Heresy Hunters On Planet Provo!

0:00Good evening, everybody, and welcome to another exciting episode of Mormonism Live. I am one of the two hosts of the show Radio Free Mormon, Bill Reelsy, other. How are you tonight, Mr. Real? What a fun night this is going to be. We're going to dive into the past, dig into an old general authority, someone who had a lot of impact on folks my age or age. It'll be interesting with a lot of time in the rearview mirror to examine what is going on here with this talk. So please do tell us more. I'm excited. Thank you. Mckonkey Brusar is one of the few GAs who has a whole group of Mormons named after him. Mckonkey Mormons. These are the ones who believe the Orthodox religion, and that is the religion that Brusar Mckonkey taught. And without any difference or thought for any differing opinion, because those must be mowed down in front of him. He alone is the one who can be right.

1:01And the same with those who believed as he did. And in this talk, he takes care of mowing down a lot of different thoughts than he had about the gospel. This was the seven deadly heresies. Now this is June 1st, 1980. I'm actually on my mission. I have been a member of the church for just less than two years at this point. I didn't hear about this while I was on my mission. I'm in Japan. I would have loved to have been there. I am sure. And I don't know when I found out about this talk probably after I got back from my mission. It's pretty famous. And then I want to ask you a question about that and ask you a question about that as well. Brusar Mckonkey. This is 1980. I think everybody in our audience with a few exceptions, perhaps, have heard of his talk, the seven deadly heresies. That's 46 years ago. And I'm thinking how many general authority talks could I name by their title because they

2:05are that memorable? How about you, Bill? Yeah. There are certain speakers who have a whole host of them. And Brusar Mckonkey is at the top of the list. Elder Holland would be one that I could name a few of. Thomas Monson may be a couple, but there are very few speakers in the church that you can go into your head and pull out numerous things that they contributed to the way that you absorb the gospel. Yeah. And a lot of people didn't like Elder Mckonkey. A lot of people don't like him today. Obviously, he was popular though, which means some people like them and probably a lot of people like him. And I was one of those people. I remember there was this other member of the ward. He was going on his mission. I had come back from my mission. His name was Michael. I can't remember his last name, but he would bike from place to place with his walkman on his side and his earphones and his ears and his Brusar Mckonkey tapes playing. That's how much he loved Brusar Mckonkey.

3:08You said you joined the church in 78. And I joined the church in 96, almost 20 years later, almost two decades after you. And Brusar had such a big impact on me. My father, my ex-father-in-law at the time, it wasn't my father-in-law time, but he was the father of the girl I was dating soon to be future father-in-law and then ex-father-in-law at some point. And he was big. He had a little bookcase. He didn't have a ton of books. He wasn't a scriptorian or anything. He was just one of those guys that showed up every week and did what he was told to do. But he had books on a shelf and Cyclopetias of Mormonism, James Talmud, Jesus the Christ. But Mormon doctrine was one of them that he had. And he highly recommended that as I was investigating the church and joining that I look at that book and it was one that I gravitated to immediately, like in Cyclopetia Mormonism, Mormon doctrine is kind of like a Mormon dictionary.

4:08It tells you all the terms in Mormonism, tells you what they mean. And so as a new member, if you want to understand what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is, what it teaches, what it believes, and you want to know all the idiosyncrasies, all the nuance, that was the book that we all went to. And it played such a big part in my Mormonism, obviously in your Mormonism. And I imagine with the audience that we have, if you're not the younger generation of folks who are like, who's Bruce Armakonky, if you're a little older, he has had, I imagine an immense impact on so many of you. It's such a strange thing to go from thinking he has all the answers to the questions to where I'm at today and feeling very differently about him and the things he said in his motivation to say them. Yes. And as we were talking about this on the phone yesterday or last night, I think it was,

5:10we were talking about, it is kind of a different day back than it's 46 years ago. These beliefs mattered. We'll get to that at the end. But one thing I want to bring up is that something that Elder Mekonky is not telling the audience is that really on each and every one of these heresies that he's combating, he doesn't tell the audience that they have all been taught by prophets and apostles before him. And I mean the Mormon kind. For instance, when you bring up Jesus the Christ, which is, I mean, as near to Scripture as you can get, when I was on my mission, when all the missionaries were on our mission, at least that mission. And I don't think we were the only one that allowed us to read the standard works, which is the Book of Mormon, the doctrine and covenants, you got the Bible, you got the Perligate Prize, okay? That's those are the Scriptures for the Mormons. We could read from those and there were only two other books we could read in addition to those. And one was Jesus the Christ by James Talmudch,

6:11and the other one was the Articles of Faith by the same author James Talmud, Javarian Flouinchal Apostle and Scholar from the turn of last century, this century before this last one. So he wrote those books and those are very, very important. The reason I bring that up is because on at least two of these heresies that Bruce and Mekonky is going to combat, two of them at least were promoted by James Talmudch as being the truth. In other words, James Talmudch took the opposite side of the issue from Bruce and Mekonky. And one of those will be about evolution and one of those will be about whether there's any progression between kingdoms, if that's even a possibility to believe in. And on both of those, Bruce and Mekonky will state their heresies and say how dumb the people are, who believe them without saying who they are or naming anybody. And sometimes he'll insinuate that they will go to hell for believing such a stupid thing or that they don't deserve to be saved. This is very serious business.

7:14From Bruce and Mekonky's point of view. And of course, when you get to Adam God, number six, he has seen number six, you get to Adam God. Well, of course, that was taught by Brigham Young. He's not going to mention the words, Brigham Young. He will vaguely wave his hand at those who have gone before without naming names. But it's just a very, very strange thing that Bruce and Mekonky feels that he is the one who has the authority to correct prior apostles and even prophets of the LDS Church. Even the word he uses, heresy. And if you don't mind me just skipping to your next slide. Even the definition of the word heresy, a belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious doctrine. And you know, Bruce is intelligent enough that he uses his words very intentionally. He's also was a lawyer before he was a general authority.

8:16And he understands what words mean. And in fact, he's probably the guy in the church at the time that is sort of sought out to articulate ideas. We know that he had a big role in the 1981 standard works that came out. The footnotes, the Bible dictionary, all of that. And so when he uses the word heresy, he's implying that there are these beliefs out there that are contrary to orthodoxy or the revealed truth of Mormonism would be another way to see that within the church. And he's just trying to straighten out these members of the church who are prone to believe the false beliefs that are not true doctrine. But it, you know, we talked about this last night as well. There's a game being played here, at least two of them. One game is that he's throughout this talk. He's blaming members for believing the wrong things. But there's multiple points where he gives the leaders practically a free pass for having

9:22taught the wrong thing. So there's that. You think they might be more accountable? I don't know. You would think so. The other game he's playing is that he frames this talk as if the goal is to straighten out the believers to get them believing the right thing. But it seems so apparent to me now as I've gone back and read this talk several times in my life, but just recently in preparation for this podcast, that he picked seven intentional issues that there is evidence on both sides. And he is trying to be the deciding vote going forward for Mormonism. He wants to have an impact in the church by being the guy who straightened out doctrines that could not be straightened out up until this point. Yeah. And every side that he picks on every doctrine is the exact same side as his father and law, Joseph Fielding Smith and every doctrine that Joseph's Fielding Smith took aside on

10:28was the same one is taken by his dad, Joseph F. Smith. So that's really this very strong line of doctrine air individuals who come down to us from Hiram Smith. And they lived with us and governed so strongly with their doctrinal pronouncements that when 1985 rolled along, and Bruce and Maconkey passed away, I'd been a member of the church for seven years at that point. Every moment I'd been a member of the church, there had been a Bruce or Maconkey alive. And when he was gone, there was nobody left. And the absence was immense and noticeable that there was nobody there who knew the scriptures or taught the scriptures the way that Bruce or Maconkey did. Yeah. He did this throughout all of his writings, but it shows up so dominantly here that he is framing

11:29these issues as though they're already settled. As if, you know, the audience, you guys are stupid. We already know the answer to these things. Those 14 guys behind me and myself, we already know what the truth is. And here I am trying to tell you what the truth is. So you stop waffling between the true belief and some other belief for which there might be some, some inexcusable evidence out there for it. In reality, he's speaking about topics that have not been decided. I think essentially across the board, except for maybe one, the Adam, God theory, perhaps. But across all the other ones, there is still debate going on at Mormon, in Mormonism at the time he gives this talk. And on several of these issues, somebody at the very top of the church has laid down even wording to say this hasn't been quite decided yet. And we'll see some of that tonight as well. Yes. Well, he saw himself as the decider of doctrines and he was going to do it here.

12:34And once again, never letting people know that these were taught before by other church leaders. And that's the thing. You have to know all this. You have to bring all this to the table when you're listening to Bruce Hormaconkey speak, which I did not in the 1980s. I had no idea. But you have to know that in order to see what he's doing and the game that he's playing. And the problem is, is that he knows the game that he's playing, which makes this talk unfortunately more deceptive than it would otherwise have to be. And I think that's what got Eugene England in trouble was he also knew the game that Bruce Hormaconkey was playing. I think so. But still you got to cow-tow to your boss, I guess. This is some boss to have, huh? Well, a few words about the heresies. They are on this thumbnail. By the way, what do you think of this thumbnail, Bill? I thought this was very creative and I love it.

13:38And I'm glad that again, I had to ask you this other night. I've seen maybe three or four of these episodes. It's not a show that I've watched a ton of. I've got my oldest son is watched a bunch of it. He really loves it. He thinks it's hilarious. It is pretty funny. Not my sense of humor. I don't find it as funny. Kind of like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which I never laughed at one time. Not even once. Not once. Okay. No. But I thought that a little bit of peril could have a bit of peril, please. But it was a very creative thumbnail. I knew what you were going for and the audience will very much appreciate it. Yes, thank you so much. So anyway, yeah. So here's RFM and Bill Reale, like Rick and Morty traveling back in time to 1980 to Provo. Heresy Hunters on the Planet Provo. And they're here to do battle with the seven heresies that Bruce and Mokaki has apparently evoked from by mentioning them in his talk at BYU.

14:39So it's all there. You can see it. So the first one, and these are in order. This one is God progresses. This idea that God progresses in knowledge, that's a heresy. He can progress in any other way possible. And that's okay. And that's true. But when you get to the knowledge part, God progressing is a heresy that if you believe that apparently you can't be saved according to Bruce and Mokaki. Then there's evolution. Yeah. Organic evolution. That's a heresy. So then there's temple marriage equals exaltation. This was a little bit unusual. And a lot of people don't get this one. I'm not sure I do, but I know you've got a great story to add to this. We're just going to help us understand this one. The fourth heresy is a second chance at salvation. You see, you ever hear that expression that Jesus is the God of second chances? Okay. Not in Mormonism. No. You get one chance. One. And that's it, baby. If you don't take it now, you're screwed.

15:39You cannot accept it later in the spirit world and then go to the celestial kingdom where you would have gone otherwise because that would be a heresy. No, you can't do that. You'll only go to the terrestrial kingdom if that happens to you. So you kind of made a few things up there in order to squeeze that one in. But yeah, there's a progress between kingdoms is similar to it, but not exactly the same. This is once you're already now resurrected, right? You've already gone through the spirit world. You've already heard or accepted or accepted the fullness or did the fullness and not exactly sure. But now you've gone to your assigned kingdom. And now that you're in your assigned kingdom, can you progress between kingdoms or can you even go down between kingdoms? Is there an elevator? Is there any way of going up? We know people can go down. We understand that. That can go all the way down if he wants to, but apparently he doesn't want to. The same with Jesus and the Holy Ghost.

16:42But people cannot go up. This is what Bruce and Maconkey teaches us. There is no progression upwardly between kingdoms. So saying otherwise is a heresy. And then finally, perfectionism is the one that all you put that up there, didn't you feel? Haley say and apparently Bill has no sense of humor. Yeah, he has a sense of humor. He does. So let's see. So those are the heresies. And I wanted to say a couple of things about these heresies. Okay, first is this. Perfectionism number seven is not even a heresy and Bruce and Maconkey will admit it. Okay, he throws it in there. Why? So it'll be seven. That's obvious. There's only one reason he gives this whole talk. Okay, and it's because of number one, the progression of God in knowledge. You will note that not only does it come number one on the list, you will also note that it gets far in a way, the lion's chair of attention.

17:45He is going to spend like twice the time on the first heresy of God progressing in knowledge that he will spend on any other heresy. So that's why I think this is what's mainly on his mind and everything else may be more afterthoughts. But the reason why is because of, let me see here, where was there he is, there he is, Eugene England. Can you just tell the audience briefly what was going on behind the scenes? And I'll let you know up front if you didn't check the date that the letter, the letter that Bruce and Maconkey wrote to Eugene England was written in February of the following year in 1981. So all the stuff is boiling over at this point. Yeah, Eugene England was the Bill Real Radio Free Mormon, John Delin of his time. What I mean by that was he was, he was diving deep into Mormonism, again, not necessarily this moment, but when all of us were faithful.

18:49Eugene England was a faithful believer of the church. I believe he was a professor at BYU too for some time. And he was very compassionate, very nuanced. He allowed room for people to talk things out and to validate like, hey, this is messy. And but he stayed in the church. And over the course of his time, he had ideas about things. And often these were ideas that certainly have the backing of things that have been said in the past in the church. It wasn't like he was pulling ideas out of a vacuum, right? But Bruce Ar Maconkey saw Eugene England as an arc steadier. And so Bruce Ar Maconkey at some point writes, and again, you say it shared the date, he writes Eugene England a letter that has been made public since then, where he corrects Eugene England and multiple occasions. But even the letter is a discombobulated mess of contradictions on Bruce Ar Maconkey's part. But it was so important to Bruce to be right that he took every opportunity, because Eugene

19:57England is not the only one. I think he ended up writing Richard Pol as well and straightening him out on something also. Bruce Ar Maconkey went out of his way on multiple occasions to make someone sort of bow down because he had the authority and he took the opportunity to put people in their place to correct them on doctrine if he thought they were wrong. Regardless, if the church generally held that position or not. And so those writings cover multiple issues between Eugene England and Bruce Ar Maconkey. Adam God being one of them. But one of the famous lines in there, and again, I don't know the exact words, but Bruce Ar Maconkey tells Eugene England, it is your job to echo what I say or to remain silent. And that's such a strong line coming from an apostle who's sharing ideas that aren't universally accepted among the 12 or the 15.

