Mormon Insider Speaks Out

Who are these mormons

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Fell you for years.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
But you're Jewish, right, I'm actually I'm actually not.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm raised Roman Catholic, but I have a great affinity
for Jewish people in Israel.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
You're gay to share that in their interpretation of scripture,
I should not be allowed to do.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
When I can't say my friend's name. But he said,
his biggest fear is that ISIS or some terrorist group

(01:08):
like that will get a hold of a dirty bomb
and exploited over a major city within the United States
and kill tens of millions of people, because then the
blowback against innocent Muslims would be absolutely terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yes, that's rue, that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Oh yeah, let's do some jokes.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
I have heard about a whole lot of hate that's
being directed at our trans community.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Absolutely terrible.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
All right, everyone, welcome to readoubt. We have a surprise
stream for you today this Thursday evening. My name is James.
You got Christian, John and our special guest West with
us here today. Before we jump into the main topic, though, Christian,
how are you doing today?

Speaker 5 (02:06):
Good sir, hanging in there.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
Fantastic drinking anything, Just.

Speaker 5 (02:11):
Water tonight, just water. You gotta help your alcoholic I know, man,
boring I'm boring.

Speaker 4 (02:17):
I'm bad influence John. How you doing well?

Speaker 1 (02:20):
I'm also non alcoholic, but this is again a diet
doctor pepper BlackBerry, which is surprisingly good.

Speaker 4 (02:27):
I wish I had some vps.

Speaker 6 (02:28):
Yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
Am out right now. I need to go to the
grocery store, all right. And then and then finally, Wes,
how are you doing great?

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Thanks so much for having me on.

Speaker 4 (02:39):
Absolutely, Wes. Can you just tell us a little bit
about yourself and your connection to the Mormon Church.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, so, just my credentials speaking on the subject. I
was born into the Mormon Church, raised in the Mormon Church,
was a member of the church for eighteen years. Both
sides of my family go way back in the Mormon Church.
On my mom's side, the family actually goes all the
way back to the founding of the church. They came

(03:05):
across the Plaines and the whole bit, and so have
extended family and my grandpa specifically, that is one of
the leaders of the church. He's not one of the
people that you'll necessarily see every General conference or every
meeting that they have get up in front of everybody,
but he has given some big presentations, big speeches in

(03:28):
front of the whole church. And so you know, if
any Mormons are listening, you know, having somebody who has
this much experience in the church may hit for them
a little bit differently. And somebody who's already had experience
with the church might hit a little bit differently than
somebody who's coming from the outside. So when we get

(03:48):
into kind of the deep the rabbit hole that the
church has, because I think it was two podcasts episodes ago,
you guys kind of went into the theological aspects of
the church, right, and that stuff's weird enough, but Mormons
have a really good way of kind of softening that
for people that don't know a lot about the church.
They kind of they ease you into the theological side

(04:10):
of things, and once you kind of accept some of
the premises and that kind of stuff, it might not
be too weird to somebody who doesn't know a lot
about Christian theology in the first place, but the actual
organizational structure and the corruption should be a deal breaker
to anybody that knows. Unless you're already deep inside the church.
Once you know how the church operates, there's no good

(04:32):
reason to be a member, at least unless you're somebody
that's benefiting from the corruption, so.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
Right, right, Yeah, I mean that's why I wanted to
have you on, because there's only so much we can
see from the outside, and especially considering that it seems
like there's a two tier system in terms of what
we're supposed to hear and allowed to hear versus someone
with eighteen years of experience within it. So yeah, really
excited to have you. Grateful for you reaching out. You
send us a couple of clips that will help frame

(04:58):
some of what you wanted to say, and so I
think that's probably the best place to start is just
pulling those up and we can you know, feel free
to cut in whenever. Same to you, John and Chris
if you want to posit and ask a question, but
we'll just go ahead and start rolling these.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Right. So this is actually in the context of a
modern prophet of Mormonism. Correct, this is a BBC video
And for let me correct me if I say this wrong.
But Mormons are led by a prophet. They always have
a prophet, the person in charge. They don't have a pope,
They have a prophet, right, who is elected after the
last one steps down or dies? Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Right? So, just like in Jesus's time, there was Peter
James and John More. Mormons believe that there is prophets
that can speak God's will just like Peter James and
John did at the time of Jesus.

Speaker 4 (05:49):
Did they call them apostles.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yes, So there's the president of the church. He is
the only person that can speak for God on his own.
Then he has two counselors, which are kind of like
his left and right hand. And then there's a quorum
of twelve apostles, because at the time of Jesus he
had twelve apostles. And so the Mormon Church tries to,
you know, say, hey, we've recreated the old in the

(06:14):
modern day. And so they've got a qorm of twelve Apostles.
And this is Elder Holland is what Mormons would know
him as. He is a member of the Korma twelve Apostles,
and he's very senior. He's not one of the new ones.
He's been around for a very long time. Every one
of these members of this they call it the first
presidency in the church. They serve for life, So as

(06:35):
soon as they're appointed to the first presidency, they will
serve until they die. So usually the more senior you are,
the more likely you are to have more important positions,
to have been around longer, you know. And one of
the things that's really important is that there's actually the

(06:57):
oldest member of the Korma twelve Apostles become the president
of the common twelve Parstles, and he's most likely to
become the next prophet. So that's kind of it works.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Interesting. So you almost have like a trinity at the top.
You have the president and his left and right hand man,
and then you have the twelve apostles under them. That
is interesting. Yeah, all right, we'll let display.

