And, you know, yeah, sure, it was an on-balance negative, but it was not, there wasn't a vitriol behind it, unless you ran into a pastor or a super, you know, super born again, you know, he's wearing a cape that says, you know, saved and the date on it, you know, but in Colorado was very different. In Colorado, there was a cultural hatred of Mormons that actually tried to get to the bottom of by talking to some people that were from there. It's like, so why, I mean, I mean, I had a member of my dissertation committee. You think you had a rough dissertation committee. A member of my dissertation committee told me when he found out I was writing on a Mormon topic before he found out I was a Mormon. The first words he said to me were, oh, you're writing about Mormons, huh?

Gerrit Man, I hate Mormons. My wife especially hates Mormons. Glad to have you on board, doctor. Let's see how this works out. You know what I mean? He was honestly kind of a jerk about it. He actually, in my oral exams, so I don't know how you do it in business because it's all business, business, business, business. Is this working? Yay. But did you have oral exams?

Richard No, I had exam exams.

Gerrit Yeah. So in history, at least in most places, I mean, I obviously can't speak to, I mean, if anyone's listening is getting their history, PhD, like University of the Cumberlands or some online mill, maybe it's not the same, but, but for most actual schools you have a, an, an online, I'm sorry, you have a written test component where you have to write, but you also have an oral test component. So, so in order to pass your exams, you have to both pass written and oral exams, okay, to get to where you're allowed to write your PhD. So with the oral exams, you have multiple areas of like, okay, what's my main focus? It's American history. What's my secondary focus? It's 19th century American history, American foreign relations. And what's my third?

Gerrit It's Latin American history, right? So though you have three areas of focus in those kind of descending orders. Well, this guy who had informed me how much he hates Mormons. One of his oral exam questions to me was about the history of American breweries that has like literally nothing to do with my emphasis or focus. That in the meeting, he said, well, I asked you that because I know you're a Mormon, and you probably don't know very much about beer and alcohol.

Richard Are you serious?

Gerrit Yeah. Are you serious, Clark? Yeah. No, seriously. Yep. Now, the best part was I actually did know the answer to that question. So I was able to give the response to him. But yeah, he he he made no bones about it. And now, obviously, you can't have I mean, what is it?

Richard So you said this before in the podcast, and I love this. I mean, I don't love that it's true, but I know you said it.

Gerrit Yeah, I'm closeted anti-Mormon.

Richard So Rabbi Doherty and Phoenix.

Gerrit Murder accounts on X.

Richard Yeah. So it was it was your dissertation chair that said that kind of how stunned he was that it seemed okay to hate Mormons.

Gerrit Yeah, he actually said that a couple of times. And and the reason why was he was, you know, he's not a super religious guy himself. His his wife was pretty religious, you know, Catholic. She was from Spain. So Andrew would have gotten along with her very well. He tried to share the gospel with her. Sure. Nice lady. And he was a nice guy. But, you know, he would, you know, people are always asking, especially when you're someone like him who has a ton of graduate students because he's like so good at what he does. You know, the common conversation for a professor who is leading multiple graduate students in Ph.D., you know, dissertations is, oh, what graduate students you have? What are the topics that they're working on? I mean, that's common conversation for, you know, professors getting together, you know, which sounds like, sounds like the title of the worst movie you ever saw. Professors Getting Together. But they, you know, asking me to be like, oh, I've got a really interesting one right now.

Gerrit I've got this Mormon student who's writing about American foreign relations with Mormons and how Mormons are treated as a separate entity, even though they're actually American citizens, most of them. And the response he got from everyone was some kind of derogatory statement. And so that's one of the things he said to me. He's like, and of course this is in 2009, right? But he said, I am stunned at just the casual hatred there is for Mormons. And he said, I don't really understand it. He said, every single professor. So these are not uneducated people. And these are professors, most of them at the University of Colorado, Boulder, which the town of Boulder prides itself on its liberalism to the point where people who live there, they put bumper stickers on their cars that say the People's Republic of Boulder.

Gerrit They want to be a Communist enclave. They're so excited about it. He was stunned that every person he talked to would make these kind of weird derogatory comments. And he said, you know, it just made me come to the conclusion that it's okay to hate Mormons. And he said, I'm talking to these people that they don't think it's okay to hate any minority group. And that, and yet that same person will just casually talk about how much they hate Mormons or how Mormons deserved it. So a very, another very odd thing that came up. I mean, you were even at a conference with me once when someone brought up something similar. Like, well, yeah, Mormons deserved it, right?

