The convoluted story of Mormonism, as it exists in the 21st Century, is very similar to the duplicitous birth and use of a computer generated document fraudulently represented to be a real copy of, for example, a birth certificate, marriage certificate, or other public document originally created on paper and electronically scanned into a PDF document. Such an illegitimate computer generated document, a total fraud, is craftily created by its maker in superficial layers made from other previously created documents that preexisted the fraudulent generated document. For Mormonism began officially in 1830, but its real origins began in the minds of Joseph Smith, Jr., his mother, Lucy Mack Smith, his father, Joseph Smith, Sr., his brother, Hyrum Smith, and, in all probability, his third cousin, Oliver Cowdery, around the year 1820. Supposedly, in that year, Joseph Smith, Jr., the fourteen year old son of a failed farmer in up-state, Palmyra, New York, independently decided to pray to his deity in order to be led to the church that he should join. According to the tale told by the boy, Smith, he went, in his fifteenth year, to a wooded area near his father’s farm and supposedly prayed. This was, allegedly, done in the spring of 1820, and Joseph Smith, Jr. came away from the woods to originally tell certain people, first his mother, father, and brother, that he had received a vision in which an angel came to him and instructed him to join none of the existing Christian churches. In Lucy Mack Smith’s biography of her son, Joseph Smith, Jr., she wrote that “Joseph had told her that an angel, named Nephi, appeared to him in his first vision.” This was actually the first of seven versions of what Joseph Smith, Jr. referred to, from 1820 until 1843, as his “first vision.” There was actually an eighth version of the “vision story” that was culled from all seven of the very different versions of Joseph Smith, Jr. by his successor, Brigham Young, in 1848, which is the version used by the LDS Church as its current official “missionary version”
In the immediate years following 1820, very little is known from historical records about the activities of the family of Joseph Smith, Sr., except for testimonies from neighbors in Palmyra, New York that, as a collaborative team, Joseph Sr. and Joseph Jr. derived their main income by “money digging” through the use of a “seer stone” that Joseph Smith, Jr. found while digging a water well. The Smiths represented themselves to their neighbors as possessing the occult means of locating buried treasure through “folk magic and sorcery” by the use of the white oval-shaped “seer stone.” According to sworn affidavits from reputable men of the Palmyra community, between the years 1820 and 1830, and later, as well as from the journals and diaries of respectable men and women who knew and associated with the Smith family, the recorded facts reveal that Joseph Smith, Jr. took to wearing a Jupiter talisman around his neck around the year 1819, which he continued wearing until his fatal lynching in 1844. The neighbors and friends who wrote about Joseph Smith, Jr. stated that Joseph wore the talisman for mystical power while using the “seer stone” to find buried treasure. According to the existing records, the young Joseph Smith and his father were not credited with finding any buried treasure, but according to the legal records of Manchester County, New York, Joseph Smith, Jr. was accused of criminal fraud in 1822 by one of his neighbors, who had paid him money to find buried treasure on his land. According to the court record, available on the Internet. Smith was accused, tried, convicted of criminal fraud, and fined for committing the crime.