Speaker 7 (07:20):
I want to find out more about the mysterious Strengthening
Church Members Committee. Off to the church to meet it's
chief spokesman and the mastermind behind the I Am a
Mormon campaign, Michael Purdy. What's the Strengthening Church Members Committee

(07:42):
and does it still exist?

Speaker 6 (07:45):
I don't know, and I guess that's a question not
for me.

Speaker 8 (07:50):
I couldn't tell you that.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Oh wait, isn't he the spokesman of the spokesman.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
He's the chief pr for the church, all right?

Speaker 1 (08:01):
That goes above his pay grade. Who do you talk to?

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Then?

Speaker 1 (08:03):
That's funny?

Speaker 4 (08:05):
And this group that he's talking about. Is there any
context that we need about this or does that come
later that.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
So that Yeah, so the Strengthening Church Members Committee. As
you get more into the clips, you'll learn more about it.
But officially, the Strengthening Church Members Committee was said not
to exist until it was exposed in a leaked memo
in nineteen ninety two, and that was the first time

(08:33):
that we had ever learned of the existence of it,
and it kind of went back under the radar for
a while, but then it kind of came up when
Romney was running for president and that's when this BBC
documentary came out and who officially said that it did
not exist. So you'll hear in this interview that Michael
Party is given to this BBC reporter. He's going to

(08:56):
try to say that it doesn't exist because the church
really doesn't like to talk about it. But when they
get pushed and like they get backed into a corner,
they're like, Okay, it does exist, but they kind of
whitewash what it does.

Speaker 4 (09:10):
But he could kind of plead ignorance. Is there any
official statement from the church that says it doesn't exist
or is it just sort of that ignorance game.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
So there's an official there's official recognition that the Strengthening
Church Members Committee does exist, especially after that leaked nineteen
ninety two membo, they came out and they said, yes,
it does exist. But it's just a news aggregation service.
Like they just go onto online sources or they go,
you know, out there into the print media, and they

(09:39):
just gather information about the church and it's you know,
members and that kind of stuff and what people are
saying about the church. But it goes a lot deeper
than that.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Perfect I couldn't tell you that.

Speaker 6 (09:52):
I don't know.

Speaker 7 (09:52):
You're the head of media relations for the church, right
and I've expelling to people ex members of the church
who the Strengthening Church Members Committee does exist? Does it
still exist?

Speaker 9 (10:06):
I've heard that, Yeah, there is a Strengthening Church Members Committee,
but I.

Speaker 10 (10:11):
Couldn't tell you the details of how that works.

Speaker 9 (10:13):
But we'd be happy to provide someone that can.

Speaker 7 (10:16):
Sorry for my confusion when I originally asked, you weren't sure.
Now you do know that it exists, and you will
give me somebody who knows something about it. Absolutely so
on the Strengthening Church Members Committee. A spokesman for the
Mormon Church couldn't give me a satisfactory answer.

Speaker 6 (10:33):
Maybe the apostle could. What is the Strengthening Church Members Committee?

Speaker 11 (10:38):
The Strengthening the Church Members Committee was born some years
ago to protect predatory practices of polygamists.

Speaker 6 (10:51):
I asked, what is it? But that's what it is.
It is. It does still exist, It.

Speaker 11 (10:56):
Does still exist, it does still exist.

Speaker 7 (10:58):
And it looks at it's there to defend the church
against polygamist.

Speaker 11 (11:04):
Principally, Prince, that is still the principal task.

Speaker 6 (11:06):
And what is it subsidiary task?

Speaker 11 (11:10):
I suppose just to be protective generally, just to watch
and care for any insidious influence. But for all intents
and purposes, all that I know about it is primarily
to guard against polygamy. That would be the substantial, essential
part of their work.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
I'm not on that committee, So he's an apostle, but
he's not on that committee. So this guy's almost the
top line, Like, you don't get much higher than.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
This, right, And keep in mind something that Mormons don't
know is that there's actually two apostles that serve on
the committee. So there's two apostles, two of his coworkers,
people that he works with in the same building every
single day, are having these meetings in the Strengthening Church
Members Committee about these activities. So he clearly knows what

(12:00):
Strength and Church Memories Committee is. He's just trying to
obfuscate and plead ignorance because the more you learn about it,
the less you're going to like it. Basically, do they.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
All meet in the same building? Is there any sort
of structure similar to the Catholic Church where you have cardinals?
I don't know, Chris, Are cardinals only in a Vatican?
Are their cardinals around all around?