21:01It's also an odd thing for a person to do when they've been reprimanded themselves on numerous occasions for going too far in their own theology. Yeah. And he got in trouble with President Kimball after this as well. And President Kimball dressed him down and told him he had changed a lot of the words and a lot of the language in his talk. So what we've got is we have the transcript of the talk after it was changed according to what President Kimball ordered him to change. And you'll see he took out a lot of the snark, a lot of the bite, a lot of the nasty comments. And he took out a number of, well, one of the things that President Kimball was not happy about, again, like he had been unhappy about Mormon doctrine and the whole title is that here's Bruce Ar Maconkey taking it upon himself to declare and define what is doctrine for the LDS church, which struck Spencer Kimball is something that was more appropriate to the president of the church. And so he got in trouble for that and he got in trouble for this again.

22:01And so all these blanket statements of this is the way it is. And so and so had to be changed to questions or statements of I believe that he had that Bruce Ar Maconkey had to say I believe. So what we will see here, because we're going to play the audio of a number of these clips okay. And you'll see on the screen, let me see if I can give you an example here. Here is introductory remarks that he's going to make. The title that I gave it is introductory remarks. It's from timestamp 0.46 to 1.40. And we're going to hear what it is that Bruce Ar Maconkey said back in 1980 and we'll be able to compare it with what the transcript of the talk ended up being changed to be. So what we'll probably do is I don't know. I think we should probably play it first and then read it so you can see what the changes are. I think backward would make it unnecessarily complicated. So here's one and Bill, can you read this?

23:02These are the words of Bruce Ar Maconkey in the transcript of the talk after it was changed. I shall depart from my normal unusual pattern and read portions of my presentation because I want to state, temperately and accurately, the doctrinal principles involved and to save them in a way that will not leave room for doubt or question. I shall speak on some matters that some may consider to be controversial, though they ought not to be. So says he, they are things on which we ought to be united. Everybody should just agree with me. Wouldn't it be much easier that way, Bill? It would and that's what he wants. This is a proto-Jagob Hansen speech. They are things on which we ought to be united and to the extent we are all guided and enlightened from on high, we will be if we are so united and there will be no disagreement among those who believe and understand the revealed word. Again, so says he, we will progress in advance and grow in the things of the spirit.

24:08Okay. Bill is going to use this cool function he just discovered in order to play this clip. And what I just decided is we are not going to go through all these clips reading them and having, listening to Bruce or Mekonky. We'll just listen to Bruce or Mekonky and read it while he's saying it if there are any changes we can comment on it. Okay. I'll put the first one up here. So I'll just give folks what it was difficult for us to get the text and the audio on the screen at the same time. And so in order to do that, I won't be able to get the exact timestamp so you might notice things being said to begin with that aren't on the screen, but within maybe six, seven, ten seconds, it will be what you see on the screen there. And this should pretty much follow the transcript. I have sought very diligently to be given utterance and have the guidance of the spirit tonight

25:15in what I hope I will be able to say to you. I'm going to depart from a normal and usual pattern and read questions of what is involved because I want to state temperately and accurately the views that I have and say them in a way that will not leave room for doubt or for question. Things that I have. I intend to speak on some matters that some would consider to be controversial. They ought not to be. There are things upon which we ought to be united. And proportionately as we are, we'll make progress and advance and grow in the things of the spirit. Prepare ourselves for a life of peace and happiness and joy here and for eventual eternal

26:22reward in the kingdom of our Father. There is a song or a saying that must be a proverb. Yeah, it was so different that I couldn't even tell where the two ended in the same place. It is. And I was actually keying in on when he said, my views, then I thought, wait a second, this was the original version when he said my views, they got changed to be even more strong here where it talks about the doctrinal principles involved. Yeah, it works in the opposite way in that instance because in other places and in majority of places, he's asked to soften things up. But in the audio here, he actually was more lenient, more safe space for difference by seeing it as just his particular views rather than doctrinal principles. I have underlined it then. I italicize the couple of parts of this introduction. We're just going to play this one clip from it. I want to start with the last line, the one that's italicized where he's talking about

27:23this dream state of all of us being united in everything that we believe and understand and will all just look like Bruce or Mekonky. He says, once we achieve that, we will progress and advance and grow in the things of the spirit. I totally bought that when he was saying that originally or when I first heard it. And now I look at it and I say, how is that even possible? You can't grow in any way if everybody thinks the same thing. I don't think so. Can you? Aren't you already circumscribed by what you've already agreed to all believe? Yeah. I agree with you. The reason I'm stammering is because when we get into the idea of progression through kingdoms and does somebody get a second chance? Even here, he's sort of saying, I might be able to rattle you tonight. I might be able to get you to change directions and then you can progress and advance and grow in the things of the spirit.

28:25When the moments are that I'm sorry, it's hopeless. You've already made up your mind. You don't get any further opportunity. And then even in his talk, he's like, I'm going to possibly affect you in such a way that you're going to have an opportunity to head off into a different direction. And now you're going to start progressing and growing in the gospel. Even here, he's contradicting a later heresy that he goes after. Good point. You can all progress and grow until you become even as Bruce or McConkey, but that's where the progression ends. Now, the things that are underlined here is another thing that Bruce or McConkey does a lot. This is a logical fallacy. It's all over the place in his talk. And I see it in so many places. Sometimes I catch myself starting to use it. It is the logical fallacy that is called the no true Scotsman fallacy Trevor Larson. I sound like Forest Gump reading a speech. I hope you're talking about Bruce or McConkey. Maybe you are. He does kind of, I guess. But this is the no true Scotsman fallacy.

29:28And here is what he says. They are things. The things he's going to talk about, these heresies, right? They are things on which we ought to be united. And to the extent we are all guided and enlightened from on high, we will be. So there's the no true Scotsman fallacy, which means that if you agree with me, then you are guided and enlightened from on high. And if you do not agree with me, you are not guided and enlightened from on high. He goes on to do it again in the very next sentence. If we are so united and there will be no disagreement among those who believe and understand the revealed word. So if you disagree with Bruce or McConkey, you don't believe the revealed word and you don't understand the revealed word and or. At the same time he's saying this, there are members of the 15 who don't agree with him on these deadly heresies. And there are certainly general authorities in the past who also held the role of Prophet

30:31Seer and Revelator who laid out contradictory opinions for which nobody at the top authority of the church straightened it out and said, that guy is wrong and this guy is right. So he is, as you pointed out, he's playing a game where he's saying, if everyone would just agree with me, we would be better off. Exactly. It is Jacob Hansen, Redux. So can we go to the next slide? Let me see if I can put this one up if I can. I'll do this one so I can move this one, okay? So what is the No True Scotsman fallacy? It's when someone redefines a group to exclude anyone who disagrees with them. Example, no real band, a band, a band, a band of a band. Okay, no real, let's say Nirvana likes their new stuff. Let's say they were putting out new stuff when this is said. And you say, I've loved them for years and I like their new album too. So what does the other person say?

31:32It's because you just contradicted them. You just said, wait a second, I'm a fan and I like their new album and you've already said no true fan likes their album, their new stuff. What do they say? Then you're not a real fan. You have to be excluded from the group so that they will not be wrong. That's the No True Scotsman fallacy. You're not a true Scotsman fallacy. You're not a true fan. Suddenly you're out and they don't have to question their own bias. That's the result of it. Okay, so the No True Scotsman fallacy, it's a favorite. So this is going to be, heresy one, we're just going to play it from the Bruce. This is going to start at timestamp 543 and go to 615 so it's about half a minute long. This is heresy number one. And compare the transcript in front of us on the screen with the words we hear, which was the original version.

32:41Can you hear it, Bill? I can't hear it. Oh, may I suggest the list of heresy number one? So those who say that God is progressing in knowledge and is learning new truth. This is false, utterly, totally and completely. There is not one sliver of truth in it. It grows out of a holy twisted and incorrect view of the King Paulic sermon and of what is meant by eternal progression. He sure didn't change any words in that one, did he?

33:43That's another suggestion, perhaps, that this is the one he was most interested in getting across. Heresy one, there are those who say that God is progressing in knowledge and is learning new truths. Oh, there are those. You mean like Brigham Young? Brigham Young maybe. Brigham Young was one, obviously. And apparently Joseph Smith was too, because when he talks about the King Paulic sermon, that's the penultimate sermon that Joseph Smith gave in this life. And in it, he talks about God progressing and progression being infinite. And there are those who have taken from that sermon, the idea that God is progressing in knowledge as well. But the heresy, be it remembered, is thinking that God progresses in knowledge because thinking that God progresses in every other possible way is absolutely fine and orthodox. And just when you get to the knowledge part, that it becomes a heresy. So we're back now at Eugene, England.

34:43Oh, here's a representative quote from Brigham Young. Could you read this, Bill? God himself is increasing in progressing in knowledge, power, and dominion, and will do so worlds without end. And that's from the Journal of Discourses. William 11 page 289, sermon given January 13, 1867, is what that says. So apparently Brigham Young disagrees with Bruce. But upon what meat did this our Maconky feed that he has grown so great to challenge Brigham Young on a point of doctrine? You know, this isn't the only, again, Adam God is another instance where Bruce our Maconky gets to divert down a different path than what Brigham Young went. And it at least seems clear to me that part of the strength that Bruce our Maconky gather is around his views is that once he knows that a certain leader was wrong once, he feels

35:48entirely safe to go like that leader could be wrong a hundred times. And I get to be the guy who now states a difference of opinion and gets to be right on that thing. Yes. Oh, here's where he brings this up. Now he brought this up in this speech. He brought it up in another speech. I think a general conference speech at one point. He throws it out there just sort of get to wow the audience. And this is where he talks about God being in our universe for almost 2,555 million years. Now he's not talking about that. He's just throwing it out there to show that God's been around a while. So he should know everything by now. I mean, it's been to an a billion years for crying out loud. It starts on timestamp 749 and goes to 827. Is eternal life?

36:52An eternal progression consists in living the kind of life that God lives and of increasing in kingdoms and dominions everlasting. So it started at the right time but then all of a sudden it jumped ahead. So give me a second. I'm going to try this again. Is eternal life? An eternal progression consists in living the kind of life that God lives and of increasing in kingdoms and dominions everlasting. Why anyone should suppose that an infinite and eternal being who has presided in our universe for almost 2,555 million years who made the sidereal heavens. And now you can start. Like I said, it's just a clause in a sentence.

37:53It's not the main point. But he throws it out there and it got a lot of attention. I remember I was going, what the heck is this about and all the people, my friends are going, I don't know what that was about. That seemed like a very specific number and a very big number. Do you know where it is? He got this number. Bill, I'm ready to go into it. But I want to give you the floor first. Yeah, I don't know because the science would say the universe is 13.8 billion years old and Mormonism would say the earth is 6,000 years old. So how does he come up with this answer somewhere in between? We're 7,000 years old. It kind of depends, you know, I know both are hopelessly too brief, 6,000 or 7,000. That extra thousand isn't going to buy you a lot as far as evolution goes. But it's an important distinction here, okay? Because here it is, Bill, you ready? This comes by the way from the Abraham Egypt project and I believe it's a letter from

38:56WWFelps writing about the project and allegedly quoting Joseph Smith on this issue and this number, okay? Or maybe it's something he came up with, I don't know. But it's a very simple number to understand once you realize what's going on and that is simply banking off a peter in the New Testament who tells us one would think metaphorically that a day with God is as a thousand years unto man. But what has happened here is they've taken what I would have thought was metaphorical quite literally. But if you take 7,000 years and count every day of 7,000 years as a year, you will have 2,555,000 years. We're put another way. There are 2,555,000 days in 7,000 years. I don't know if I was saying 7 before, I meant 7,000 throughout.

39:57Okay? And you can do that. Here I'll take this one down, go to this next one. And the math is simple. There's the reference. Second peter, 3,8. I think we all know this one, right? One day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years is one day. That sounds like a chiasmus. How many days in a year, 365? If a thousand years are a day into the Lord, then 365 times a thousand would be a year into the Lord. Therefore, a year into the Lord is 365,000 years for us, right? And then you go here. The traditional time that the earth has been in existence is 7,000 years and you can go to the Doctrine and Covenant, section 77 to find that out. And the seven seals each one representing a thousand years of the earth's temporal existence. 7,000 times 365,000 years is just another way of coming to it. The 2,555 million years number. Hence the time God has been presiding in our universe is 7,000 of our years or translated

41:00in terms of God's time of the thousand per day. It comes to the same thing. Okay, so I said about three different ways. All it is is saying, this is 7,000 years that we know that the earth has been in existence, the temporal existence of the earth, right? How could we have calculated for God's time? So that is the answer to that particular riddle. Oh, or looked at another way. That's where I started. That was the simplest way. There are 2,555,000 days and 7,000 years. Any questions about that Bill? No, but I think this is a good sort of teaching moment to explain how these guys get off in different directions. I was just trying to find the quote from Brigham Young where he talks about the Old Testament being like children's stories. They're stories. Spencer W. Kimball said that the creation story is figurative, for instance.