Then, suddenly in 1823, came the story, reportedly proffered by only Joseph Smith, Jr., that another angel, named Moroni, appeared to him at his family farm in his room while he was sleeping. Again, supposedly, young Smith told his mother, father, and brother, about the angel, and Lucy Mack Smith later wrote that the angel Nephi had again appeared to her son. Supposedly, Joseph Smith, Jr. had no association with his third cousin, Oliver Cowdery, until around 1828, even though Cowdery lived and worked as a school teacher in another town not more that 45 miles away from Palmyra. Yet, this is not believable based upon the sudden and close relationship that the two young men later assumed, and the fact that Joseph Smith, Jr. did not disclose to the public the family relationship that Cowdery and he had shared. According to the then, eighteen year old Smith, the second angel told him about golden plates buried in a hill not far from the family farm, and that time would go by before he would be allowed to possess the golden plates, from which would come an original 588 page book, “The Book of Mormon,” about the Hebrew (Jewish) origin of the Native American Indians. In addition to the accounts of “money digging” and a conviction for criminal fraud during the years following Smith’s first alleged vision in 1820, it is also recorded that the young Smith joined the Methodist Church in Palmyra, New York, and became romantically involved with Emma Hale, who eventually became his wife in 1827. Between the time that Joseph Smith, Jr. was, supposedly, visited by the second angel, in 1823, and the year of his marriage, in 1827, the very charismatic and imaginative young man had four years to work with his mother, father, brother, and third cousin, Oliver Cowdery, to develop on paper a plausible narrative about the discovery, retrieval, and purported translation of the golden plates that the second angel, supposedly, allowed him to possess just shortly after he was married. He also had enough time to work, primarily, with his very literate cousin, Oliver, to prepare and write a rough draft of what would be publicly known, in 1830, as the “Book of Mormon.” Oliver Cowdery’s educational level, and profound deductive, intuitive, and scholarly abilities, which placed him in, probably, the top fifteen percent of the most intelligent men in the nation at that time in history, allowed him to later become a successful practicing lawyer, and Joseph Smith, Jr.’s charismatic influence over other people, his proven ability to read and write well, and his access to the holdings of public libraries in the towns of Palmyra and Manchester, are facts that promote the secretive collusion of the two men, from 1823 until after 1828, in the writing and production of the first and final drafts of the 1830 “Book of Mormon.” Yet, in the formal official history of the Mormon Church,written by devout Mormons after the lynching and death of Joseph Smith, Jr., in 1844, the dubious official version of events, from 1820 to 1830, makes it seem that Joseph Smith, Jr. and Oliver Cowdery were complete strangers when they, supposedly, met sometime in 1828; when, according to the Mormon version, Cowdery accepted Joseph Smith, Jr. as a prophet, became his scribe, and assisted him in the translation of the “reformed Egyptian language, which was allegedly the language used in anciently inscribing what was written upon the golden plates, which were not actually witnessed by the anatomical eyes of the purported witnesses who testified that they saw the plates.
What happened subsequent to April 6, 1830, after the “Book of Mormon” was published earlier that year and when the Mormon Church was officially established on that date, is pretty much a matter of consistent historical record, which clearly serves to concretely oppose the theological, doctrinal, and historical claims of the Mormon Church hierarchy. The first sinister layer of the fraud was the, basically, Trinitarian, “Book of Mormon,” into which Joseph Smith, Jr. placed a portion of the Christian theology contained in the New Testament; that is, the nature of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Primarily, God is identified in the original 1830 edition of the “Book of Mormon” as the traditional Trinity. In the original unchanged 1830 edition, 1 Nephi 11:18-21 reads,
“And the angel said unto me, behold the Lamb of God, yea even the Eternal Father! And I answered him, saying: Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore,it is the most desirable of all things. And he spake unto me, saying, Yea, and the most joyous to the soul. And after he had said these words, he said unto me, Look! And I looked, and I beheld the Son of God going forth among the children of men; and I saw many fall down at his feet and worship him.”
In contrast, the very different 1 Nephi 11:18-21, from the current 1981 edition of the “Book of Mormon,” reads as follows:
“And he said unto me: behold the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the son of God, after the manner of the flesh.) And it came to pass that I beheld that she was carried away in the Spirit for the space of a time the angel spake unto me, saying: Look! And I looked and beheld virgin again, bearing a child in her arms. And the angel said unto me: Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father! Knowest thou the meaning of the tree which thy father saw?”
The 1981 edition the “Book of Mormon” was changed grammatically and textually to reflect the changes in Mormon theology made after 1830, primarily after 1835. Around February 1835, the oneness of God the Father and Jesus Christ was radically changed in accordance with the radical change in what Joseph Smith, Jr. made in 1835 to his 1820 “first vision.” In that year, the 29 year old Smith changed his story to say that, instead of one angel, named Nephi, two separate personages appeared to him in the woods, God the Father and his son Jesus, in tangible bodies of flesh and bone. This fleshly distinction between God the Father and God the Son made the textual change in 1 Nephi 11:18-21, of the original 1830 edition necessary. Yet, the substantial composite Trinitarian orthodoxy of the original 1830 edition could not have been substantially changed throughout the entire “Book of Mormon, in its later editions, without the presence of flagrantly noticeable contradictions. Hence, the oneness and spiritual nature of the Godhead was retained from the original 1830 edition in such verses as found in Alma 18:24-28, as shown below:
“And Ammon began to speak unto him in boldness and said unto him: Believest thou that there is a God? And he answered, and said unto him: I do not know what that meaneth,. And then Ammon said: Believest thou that there is a Great Spirit? And he said, Yea. And Ammon said: This is God. And Ammon said unto him again: Believest thou that this Great Spirit, who is God, created all things, which are in heaven and in earth? And he said: Yea, I believe that he created all things which are in the earth; but I do not know the heavens. And Ammon said unto him: The heavens is a place where God dwells and all his holy angels.”