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Let's see, I think the cardinals only.

Speaker 5 (12:27):
I could be wrong. Chat might have to help me
out on this, but I'm pretty sure cardinals reside in
the Vatican, then the bishops usually reside over the territory
either way.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
So yeah, Wes, can can you kind of provide a
little bit of of assembile in terms of the structure.
Are the apostles all kind of like the cardinals that
they're all in the exact same location.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
So the way it works is that there's the Mormon
Church office building, and that's a really big skyscraper in
downtown Salt Lake City, and that's where they all used
to work out of until nine to eleven, and after
nine to eleven they thought, okay, this really tall skyscraper
in Salt Lake City for some reason, you know, some

(13:10):
crazy you know, anti Mormon people are going to hijack
an airplane or something try to take out the leadership.
So they actually built a second building that's nearby the
main church office building. It's called the Church Administration Building,
and it's actually a bunker. It's half of its below
ground and it's only accessible from the parking deck. So

(13:33):
I've been in it personally. I got a tour of it,
but basically it's only accessible to the people that work there,
and it's pretty high security.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
So yeah, they were scared of a terrorist attack taking
out the entire leadership in one go, basically, right, talk.

Speaker 7 (13:51):
About Mitt Romney, the man who may well become the
most powerful man on a as a Mormon in the temple.
I've been told he would have sworn an oath to
say that he would not pass on what happens in
the temple lest he slit his throat.

Speaker 6 (14:12):
Is that true.

Speaker 11 (14:13):
That's not true, that's not true. We do not have
penalties in the temple.

Speaker 6 (14:19):
You used to. We used to.

Speaker 7 (14:21):
Therefore, he swore an oath saying I will not tell
anyone about the secrets here, lest I slip my throat.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
Well, that the.

Speaker 11 (14:31):
Vow that was made was regarding the ordinance, the ordinance
of the Temple.

Speaker 6 (14:39):
It sounds Masonic, Sir, it sounds Masonic.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Well, it's comparable.

Speaker 11 (14:44):
It's similar to a Masonic relationship.

Speaker 7 (14:47):
The most potentially the most powerful man in the world
has sworn an oath which he meant at the time
whatever it is now, that he must not tell anyone
about what he's seen, lest he's.

Speaker 11 (15:00):
That he would not tell anyone about his personal pledge
to the Lord. I'm assuming that any religious candidate, an evangelical,
a Roman Catholic, Rick Santorum Newt Gingrich Osama, I mean
President Obama. I'm assuming that anybody who has a relationship

(15:21):
to God has made a pledge of some kind to God.
There's there'd be some kind of loyalty to God or
what kind of a God is that?

Speaker 2 (15:34):
So that clip at the end there he gets into
a different topic, which is the penalties in the Temple,
which were done away with in the early nineteen nineties.
I believe I might have gotten the exact date wrong
of when they removed that. But Mitt Romney, based on
his age and based on when he would have gone
through the temple, he would have definitely made those odes

(15:55):
of mimicking slitting his throat and open his vowels if
he were to reveal the secrets of the temple. Basically,
so he was Basically. The reason why that's a part
of that is because that apostle is clearly trying to
lie around the fact that that Romney clearly made those promises,

(16:18):
but they don't want to talk about it because it
sounds really barbaric and ghoulish and all that kind of stuff,
because that's what they used to do in the temple.

Speaker 4 (16:26):
When the vowels were taken away in terms of new initians,
were they were people who had made those vowels were
released from their vows.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
No, they didn't even acknowledge it publicly that or you know,
acknowledge it within the church that they were making that change.
They just changed the wording that the if the actual
temple workers, the people leading you through those rituals, say so,
they don't tell you, hey, I want you to make
this sign, Hey I want you to do this. But

(16:57):
there's still parts of it in there that are holdovers
from when that was a part of the ritual.

Speaker 4 (17:03):
When that was a part of the ritual, was that
I mean, I assume did you have to make similar vows?

Speaker 2 (17:10):
No, I actually left the church before I went through
the Malkezedic priesthood side of the temple is what they
call it. There's the ironic priesthood side of the temple,
which is where they do the baptisms for the dead,
that kind of stuff, which I did participate in. But
then once you turn eighteen and become an adult, then
you become you get the endowment, is what they call it,

(17:33):
and that's where you go through the Malkezidic priesthoods.

Speaker 6 (17:36):
Side of it.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Gotcha.

Speaker 4 (17:38):
So when you do make those vows, are they understood
to be symbolic or are they taken literally?