42:04And yet you have other Mormons who are like, no, it has to be a literal story. For there to be a literal atonement, there has to be a literal fall. And so all you have to do is be in one camp or the other and you start to look at the scriptures entirely differently. Bruce Armaconchi here takes everything so literally. Meanwhile there are other prophets, seers, and revelators who are much more open to things being myth, figurative, embellished stories at the very least. And what grounds you start on is going to dictate how you interpret things going forward. Yes. And I observe that with this particular tactic of just throwing the year out there as a clause in a sentence that isn't even talking about that and not explaining what it means or where it comes from or how it's arrived at does tend to make it seem a lot more mysterious and Bruce Armaconchi a lot more doctrinally inscrutable. That's what we were all thinking.

43:07You must have gotten this direct from God. Here's a slide. Can you take us through this one Bill? Yeah, all I wanted to do here was just show the audience that there are things said by the scriptures or by general authorities that support Maconchi's view and this will happen on every one of these. And there are things that work against what Maconchi's view is. And so here what supports Maconchi's view, the scriptures often say God knows all things, right? He is all knowing. And the lectures on faith taught that we need to believe God knows everything in order to have faith in Him that he has to know at least, you know, the things that are important to our salvation. And then Orson Pratt and Joseph Fielding Smith also taught that God has a complete perfect knowledge of things. But the lectures of faith on faith is one thing produced by Joseph Smith during his time. The King Follett sermon is another.

44:08So Joseph Smith taught in the King Follett sermon that God was once as we are and that we must learn to become God's just as God's did before us. If people wonder, we always credit Lorenzo Snow with the couplet, but it really does have its foundation in the King Follett sermon. Brigham Young plainly taught that the God I serve is progressing eternally. Other leaders taught similar ideas. They did not always mean the same thing. Sometimes they meant knowledge, sometimes glory, posterity, dominion, but they clearly did not all speak like Bruce R. McConkey about the topic. Brigham Young and Orson Pratt even disagreed with each other over what God was like. Early Mormonism was not as settled or unified as McConkey makes it sound. McConkey leans heavily on the lectures on faith as if it settles the matter, but we do not know that Joseph, we do not even know that Joseph Smith wrote all of it and it teaches that the father is a personage of spirit which clashes with the familiar LDS teaching

45:08that the father has a body of flesh and bones. So it's risky for McConkey to treat it as if it's the final tiebreaker. And he's counting on the audience not knowing that. And frankly, why would they? The lectures on faith remain. The lectures on faith, okay, published for the first time in 1834 in newspaper edition and then added to the Doctrine and Covenants, the first edition in the following year, in 1935, the lectures on faith are the Doctrine and the Doctrine and Covenants. They were the first half of the book. This was scripture until they were removed from the Doctrine and Covenants in 1921. So these are very, very important things that are said there, but you cannot find it still on the church's website. The church has general conference, the same talk given a million times back to 1970 or 1971.

46:09They don't have the ability or the bandwidth to put up seven lectures on faith. And frankly, Bill, the reason I sound still disappointed about this, I mean, I've known this for a long time. We've talked about it before. I was doing research for the show looking up lectures on faith and it went to LDS.org and I thought, oh my gosh, have they put the lectures on faith? It was title lectures on faith. Have they put it there? No, they haven't. But they have an article about it. They have an article about saying that the first half of the Doctrine and Covenants, which was scripture for almost 100 years in this church. They have the article about it, but they don't have it available on the website. They've been hiding that for a long time. Very good. And I know who you're dealing, too. That's Dallas. I wanted to just say one other thing. I put this in the slideshow as well. This is about a particular point. I wouldn't say this is an exact overlap with Maconky, but it's in the same arena.

47:11And I'll just read here this. Since that, this is on the church's website. This is the gospel topics, becoming like God. What has been taught in the church about divine nature, since Joseph Smith? Since that sermon known as the Kingfallot discourse, the doctrine that humans can progress to exaltation and godliness has been taught within the church. Lorenzo Snow, the church's fifth president coined a well-known couplet, as man now is God once was, as God now is, man may be. Then it's this sentence. Little has been revealed about the first half of this couplet. And consequently, little is taught. There is ambiguity in Mormonism. Bruce didn't like that. He wanted all ambiguity to be gone. Anytime general authorities church history was split on a topic, he wants to be the deciding vote. But the church's own website acknowledges in this modern moment that at least with some

48:15issues, there is little known, heavily mothers, another one where they've said similar things. God has been revealed about the first half of this couplet and consequently little is taught. So, as man now is God once was, that portion we don't know exactly how that works. And if God's been around for two and a half billion years, we know that there was a progression. How does Bruce Armaconchi know the exact moment where that's where the progression stopped and God knows everything from that point forward, that would just be guesswork. I believe that everything that's been said in this article that you've read so far is true, though what follows it makes me think that it's an apologetic in an attempt to defend the honor of President Gordon B. Hinckley when he was not defending the honor of Joseph Smith. Yes, when he did the interview, I don't remember if it was Larry King or 60 minutes with Mike Wallace or whatnot, but he doesn't want to go into detail about the deeper doctrines

49:20of the church. Later has to sort of make amends with the membership. They may very well be doing that, but nonetheless, it sits on the website today and that's all we have to go off of if you're a believer in the church and want to know what the church's presence stance is. Right. And they've refer to that right there in the second part of that. Yep. Reporter in 97. Yep. Okay. Were you done with the slide? Yep. All right. So we're still dealing with number one. Heresy number one. These will go faster. I told you he spends at least twice as much time on the first heresy as in any other heresy. And at 840 to 931. All right. We're going to play this clip, but you've got to understand this. What's up on the screen? Covers what he says from 840 to 9. He will continue for another 31 seconds saying things that were completely deleted from the transcript. And that's why the ellipses are there.

50:21So let's play that whole thing from 840 to 931 just realizing that once you get to that end of that sentence on the transcript, he's going to go on for 31 more seconds. To learn and new truths to discover in the laboratories of eternity is totally beyond comprehension. Will he one day learn something that will destroy the plan of salvation and turn man and the universe into an uncreated nothingness? Will he discover a better plan of salvation than the one he has already to give to men in worlds without number? I have been sorely tempted to say at this point that any who so suppose have the intellect of an ant and the understanding of a clawed of myriad play in a primordial swan. But of course, I would never say a thing like that.

51:28That's it. I'll bet you wouldn't say to bring him young space though, Bruce. This is if he's calling the members who are stupid in that way, right? It's like as if he's calling them the name. But when you know the history, what he's actually doing is turning around. And he's to the prophets, heers and revelators, both in the past and the other one sitting with him in the quarums that he sits in. He is basically saying, you guys are fools if you hold that opinion. By the way, we know that some of them do because there is no unified stance on this piece of theology. So there isn't unanimity. There isn't the apostolic charge at work here. There's still room for difference of opinion. So he's not calling the naive members fools. He's calling the general authorities who won't let this be settled fools.

52:31And usually when these kind of chess nuts hang around for a long time, it's because both sides are problematic. I mean, there's no clear winner that a vast majority of people are going to be attracted to. Yeah, you would have to discard prophetic teaching somewhere on one side or the other. Yes, exactly. Well put. And some people could say, well, who do you think you are talking to the prophet of God, Brigham Young, Bruce Armakonky, when you're nothing but a freak in a puzzle? Well he was alive when he said it. So that sort of trumped it, didn't he? Because he was alive. So we're supposed to give he to the living oracles of God more than the past. But now Bruce Armakonky is passed. So what do we do with it now? Yeah. If Bruce Armakonky is wrong about a bunch of things and he said, shame on you if you believe the false teachings of those prophets, seers and revelators who got things wrong, well the same people laughing in the audience who are writing down his words and going to

53:35move forward from that point, believing the way he's saying are jeopardizing their own salvation. And this is something also that we're going to find out if you haven't already, is that in this talk and in this day, what you believed as a Mormon, your salvation hinged on it. They not so much it seemed like. Oh, I wanted to bring up this other, another logical fallacy that he uses here. He does this over and over when he's talking about how God cannot be progressing in knowledge because if he were someday he might find out something that would overthrow the entire plan of salvation. And this was one example where he uses that. This is not a logical argument. Okay, this is a fallacy and it's called an appeal to consequences. Can you read what that logical fallacy means Bill? Concluding that an idea or proposition is true or false because the consequences of

54:35it being true or false are desirable or undesirable. The fallacy lies in the fact that the desirability is not related to the truth value of the idea or proposition, this comes in two forms, the positive and the negative. So just saying, hey, if God, if we even believe that, I don't think it's true. Look, you don't have to know everything to know enough to do your job. If you know how to play monopoly because you've read the directions on the inside of the top of the box, right? If you know how to play monopoly, you can play monopoly until hell freezes over regardless of what you might be learning on the side of nuclear physics or quantum mechanics. None of it's going to change how you play monopoly. So I don't accept the premise at the outset. I think it's a ridiculous premise. But even if it were true, it wouldn't have any bearing on the truth of the matter because just because something could blow up doesn't mean that it's not true.

55:38In fact, sometimes it's a good idea to accept the truth of something that could blow up because it might actually save you under some circumstances. And I don't want to get off into the weeds, but there's also this idea that God, if God, if God doesn't know everything, how would God know what He doesn't know? And so if God, if God got to the point where He was intelligent, informed, educated enough about humanity and eternal progression and making planets that He said, you know what? I feel pretty comfortable. I feel like I've gone a couple of thousand years and nothing has gone awry. I think I understand how all of this works. That's great. But also you can't know what you don't know. And what Bruce is essentially saying is that God could only start the planet salvation when he was just absolutely certain that he knew all the things that there was to know,

56:43but how would he know that he knows all the things that there is to know? And you can sort of get lost in that thought exercise. And you would have to have somebody above God telling him, but then you can take it just one step further and go, you know, maybe you've gone 20 billion years with everything working the way you thought it did. But still doesn't mean you know everything there is to know. Yeah. I'm sure that gods have CLE credits they have to, you know, take an account for and they have to renew their their godhood with whatever the licensing agency is in the celestial kingdom for that sort of thing. So here we're going to go to the next one. By the way, we're still not even to a heresy number two. It really will pick up here in a second. This goes from the timestamp 10, even to 1036 or just 32nd, 36 seconds long. And he's going to quote from the lectures on faith. Remember those lectures on faith that you can't even find on the church website.

57:45Well, he's going to quote from them authoritatively and he's going to attribute the statements in them to Joseph Smith. And I think rightfully so if Joseph Smith didn't write them, Sydney Rigden may have, but Joseph Smith certainly adopted them by approving them for publication in the doctrine of covenant. So I have no problem with that. There's going to be an irony here and you've already hinted at it is citing to the lectures on faith to show that you have to believe the right things about God and scoring one point while hiding the fact that lecture five teaches something very different about God than the church teaches today or that Bruce or McConkey believed. Life and salvation. Joseph Smith thought that three things are necessary in order that any rational and intelligent being may exercise faith in God and to life and salvation. These he named as one.

58:49The idea that he actually exists to a correct idea of his character, perfections and attributes and three and actual knowledge that the course of life which he is pursuing is according to the divine will. There you go. The attributes of God. And did you notice that when he gave the speech, he did not mention the source of the quote. He just said Joseph Smith taught it. He didn't say lectures on faith in his speech. Okay, but that's where it comes from. There's the lectures on faith which has been published separately since 1921 for those who want to read it since you can't read it in your doctrine in Kevin and S anymore. The 1835 lectures on faith, the fifth lecture, paragraph two, I think there's just two paragraphs and it's the shortest lecture and the most controversial. Peach is that God is a spirit.

59:50There's nobody of flesh and bones about God. Not in 1834 when the lectures on faith were first published in the newspaper and in 1835 when they were first published with the doctrine in Kevin. Quote, they are the father and the son. This is the Godhead. There are two beings in the Godhead according to the lectures on faith, lecture five. They are the father and the son. The father being a personage of spirit, glory and power, possessing all perfection and fullness. The son who was in the bosom of the father is a personage of tabernacle. He's resurrected. Made her fashion like unto man, being in the form and likeness of man, or rather man was formed after his likeness and in his image. And then it talks about the Holy Ghost not being a personage, but simply being the mind of God that is shared between the father and the son. So that's the dilemma on the horns of which Bruce and Maconkey thrust himself in hopes that no one will be impolite enough to point it out.

1:00:53Yeah, I would only want to say here for the audience, notice how the 1835 lectures on faith, lecture number five, meshes much better with the 1832 account of the first vision. And Joseph somewhere along the way shifts his thinking about what he wants to portray the Godhead as. We know in 1832, he says, the Lord opened the heavens and I saw the Lord and Apologists want to say that's both of them, but you and I both know that that's not the case. Apologists also want to massage this and make this mean something other than what Joseph Smith is saying. But why don't we just take Joseph Smith at his word? Jesus is the tangible being. Everything else is something other than a tangible tabernacle of clay. 1832 says that 1835 says that it's not until 1838 where Smith shifts on his theology.

1:01:57Right. You know, I will do the Apologist one better in that 1832 first vision account. Joseph Smith actually meant two different beings, both times he says, Lord, I'll agree with him and I'll raise them the fact that the other three times that Joseph Smith mentions the word Lord in that account, he's talking about additional different personages. There's actually five beings that showed up to Joseph Smith in the growth. And if you're allowed to make one into two, you can make one into five. There's no, there's no real difference there. Yep, hoisted on their own petard, but this show is not about that. This show is about this. So Bruce or Maconkey is using the lectures on faith to prove we must have a correct understanding of the attribute to nature of God to be saved. Once again, the salvation and equating with believing exactly the correct thing and not believing the incorrect thing about God, about the gospel, very, very heavy here. And Bruce or Maconkey leans heavily on the place where the electron faith says God is

1:02:59unnippadent. We're not playing that clip. You can read it all the while ignoring lecture five, which specifically defines the nature of the Godhead in a very different way than the current church. This is called a Piric Victory. You heard that one before, Piric Victory. No, I've not heard of that. Oh, it's an old Roman thing and basically it's where you go into war and you get you win, but you get your ass kicked so bad it would have been better if you had never fought. That's what a Piric Victory is. It's actually from a battle. Victory nearly is costly as defeat. Well done on your victory, sir. The other person says, if we are victorious in one more battle, we shall be ruined. Yes. In the previous slide. Give me just a second here.