Richard It was interesting, Gerrit. So just, I mean, I mentioned this on the, on the free episode last week in the meeting that I had, as I'm just randomly going to a rabbi's house in Phoenix. Yeah. But as we were discussing our beliefs, the one rabbi, the non-main rabbi, the other one was like, you're, he actually understood where we were coming from because he said, so that you're, you must be outcasts from the Christian community, like we're outcasts from the rest of the world. And the way he said it at last week, I didn't think anything of it, but today I think of it very differently than I did at least last week.

Gerrit Yeah. Well, I mean, we started off trying to give a tribute to President Nelson, and we kind of got sidetracked by the events of the weekend.

Richard University of Colorado will do that for you, I guess, right?

Gerrit The point being, when I lived in Colorado, I get, look, is everyone in Colorado like this? No. I mean, whenever you point out that there are people that are enacting religious bigotry, it's an almost knee-jerk reaction to say, yeah, but there's a lot of people who weren't doing that right. Obviously. Yeah. Yeah. There are always people who aren't doing the bigotry. The problem is the people enacting the bigotry are the ones doing something. And so therefore they have a much bigger impact, however small their numbers are than the ones who aren't enacting the bigotry. You know what? I did have more professors than not who didn't make derogatory comments about my faith.

Gerrit The problem is I had multiple professors who made derogatory comments about my faith. And so, yeah, it certainly would be wrong to say all of my professors were like that. It would also be wrong to pretend that the first graduate class I sat in at the University of Colorado didn't have a professor teaching it who had formerly been the department chair. So apparently, you know, knew my file. So I didn't know anybody yet. I sit down, everyone's going around, introducing each other, right? Introductions, da da da da da da. Comes to me, I say, hi, my name is Gerrit Dirkmaat. And he interrupts me and goes, Dirkmaat, you're the one who's from Idaho, right? And he said it kind of aggressively. And look, I mean, Idaho usually is, you know, people aren't like giant fans.

Gerrit And I said, I said, I said, yes. And he goes, that must mean you're a Mormon. I can't stand Mormons. Said it right there in class to the whole group. And then he actually changed. He actually changed the curriculum of the course. It was a readings course. We were reading about some aspects of Western history. He went in and changed what we were reading to add multiple anti-Mormon books to what we were supposed to read. It was stunning. And anyway, so look, I made it through. Don't worry. I'm fine. But there's, it's sometimes events like this, they do a couple of things. And we're, you know, course referencing the horrible murders that took place in, in Michigan, um, over the weekend.

Gerrit That it, hopefully it re-centers a believing Latter-day Saint in the fact that what you believe is unique and you have a long history of other people. Some other people, obviously there's amazing, wonderful people who have been nothing but kind to us in the aftermath of those events. But there's certainly an awful lot of people who think it's far more important that people know that we're not real Christians, um, than, than to say, I'm sorry that your people were murdered. Um, and it demonstrates, I think, whether or not someone is actually very close to Jesus. They can, they can make a profession all they want about how wonderfully well they know Jesus. But if their first reaction to people being murdered is, well, they're not real Christians.

Gerrit And you're not close to Jesus. You're not close to Jesus at all. You just, you just like to say words. And there will be many who say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And he will say, depart from me, ye that worketh iniquity. It's interesting that despite the standard evangelical claim that it's all about faith, it's all about faith, it's all about faith, when Jesus talks about the people, he'll tell to depart. It's about the people who do evil. But I don't want to get bogged down in that. It was horrible tragedy. Our hearts go out to the people who suffered it. And I hope that we can, at the same time of President Nelson's passing, continue to be the loving peacemakers that we are to be.

Richard I actually, Gerrit, that was, I thought, you know, I was already thinking of President Nelson quite a bit on Sunday after hearing of his passing late Saturday night. And I was listening to, on Sunday, before I heard about the news in Michigan, I was re-listening to a couple of talks of his that have had a significant impact on my life. And one of them is that peacemaker's talk, and the other is the most recent talk that he gave about having confidence before the Lord with charity and virtue, and the role the temple plays in that. There's also a video that's been going around about the joy of forgiving others that he recorded about two years ago. Not just forgiving those that are...