Speaker 2 (17:48):
So the history of the penalties, in particular in the
Temple come back to the history of the martyrdom of
Joseph Smith. So Joseph Smith was murdered in a jail
and not voo Illinois, and the Church then vowed to
get revenge on the people that killed Joseph Smith. And

(18:10):
so part of the penalties was basically a vow taking
that they everybody was sworn to secrecy that if hey,
we get back at these people and we go hunt
them down and kill them, that we're all we're all
in on it. We're not talking about it, basically, So
that's where it comes from. But your modern warmon member,
even at the time you know they were done away with,

(18:30):
wouldn't have known that. So basically it's all considered to
be symbolic unless you know what the where the symbols
come from, because it's all Masonic symbols. Basically, Joseph Smith
was a master Mason before he created the Temple rituals,
and he borrowed almost entirely, but very very heavily, from

(18:52):
the Masonic Order to go ahead and create the temple rituals.
So they do prayer, sir, they do chants, they do
the hand signs Masonic hand signs. There on the garments,
the temple garments, there's three symbols on the temple garments.
On the you know magic underwear that Mormons wear. There's

(19:13):
a there's one for that's supposed to look like a
Masonic compass, there's one that's supposed to look like a
Masonic square, and then there's one that's like either a
circle or something like that. But they're placed in, you know,
significant spots on your garments, and you're supposed to cut
them out before you throw your garments away. So if

(19:37):
you ask a Mormon person what those things mean, they
just say, what it's up to interpretation. It's up to
what you feel spiritually about those symbols. So they can't
give you a good answer. But anybody that knows Masonic
rituals and know where those symbols come from could give
you a good answer, because that's where it comes from.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, I mean, I think this is a very very
early rendition of what some of the the undergarments look like.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, but that's exactly where they're at on modern garments.

Speaker 4 (20:11):
Interesting. So I think we we have another clip. Do
you want to move on to the next one or
is I guess any more comments on that one?

Speaker 6 (20:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (20:22):
I think we covered the penalties. I mean, there's it's
more from a side of does it weird you out
that they did that or is it you know some
people that was kind of the thing when they learned
about it, they were like, oh man, this is crazy
kind of thing. But for me, it's like with all
the Masonic stuff. Once you learn where that comes from,
it's like, I mean, that's not too surprising, given that

(20:42):
we're all, you know, chanting in a circle and we're
all doing all the other crazy stuff. That's not too surprising.

Speaker 4 (20:48):
But did Joseph Smith's Masonic time come after he had
written a bulk of the Book of Mormon and or
just discovered it? Or was he a Premason before all
of that like coming over?

Speaker 1 (21:05):
I remember correctly, Joseph Smith tried out a bunch of
different religions. One of them he attended a Masonic temple
right and which I believe is where he got basically
all of the inspiration for a lot of the symbology,
a lot of the rituals and whatnot, which is why
they're so closely linked together. But I believe that was
before his time of you know, writing the Book of

(21:26):
Mormon and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah, as far as I understand, the Masonic rituals that
are in the Temple were borrowed almost one for one
after Joe Smith learned about them, after he became a
Master Mason and was able to, you know, be inducted
into that Masonic order. But that was after he had
already written the Book of Mormon much earlier on, and

(21:50):
so some things I think were a creation of Joseph's
own imagination. But those things are pretty much like you
can't deny where those symbols come from.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
So and now, when you talk about the punishments for like,
you know, the secret recordings that I don't know if
you guys have ever seen these on YouTube, but you
can actually go find like the secret recordings of rituals
that are filmed like very covertly. So the punishment for
this sort of thing, for talking about what goes on

(22:20):
inside the temple or filming it or releasing pictures or whatnot,
you get excommunicated, right, which means you get shunned from
your whole family basically.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah, So basically the penalty the penalties would be, you know, spiritually,
I guess, is the interpretation that you're slitting your own
throat if you're doing this right, and you're casting yourself
into outer darkness. Because even some of the most you know,
vile characters from human history, right, you could name off

(22:52):
people that have are responsible for millions and murders of
other humans, they only get to they only get penalized
by going to the t lestial Kingdom, which is like
the lowest level of heaven. The only way that you
get cast into outer darkness is if you know the
truth and then you rebel against it, and so that
I guess that would be one of these offenses is

(23:14):
if you're basically apostasy.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Right, So demons and apostates that they get thrown into
outer darkness, right, And that's something that we did. We
kind of talked about a little bit last time, but
you probably understand it better. But Mormon eschatology, there's three
different levels to heaven, but in the highest realm, the
celestial realm, the only way to ascend to godhood is
to have a temple ceiling with your wife, right, That's

(23:38):
the only way to make it to the tippity top level.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, so there's actually so the way heaven works according
to the Mormon theology is you have the te lesterraal Kingdom,
which is like worse than Earth is right now, but
it's like you're stuck on Earth, but with all of
the worst people. So it's like you're in prison on

(24:03):
Earth kind of thing, and you're stuck with like all
the rapist murderers, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 6 (24:07):
Right.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Then there's the Celestial Kingdom, which is like Earth. You're
just there with a bunch of people, and some of
them are you know, just have like mortal problems.