1:03:59There are so many moments. Again, we can go right back to Brigham Young in his teaching on Adam God, which again becomes another one of the the heresy he wants to go into. But Brigham Young misunderstood the character of God according to Bruce or Maconkey. Yes. His attributes, his nature, the name of the church also misunderstood the nature of God. And it's like he doesn't ever really deal with that. He wants there to be this nice clean cut where everybody needs to believe the right things to be saved without dealing with just how many members of the church according to him didn't believe the right things. He actually did try and think that through. I don't think he was successful. And his thought process is reflected a little bit in this talk, but mostly in that letter to Eugene England when he says, yeah, Brigham Young taught all the things that the cult has

1:05:02described to him. He taught all that stuff about Adam God. And I know he taught it. And the deal is this is that God allows profits to teach heresies to the people so that the people can choose to disbelieve the heresy and show that they are worthy in some way of disbelieving the prophet. I don't like I say I don't think it was very persuasive, but it was the best that he could do, I think. Yeah, except the Holy Ghost fails all members of the church because the majority of members of the church believe whatever the current prophet says and someday he's a dead prophet too. Oh, yes. And on any other subject, Bruce Erma Khanky would be beating that bell with the best of them about following the prophet. Just not that prophet. That's why he doesn't want to mention his name. Otherwise, it gets uncomfortable. Yeah. Okay, there's the parakeet victory lectures on faith removed from doctrine and covenants

1:06:02in 1921 as a scholar of the scriptures. Bruce Erma Khanky certainly knew this to be the case. I mean, it was just a decade before he was born. There is one other reason he might have known about this. Oh, wait a second. It's his father-in-law. Oh, yeah, Joseph Fielding Smith. He was involved with the committee that took the lectures on faith out of the doctrine and covenants in 1921. In fact, he's on a record of saying it's because of that controversial fifth lecture. We needed out of there because now that we've got section 130 in there about God having a body of flesh and bones, his tangible, his man, the son, also, and the Holy Ghost being a personage of spirit. Now, the way that conflicting section in there, I think we better get rid of, well, lecture five, but that would look too suspicious. So let's just get rid of all the lectures on faith. And gone, they were? Yes. I think Bruce Erma Khanky knew that. So once again, I think that he is not being straight with his audience.

1:07:04He is playing to win and he's not obeying all the rules. So now we're at this part. Oh, hey, we're at Harsie 2 Bill. We're only an hour and seven minutes into this. We're at Harsie 2. At this rate, we'll be here all night. This will be the second telephone. This is going to go a lot faster. This is Harsie number two. And this is 1224 to 1255, about a minute and no, about a half a minute. There's lots of changes to the transcript here. And this is the one about organic evolution. He's stuck the way the transcript starts is Harsie 2 concerns itself with the relationship between organic evolution and revealed religion and asks the question whether they can be harmonized. That sounds like a really reasonable statement, doesn't it? That's why he never said this part. I mean, when you play the clip, you're never going to hear those words. Those are added later in the transcript and everything else is kind of monkeed around too. And because of the timing issue, either have to go like a minute before or one second late.

1:08:10So this will be one second into it so you might have missed him saying Harsie 2. Okay. Thank you. Yes, all truth is in the beginning of that bill. And true religion. The problem was that this screen was an up the one with the audio, so we couldn't hear it. Harsie 2. Perfect. There are those who say that revealed religion and organic evolution can be harmonized. This is both false and devilish. Yes, all truth is in agreement. And true religion and true science bear the same witness. Indeed, in the true and full sense, true science is part of true religion.

1:09:12But there is no way to harmonize the false religions of the dark ages with the truths of science as they have now been discovered. There is no way to harmonize the revealed religion which has come to us with the theoretical postulates of Darwinism and the diverse speculations descending there from. I think that's enough. Do not be to see. So you can see that it was much stronger in the original and a lot of that had to be changed. But he certainly makes this point very clear about evolution. Now one might wonder why is it other than the fact that his father-in-law Joseph Fielding Smith had a real fore evolution. He wrote an entire book called Man is Origin and Destiny which repeated a lot of other people's arguments about why evolution was not true. I read it back in 1984 I think it was. And yeah, so very, very, and then you go to Joseph Fielding Smith's dad, Joseph F. Smith,

1:10:18and he's the one who did, as in the first presidency, we as president of the church, the statement about man, his origin. And that was the first presidency statement back around 19, what was it, 1912, 1917, right around them when evolution was really being a hugely controversial issue across the country. So but he will go into why it is that he feels so strongly this way that evolution must be a heresy. And if you believe it, then you will not be saved. Were you able to figure this out, Bill, as to how it is that he feels this way, what the logic, if I can call it, that the reasoning behind his position is? Why he needs evolution to be a heresy, is that what you're saying? Yes, what is it about it that he finds would like under, will basically destroy the atonement of Jesus Christ, yeah, I'm putting it to dramatically. Yeah, to what I said earlier, there is this idea that if the atonement is real, then

1:11:25the fall has to be real as well. Evolution has the slow gradual shifts where something is less than human a million years ago, and it's definitely human a million years from now, but the exact moment at which it's human. Who knows? And so they've tried to deal with this issue by saying, well, the garden was sort of like this encapsulated bubble that there were things happening outside the bubble, evolution's happening in its normal way, but inside the bubble is Adam and Eve and maybe outside the bubble or the pre-Adamites and they're still evolving. So there's been all these workarounds to try to deal with it. The thing in the audio, and it wasn't in the text version, but it was in the audio where Bruce Armakonke says, it would be impossible to harmonize the religion of the dark ages with the truth. And Bruce would have, he's never going to do this, obviously, but he would have been

1:12:29just as reasonable to say that it's impossible to harmonize the gospel of 1840 in the LDS church with the gospel of today. There's so much difference. He wants the differences to be like, oh, the apostasy way back then in the restored church today, but the Mormonism of Bruce Armakonke differs so significantly from the Mormonism of Brigham Young, for instance, that he doesn't need to go back that far to draw the conclusion that they can't be reconciled. But again, that's not really the issue he wants to deal with. Anyway, sorry, I'm off on a tangent there. It is all so confusing. As you try and break it down, it becomes more and more confusing. I understand what you're saying, because Bruce is talking, Elder Makonke is talking about the state of science in the dark ages. And then talking about how science today would not agree with that. Isn't that what he says?

1:13:30Science today would not agree with that. True science would not agree with that, but he gets to decide what true science is the science that agrees with him and false sciences the science that doesn't agree with him. It seems pretty obvious to me. Yeah, absolutely. That's what true science and false science is. In fact, that's what real science is. Yes, you're right. Okay, so let's see about this window. There's lots of changes to this transcript. This is from 1224 to 1255. And actually, that one we've already played. Let me take this one down and go to here. This is from 1319 to 1500. It's four to a couple. Yeah, you found it good. Thank you. And lots of changes here. And this is where he talks about the father of his father in law, Joseph F. Smith, and the first presidency statement, the origin of man. This is just a little bit long. I have this all set forth. There's lots of changes, though, but I have a set forth because it gives his reasoning

1:14:32for why it is that he holds this position. A legend which has come to us with the theoretical postulates of Darwinism and the diverse speculations descending therefrom. Do not be deceived and led to believe that the famous document of the first presidency issued in the day of President Joseph F. Smith and entitled the origin of man means anything except exactly what it says. The saving doctrine is that Adams stood next to Christ in power and mind and intelligence before the foundations of the world were laid. That Adam was placed on this earth as an immortal being. That there was no death in the world for him or for any form of life until after the fall. That the fall of Adam brought temporal and spiritual death into the world.

1:15:37That this temporal death passed upon all forms of life, upon man and animal and fish and foul and plant life. That Christ came to ransom man and all forms of life from the effects of the temporal death brought into the world through the fall and in the case of man from a spiritual death also and that this ransom includes a resurrection for man and for all forms of life. Try as you may, you cannot harmonize these things with the evolutionary postulate that death always existed and that the various forms of life have evolved from preceding forms over astronomically long periods of time. Okay now that one did you notice all of his declaratory sentences being made into question marks in that particular clip? Yeah, but in the transcript it made them into questions.

1:16:43But that wasn't the tone of voice, that wasn't the way he's saying it. No, they were exclamation points. He wasn't asking any questions. He's just pulling a carry molsteen here. He starts with the conclusion that the atonement is literal. Jesus is the Christ. He rose on the third day and he redeemed mankind and then he works backwards from there and even when you read it you can see that that's what he's doing. He starts with if Christ did this, if the atonement happened then of course there had to be a fall and of course there had to be this and of course there had to be that and it's essentially working like carry molsteen where you say I start off with the conclusion that the book of Abraham is true scripture that it's historical and I try to fit all of my assumptions into that conclusion. Yeah. For a lot of what he said about what happened with death and Adam and when it entered into the world and who was involved everybody, he's quoting from the book of Mormon on that one. This is one that Mormons are going to have to live with because this is one of the

1:17:46rare places where the book of Mormon actually says something that's different than is in the older than the New Testament and it gives some. Well it's really hard to argue with that interpretation. It is pretty clear. I didn't include the clip of him reading that particular passage in favor of the one where he's just setting forth everything but when it comes to his reasoning about if Adam did not die then there was no need for Christ's resurrection. I mean he's riffing on 1 Corinthians 15 I think but I think that what it really stands for the proposition of is this that if you believe that the fall had to happen in order for the atonement to happen then you will believe that if the fall did not happen then the atonement is meaningless. Yeah you can't have one without the other if you disregard one you have to disregard the other. I also think this ties into why Mormons and general authorities too have said this again no

1:18:49Mormon says the thing unless their leader has originally said it but the idea that the earth has to be baptized hence the global flood like we have to believe in a literal global flood because the earth has to go through the same ordinances that we go through. So yeah such a strange thing that we have to fight up against science for the rest of our time. Mormonism has to because so many stories have been articulated in cohesion with our theology by making the stories extremely literal and so as you said earlier we're sort of stuck with them. Yes in the earth cannot have a mountain a tree or even a branch sticking out of the water during the baptism. All immersion has to be completely immersed for at least one moment all the way around. That's the tough part. All right so let's see here we've got is this let me remove this from the stage I'll put this one

1:19:49back up. Is this is what we have yeah so all I was showing here again people can pause the screen this is in heresy number two what supports Maconkey's view the 1909 first presidency which is his grandfather in law teaches a statement that Adam again goes on second Nephi as you pointed out book of Mormon talks about the fall all things would have stayed in the same state and then Joseph Fielding Smith taught this very strongly no evolution but there's lots of things that are working against him. Joseph F. Smith said church leaders should not decide how much evolution was true so even though he's giving man's destiny and origin there's also a comment from him that we shouldn't be deciding that how much of it is true or false. No possible James E. Talmud and John Whitstone accepted an ancient earth and did not agree with Joseph Fielding Smith strict no death before Adam view in 1931 the first presidency told church leaders to quit fighting over evolution

1:20:54and leave geology and biology to science because they were not central to salvation. David O. McKay said that the church had no official position on evolution and made room for faithful members who accepted it and I'll just say here the 1909 statement never actually says that no animal plant or cellular death existed anywhere on earth before Adam a conkey needs that idea for his argument but he reads more into the statement than it plainly says. Wow great job thank you for that Bill let's see here some more information here. This is just for folks who want to know about this this was deeply interesting to me years and years ago when I came across the idea that Bruce Armaconky and Joseph Fielding Smith and Joseph F. Smith aren't necessarily right I wanted to read what was going on behind the scenes and fair Mormon apologist Michael Ash is actually the author of this article it's a great article it goes

1:21:57through the history what Mike Ash is saying is in spite of the fact that Bruce Armaconky and Joseph Fielding Smith had the most the loudest in the most public facing voices there were actually other apostles and presidents of the church who disagreed with them and those men had more training and education in the fields of science John Whitstone James E. Talmidge B. H. Roberts and so this article goes into detail about the behind the scenes conversations that were happening and so folks it's easy to find go on to Google you can search for the Mormon myth of evil evolution and reading that article will give you a great rundown of what was going on behind the scenes so that you can understand that the church had no unified position on this topic and how was it that Joseph Fielding Smith won the debate with James Talmidge John Whitstone and B. H. Roberts Bill yeah he was the loudest and said all of his things in public when the other three came back at him the first

1:23:02presidency stepped in and said we will not hear any more on this issue so it was it ended with everybody having to go silent except nobody got to put in the public discourse a difference of opinion with Bruce Armaconky but with Joseph Fielding Smith or Joseph F. Smith so the members of the church were stuck with the thing they were aware of and was the loudest yes and all three of those gentlemen had the good manners to die before Joseph Fielding Smith way before Joseph Fielding Smith he didn't pass away until 72 I think it was 1972 this was happening this 1931 this controversy that is what 41 years later and everybody else has vacated the scene dead mental no tales and can make no arguments and then this is the modern church today two different articles this one has to do with a gospel I'm gonna say doctrine class on the left the one on

1:24:04the right has to I think is a gospel topic's essay but the one on the left and the one on the right both declare that the modern position of the church is that it doesn't have a position on organic evolution and so I wanted to at least see like one sentence that says that the leaders of the church of Jesus Christ the Blatterday Saints at the time did not take an official stance on the theory of evolution but then it goes on and on and then the one on the left the church the very last sentence of the very first paragraph the church has no official position on the theory of evolution and so Bruce Armakonky is speaking out of line yes he is isn't he you know for a guy who talks about following the prophets so much this guy contradicts more prophets than I have ever seen in my life I mean face to face he just does stuff that he knows they don't want him to do and says stuff they don't want him to say and publishes things that he knows they don't want him to publish you went through that with