Other verses, such as that those found in Alma 11:44, shown below, reveal the original Trinitarian focus of the “Book of Mormon.” This pragmatic reconstruction of Mormon theology was well defined by Dr. Thomas G. Alexander, the Lemuel Redd Professor of Western History at Brigham Young University, in his 1980 “Sunstone” publication, “The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine.” I spoke with Dr. Alexander by email, and in a telephone call, wherein he told me that official LDS Church magazines had refused to publish his lengthy and scholarly paper for doctrinal reasons, and that he had wanted the truth about the changes in Mormon theology and doctrine published for the benefit of the rank-and file Mormon Church.
“Now, this restoration shall come to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, bother the wicked and the righteous; and even there shall not so much as a hair of their heads be lost; but everything shall be restored to its perfect frame, as it is now, or in the body,and shall be brought and be arraigned before the bar of Christ, the Son, and God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, which is one eternal God, to be judged according to their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil.”
Furthermore, the revealing verses in Mosiah 15:1-4 show even, more so, the oneness of the Father and the Son Jesus as God in conformity to the Trinitarian theology of the King James Version of the Holy Bible used by Joseph Smith, Jr. in his “Book of Mormon.”
“And now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people. And because he dwelleth in flesh, he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son– The Father because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and the Son– And they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth.”
How could anyone reading this, in conjunction with the other cited verses, derive another conception of the Godhead than that of a Trinitarian oneness in entity by reading the foregoing? Moreover, in 2 Nephi 31:21, the inseparable Trinity of the Godhead is again succinctly stated:
“… And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end. Amen.”
Therefore, the clarity of the obvious changes made in the first edition of the 19th Century “Book of Mormon,” by the same men flawed and fraudulently-minded men who had collectively authored it, for the purpose of accommodating a very noticeable change in Mormon theology, cannot possible be ignored.
Yet, the fatal contradiction surreptitiously made by the 19th Century Mormon leaders, who subtly replaced Trinitarian monotheism with pagan polytheism, came in 1835 when Joseph Smith approved and canonized the “Lectures on Faith,” which were produced in the Mormon School of the Prophets in 1835 in Kirtland, Ohio. The double-mindedness of Joseph Smith, Jr., depicting his exclusively human efforts, was evidenced in his attempt to validate, in the “Lectures of Faith” the Book of Mormon Trinitarian theology while, at the same time, he was also preparing to introduce polytheism to the Mormon people through his fraudulent and devious production of the Book of Abraham from the Joseph Smith Papyri. The plurality of Mormon gods, with a capital G, was first introduced in Smith’s fraudulent Book of Abraham, while in 1835, the “Lectures on Faith” became the entire doctrinal section of the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. The Doctrine and Covenants as they currently exist in the 21st Century were regarded by the Mormon Church as the “Covenants” section of the “Doctrine and Covenants” from 1835 to around 1925. In other words, the “Lectures on Faith” were, supposedly, the recognized doctrines of the LDS Church for over 100 years before the “Lectures of Faith” were quietly de-canonized around the year 1925.
The foregoing true factual history of Mormonism was first explicated in former-Mormon Fawn Brodie’s classic biography and history of Joseph Smith, Jr. in her book “No Man Knows My History.” Brodie was a niece of Mormon Prophet David o. McKay, and spent the first thirty years of her life in
the confines of active Mormonism, until she became convinced that Mormonism was not Christian. The modern world-wide Mormon missionary scheme was devised, in its original canned-form around the year 1950 in order to effectively conceal, from mainstream Christianity, all of the true pertinent facts about the real theology of Mormonism, a theology that was concocted in the mind of Joseph Smith, Jr., and his close associates, from 1835 to 1844, refined under the theocratic rule of the succeeding Mormon prophets, Brigham Young and Lorenzo Snow, in the Utah Territory’s Mormon theocracy, from 1851 to the late 1890s, and introduced surreptitiously in a necessary fabricated facade created by the Mormon hierarchy when Mormonism made its debut in Christian America as Utah was ushered into the Union as a state on January 4, 1896.