Speaker 10 (24:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
They might drink too much, they might smoke too much. Right,
they don't really get any bonus points for their life
on Earth.

Speaker 6 (24:27):
Right.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
And then you've got the Celestial Kingdom, which is kind
of like vip heaven where you are Mormon, you're you know,
faithful while you were alive, that kind of stuff. And
then there's actually a degree in the Celestial Kingdom higher
than that where if you get sealed in the temple,
then you go into the Holy of Holies and you

(24:49):
become a god basically and more my theology, and there
is no hell, that's the outer darkness, but you have
to really try to get out of there, get out there.

Speaker 4 (25:05):
So even the layer of heaven you said, that's with
all the rapists and murderers, that's still considered a layer
of heaven. That's not the outer darkness. That's that's one
level above, is that right?

Speaker 2 (25:14):
Right? Because you're hanging out with Stalin, right, Stalin, all
of the worst you know, poll pots in there with you,
like everybody that you know would be considered to have
committed mortal crimes gets to go down to the lowest
level of.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
Heaven and is the outer Wait wait, those guys are
going into the telestial Kingdom and that is not the
same as the outer darkness? Or is that okay? So
is the outer darkness just like annihilation? Or is it
a burning link of fire? Are you being raped by
the devil? Or or what does that look like?

Speaker 2 (25:48):
It's it's kind of like the idea that you guys
brought up in the podcast episode where you said, like
what does what does nothing feel like? What is? Because
the idea in Jose Smith's theology is that outer darkness
is for people that do not have bodies, meaning that

(26:08):
if you came to Earth, you passed the first test
in the War on Heaven war in Heaven, where you
were at least valiant enough that in the war in
Heaven you like pass the first test. So you came
to Earth and you've got a body. So the worst
you can do is be like Stalin or something like that,
right where you committed a bunch of mortal crimes. So

(26:29):
you go to the lowest level of heaven. But Satan
and these angels were on the wrong side of the
war in heaven and so they never got bodies. They
exist in a corporeal form on this planet, you know,
trying to tempt people and that kind of stuff, but
they go to outer darkness where they will never receive

(26:49):
any sort of form of exaltation because they don't even
have bodies.

Speaker 4 (26:53):
Gotcha, Okay, all right, cool?

Speaker 1 (26:56):
So that's fascinating, all right, And now getting back to
this committee. So this is at this radio free Mormon
spying for the Lord one discussion inc.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
So the reason why I bring this into a discussion
on Mormonism is because for most people that are in
the church, how the church works on the inside isn't
even a topic of conversation, right. The church is run
by a whole bunch of different committees, and for the
most part, the church kind of looks like this unified form,

(27:30):
this unified structure to the outside to people that you know,
are living in the church, just going to church every Sunday.
But there's these different committees that actually run the church,
and this is one of the most important ones because
it actually affects the lives of daily of members. And
so that's why it's really important that more Mormons learn

(27:51):
about it, and when they learn about it, they're probably
not gonna like it.

Speaker 10 (27:57):
It is generally understood that the Strengthening Church Members Committee
or SCMC, keeps files on dissident Mormons, those that they
consider to be vocally critical of the church and its leaders.
And once again, when those dissident Mormons are considered to
have crossed some threshold of being too critical, too vocal,

(28:18):
too popular, that information in the file is then passed
on to the members local leaders for disciplinary action. I
have known about the existence of the Strengthening Church Members
Committee for a number of years now. I have known
about the rumor that they keep files on dissident members
of the church, and I have long suspected that they
must have a file on Radio Free Mormon as well.

(28:39):
I have also been led to understand that it is
very likely that the Church believes they know the true
identity of Radio Free Mormon, that they know my name,
and that sets the background for what happened earlier this morning,
May one, twenty nineteen, when I had a nice chat
with a member of the Strengthening Church Members Committee. He

(29:00):
is a general authority. He is a member of the
first Quorum of the seventy and his name is Timothy J.
Dykes d y c Ees. The funny thing is he
didn't call me. I called him. Here is how it
came about. Early this morning, I was contacted by Bill
Reel advising me that there is a teenager he's about

(29:23):
eighteen years old, who listens to the podcast and he
also frequents x mormon Readit, which is a message board
where dissident members of the church gather to express their
feelings about the LDS Church. While he was on x
Mormon Readit, this teenager read a comment that somebody had
made about how Radio Free Mormon's neck is in the

(29:45):
SCMC noose over his latest podcast, President Nelson Jumps the Shark.
This teenager learned of the existence of the Strengthening Church
Members Committee. From this post, he learned that the SCMC
has files on dissident Mormons like Radio Free Mormon, and
that the SCMC surely had a file on Radio Free