1:25:07David O. McKay with the first and the second edition of Mormon doctrine and now he's been added with you know Spencer Kimball and he gives this talk and he knows he's got to know come on it's 1980 for crying out loud he knows he's going to be making President Kimball upset but he doesn't care he doesn't care President Kimball you can yell at me all you want and what happens after all the yelling is done he gets made a freaking apostle okay when I mean the yelling being done from Mormon doctrine back when he was a 70 he gets made an apostle in 1972 I think it was was a 72 bill that sounds right 1972 I think is correct yeah so he gets promoted for his insubordination and I don't know we were talking about to say why would you do that and then we thought well David O. McKay and Spencer Kimball had very different uh well they I think they had similar temperaments

1:26:08but they were both very different from the president who called Bruce and McConkey to be an apostle which was Harold B Lee and go ahead and finish it no no no yeah I was gonna say you said Harold B Lee earlier when we were having the conversation so I didn't know if you anyway go ahead Harold B Lee oh yeah and oh go ahead put the cherry on top because Bruce and McConkey was called to take the place out Joseph Fielding Smith yes yes his father and law when his father and law passed away in 1972 it left a vacancy in the quorum of the 12 because Harold B Lee the senior was promoted to be the president and it left a new spot open which was filled with Joseph Fielding Smith's very famous very well regarded in many circles uh son and law and that's how Bruce and McConkey became an apostle okay let's see is there something else up here is this the next

1:27:08one Bill let me just check behind this okay yeah that was yours on a organic evolution um this is also about Bruce and McConkey's beliefs about evolution this second heresy it starts at 1611 it goes to 1642 here I'll take this down with that one up and notice that the entire paragraph I think it's the one that I have highlighted was added to it look this this this paragraph that's highlighted at the top it says these are questions to which all of us should find answers every person must choose for himself what he will believe I recommend that all of you study imponder and pray and seek light and knowledge in these and in all fields that sounds reasonable doesn't it that's why he didn't say it this white this had to be added later to make his talks down more reasonable the the

1:28:09Atonement of Christ is the great and eternal foundation upon which revealed religion rests no man can be saved unless he believes that our Lord's atoning sacrifice brings immortality to all and eternal life to those who believe and obey and no man can believe in the atonement unless he accepts both the divine sonship of Christ and the fall of Adam so there's the end of that quote we can see his reasoning I think we've already addressed it I don't see that it makes sense that you have to believe in the fall just because you're a Christian a literal fall do you think that that makes sense Bill either the physical or the spiritual I think in Christianity at large there's so much room for differences of opinion and belief on all of that even to the extent of how divine Christ was or was it

1:29:14a myth story to be in sort of a similitude of our humanity and how each of us shows up in the world but there but most of Christianity is going to take the atonement literally most of Christianity is going to take the fall literally and because the scriptures have been built upon a literal interpretation of those things it's going to be hard for anybody to get away from that without looking like they're part of the woke culture that's watering things down into myth stories okay well I suppose that if you believe one myth I mean you may as well believe too right again Spencer W. Kimball said that the fall was figurative in as much as the rib was concerned I believe well the the temple recommend actually the temple endowment lecture stated that the fall

1:30:15will be depicted and that the no the creation will be depicted that the creation is purely figurative in so far as the man and the woman are concerned right so where do you start and stop with like where is it figurative and where is it literal because again Brigham Young Spencer W. Kimball and others have given you room to at least see certain aspects is figurative why do they allow those aspects to move into that space of being figurative and why do other things have to stay literal and it really at the end of the day it seems to just be one's personal opinion of what they can reconcile and what they can because we would all believe it literally if it could all be reconciled literally and make sense to us the reason we move into mythology is because the story no longer holds up in our brains when we're when we're trying to reconcile it with science or other aspects of things that show up in the real world and appear to operate a certain way

1:31:21yes and as you can tell from these clips what I see Elder Maconkey doing is not inviting us all to expanding bro in knowledge and learning about God but he is using a vice and he is building a box and he's building it strong and he's building it small and he's building a box that you're going to have to fit in for the rest of eternity he's doing exactly the opposite of what I would expect a person who's doing who really is interested in learning about new things. Yeah when you are certain of things you're not really going to learn much are you? No even on our our mission we had this saying that we passed down about teachers you know you don't want to be teaching as a missionary a teacher because teachers already think they know everything the irony was completely lost on us as we said that I just want you to know yeah so let's see about this one. Hairsi 3 we're at a heresy 3 this is going to be about temple

1:32:26marriage assuring salvation it's an odd one but it exists this is something else I wanted to mention about all these heresies all of these heresies were in circulation in Bruceur Maconkey's day and they were in circulation to the point that he thought it was necessary to address them publicly so all of these things were going on just because I never necessarily heard about heresy 3 I think Bill did and he's going to tell us about that story as soon as he played this clip from 1727 to 1802 heresy 3 and here's the transcript versus what Bruceur Maconkey is going to tell us. Hairsi 3 there are those who say that temple marriage assures us of an eventual exaltation

1:33:30some have supposed that couples married in the temple who commit all manner of sin and who then pay the penalty will gain their exaltation eventually this is contrary to the whole system and plan that the lord has ordained under which we are privileged to work out our salvation with fear and trembling before him so Bruceur Maconkey doesn't like this idea at all no there's never ever going to be a time he's not going to talk about the second anointing which he's already received in which he knows that this is being confused with for some reason he's also not going to quote the passage from dr. Nick Havett in section 132 that is legitimately confusing on this issue and I think that there's a reason why but before we get to that I don't let me just check this next them what is the next slide is that next slide one of yours Bill it is can you tell your story about your dad yeah first I'll just say the second anointing has to be mentioned here if you were to substitute the second anointing this quote makes just as much sense there are those who say that

1:34:36the second anointing assures us of eventual exaltation some have supposed that couples going to the temple and having the second anointing who commit all manner of sin and who then pay the penalty will gain their exaltation eventually this notion is contrary to the whole system and plan that the lord has ordained a system under which we are privileged to work out our salvation with fear and trembling before him the second anointing takes away the fear and trembling and mcconkey acknowledges that's contrary to the whole plan and system meanwhile he's saying this about temple marriage as you point out after having gotten the second anointing and knows that he in his own head thinks that he is automatically saved in the celestial kingdom because he received it yes wow you eviscerated that one that was pretty pretty insightful there Bill in regards to the personal story you said you had never heard of this when I first joined the church again my

1:35:41girlfriends husband or sorry my girlfriend's father who becomes my eventual father-in-law I'm not at least the girlfriend's husband's story better can we go with that one yeah that's great I'd imagine that's a good one the the he says to me and I don't remember how it even came up but he's telling me about section that he that his marriage that as long as he doesn't shed an instant blunt he doesn't commit murder as long as he doesn't deny the holy ghost he can commit all other manners of sin not that he was he's a good guy but that he in his head knew he could commit all manners of sin and that he might have to suffer a little but that he would eventually enter his exaltation and rise in the first resurrection and when I heard that I thought that doesn't sound like the gospel the missionaries are teaching me and when I asked him about it he referred me back to section 132 so I'm going to slide here I put section 132 up here and it's

1:36:45verses 1926 and 27 and if you read that if a man marry a wife by my word which is my law and by the new and everlasting covenant and it is sealed under them by the Holy Spirit of promise by him who is anointed under whom I have appointed the power and keys of this priesthood it shall be set unto them ye shall come forth in the first resurrection and if it be after the first resurrection in the next resurrection and shall inherit thrones and kingdoms principalities powers and dominions then it shall be written in the lambs book of life that he shall commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood and if he abide in my covenant and commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood it shall be done unto them in all things whatsoever my servant servant hath put upon them in time through all eternity they get the past by angels they're out of this world and then in 2627 it says kind of the same thing barely barely I say into you of a man marry a wife according to

1:37:45my word they're sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise according to my appointment and he or she shall commit any sinner transgression of the new and everlasting covenant whatever and all manner of blasphemies and if they commit no murder wherein they shed innocent blood they shall come forth in the first resurrection and enter their exaltation but they shall be destroyed in the flesh and shall be delivered unto the buffetings of Satan unto the day of redemption say it the Lord that's exactly what my father-in-law told me so he's only reading a reasonable interpretation of DNC 132 and I'll just say here verse 27 the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost which shall not be forgiven in this world nor the world nor out of the world is in that he commit murder wherein he shall shed innocent blood in a sentente of my death and basically if you do one of those two things then you're damned but otherwise you might have to suffer in the hereafter for while you might have to pay for your sins

1:38:50Christ might have to go down into spirit prison to get you but you will come forth in the first resurrection or the second and you will enter your exaltation yes and I think we can all see that this is on its face somewhat confusing legitimately confusing because it does appear to say what it is that Bruce or McConkey is arguing against and he's not making a textual argument based upon the passage that is in dispute he doesn't even mention what section it's in so he thinks that's not the way he wants to argue it he doesn't want to show it to you he just is going to be pedantic I think about the way things really are regardless of what this might say I had asked you Bill about your father-in-law your former father-in-law and I had asked you if he was a kind of guy who would get this from reading the doctorate in covenants and come to the conclusion this is the way it is or did he more likely hear it from somebody else there is little to no chance that he made up

1:39:51this interpretation on his own he would have read the scripture he would have read what it was saying but he wouldn't have promulgated the idea unless he had heard it talked about somewhere else some other Sunday school class somewhere else where the room had talked about it and decided based on whatever instruction they were given that that was the correct interpretation I think the main place where your father-in-law got confused is that he was not marrying a plural wife once again we bend down this road and I and I'm not going to try and speak authoritatively on this because I don't know I do know this much is that at this time in 1842 1843 1844 first half of plural marriage is being instituted in an anointed quorum and entry into plural marriage is being taught as necessary to salvation and the second anointing is also an ordinance necessary to

1:40:54salvation and I think that to the extent that we can make sense out of this and it's not just badly worded I think that the very first lines and again very I say into you if a man marry a wife by my word which is my law and by the new and everlasting covenant which which he's just spent the first you know 18 verses talking about how this is what he's talking this is his law this is his new and everlasting covenant this is plural marriage so if you enter into plural marriage then there's an association there being made with having your calling an election made sure or at least that kind of status that's the most I can say about it I do think that it even contains the language of the ordinance that was performed at the time when it says it shall be said unto them there could be quotation marks around that I think ye shall come forth in the first resurrection and if it be after the first resurrection in the next resurrection and she'll inherit thrones kingdoms

1:41:55principalities and powers all heights and depths period end of quote I think the language of it is there I don't know if they continue to use that maybe we get Tom Phillips on the line in while you're pointing out that new and everlasting covenant at the time Smith does this is polygamy it's it's quite obvious that my father-in-law as well as the modern church as redefine these terms as just marriage between a man and a woman sealed in the temple in the church would want to hold that position today they would not want to say that's polygamy they would want to say that's marriage so from his point of view and from the modern church's point of view he's only taking their scriptures the way they want him to take them I just want to make the interesting observation I think it's interesting that in order to change the entire subject matter of this revelation from plural marriage to simply eternal marriage with one wife for a man this is one of the problems they

1:43:01ran themselves into this is a creation this problem was created by the church and jay Ruben Clark in the 1930s when they agreed to change the definition of celestial marriage for meaning plural marriage to just meaning eternal marriage and sometimes those kind of things happen okay so heresy four I'll put this one you see I'll take that one down put this one up heresy four 1956 to 2040 so almost a full minute oh and this has to do with a heresy if you think that you get a chance to hear the gospel here you reject that you get a chance to hear it in the next world you accept it and you can go to the celestial kingdom that's a heresy and then here's how gruesome raconkey puts it by the way there's a few asterisks can you see those I put there that's because there's going to be some things he says in between the parts that survive the editing process into the transcript there are those who believe that the doctrine of salvation for the dead

1:44:11offers men a second chance for salvation this is false false false I know a man now deceased a non-member of the church who was a degenerate old reprobate who found pleasure as he supposed in living after the manner of the world a cigarette dangled from his lips alcohol stanched his breath and profane and body stories defiled his lips his moral status left much to be desired if you can stop at their built five seconds just pause it will continue from there he's going to tell now this absolutely apocryphal story but it's so attractive to church members he is going to find a very receptive audience for this story and he knows it and it's going to get better here as we continue but this is under heresy for that there are those who believe that the doctrine of salvation for the dead offers men a second chance for salvation and he was forced apparently to delete the

1:45:17phrase that is false false false so he's going to tell the story about this man who is now dead and can't contradict them those are the safe kind of guys to tell stories about right Paul H. Dunn so elder mcconkey is going to he's actually going to say that his wife is a member and that he didn't join the church and that she confronts him one day and says things to him and he sees things he says things to her that every Mormon is just going to love in this next bit oh I can't hear it Bill but by the way also notice the difference in the language of this last part that could be under the circumstances one day she said to him you know the church is true

1:46:19why don't you be baptized he replied of course I know the church is true but I have no intention of changing my habits in order to join it they really happen I prefer to live the way I do but that doesn't worry me in the slightest I know that as soon as I die you will have someone go to the temple and do the work for me and everything will come out all right in the end anyway he died and she did and it was a total and complete waste of time end what the transcript says at the end is he died and she had the work done in the temple we do not sit in judgment and deny vicarious ordinances to people do we bruise but what will it profit him so you can see he had to change that and tone it down a bit as well what do you think