Now, 121 years later, if, per chance, you, a Christian believer in the sacred truth and reliability of the Holy Bible, ever open-up the door of your home to two-or-more men or women (late adolescents or people much older) representing the Mormon (LDS) Church, you can rest assured that those particular men are Mormon elders (holders of the Mormon Melchizedek priesthood) and that, both, the men and women have taken blood oaths in some Mormon temple (there are now 155 operating Mormon temples around the world) to do everything humanly possible to enhance the financial holdings and social, political, and ecclesiastical influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. These men, or women, who will be knocking on your door, are full-time Mormon missionaries, from a continual world-wide force of approximately 90,000 such young missionaries, 18 to, approximately, 25 years in age, who presently spend two full-years of their lives preaching Mormonism somewhere in the civilized world. Every young full-time Mormon male missionary will be neatly dressed in white shirts and ties and will be wearing a small black name-tag, with white lettering, identifying them as “elders” of the Mormon Church. The young women will be wearing similar name-tags identifying them as “sisters.” There are also senior couples, men, senior Mormon “elders,” and their wives, who spend two years preaching the Mormon gospel full-time.
These young full-time Mormon missionaries, especially those tens of thousands within the United States, are, at first glance, extremely persuasive in maneuvering you in their smiling cajoling fashion into accepting and believing that they are representing the one, and only, Jesus Christ, Savior and Redeemer of the world, and his “restored” gospel. As for the senior couples, they are taught at their mission training centers to portray a grandfatherly/grandmotherly demeanor to win the Christian’s confidence. In fact, the first words out of their mouths, the young and the old, when you open your door to greet them, will probably be their “true” representation of Jesus. Their prime objective is for you to be so impressed with their seemingly “Christian” demeanor that you are emotionally ensconced, and feel compelled to invite them into your living room, offer them seats, and allow them to present to you, over a future period of around four-to-six weeks, six scripted, memorized, and rehearsed segments of Mormon theology, doctrine, and history, called “discussions.” Hopefully, you have previously received by regular mail, by email, or directly from a Christian friend, a copy of an official LDS (Mormon) document entitled “Lesson 21 – Man May Become Like God,” from the 1984 39-lesson LDS Melchizedek Priesthood Personal Study Guide, “Search These Commandments.” This particular document was proclaimed and extolled by the 1984 LDS First Presidency, comprised of the Mormon Prophet, Seer, and Revelator Spencer W. Kimball and his three Mormon apostle counselors, N. Eldon Tanner, Marion G. Romney, and Gordon B. Hinckley, as canon LDS theology, scripture, doctrine, and commandments, which means that the substance of “Lesson 21 – Man May Become Like God” was, and is currently, regarded as canon LDS theology, scripture, and doctrine, from the time it was first accepted as such by the Mormon hierarchy throughout all time.
These young, and old, missionaries will tell you in their six scripted discussions a fabricated fraudulent story of the origin and rise of the Mormon Church in the 19th Century, very different from my foregoing summary of Mormon history, and will try and make you believe that the one-and-only Gospel of Jesus Christ, spoken of by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 1:1-10, disappeared from the earth and was “restored” by Joseph Smith, Jr. in 1830. They will tell you everything but the factual truth about Joseph Smith., Jr, Oliver Cowdery, and the other principal characters in the origin of Mormonism; and only about a basically Mormon Trinitarian theology of supposedly revealed in the 19th Century apocrypha, supposedly translated by Smith, the “Book of Mormon.” They will swear to you that the theology and doctrine contained in the “Book of Mormon” is the official theology of Mormonism, and the keystone of the Mormon Church.