Richard I mean, he talks about those that are reviling against us, and to love them and forgive them is the way that Jesus did, is the way that the early saints did. I think that we're not a current event. I mean, you like to focus. If it's not the 19th century, I'm not interested.

Gerrit Yeah. In fact, we get questions about the 20th century all the time, like, pass.

Richard But I think that there is quite a bit of learning of both from President Nelson and what he taught and from Joseph Smith and the early saints that can help us actually to make our way through these difficult times.

Gerrit I think so. I mean, you turn to these prophetic utterances, but I mean, Jesus is the great exemplar, right? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And all of the people who have horrifically vile things to say about President Nelson, because he was the leader of a cult, or all of the people have justifying the murder of innocent Latter-day Saints in their meeting house, as it burns down around them and they're being shot, all the people who qualify it by saying, but they're not really Christians. They clearly know not what they do. I mean, so you always have to temper your own reactive anger, with the fact that, but for the grace of God, go I. Right? I mean, I have often shared that I don't know what would have become of me if I was not raised a Latter-day Saint.

Gerrit I frankly believe that I would have been an atheist. I, I, I, I don't believe that I would have accepted the standard Christian conception of God. And my mind works in a kind of logical, prove it to me sort of way. And I don't think I'd find enough proof in the, yeah, God created us all out of nothing. So we could all burn in hell for no reason forever. And he's still creating people right now so that they can burn in hell because he loves us so much. He just keeps creating more people to burn in hell because he's just, it's just love. It's just like all about the love. That's why he keeps creating people to burn in hell. So, I mean, I don't know where I would be, you know, in, in, in, you know, we are all made up of our experiences and our teachings and our, you know, that all commune with our, our soul in some way. But, you know, for, for me, I know that Jesus is my Savior because of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his experiences, and because I was raised in, in the church.

Gerrit So I didn't doubt that Jesus was my Savior because of my church membership, because that's what led me to read the Book of Mormon and to gain a testimony of the atonement. And so when someone comes along and says, we don't really believe in Jesus, I'm like, I don't think you get it. The only way I'm believing in Jesus is if it's a Latter Day Saint, Jesus, because I don't believe in the other Jesus. I don't believe in the Jesus who creates people out of nothing for them to burn in hell forever. I don't believe in that Jesus. So, hopefully, even though it's one thing to have people chant, you know, belief of the Mormons at a football game because everyone's drunk and that's what they do when they're drunk and stupid. It's quite another in the aftermath of horrific murders that at least the White House is now saying that the FBI evidence is that it was motivated by hatred of Mormons.

Gerrit It's quite another to have people in the aftermath of that say, well, it's your own fault or you deserved it. Or let's just remember, you know, don't be too sympathetic because Mormons aren't Christians and Mormons are a bunch of liars and Mormons are a bunch of thieves and Mormons are driven out of everywhere they live because they just aren't really good at getting along with other people because they're just really evil and all kinds of stuff. Take a deep breath. Take a step back. Obviously, I am one who has who lives his life on the edge of his dandermeter. And so it was very upsetting. And that's why it's great. As Richard said, you go back and listen to the talks of President Nelson, who begged us to be peacemakers, who begged us to give love not because it was deserved, but because it wasn't deserved.

Gerrit The greatest, the greatest evidence that you are coming closer to Jesus, and maybe it's the greatest evidence that I'm not, is that you have love for other people even when they don't love you, and even when they revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely. And so it's easy to focus on the hatred, it's easy to focus on the anger, because those things are visceral, and those things are top of mind, and those things are reactive. And it's important that we remember that we are a gospel of peace. You know, Brigham Young, for all the horrific things that are said about Brigham Young, there was a time in 1845 when the sheriff of Hancock County, Backenstos, he's not a Latter-day Saint, but he's trying to stop this anti-Mormon violence.

Gerrit And he requests Brigham Young to turn out essentially hundreds of men from Nauvoo to create a giant posse so that he can march on Warsaw and march on Carthage, which honestly sounds great. I mean, from my perspective, the dandermeter at a billion, why don't we do that? And here is this non-Latter-day Saint, sheriff saying, look, I need this posse so that we can go essentially lay waste to Warsaw and to Carthage. And Brigham Young refuses because he knows that if he sends them, that there's going to be violence and that people are going to die. And that, you know, I, I reflect on that a lot because houses were being burned down.