1:47:21about this part Bill do you think the story actually happened do you think a non-member actually said of course I believe the church is true I'm just not going to join it because I want to live it up now and join later um I've been a so first off maybe not but I've been around families part member families I can think of one in particular where there sort of was that thought and again he's living he doesn't believe the church it's not like he really believes I can do whatever I want you can go into the temple after my death do my work for me and I'll be saved it's I don't take this seriously I don't believe this thing so but you're going to go do what you're going to do anyway and when I die you're going to get my work done it's going to make you feel good about everything you're going to tell your friends that you felt my spirit and I'm I've gone to the social kingdom with you and that's the story that gets told Bruce R is using an extreme example if we just assume for a moment that Mormonism is true of course this kind of person

1:48:23the work being done for the dead probably doesn't do them any good but this is an extreme example that doesn't really fit in talking to people people aren't making the decision that concretely people are going you know I don't think the church is true I don't think the church is right when it prides into my life in these areas I'm making decisions about how I'm going to live my life and I don't I don't think that what the brethren say on this issue or that issue has any hold on me I don't think it's the truth or they don't believe the church and they don't care like some people are upset that names are taken to the temple and done for instance people of Jewish ancestry who are in the Holocaust their descendants are pissed that the work was done for them and so they've raised a voice to the church to knock it off as a member who's left who doesn't believe it anymore I don't

1:49:25care you can dunk someone on my behalf a million times I don't think it has any effect because there's so much in Mormonism that doesn't add up that it would be absurd for God to have tricked me by showing that much evidence that it's not true and to still have it be true those people don't care if if the if somebody is doing a proxy baptism for them person again some people might care but I'm speaking specifically specifically of those who don't the people he's trying to speak to are the ones who believe the church but don't want to live it to its fullest for one reason or another but in order to convey his point he picks a person who seemingly doesn't believe in the church at all it's an excellent point because I don't think that person exists let's say they do and it's one in a thousand or one in a million somebody who actually knows of course I know the church is true but

1:50:27I'm not going to join it because I'd rather smoke a cigarette or drink yeah I don't think that person really exists however we'll give him a rate of one in a thousand I think that's being charitable I won't go to the one in a million okay the problem with Bruce or Maconkey's argument is that the best he can hope for is that it applies to this guy this is the only guy that that argument makes any sense in applying it to a guy who actually is married to a moron who knows all about it who knows the church is true but has made the decision they're not going to join it because they just want to have their their habits that are against the teachings of Mormonism okay that's still not the there's still no second chance for this guy but okay I can understand not having a second chance as best as I can for this guy what about the other 999 people like you said Bill because they're out there saying I don't believe this you know you go ahead and

1:51:30do it and I'll support you to whatever degree I do and I know as soon as I die you're going to do this why is that that that person who's 999 times going to happen to every one of this other guy why is it that they get the same result as this other guy and they don't get a second chance or is this part of the pushing of the mystery and the kicking the can down the street through the next mystery which is at what point does a person have a chance to hear you see you answer one mystery with definition it only leads to another mystery that you can't resolve yeah I I wrote a couple of points down if you don't mind me reading these McConnie's position seems fundamentally unfair because people cannot simply choose what they believe we believe what our minds conclude is reasonable based on the evidence available to us god has allowed his church to develop a history filled with extreme contradictions failed teachings troubling behavior

1:52:38and leaders who can reasonably appear dishonest or unethical while those same men claim to be profit seers and revelators so millions of sincere people examine Mormonism and their mind simply cannot make it add up if god allowed the evidence to look this confusing and this contradictory how could he then punish people eternally because their brains reach the conclusion that the church wasn't true that turns honest disbelief into moral failure and I don't think disbelief works that way and then simply hearing about the gospel doesn't mean someone had a fair opportunity to accept it they may not have understood it they may not have had good reasons to believe it they made it may not have felt free to investigate it or been in circumstances where they could fairly evaluate it McConkey's argument ultimately requires god to judge something we can't

1:53:39possibly know would this person have accepted the gospel if they had been given a truly fair opportunity and so for you or me or the people in the chat we it's so clear to us this Mormonism always phrased it like well there's gotta be some evidence against it it has to hang in the balances if it's equal on both sides the reality is that balance that scale is so weighted down with evidence against the church and a few little things over here that aren't gonna make it budget all that all of us audience you and me we go it's absurd it's absurd we have to make excuses for the book of Abraham for Joseph Smith treasure digging for Joseph Smith's polygamy for Adam God for this for that the other thing and by the time we're done we're like it's just way more easy to go it's just not true and so McConkey is saying in essence there can be all this stuff stacked against the

1:54:40church but the honest secret of truth will somehow figure out their way through it but I just don't think that's how the brain works the brain believes what the brain believes and for those of us where it's over-weighted that it's not true for instance I've told this before if if I said to the people in the audience look it's it is your salvation's on the line when you wake up tomorrow you have to believe in leprechauns and unicorns and we'd go well I guess I'm going to hell because I can't do that I can't make that leap for us Mormonism is the same way I can't make that leap and for him to go shame on your brain for coming to the conclusion that it does that you just live your life not taking this nonsense seriously because it's not worth taking seriously if you base your perspective on the evidence you're somehow still punished because your brain arrived at a certain conclusion guys people like me are just going to go what you can believe whatever you

1:55:45want Bruce that's nonsensical and you're blaming the your your you're you're putting someone's salvation at stake for where their brain can get to if they can't believe in leprechauns and unicorns they go to hell that doesn't make any sense any god who creates a plan where you have to believe in the absurd in order to get to heaven that plan is stacked against the people who think rationally that makes so little sense now that's why the celestial kingdom is going to be filled with psych ward radio fans did you want to say anything about this slide bill no people can pause it and look but again in every one of these issues there is evidence for mcconkeys perspective there's evidence against it's not settled but Bruce armaconkey sees himself as judge jury and executioner and he comes in and goes my side's right every other church leader who said the other thing is wrong and I get to decide the deciding vote today in this talk ever going forward

1:56:49and then the leaders of the church said that's ridiculous Bruce we've had to correct you so many times in your life that you probably should have learned the lesson by now but he never did and that's why he's remembered what is so bad about having a second chance anyway this is a thought card isn't the entire gospel a plan gospel plan a way to give us all a second chance when we find out we can't be worthy on our own why does elder mcconkey fight so hard against giving people a second chance is it because he didn't need he didn't need one he thinks so nobody else should get one is it because he gave up having a good time and so nobody else should be able to I think whenever these discussions comes up and they come up regularly in Mormon circles it seems like there's sometimes a personal a personal feeling being injected into this that that one person may be

1:57:51grew up Mormon or they took their first chance and they have been faithful and so they don't want to allow for the possibility of somebody else having a first chance not being faithful like you getting a second chance and then being able to get the gold ring anyway. In isn't it first Peter and second Peter where Jesus descends into hell I think it's both in first Peter I think the first one is in 319 and the second is in 4.6. This idea that Jesus descends into hell and Christianity or descends into the spirit prison and Mormonism and what is he doing there isn't that a second chance of sorts? Yeah well he's he's preaching the gospel to those that were wicked even in the days of Noah right let's see here. That seems like a second chance in the here after who is Bruce to contradict that?

1:58:53Well he's Bruce the Almighty he might be looking at that as a first chance I have no idea honestly I suspect that he's been thinking about this for long enough to where he's got an answer for everything though it may not be an answer that you or I would be persuaded by. So God drowns all the men women in children before they have their first chance. Yeah especially the children because the children are covered anyway. Okay so here is first Peter do you want me to read this? You can just so the audience is familiar with it although I I would think they are already but it might not be a scripture that gets emphasized anymore. This was mim you had to memorize this one yeah joining the church that's how we know it for Christ this is 18. First Peter 3 I said 19 it starts in 18 for Christ also at one suffered for sins to just for the unjust that he might bring us to God being put to death in the flesh but quickened by the Spirit then verse 19 by which also he went and preached unto the

1:59:55spirits in prison verse 20 which some time were disobedient in the past they were disobedient when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was up preparing was up preparing early modern English anyone where in few that is eight souls were saved by water. So there's that part and by the way it's the next verse that says the like figure we're into baptism. Now save us right so that's also the idea where the earth was baptized. Now let me see here so that's and then for where we do a scriptural rail split with these two they're close together so it makes them seem like they're talking about the same thing and maybe they are to a certain extent that this was yeah first Peter 4 6 for for this cause remember it's the verse that starts with 2 4s for for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead that they might be judged according to men in the flesh but live according to God in the Spirit. The guy that McConkey tells the

2:01:01story of was disobedient Christ went into the spirit the the the souls in prison who were disobedient even in the days of Noah. I don't see the difference and McConkey again is so sure that he's right but the Mormonism I was raised with gave me the concept that even those who were disobedient who just didn't quite understand exactly what was going on if it had been presented a better way if they really hadn't gotten some fair shot we'll get another shot in the hereafter. Yeah you know the thing that makes that even more compelling I think is the uniquely Mormon belief by the way you're representing correctly the the LDS interpretation of the verses in first Peter chapters 3 and 4 but on top of that the the Mormon scriptures also state that Noah preached the gospel for years before the flood and the ark and nobody accepted it. This is the group of people

2:02:09that Jesus would have been visiting in spirit prison and described in Peter as those who were disobedient in the days of Noah so they were preached the gospel to by Noah himself thereby definitely making Jesus going to preach to them in spirit prison a second chance. Yeah I was just looking I think it's probably in Moses 8 the last chapter of Moses where it talks about Noah preaching but anyway that is a distinctive Mormon teaching I think. So let's see what else we've got we've got this one now let's see it is two hours and two minutes well we'll just pop through this we're almost at the end how many slides do we have left to go bail? We're on 38 how many do you did you say there was? There's about 120 no there's really only around 62 let's try to go through them quickly okay let's do this because here he's going to talk at 2225 and 2336 he's still on this

2:03:13heresy about getting getting second chances to hear the gospel right and what he's going to do is he's going to quote from section 137 this had been newly added in 19 it was probably newly added at that time it went from the pearl of great price into the the dr. M. Covenant's got its own section this is the vision that Joseph Smith or a partial setting forth of the vision Joseph Smith claimed to have had I think it was an early 1836 C. Zalvan in the celestial kingdom surprised to see him there because he died before the gospel and then God tells him the requirements to be in the celestial kingdom and they are simply that if you would have accepted it here on the earth with all your heart then you go to the celestial kingdom and that's all there is to it there is no work for the dead there is no baptism for the dead because that's not going to be revealed until 1840 four years later so there's not going to be any work for the dead that's going to show up in this revelation it's just wanting it with all your heart

2:04:16now what Bruce or McConkey is going to do with that same passage is he's going to use it to say look the requirement to be in the celestial kingdom is you have to want to with all your heart if you didn't want to with all your heart i.e. the guy in the story then you're not going to go there you're going to go to the torestral kingdom what Elder McConkey is not going to do is wrestle with the contradiction between this revelation and the revelation on temple work for the dead because according to this revelation they don't need it the revelation recently added to our canon of holy rith these words come thus came the voice of the Lord unto me saying all who have died without a knowledge of this gospel who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry shall be airs of the celestial kingdom of God also all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it

2:05:23who would have received it with all their hearts shall be airs of that kingdom or either Lord will judge all men according to their works according to the desire of their hearts there is no other promise of salvation than the one recited in that revelation those who reject the gospel in this life and then receive it in the spirit world go not to the celestial but to the terrestrial kingdom and there you have it what do you think about that argument bill say that last what do you think about that argument bill yeah i uh when you judge people according to their works according to the desire of their hearts you leave a lot of room for God to understand why the Mormon who has the temple recommend doesn't get to the celestial

2:06:23kingdom and the ex-mormon who doesn't maybe does doesn't have a temple recommend gets to the celestial kingdom when you judge people based on what's going on internally outward behaviors can be can be tricky to figure out what's going on underneath again if the brain doesn't believe it the brain is going to decide to do other things than Mormonism those can still be the best people on the planet and outward behaviors are a boon to a certain class of people who want to be thought righteous without the burden of actually being so you just have to appear righteous yeah and those are the people that seem to be molesting kids every week and they certainly work their way up the latter ship excuse me the latter ship the latter of leadership we'll call it the latter ship um let's see what else we've got here sorry the next one is heresy five i heard him say that just then he was going to go to the next heresy heresy five

2:07:24there's more changes from the original speech here especially between the paragraphs as i've got the ellipses there to show oh this is the one that there's no progression between kingdoms no matter what you know um James Talmadge had to say about it oh i can't hear it though can you flashed you but to the terrestrial kingdom here we go heresy five heresy five there are those who say that there is progression from one kingdom to another in the eternal worlds or if not that lower kingdoms eventually progressed to where higher kingdoms once were this is worse than false it is an evil and pernicious doctrine it lels men into a state of

2:08:35carnal security it causes them to say god is so merciful surely he will save us all eventually if we do not gain the celestial kingdom now eventually we will so why word it lets people live a life of sin here and now with the hope that they will be saved eventually so bill does that remind you of the second anointing too it sure seems to work that way doesn't it if you get the second anointing it causes uh men to say god is so merciful surely he will save us all eventually if we do not gain the celestial kingdom now eventually we will so why worry it lets people live a life of sin here financial fraud with the u.s. government lying about uh electro shock therapy happening under your watch being able to sleep with 14 year old children several months shy of their 15th birthday

2:09:39it lets people live a life of sin here and now with the hope that they will be saved eventually mm-hmm i also have to observe i think i put the slide in there because he's committing the same logical fallacy of appealing to the consequences he's saying the consequences if god allowed us to progress from kingdom to kingdom it would lead to bad things that's his argument it's an appeal to consequences so it is invalid as an argument what he has done is he has concluded that an idea proposition is true or false because the consequences of it being true or false are desirable or undesirable in this case undesirable to preserve a conkey therefore he rejects it and i think this is his only argument in support of this i could be wrong but i think that's it did you see anything else who he argued about this no but i guess i'm confused at what you're