(30:06):
Mormon and the disciplinary action would no doubt be shortly forthcoming.
This was the opinion of the person who posted the
message at x mormon Read It that was read by
this teenager. Now this teenager now.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
When it comes to Radio Free Mormon, they are Mormons,
but they are more dissident or they cross the line
that the Church doesn't like. Is that what I'm guessing
from this.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, So he podcasts with like a conglomerate of different shows.
It's called Mormon Discussions, and you have a variety of
different voices in that. You've got some people that were
Mormon are no longer, some people that have been excommunicated
very publicly by the church. But Radio Free Mormon is
anonymous and so so far he hasn't been excommunicated, even

(30:52):
though the Church believes they know who he is. And
now he uses his face on podcasts and stuff, but
just he stays it on us for kind of his branding.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Well, yeah, so we have some Mormons in the chat
that are disagreeing with you West. They're calling you out
for not knowing your stuff. And I mean, I don't
know how the other hosts feel, but if they want
to have a discussion at some point in the future,
I would be more than happy to listen to them
as well.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, I mean, if Mormons want to fact check me
on dates or on you know, very specific theological points,
you got to remember like, this was six years ago
for me, so I'm trying to remember eighteen years. And
it's one of those things where Mormons like to say, well,
if you don't know you your doctrine down to the
very letter, the very you know that kind of stuff,

(31:41):
then they like to throw everything out right, because they're
just looking for something to nitpick. And at the end
of the day, the content of what I'm trying to
bring to the table is they don't know that the
church has an internal stazi. Okay, it has an internal
spying agent, see that spies on members, and they don't

(32:05):
have any curiosity to know more than that. Right. You
can talk to a member of the church and say, hey,
did you know that the Strength and Church Member Committee exists?
And they're like no, I had no idea. And you
tell them about it and they're like, well, yeah, that
does seem kind of serious. And you know, I feel
bad for those people that you know, I feel bad
for those you know, dissident members that you know, get

(32:27):
the bad end of that stick. But you know, I'm
a good, faithful member, So why why should I care?
They're not spying on me, right, And it's like, well,
the problem is is that if you think that the
church treats it's you know, is willing to spy on
bad people in the church, you know, quote unquote bad Mormons. Right,
then what do you think they do with the good

(32:48):
members of the church. You think that they're just like, oh, okay,
you know these good members of the church, We're going
to treat them great. It's like, uh no, they think
you're all marks.

Speaker 6 (32:56):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
They think that you're all lemmings basically, and they think
you're stupid. So that's why I'm trying to say, like
they single out people that speak out about the church
because they kind of have like some free thinking or
they you know, try to find the truth and they
speak out about it, and they try to get those
people out of the church as quickly as possible. But

(33:17):
for the people that are just like your average members, right,
they don't even give you the time of day to
ask your opinion. They just do what they're going to
do and want you to pay for the privilege.

Speaker 10 (33:27):
Basically, is not just an average teen. His grandfather is
a General Authority seventy also a member of the First
Quorum of the seventy, but he is not Elder Dykes.
The team talks to his grandfather about different issues relating
to the church. Now, obviously, this teenager, if he's listening

(33:50):
to my podcast and frequenting ex Mormon Reddit, is probably
not entirely orthodox in his beliefs. But he talks with
his grandfather about his questions relating to the church, and
his grandfather is nice enough to talk with him in
trying to answer those questions. Now, by the way, I
am not using this teenager's name or the name of
his grandfather because I don't want to inadvertently dox him.

(34:11):
I know the name of his general authority grandfather, but
if I gave the name of the general authority grandfather,
I would be doxing the kid just as much as
if I said the name of the kid himself. Anyway,
the teen's grandfather, the seventy, said he knows another seventy
who does work on the SCMC, and this seventy's name
is Elder Timothy J. Dikes, the one I've already mentioned

(34:32):
to you. After checking with Elder Dykes, the grandfather got
back to his grandson to say that the grandfather had
spoken with Elder Dykes and that the SCMC does in
fact have a file on Radio Free Mormon. But the
grandfather seventy went further. He gave his grandson Elder Dyke's
telephone number. He told his grandson he could pass it

(34:53):
along to Radio Free Mormon, and that Radio Free Mormon
could give Elder Dykes a call to discuss the content
of his SCMC file, and that Elder Dykes would be
expecting the call. All of this information was related to
me by Bill Reel on the morning of May one,
twenty nineteen. Well, as you can imagine, it was all

(35:14):
too much for me to resist, so I called the
phone number provided It was eight zero one two, four
zero three, three zero five. I frankly wasn't sure whether
this was a real phone number or whether it would
actually go to Elder Dykes, but I thought I would
give it a whirl anyway. Well, a very pleasant lady
picked up on the other end and advised me that
I had reached the office of Elder Timothy J. Dikes

(35:37):
and asked how she could help me. I told her
I was calling for Elder Dykes and that he was
expecting my call. She asked for my name. I thought
saying Radio Free Mormon would raise more questions than it
would answer. I mean, my whole goal is to get
past the receptionist and to Elder Dykes, so I'm trying
to make this as quick and painless as possible. So
I don't want to say it's radio free Mormon. So
I just made up a name because I didn't want