Gerrit People were being shot and murdered in the dark. Threats of extermination were going on. No other governmental people were offering to help the Latter-day Saints. And in that moment, Brigham Young chose peace rather than, than violence. And he could have chosen violence. The sheriff wanted violence and he chose peace. Now obviously Brigham also believed that people should be able to defend themselves and told men to be prepared to defend themselves. But you know, in the end didn't send the men off to go level Carthage and Warsaw in their attempts to stop mob violence. So I think it's great time to re-read and re-watch some of President Nelson's talks about being a peacemaker.

Gerrit Part of his legacy is reaching out to other people. It hurts us personally when people say all manner of evil against him falsely, but I think President Nelson be the first person to say it's okay. People are going to say vile and evil and false things. For so persecuted they, the prophets who came before you. That's part of what being a Latter-day Saint is, is signing up to know that because of the knowledge that you have, everyone is going to despise you for it. Now, hopefully, they don't become so unhinged in their anger that they perpetrate those horrific acts of violence that took place in Michigan. But that's part of what being a Latter-day Saint is. It's believing that God has brought forth knowledge to this world in this great restoration.

Gerrit And by definition, it means that other people don't believe it. And sometimes, it's really hard for us to hear because we want to be liked. Desperately, we want to be liked. We want everyone to be kind. We want everyone to say nice things. That's probably not going to happen before Jesus comes again. Anyway, I was going to say, working on the Joe Smith Papers Project, how about that for a tangent? When I got there, the first three Apostolic Advisors, so you'd work on your stuff and then you'd send it in. You'd send it for review. And you had three apostles that were advisors to the project itself. So they read everything. And the three were, I mean, then Elder, but now President Holland, then Elder, but now President Oaks, and then Elder, but now passed away President Nelson.

Gerrit So they read, all the things we wrote and made commentary on it. And so some of my earliest personal interaction, I would not personal, but I mean, individual interaction was reading the comments that President Nelson had on things that I had written, as you know, the comments came back, and they were always kind and insightful. I will tell you, he did not like the term Mormon, even long before the Church J. You can tell that was percolating with him for a while, because, you know, we were writing it to an academic audience. And so, of course, the term Mormons used all the time. I mean, we're obviously very clear, like it's the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, right? But that's not going to stop the mob in Jackson County from calling us Mormons. No, actually, actually, guys, it's the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was actually hilarious how many news outlets at least didn't refer to us.

Gerrit I mean, some did, but most didn't refer to us as the Mormon Church. But how many of them referred to us as the Church of the Latter-day Saints and just left Jesus Christ out? I think the New York Post did that on their first headline. Oh, the Church of the Latter-day Saints attacked. How about you just give us our name? I get it. It's long. It's fine. You guys are more than willing to give the full name if someone has like three hyphens in it. Just give us our name. Just give it to us. Anyway, but President Nelson was always very kind and insightful in the comments he provided. And frankly, you know, President Nelson and President Holland and President Oaks were, they were big supporters of that work that has really led to a transformation in our understanding of Latter-day Saint history.

Gerrit The Joseph Smith Papers Project has transformed the Church's understanding of Latter-day Saint history. And President Nelson was a huge supporter of that, to the point where, before President Nelson died, it was President Nelson who directed Richard Turley to begin the process of writing a new biography of the Prophet Joseph Smith, which they're engaged in right now. So he also released the Proclamation on the Restoration. It's interesting with it being the anniversary of the Proclamation on the Family. How many people reflected, man, I remember when this came out. I remember when the Proclamation family came out. I was a teenager. I think I was a teenager. Was I? Yeah, yeah, I was a teenager.

Gerrit And I remember thinking, okay, this sounds good. Got it.

Richard Becky tells a great story where she, as a youth, their ward went around to everyone in Western Idaho, where it's 10 to 15% LDS, depending on where you're at. Maybe certain parts of Meridian are like 87% LDS, but for the most part, it's 10 to 15. So they went around and they handed out proclamations, the family proclamation, to everyone in their entire ward boundaries. And they received zero, like everyone was like, yeah, of course, right? Like there was nothing in it that was in any way provocative or crazy at all. At all. Latter-day Saints and non-Latter-day Saints alike were like, thank you, but obviously.