2:10:39what you're under this heresy number five i think this was basically the only argument he made was that it would be a horrible thing if this were true therefore it's not true because people would just be they just be sending all over the place because they would know that later on they could make it up in the hereafter it's a strange thing again if i go to his words here um he had a the belief laws meant into a state of carnal security it causes them to say god of some there was another word he used in the in the audio at least uh where he sort of he mentions the people who would proclaim this theology having like an evilness to them i forget the exact word it's in the ellipses part evil and pernicious doctrine yes it's an evil and pernicious doctrine but consider for the moment who taught this hi-rim smith by the way there's an article written by tarol givins on

2:11:44progression through kingdoms where tarol does all the research finds all the quotes on both sides of the argument and publishes them in his article that's where this comes from do you know where i first heard that quote from hi-rim smith back in the eighties um where because you never hear this one by the way he says those are the terrestrial glory either advanced to the celestial or received to the celestial he goes on to say that's why the moon is the symbol of the terrestrial kingdom because it waxes and wanes he even throws that in there um from van hael and mormon's miscellaneous on the collection of their little note cards that they have these just unusual little factoids printed on yeah so you've got hi-rim smith the brother of the prophet teaching the evil and pernicious doctrine of kingdom progression you've got brigham young saying they would eventually have the privilege of proving themselves worthy and advancing to a celestial kingdom but it would be a slow progress evil and pernicious these are the prophets sears and revelators that we trusted to speak the mind and will of god teaching evil and pernicious doctrines

2:12:52the really funny thing about hi-rim smith is that he he brusar has been quoting his father in law Joseph fielding smith and his father Joseph f smith but this is Joseph f smith's dad hi-rim smith yeah and Joseph f smith is on here too i sort of chuckled earlier when you said he only reiterates what his dad and grandfather said is in this instance he actually diverges from him so at the i'll just read the other two elder james e talmadge said advancement from grade to grade within any kingdom and from kingdom to kingdom will be provided for eternity is progressive eternity is progress we're all going to learn here a little there a little jot every jot and tiddle until we all slowly move as far as we're willing to grow and move isn't the problem that those of a more philosophical intellectual bent think about the shortness of the span of earth life compared to the eternity of life after this and the progression that is fundamental to mormonism

2:13:56and just wondering how that can possibly be how can any cage hold an eternally progressing individual forever and who are you to limit what god can do through all eternity yes president j rubin claire in the eons of eternities that are to follow the unrighteous two may climb to the destinies to which they who are righteous and serve god have climbed and then joseph f smith again this is bruce armaconkeys grandfather in law passing from one kingdom to the other may be possible for especially gifted and faithful characters like harry potter yeah a bit harry potter could pass her munching them to another yeah i won't read these ones but these are the ones that he that bruce armaconkeys were lying on these are the folks who give an opinion similar to bruce armaconkeys take and so these are ones that he would use to back himself up so again joseph f smith set it on one side joseph fielding smith set it on the

2:14:59other bruce sides with his father in law rather than his grand father in law it is just so funny to see the names of the different jays that i recognize all of them uh some on one side of one issue some on the other and bruce armaconkeys not telling the audience any of that yeah and i'll just say fair mormon which by the way they show their cards here fair mormon uh question do mormons believe that there is progression between the three degrees of glory there is no official pronouncement on this question some leaders of the church have however expressed deep skepticism about this idea now they could have framed it the other way couldn't they yes couldn't they have said that some leaders of the church have expressed the possibility of bov kingdom progression they cannot resist putting their finger on the scale yeah they're only going to recognize those who agree with what apparently they would like people to believe there's no official pronouncement on this question from

2:16:00the church but you should believe that there's no progression between kingdoms anyway yep that was the take they had so there's fair mormon weighing in heresy six we are to heresy six now we're almost there this is from 2645 to 2734 so a little bit less than a minute and this is about the good old Adam god there you didn't think you were going to get through a list of heresys by bruce or mcconkey without Adam god showing up did you so we'll see how this goes now is this the yeah these screens look identical but there's actually two different ones and this is the one where where how was it bruce where bruce we're built and access the audio on this one maybe bruce can too I don't know whatever eternal progression there is is in a sphere heresy six there are those who believe or say they believe that Adam is our father and our god that he is the father of our

2:17:06spirits and our bodies and that he is the one we worship the devil keeps this heresy alive as a means of obtaining converse to cultism it is contrary to the whole plan of salvation set for in the scriptures anyone who has read the book of Moses and anyone who has received the temple endowment and who yet believes the Adam god theory does not deserve to be saved oh that was one of the parts they changed to that whole part about anybody who believes the Adam god theory doesn't deserve to be saved that hit the cutting room floor a little bit late but he changed it in the transcript to has no excuse whatever for being led astray by it he says anyone who has received the temple endowment but if you were at the saint george temple when it was first opened and brigham young had the presentation at the veil you would have an excuse for being led astray by it

2:18:13it is a good point you make and the point that I want to make follows that point which is okay bruce and racon cus we're going to show here in a second knows perfectly well that brigham young taunt the Adam god theory at the point he's saying this in 1980 in jim either that or he learned it really fast by february of the following year i think he knew it at this time all right he knows that brigham young taunt all the things that he is represented as teaching by the people who believe in the Adam god theory he knows all of that which means that bruce and racon cunkey knows that adam is not elohim in the adam god theory adam is the center grandson of elohim they are two separate beings in the adam god theory and what i find troublesome about this argument is that what bruce and raconkey is doing is he is intentionally

2:19:15using a faulty argument in order to try and convince people that he's right this is the argument that is used by people who are not familiar enough with the adam god theory to think that it really means that adam is elohim that adam is the same being as his father elohim god the adam is god in that way that there's no god above him right okay so that incorrect understanding of the adam god theory is often argued against with this argument saying well obviously you've never been to the endowment because if the implication being if you've been to the endowment you would see adam talking to god and you would know they're not the same being if you read the book of Moses the first chapter you would know that the adam god theory is not true because adam is talking with god those are both faulty arguments because they both rest upon the faulty premise that the adam god theory teaches that adam is elohim and not that adam is god and elohim is a god above him and his father

2:20:23or grandfather bruce or mcconkey knows this so now try and put it all together i'll let you have a crack at this too bill what bruce mcconkey is doing is using faulty arguments in order to get people to believe the way he wants them to believe he knows their faulty and he knows that they're based on a misrepresentation of a doctrine that he's not elucidating for the audience specifically so he can make this argument yeah what i'll add is to demonstrate that what you just said is correct one only has to go back to brigham young notice that he presented elohim talking to adam talking to jahova sending them to create worlds and he believed the adam god doctrine and he didn't see anything in the temple endowment between those two sides of the coin that were contradictory to each other it is such a great point because one could ask bruce or mcconkey well who do you think it was who came up with the endowment that would be the

2:21:26guy who came up with the adam god theory so obviously there can't be that big a contradiction between the two great point bill and here was this letter and this is just a documentation that i'm going to show really quick that bruce or mcconkey and a letter that he wrote to you gene england it's dated february it's 1981 and i think it's the 18th but this is the first page it's a multi multi-page letter this is page six i believe it is and we're going to go right to that middle paragraph and even there's difficult to read so this is the transcript okay from bruce or mcconkey yes he writes yes president young did teach that adam was the father of our spirits and all the related things that the cultists ascribe to him this however is not true he expressed views that are out of harmony with the gospel elder bruce or mcconkey and that's why i say he knew perfectly well

2:22:30that bruce or mcconkey did teach this stuff and yet makes an argument that is based upon a misunderstanding of what he actually taught and it's used only to score a rhetorical point yeah so a thought card so according to elder bruce or mcconkey president bruce and bruce and mcconkey didn't deserve to be saved remember that part they they changed in the transcript anybody who believes the adam got there he doesn't deserve to be saved so i guess that includes bruce and how is it an apostle is condemning a prophet aren't things a little out of order here he's forgotten which way he's supposed to face doesn't he yes he has he has gotten so close to the son that the only person behind him is god and he turns and faces the rest of humanity yeah he was a bit big for his britches so heresy six now this is something that we we already did

2:23:36that's right because i'm on the the second set of slides this is one that i had written and i've already said this okay so i'm not going to repeat it here but this is where he talked about the adam about theory and how it is that that argument he makes is not based upon the understanding of the adam god theory that brigham young himself that bruce or mcconkey himself had by the way bill you know it's happening on september 21st right now it's september 9th it's 9.9 26 september 21st that's going to be in 12 days it's the day after the cruise you know what that is bill it looks like it's like it's the anniversary yes of the very first conversation i had on the topic of adam god adam god subterfuge it was a great conversation anymore you want to say about that one well it's the first time i ever appeared on your show

2:24:37it was i was going to let you say it september 21st 2026 you'd seen something i wrote over at rational face on the subject you wanted to do a podcast on it at more than discussions you reach out to me i said would i you said peg leg peg leg and before you knew it i was on your show when we were talking about the adam god theory and that is the moment where our two paths merged and we've been working together in producing great content ever since the rest is history it's going to be 10 years can you believe it 10 years i can't believe it i think the mirror can believe it i can't believe it and in october to show you how quickly one thing followed the other and i think it's about a month later i can't remember is that october 23rd i'll have to go back and check was the first episode of radio free mormon it didn't take long it was obvious that you knew your church history you knew your church theology and doctrine and it took me about a month of twisting your arm to

2:25:43to get you to do this you i think you had said you always want to do a podcast you just didn't know how to do it and i had that part down by then so we spent some time and you took off i've never seen anybody gain a following as fast in this space as you have well thank you very much not even a list of grin fill uh maybe i don't know when she started and when she began having really huge post but i think she could have started when jesus was born and she would have grown faster than i well there you go that's how big she is but thank you very much sorry it's the lawyer in me that looks for the counter example with everything that said even compliments and i apologize so here's heresy seven which bruce rmeconky is going to admit was not even a heresy and this is 28 13 to 28 39 ha ha i get the joke peg leg peg leg do you get that joke bill that may not be the joke she's referring to but oh okay uh but i'll just leave it there you know so many a lot of people come up to

2:26:46me and they say i get i i get all your jokes i just want you know i get all your jokes and i think that's great but then i think well how would you know i said whole question if how do you know what you don't know right yeah and i i'm sure that a lot of you do get all my all my jokes and and i think that's great it's definitely targeted to a certain audience and um a certain age perhaps many of my references have to do with the 1970s were the 1600s were the first century in any way bill are you looking at something there are you you're you're you're you're you're you're gotten this thing set hang on i think we take this one down and put this one up right we do uh and i'm just sort of waiting you can see there the time is at 27 35 otherwise it goes quite a bit past the 28 13 so i'm just trying to say some words and fill some space but oh and pick up on it and okay great great i didn't i couldn't even see it was moving yeah here we go

2:27:48and having so determined they soon are ready to enter polygamous relationships that's the guys who believe in Adam god we worship the father in the name of the son by the power of the holy ghost yes and Adam is their foremost servant by whom the peopleing of our planet commands Adam wasn't any of the big three peric seven there are those who believe we must be perfect to gain salvation this is not really a great heresy only a doctrinal misunderstanding which i mentioned here in order to help round out our discussion and to turn our attention from negative to positive things okay so as among all the other heresies he says this one is not really a heresy but the one he's talking about is perfectionism and of all the heresies this seems to be the one

2:28:48that's most likely to lead to mental health problems but it's not that big a deal according to Bruce Hermann Conkey i put a note at we were talking about this last night yesterday maybe not last night yesterday during the day mcconkey says that you do not have to become perfect in this life to be saved thank goodness because nobody is but then his fourth and fifth heresies make the afterlife strangely unforgiving if you do not make the right decision before death there is no real second chance and if you end up in a lower kingdom you can never work your way higher so apparently you can keep growing after death but only if you already made it into the right category before death and i put a question here if god allows incomplete people to keep progressing after they die why would he permanently shut the door on other incomplete people who need that same growth even more

2:30:00my point being is that heresy seven yes contradicts at least in part heresy four and heresy five this part i got it was that last sentence where you lost me a bit if god allows incomplete people to keep progressing after they die and who's that uh more this one here mortal perfection is not required for salvation here okay so if heresy seven is true and people don't have to be perfect in order to die and continue to progress and go to the celestial kingdom then why in heresy four and five salvation for the dead does not provide a second chance and there is no progression from one kingdom to the other why would he permanently shut the door on other incomplete people who need the same growth even more that is really really a great question i think i know what the answer is but it's not a good answer my answer is because Bruce Hermaconc he knew he was not perfect he personally needed that grace therefore it's accessible to others

2:31:03it's accessible in heresy seven it's inaccessible in heresy four and five right because he doesn't need the grace that they afford he's on the path he's doing everything he's supposed to he's not doing second chances he's not going to be doing any progression between kingdoms he's got a straight shot to the celestial kingdom and he knows it because he's received the second anointing he's checked those boxes he hasn't checked this one therefore he suits it to his own his own i think so and i think there's a lot of that going on with everything he taught so this was Benjamin Park who did an episode on this i didn't realize he had it was like three to four months ago that he did an episode about this talk he's the historian den Houston he does a great job he affirms that every single one of these heresies at least one through six had been taught by prior church leaders and some things by current then current B way u biology professors like

2:32:04evolution as well as apostles but here's what he says about heresy number seven about this perfectionism and this was the part that surprised me because he's going to say that the perfectionism is the only thing that he was not able to find the general authority having promoted heresy number seven finally there are those who believe we much be must be perfect to gain salvation so he ends on a positive note you don't have to be perfect gain salvation this is a bit of a strawman argument and it's also the only one that i haven't found any evidence for previous Mormon leaders teaching so gold star to you on this one but you can see some key themes throughout this so that was the only thing that i i thought was unusual and the reason why is because when he started saying that i thought this is the theme of every general authority ever since i've joined the church and long before which is one of perfectionism they may not use the word but you