(35:58):
to give him my real name either, for obvious reasons.
There is a reason that this podcast is anonymous. So
I just made up a name and told her my
name was John Smith. Yes, that's actually the name that
I thought up on the spur of the moment. I
will get less than high marks for my creativity there.
She asked what this was regarding. I told her it
was a bit of an unusual situation, but it was

(36:19):
my understanding that Elder Dyke serves on the Strengthening Church
Members Committee, that he has a file on me, and
that he is expecting my call to discuss the contents
of my file. This did not seem to phase her
in the least. She did not express confusion, shock, or misunderstanding.
She did not say, what is the Strengthening Church Members

(36:40):
committee of which you speak? She understood exactly what I
was talking about and said she would check to see
if Elder Dykes was available to talk with me, and
she put me on hold for about a minute while
I listened to some very nice classical music. When the
phone picked up again, it was the receptionist's voice. I
expected her to say that Elder Dykes was busy or
unavailable and couldn't take my call at the time, but
instead she said she was transferring me through to elder Dykes.

(37:03):
A moment later, elder Dykes picked up the phone and
identified himself. I told him I had used the name
John Smith with his receptionist, but that my name was
not really John Smith, but that I podcasted under the
name Radio Free Mormon. I told him that this was
a bit of an awkward phone call, but that I
had learned through a circuitous route that Elder Dykes serves

(37:24):
on the Strengthening Church Members Committee, that he has a
file on Radio Free Mormon, and that he might be
expecting a call from me to discuss its contents. Elder
Dykes identified the name of the grandfather seventy and mentioned
the teenage son. He knew exactly what was going on
and why it was that I was calling, and he
indeed was expecting my call, as I had been informed

(37:45):
by Bill Reel, and I told him, yes, that was
exactly the secuitous route that I was talking about. Elder
Dykes told me that he did not want me to
use the contents of our conversation for any purpose whatsoever.
I assured him I was not recording the call because
because I live in a two party consent state and
I wasn't about to break the law. We both got
a good chuckle over this. Elder Dyke said he usually

(38:08):
would talk with people who came in person to his
office as opposed to over the phone. I told him
that was difficult, considering I lived in another state. He
understood the difficulty. Elder Dyke's at this point confirmed that
he does serve on the Strengthening Church Member's Committee and
that he does have a file on a member of
the church whom he identified as being radio free Mormon.

(38:34):
He mentioned that member's full name to me and asked
if I were that individual. I told him I could
not confirm nor deny whether I was that individual, and
we both had a good laugh over that one. Elder
Dyke said he was not comfortable talking with me on
the phone about the contents of my file unless I

(38:54):
were willing to positively identify myself as the member he
believes Radio Free Mormon to be. I asked him that
if his file is on Radio Free Mormon and I
have identified myself as Radio Free Mormon, then why couldn't
he talk with Radio Free Mormon about the contents of
his file. Elderdykes reiterated that he wouldn't feel comfortable talking

(39:16):
with me unless I positively identified myself as the member
he believes Radio Free Mormon to be. I told him
that I guess that takes care of our conversation. Then
I thanked him for taking the time to accept my
call and chat with me. I wished him a good day,
and he did the same to me. A few thoughts
Number one, Elderdyke's was very pleasant and cordial. We both

(39:37):
shared laughs over the unusualness of the situation. He seemed
genuinely sincere when he wished me a good day at
the end of our conversation. Number two, it is now
confirmed that the Strengthening Church Members Committee really does exist. Yes, Virginia,
there really is a Strengthening Church Member's Committee. Not only
did it exist back in the nineteen nineties, but it

(39:58):
continues to exist today. Not only that, it is confirmed
that Elder Dykes of the First Quorum of the seventy
is a member of the Strengthening Church Members Committee. Strangely,
if you go on to the church website and look
at Elder Dyke's official biography, there is no mention of
his being a member of the Strengthening Church Members Committee.
This is what it says there. Elder Timothy J. Dykes

(40:20):
was sustained as a General Authority seventy of the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints on April sixth,
twenty and thirteen. At the time of his call, he
was serving in a Ward Young Men Presidency. He served
as a member of the Europe Area Presidency from August
twenty and thirteen to August two thousand and sixteen, and
is currently note that word and is currently serving at

(40:42):
Church headquarters as an Assistant Executive Director in the Temple
Department and Chairman of the Restoration and Cancellation Committee period
end of quote. No mention is made of Elder.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
So that's the relevant portion of that podcast that I
wanted to bring up, but that at the end is
really notable because the Strengthening Church Members Committee does exist.
It has been acknowledged by the church, but they don't
talk about it openly, like you have to basically ask
them directly force them to either lie about it or

(41:19):
confirm it before they tell you about it.