Gerrit Well, outside of the pre-mortal life part, but we just kind of skipped over that.

Richard The family stuff, at least.

Gerrit Yeah. Well, so I've seen a lot of people, I mean, prior to President Nelson's death, on the anniversary of the Proclamation of the Family, ask about the Restoration Proclamation or the Living Christ Proclamation. Are we 30 years from now going to say, wow, I had no idea how important the Proclamation on the Restoration was? Are we 30 years from now going to have people claiming that Joseph Smith wasn't an important part of what we believe? Right? I mean, are we going to have, I don't know, are we going to have people 30 years from now saying that the Book of Mormon isn't really scripture or it didn't really come from the gold plates? I mean, maybe. I don't know. But I think President Nelson's legacy and like all legacies, you only really find them out in the decades that follow.

Gerrit I mean, I feel that way about President Hinckley. We are still feeling the effects of President Hinckley saying, you know what? We're just going to build temples everywhere. His revelation that, why do we have to make it a giant temple and have a giant staff? If temple blessings are essential, then everybody needs a temple. And the explosion of temples, since President Hinckley had that revelation, I mean, you only know his legacy after the fact. And I think we see that much more so with temples, as well as other things. President Nelson left a lasting mark, and we'll know 30 years from now how things like the Restoration Proclamation, how they are affected, or his devotion to a greater understanding of church history among the members.

Gerrit I mean, the Saints' Volumes didn't just plop out of thin air. The new manuals didn't just write themselves. The rephrasing and the rewording of the Doctrine and Covenants section headings didn't just appear out of the abyss. These things, the Gospel Topics Essays, some of this begun under President Monson, but these things were all part of a concerted effort. Of Latter-day Saint leaders to try to help Latter-day Saints better understand their history. So for me personally, I have a great amount of gratitude towards President Nelson's devotion to helping other people understand the history of the church.

Richard There was one thing that I was interested to get your perspective on. I was looking back. So for our teacher's quorum lesson, the teacher went through and had all of the talks from President Nelson since he was made the president of the church. And I don't remember this with other presidents of the church, where he gave so many talks where there became almost a viral... I don't want to say meme, that's not the right word, but remembering of a specific things that were mentioned, that became this kind of refrain. I'm not familiar with, I mean, between thinking celestial and letting God prevail, and just down the line of all of these things that the peacemakers, like all of these things that he said, Covenant Path being one of those, obviously.

Richard I can't remember of another president of the church in recent memory, where they just like, it seemed like every conference there was one, and maybe it's because of social media that carried these things out in a different way, but man, it seemed like if we were doing chart-topping hits of most popular, like there was just one after the other.

Gerrit Like a Casey Kasem countdown of President Nelson phrases?

Richard Yeah, yeah. On with the countdown.

Gerrit Get it in, get it in. 30 died, fix the best show with the countdown.

Richard No, do you know what I mean? Is that, am I up in the night on that or it just seemed like there was a way of-

Gerrit No, I mean, I think obviously social media has a lot to it. I mean, imagine if we had the same social media networks when President Hinckley was speaking. I would guess we'd get similar phrases.

Richard I suppose. And look, it's not that these phrases were-

Gerrit We had quote unquote social media when President Hinckley was president, but not, I mean, not really.

Richard So that's what I'm interested about. How much of it was social media or how much of it was just the way that he would speak that that that he would he had a way of being able to communicate something that was very memorable from the talk.

Gerrit And while I don't remember, he's obviously a master educator. I mean, and and that is one way I mean, as opposed to anything you've ever heard on this podcast. I mean, by making a point and and having some way of remembering that point by making that point small, right? Like thinking celestial, OK. And then extrapolating out on what that means. But then still having the point that you can come back to thinking celestial. Right. So he was clearly very good at distilling into a format, something that is teaching. I mean, you know, one other thing, I mean, obviously we we now have the Christus as the, you know, the kind of the logo of the church. Right. That was something that was under President Nelson as well. So you have all kinds of changes. You have changes to who can witness baptisms, how temple things are performed.