2:33:05have to obey all the commandments you must be strict in your obedience to all the commandments of God in order to inherit the celestial kingdom which sounds a lot like perfectionism when you stop and think about it so i think that all the church leaders all the prophets have testified of perfectionism in the Mormon church which is why so many Mormons have a problem with perfectionism and are in prescription medication because of mental and emotional issues dealing with that and why it is that even in a apostle this is elder holland i'm talking about bill real your favorite who back in 2018 or 17 i think 18 gave a general conference address about mental health and you know talking about how you don't have to be perfect everybody i don't know how it is that all you Mormons are getting the idea that you have to be perfect but let me set the record straight you don't have to be perfect you just have to do absolutely everything that you possibly can do i almost swore you out to say you only have to do every freaking thing you possibly can you don't

2:34:10have to be perfect but he doesn't realize is that the one is just as impossible as the other for any human being to do we can't be perfect we can't do everything you expect to us and we can't do our best to do everything because we will fail we are built in such a way we will fail at some point along the way and so we're not perfect and if we fail in doing our best well what have you just told us they were not doing what we're supposed to be doing and it's one thing for the latter day saint who makes a mistake can easily fix it like oh i goofed up i'm gonna repent i don't do that anymore great but that's not how most of life works most of life is we have these urges dispositions within us take an alcoholic for instance and so they they take a drink they they find themselves sort of succumb to that uh that thing they try to break

2:35:15the pattern they go to a a they're they're on the wagon they fall off the wagon they drink again and most of life is that way we all have different things but some of us are plagued by things i know people who feel immense amounts of anxiety and that causes them to turn to drugs and other other ways to sort of escape that the people have mental illness people deal with lots of things that are just not like oh i'm just gonna say a prayer and tell heavily father i'm sorry and i'll wake up tomorrow and not do that again and so when people have their humanity showing up in ways over and over again and the church is going that's bad you gotta fix it that's bad you gotta fix it that's bad you gotta fix it you end up just feeling a sense of learned helplessness and that you're never going to make it it's the whole reason that Brad Wilcox originally became famous talking about grace because he told all the latter days sayings he said i know all of you have listened to the leaders

2:36:20say we're saved by grace after all we can do but you're all misunderstanding it he didn't say this but he meant it including the leaders who have been talking about this incorrectly for two hundred years grace is something that we just we're just doing what we can do we're not doing the best that we can do none of us are we're just practicing and he gave the analogy of the piano but it's this idea that don't beat yourself up we're we're just trying to inch forward little by little and Bruce armaconkey is his attitude is like you're getting it wrong you're going to hell and there's just no compassion for the human condition Brad Wilcox what he added to the space Stephen Robinson Robert Millett what they added to the space was compassion for the human condition that Mormonism up until that point didn't even know existed it didn't you have any capacity or space for that it worked around it and just assumed that everybody could just beat

2:37:25themselves up into doing things perfectly and in today's Mormonism we've moved away from that we've a elder uctor for instance back in 2015 gave a general conference talk on grace where he adopts Brad Wilcox Stephen Robinson Robert Millett's point of view and it's the church had to learn that there needs to be space for compassion for the patterns that we humans have that we can't easily get over no matter how much we beat ourselves up yeah that's a good point i'm sorry i'm just perusing photos of bingo from the banana splits for some reason but i won't put them up on the screen yeah let me say earlier career at Brad Wilcox let me say one more thing and then I know we've got some other slides uh five of the seven deadly heresies mcconkey tells members to trust the living leaders over what past prophets had taught the problem is the first presidency

2:38:26of his own day had already said these issues weren't settled so ironically again we put up on the screen fair more men we put up on the screen articles from the church itself on other heresies showing that the church has no official position so ironically following mcconkey meant ignoring the caution of the very living church leadership he said members should follow he's not playing by his own rules yeah and they got me really upset on last night's show i'm certain to realize that these guys do not play by their own rules they do whatever they want and they expect us all to live like hermits and nuns yep all right so let's see we're almost done now there's another card here oh yeah perfectionism not taught in the eldest church question mark how about doctrine and covenant section 14 verse 7 which was a seminary scripture back when they had them and if you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life

2:39:30which gift is the greatest of all the gifts of gods very simple very direct what do you have to do to have eternal life bill uh keep my commandments and endure to the end it could not be more clear it's in the scriptures this is why Mormons think they have to be perfect in order to be saved oh general authorities have said things too here's an example from april 2018 general conference president rest of them Nelson speaking about the need for is it exact obedience i think it is let's see here let's remove that put this one up and here what he has to say nothing opens to heavens quite like the combination of increased purity exactly obedience earnest seeking daily feasting on the words of Christ in the book of morgan and regular time committed to temple and family history work or to be sure there may be times when

2:40:36you feel as though the heavens are closed but i promise that as you continue to be obedient express ingratitude for every blessing the lord gives you and as you patiently honor the lord's timetable you will be given the knowledge and understanding you seek all right now some people might say but wait a second radio free morgan he's not talking about exact obedience and all this other stuff that he's promoting in order to be saved he's saying it in order to get revelation well my response to that is it doesn't really make any difference what he's talking about what he's saying is that exact obedience is possible and if it's possible to be exactly obedient to the commandments in order to get revelation then that means it's possible to be exactly obedient to the commandments in

2:41:37order to get eternal life what do you think somebody pointed out in the comments obedience is the first law of heaven they remember that was Bruce Arma conkey Mormonism was so unhealthy that it laid out the very first law of heaven is obedience it's not love not empathy or compassion it's obedience that's the toxic Mormonism I joined and as you point out the fact that you just say exact obedience is in the realm of what we can all do means we all should start feeling immense amounts of guilt for not being exactly obedient we are saved by grace after all we can do my best friend Bruce put it this way and I think this is common to the way many Mormons think which is we have the ability to choose we can choose what we do we can choose in any moment to be obedient to the

2:42:38commandments or to not be obedient to the commandments and you kind of have to say okay I see what you're saying therefore if we make the choice we can be obedient to all of the commandments of God it is up to us the problem is he's not really dealing with a human condition in that he's thinking something's possible when it's not because what life is showing me and experience is showing me is that what he's saying is equivalent if saying if I flat my heart my arms really hard I can start to fly it's just beyond the ability of the human being no matter how good their intentions to be perfect I think that's true it's true for the vast majority of us anyway I'll just speak for myself I often wonder too if obedient in Mormonism is just another way of saying loyalty loyalty is really the first law of heaven um what are the leaders of the church whether you're obedient or not be if I hand closed doors where nobody can see Mormonism doesn't really care

2:43:41it doesn't really care if you're molesting kids it doesn't really care if if you're doing things off in the shadows it wants you to give the appearance of being a faithful member and it wants you to be loyal to the top leadership of the church you're right it's the loyalty that is all and the lack of loyalty is the cardinal sin the lack of sustaining the leaders of the church so another thought card and oh this is another example about exactness of obedience that we are required to do and it's been taught in this church and just what was all that talk about getting on the covenant path about and staying on the covenant path that's not an analogy for keeping all the covenants which means keeping all the commandments we have promised to keep which means we have to keep all the commandments to stay on the covenant path and only by staying on the covenant path do we go where the covenant path leads i.e. the celestial kingdom all of that stuff about the

2:44:45covenant path is about exactness in obedience to the commandments of God being necessary to exaltation the moment you break one covenant on the covenant path you're off the covenant path get back on covenant path start being exactly obedient now what's funny is that's true for the members we break one covenant we're off the path but these these prophets they can go all back and forth they can weave like a drunk after a three day bender going up those stairs but they're still not going to lead the church astray because you have to go off the path and weigh down the hill in order for that to happen so they have lots of leeway in changing and goofing things up as long as you're a leader of the church nothing is going to be considered leading the church astray that's really how bad it is but for you members you make one mistake you're off the covenant path completely you need to repent and get back on and continue with exact obedience yeah as you said earlier and as kendo here points out rules for the not for me

2:45:47yeah and we are almost done we got one more cool oh am i gonna do this i'm not gonna do this this is more of a personal thing we don't have to do this we'll skip it we'll skip it and we'll end up concluding thoughts so here are my thoughts okay bill and then i want to hear yours and then we'll say good night and go pack for the trip or actually i have to pack because i'm flying out early you're not flying out tomorrow are you nope i drive on Saturday morning okay very good well you can pack then on Friday night this talk by bursar mcconkey was given in a day when what you believe does a Mormon about the doctrines of salvation actually mattered in terms of your own salvation we've seen that over and over again especially the stuff that he had to take out in the transcript he's very clear what you believe determines where you go in the in the kingdoms of glory but his knowledge has increased in the world since 1980 church leaders have more and more had to say they don't know on subjects they formally used to take solid positions on we've talked about that on numerous

2:46:52occasions bill the more this happens the more the church leaders have to say i don't know the less we hear that certain truth claims must be believed in order to be saved in other words i don't really hear that anymore what i hear bursar mcconkey saying over and over about truth claims must be believed to be saved i don't hear that much in the Mormon church anymore um that's what i say the more this happens the more current church leaders have to say i don't know because knowledge is increasing and showing what they had said before to be wrong the less we hear that certain truth claims must be believed in order to be saved what things does a church teach today i'll ask you bail in you in the live chat what things does a church teach today we have to believe in order to be saved yeah it doesn't seem to be anything that brusar mcconkey taught brusar mcconkey became the very thing he was warning his listeners about hmm his book Mormon doctrine has been taken off

2:47:52the shelves when it was published originally the leaders of the church i don't know what it was 1400 things that needed to be changed he comes into the seven deadly heresies wanting to be the tiebreaker and these issues still remain unsettled fair Mormon and the church still acknowledge on at least five of the seven that there is no official position even this day on these things and so i'll just say brusar mcconkey seven deadly heresies was not simply a talk about bad ideas it was an attempt to draw hard lines around Mormon belief until the rest of the church which prophets which scriptures which interpretations were still allowed to count every line nearly every line he drew ran straight through the teachings that earliest eldeus leaders had taught and in several cases the church itself had already said the question was unsettled i just think this guy spent his life trying to make Mormonism his flavor of Mormonism

2:48:59that was the legacy he wanted to leave behind and he actually ended up becoming one of the discarded prophets that's no longer worth as much as a classic car or a vintage comic book and no way can i top that let's leave it at that bill excellent summary so that was a seven deadly heresies brusar mcconkey b-y-u june 1st 1980 well i tell you what you have any announcements you want to make before we say good night bill i know we've got a few shows that we're not going to be doing because there's like no real cell service on the high seas apparently yeah even the good internet's not going to be that great even the good internet is crappy is what we found out today and we have to pay for it and it's 25 bucks a day 20 bucks a day for excuse my language the shit internet and this doesn't let you talk to anybody outside the boat this is just inside the boat yeah it's it's a cruise it's the way

2:50:01cruise lines work throughout on the ocean you know what do we expect i just didn't know i thought we had satellites up in space or something like we're going to the bermuda triangle what i'll just say is rfm and myself we put a lot of time into reading talks going and finding documents going and finding the audio quotes cutting out the segments folks a lot of work goes into this show rfm spent a lot of time putting this episode together we spend a lot of time putting our episodes together would you please go to mormonismlive.org would you please click the donate button and just five bucks a month ten bucks a month the thing people don't realize rfm is we've been doing this sense again me 2012 in the podcast use sense 2015 2016 2016 and people jump on and they donate and we're we're so appreciative of that there have been so many people who are huge supporters of the show and they donate but at some point they move on from mormonism and they drop off and so donations

2:51:04go down they plateau a little bit and what we need is a next generation of people who find this information useful to say you know what i want to be on the team i want to be one of the people who support mormonism live who support radio free mormon and bill real so that they can dedicate time to putting these kinds of episodes together so that people can watch mormonism being dissected with honesty with transparency putting things up on the screen and helping people make sense of all of it and if you think that's a value would you please go to mormonismlive.org click the donate button five bucks a month ten bucks a month it'll mean the world to us it's it's what allows us to do what we do and we appreciate that for those who do and for those who in your mind right now you're like you know i could i could do five bucks a month instead of putting it off please just go to the site make a donation and support the work that we do as rfm said a couple maybe a week ago

2:52:07help us find the cure to mormonism and we're doing it one episode at a time and so folks we really do need your support so please would you consider doing that thank you so much bill all right everybody thank you we will not be here next week okay for mormonism live we should be back in two weeks so that will be shortly after we return so we may still have our sea legs about us at that time we'll see if we can come up with anything by then i expect we can don't you bill even if it's just to report on the crews i expect a lot of fun things are gonna happen yeah we've i've got some episodes planned already for the future and so i think that we'll have no problem putting more content together including have a con having a conversation about all the fun that happened on the high seas hopefully we do better than Gilligan and the skipper or the Titanic i'll just say it was i sort of noticed getting on a cruise ship in the modern moment is like how the rest of us get to be like the wealthy

2:53:07people who did get on the Titanic thankfully for you and me we're not going to be passing by any icebergs but it'll be fun hopefully there's no storms out there no but through a lot of sharks there's i think we're going to be going through a lot of sharks you said Jacob Hanson might be coming right i think so i've got a plank reserve for him all right so anyway maybe we'll have him walking the plank it will all be in good fun if we do and i'll i'm sure someone will jump in to save him afterward oh i'm sure it just won't be me anyway please join us in two weeks for the next episode again this this weekend there's not going to be a Mormonism after dark there's not going to be radio free Mormon we're going to be a bit radio silent for the next 10 days or so but we will be here unless something you know a parable happens like bill says we should be around and we should be back and hopefully we will be and we'll be back in two weeks to talk to you on another wonderful episode of Mormonism live thanks so much everybody for watching and we'll see you next time bye bye