But, hopefully, you have already read “Lesson 21 – Man May Become Like God,” and know and realize the truth about the real canon theology of Mormonism, and are prepared to ask a most important question to those Mormon missionaries during their first fraudulent presentation, or discussion; a question that those elders or sisters, will, in all probability, answer falsely. Your question is, “What is your ultimate destiny as worthy elders, and sisters, of the Mormon Church?” I know what 9-out-of-10 of those young Mormon male and female missionaries will say in response to that question. They will say that their ultimate destiny is to be in heaven with God. How do I know this? Well, I was one of those frenetic missionaries for over twenty years of my life, doing part-time for twenty years what those full-time missionaries do for two years. For those years, from 1970 until around 1990, I worked very closely with hundreds of those full-time missionaries sitting with them in the homes of Christians delivering those six fraudulent discussions to hundreds of prospective Mormons. I must have heard that question posed by Christian Mormon investigators at least a hundred times.
And, of course, when a young pimply-faced Mormon missionary says that he, or she, just wants to get to heaven to be with God, the unwitting Christian investigator presumes that such a humble wish is as Christian in doctrine, in accordance with the Holy Bible, as the goal of any person claiming to be a devoted Baptist, Methodist, or Lutheran. Yet, if you have read “Lesson 21,” you know that the ultimate destiny of a Mormon elder is NOT to humbly be in heaven with Jesus, to worship at his feet, but, rather, to be as great as his father-god, with a capital G, by becoming a Mormon father-god, with a capital G. Yep! That is the ultimate destiny of, supposedly, all worthy Mormon elders in accordance with what Joseph Smith, Jr. stated as canon Mormon doctrine in 1844, in what was called the “King Follett Discourse,” fourteen years after he published his Trinitarian, almost Wesleyan, theology in the Book of Mormon. Mormon prophet Lorenzo Snow became famous in Mormon circles for creating the perfect couplet for describing the mortal ascension to Mormon godhood, with a capital G. He wrote, “As man is, God once was, and as God is man may become.” In fact, he, before he died, produced a poem that didn’t make it to the height of American poetic eminence, but was highly venerated in the shadowy realm of LDS theological literature by devout Mormons as their mantra for their ritual polytheism and the celestial pagan parenthood emanating from Mormon father/mother-godhood, with a capital G. You see, a Mormon father-god cannot create anything without the assistance of his goddess-wife. It is almost like a scenario from Greek mythology. Snow’s poem goes as follows, as it is depicted as the essence of “Lesson 21.”
Has thou not been unwisely bold,
Man’s destiny to thus unfold?
To raise, promote such high desire,
Such vast ambition thus inspire?
“Still, ’tis no phantom that we trace
Man’s ultimatum in life’s race;
This royal path has long been trod
By righteous men, each now a God:
“As Abra’m, Isaac, Jacob, too,
First babes, then men-to Gods they grew.
As man now is, our God once was;
As now God is, so man may be,–
Which doth unfold man’s destiny.
In one of the well-known Mormon hymns, “Come, Let Us Renew,” the third verse is, supposedly, the words of Jesus to a devout Mormon who has attained exaltation, or the highest degree of Mormon heaven, through his earthly works. In the words of that verse, the poet has Jesus offering his throne to the worthy Mormon, which is not what the true Christian want in their relationship with God, and which Jesus is not going to do. True Christians want to be with Jesus in heaven, and worship at his heavenly throne, though his divine grace, but to never to sit upon Jesus’ throne. In the Mormon temple, the men and women who receive their ritual “endowments” are told that they will be gods and goddesses, with a capital G, and will inherit thrones, principalities, and powers to eventually be able to create their own saviors, just like Jesus Christ. Yet, according to the Apostle John in the Book of Revelation, Jesus will never relinquish his throne to anyone. Please note the verse below:
“I have fought my way through;
I have finished the work that thou didst give me to do.”
Oh, that each from his Lord may receive the glad word:
“Well and faithfully done;
Enter into my joy and sit down on my throne;
Enter into my joy and sit down on my throne.”
In the singular scripture in the New Testament of the Holy Bible, in Revelation 4:10, the words of Jesus’ Apostle John are very clear and understandable, and the adverse pagan theology and doctrines of Mormonism are contrasted with Christian truth.
“The four and twenty-four elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”
Therefore, the ultimate contradiction that has existed in Mormon theology since 1835 is clearly shown to be one in the same with the ultimate destiny that is summed up in “Lesson 21 – Man May Become like God” as the transformation of Mormon elders and their wives into father-gods and mother-goddesses, with a capital G.