Gerrit You have changes to how local church governance functions, as well as how upper-level church government functions. You have changes to missionary ages. You have changes to how long church is. I mean, frankly, probably most of the social media love just comes from that. I don't have to go to church for three hours. President Nelson, greatest prophet ever lived. But, you know, I think that there's a lot there. There's a lot of the fact that he was the one saying the Lord was hastening his work, that the times were coming, right? And I think that was demonstrated in his ministry. He made many changes to the church. And it's hard to argue that those changes were all terrible because in a world where people are leaving traditional Christian religions in droves, we will likely have our highest convert baptism year ever in this year.

Gerrit So, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of cloudy things. And at the same time, it would be hard. If you were just, you know, from a business perspective, Richard, if you were to examine his, you know, if he was just a CEO and not a prophet of God, that's probably blasphemous. But you would look at his tenure of leadership and you'd say, well, look at all the crises that he took the church through. And on the other end of it, the church is growing faster and with more temples and is stronger than it was before all of the crises.

Richard Yeah. No, it's true. It is actually pretty dramatic. I will say, just, you know, from a personal note, we talk about Sweetwater Rescue. You've been so kind, both the listeners and you, Gerrit, for your time as we talk about that, trying to help people get to the temple that are far from the temple. That really comes from a talk that President Nelson gave, where he talks about that there is nothing that you can do that will bring you closer to the Lord. And he gives a list of things than regular temple attendance or attending the temple as often as your circumstances permit. We were in Peru doing some work helping people get there. It was that general conference when he spoke that caused the impression that, yeah, let's expand this into an organization and turn this into a full-time thing where we can help people get to the temple.

Richard That's directly related to a talk that he gave about the importance of the temple. And you're right, from the Blasphemous CEO perspective, it is actually fairly incredible.

Gerrit I like that we maybe we'll have a regular segment on the Blasphemous CEO. Well, you're 100% right. What would a Blasphemous CEO say?

Richard But just, I mean, you bring this up all the time. Like the idea of all of Christendom is struggling. And yet, here we are, more convert baptisms than we've ever had out on the other side of this. It's actually something that is fairly stunning.

Gerrit Yeah. I mean, there are, I mean, again, if you go to religious conferences, you will hear the refrain over and over and over again, my church didn't recover from the COVID closures. You know, people just didn't come back. And, you know, for all of the people lashing out at Mormons for not being Christians online in the wake of a horrific tragedy, maybe you guys should, I don't know, look a little more inward, figure out why no one's going to your churches anymore. That's my angry Gerrit coming out. It's, you know, instead of desperately trying to let everyone know that we aren't really Christians, I always, I think it's hilarious that, well, not that hilarious, but it's hilarious that the argument, the Latter-day Saints aren't Christians stems from the fact that we don't believe in the same nature of Jesus as other Christians do, right?

Gerrit We don't accept the Nicene Creed. And the Nicene Creed is that, you know, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost are all one God. But the Father isn't the Son, and the Son isn't the Father, and the Holy Ghost isn't the Son, and the Holy Ghost isn't the Father, but they're all one God. They're all, they are all homoousios. They are all the same essence or same substance. And Latter-day Saints, instead, I mean, we don't ever say this, but we, you know, we are essentially saying that they are different beings in the same Godhead, right? So they are similar substance. Now, that seems like a pretty crazy thing to then condemn someone to not being a Christian over, right? I think that was the thing that offended me most. Every one of those people who was shot in that church believe that they're worshiping Jesus.

Gerrit And someone coming along outside of that event and say, well, they weren't really because they're worshiping Jesus the wrong way. It's such an odd thing because Christians decided that the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Creed, that would be the only measure whereby they would decide whether or not someone was a Christian. All of the other aspects of Christian infighting, that doesn't matter. So, Mormons aren't Christians because they don't believe in the proper nature of Jesus. Meanwhile, a Calvinist Christian believes the nature of Jesus is that he preselected who would be saved before he ever created this world and there's almost none of those people that are saved, who he would give the gift of faith to. And almost everyone he ever created, he created specifically knowing that they would not be saved. And that was all predetermined before he even created the world. That the nature of Christ's atonement is limited insofar as almost nobody is saved by us.

Gerrit It's the only way anyone can be saved, but also God decides whether or not to give you the gift of faith and whether or not you're saved. That's a Calvinist understanding of the nature of Jesus. On the other hand, an Arminian or a Methodist opinion of the nature of Jesus is that the nature of Jesus' atonement is that every single person could be saved if they would accept Jesus and have faith in him. So on one hand, you have the nature of Jesus' atonement is it was never even designed for almost everyone. And on the other hand, you have the nature of Jesus' atonement was it was literally designed for everyone. And yet both of those people get to claim that they're worshipers of Jesus. That is a very stark difference.

Gerrit Either Jesus intended to save everyone and wanted to save everyone, or he intended that billions upon billions upon billions of people would never even have a chance to be saved because he had already predetermined that he would never give them the gift of faith. And both of those people get to claim that they are true Christians. So frankly, Christians themselves differ a great deal on the nature of Jesus. They've just decided that the one place that they'll come together and say, you know what, we agree on this, is that Mormons are a cult. Because their different belief in the nature of Jesus is such that they won't be Christians, even though we can't even agree whether or not Jesus wanted to save people or not. So always remember that though it's meant as an invective, though it's meant to hurt you when people say that you're not a Christian, you can also turn around and wear it as a badge of pride because you know in whom you worship.

Gerrit You know that you believe that you're saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. And someone with the razzle dazzle of high Christology claiming that you don't fully understand Jesus' nature because you're not a Trinitarian Christian means that you don't worship Jesus. That might be annoying, but frankly, it shouldn't have any bearing on how you actually see yourself.

Richard So, Gerrit. One of the best things that one of the best talks I've heard from President Nelson was on the power of forgiveness and in that he talks of Jesus on the cross. And what does Jesus do on the cross? The people that are doing these things to Jesus are doing these things in ignorance. And that we have a higher call to love everyone regardless. Now, sometimes that is far easier than not.

Gerrit Yeah, far easier said than done, for sure. I mean, but the reality is for a Latter-day Saint, at some point in the eternities, every single person will know what you know, every person, and there will be a time of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth for people who rejected, fought against, mocked, made fun of the truth, who ran to that great and spacious building like it was clearance sale. I mean, who turned and pointed and mocked, but they are all our brothers and sisters. And every one of them chose Jesus, and that's why they're here. They just don't remember that they made that choice.

Gerrit At times, you kind of wish we believed in eternal hell, like that's where I want some people to go. But I think Jesus on the cross, as President Nelson quoted him, is a perfect example. There is no one who deserved his treatment or to be mocked less than the perfect Son of God, who in the moment he is on the cross, is there to take the sins of the people who are mocking and making fun of him while they are watching him die. They don't know that his death is actually the only hope that they'll ever have. There are many kept from the truth because they know not where to find it. Joseph Smith taught that we should love our enemies as well. We should stand up for the rights of other Christians, Muslims, Jews, even if they don't stand up for ours.

Gerrit We're not looking for a reciprocal relationship. We often we often feel that way. You know what? They were they were kind to me. I'm going to be kind to them. But your Heavenly Father causes the rain to fall on the just and on the unjust. We should do what's right. We should defend the rights of worship for other people, not because they've been kind, not because they've stopped saying the whole Jesus and Satan or brothers ridiculousness, but because it's right. And what's right isn't going to be determined on the basis of how people treat us.

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

Chapters

Transcript

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Matthew 7:22-23 (identified, not cited on air)

Russell M. Nelson, general conference talk on being peacemakers (title not named on air)

Russell M. Nelson, his most recent general conference talk, on confidence before the Lord, charity, virtue and the temple (title not named on air)

Russell M. Nelson, video on the joy of forgiving others (recorded about two years earlier)

Luke 23:34 (identified, not cited on air)

Matthew 5:11 (identified, not cited on air)

Matthew 5:12 (identified, not cited on air)

New York Post, first headline on the Michigan attack

The Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: A Bicentennial Proclamation to the World

The Family: A Proclamation to the World

The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles

Saints volumes, the new manuals, the revised Doctrine and Covenants section headings and the Gospel Topics Essays

Russell M. Nelson, general conference talk on regular temple attendance (title not named on air)

The Nicene Creed

The Chalcedonian Creed

Russell M. Nelson, talk on the power of forgiveness (title not named on air)

1 Nephi 8:26-27, the great and spacious building (identified, not cited on air)

Joseph Smith's teaching on defending the rights of other faiths (source not named on air)

Matthew 5:45 (identified, not cited on air)

Episode quiz

What oral exam question did the professor who hated Mormons ask Gerrit?

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From 1845 to 1845

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The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

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