Speaker 4 (41:21):
So one of the lies they tell about it West.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
So the one that they like to say is that
it's a news clipping service. They like to say, oh, okay, well,
we just go out into the public arena and we
try to see what people are saying about the church,
what they're saying about church leaders, church members, that kind
of stuff, and we get little news clippings, news articles
and that kind of stuff, and we kind of gather
that into the church and they kind of, you know,

(41:47):
digest all that information for us, and if we need
to make some decisions about the things that people are saying,
then we make them through that. The thing about the
Strengthening Church Members Committee is that it's specifically for internal reasons.
It doesn't care about what people on the outside are
saying about the church. It's specifically about what people inside

(42:09):
the church are doing and what people inside the church
are saying. There's plenty of committees for the church, you know,
to handle pr with or to handle you know, all
sorts of different things that are publicly facing that they're
totally open and you know, transparent about. Right, it's the
internal stozzy basically is what they're secretive about and the

(42:30):
things that the Strengthening Church Members Committee does. And this
is all coming from an interview with Kate Lynn Whittaker.
She actually used to be a church She used to
work for the church. She used to be a church employee,
and actually did some part of her time during her
service as an employee of the church, she did work

(42:53):
with the Strengthening Church Members Committee. So she actually went
on record and recently about five months ago, made public
a lot more information about it. And so what they
do is half of the Strengthening Church Members Committee, or
a part of it, is they take reports of crimes

(43:16):
that have been committed by church members. So this could
be important leaders of the church, This could be people
that are in positions of authority, or it could even
just be like, you know, a member of the church,
right if somebody is found in the newspaper for murdering somebody,
right and there's a report about that, or you know,

(43:37):
sexual assaults or child abuse or anything like that that
gets gathered up by the Strengthening Church Members Committee and
then they send letters to your local leadership and they
basically recommend disciplinary action for that person, saying, Hey, this
person you know was found, you know, was caught by

(43:58):
the police for or suspected murder. You know, we really
think that there should be some ecclesiastical action against this person.

Speaker 4 (44:06):
And these only civil crimes or would these also include
just things that were not illegal, but we're you know,
are frowned upon by the church.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
Well that's the thing is that that's one part of
their responsibility is if it's something that's serious enough that
it comes up in the news, like you know, somebody murdered, somebody,
some somebody committed rape or sexual assault or anything like that,
something that's high profile that the church could receive some

(44:36):
blowback for, then they try to get that person out
of the church because the last thing they want is like, hey,
you know, this person was thrown in jail for pedophilia, right,
and then they come back, come out of the come
out of prison, and they try to come right back
to church, right, and they show up in church and
then like, oh my gosh, now you have a pedophile
in church. Right, So that's that's a legitimate reason that

(44:57):
the church, you know, should keep a wa watchful eye
over like, hey, do we have members that are running
a foul criminally right that we don't know about, right,
that that's a legitimate reason that they should, you know,
do some surveillance, right. But they then have their persons
of interest part of the committee, and the persons of

(45:21):
interest are people that haven't done anything wrong criminally right,
They're usually persons of interest for apostasy reasons. So the
I just wanted to mention the last clip is we
can talk about that one for a while. It's about
the I R. S and the money side of the church,

(45:45):
which is a big topic.

Speaker 4 (45:46):
Yeah, for sure. So before we jump into that, well,
I'll let you go in a second. The excuse that
was given in the first video we watched was a
polygamy watch committee a sally. What's all that about? Was
that an old story that was told? And what is
that even referring to?

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Yeah, so I think that that was kind of just
like a cope for lack of a better term, because
polygamy is completely outlawed and disbanded within the proper Mormon
church right now, I can't talk about you know, hey,
there's some fringe radical rap, you know, external element that

(46:29):
is not a part of the church. I've heard stories about,
you know, people trying to break into the Salt Lake
Temple to like perform ceilings you know for polygamists families
and that kind of stuff. Crazy stories like that, right,
But it's not anywhere within the church's main structure. And
so what it comes down to, at least in this life,
there's the whole theological having multiple wives and having that stuff.

(46:52):
But the main thing about it is none of the
persons of interest that Caitlin Lynn with her talks about
were ever suspected of polagamy or practicing polagamy or anything
like that. There was one person on the list that
was like claimed that she could speak to the dead,

(47:13):
like she claimed that she could you know, speak to
dead relatives of people and that kind of stuff. But
most of them are like podcasters, people who talk and
give you know, interviews. Even people that are like scholars
who do like academic research on like the Book of
Mormon and that kind of stuff that take a less
than faithful view of the Book of Mormon and that

(47:33):
kind of stuff. Those are the people that the church
considers persons of interest.

Speaker 4 (47:39):
Gotcha, John, did.

Speaker 6 (47:40):
You have a question?

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Well, yeah, so that's where it comes from a commentary.
So there we're getting some some Mormons in the chat,
and I think that's wonderful that they're here hanging out.
So a com committee designed to refute false and defamatory
claims question mark, if you're a member making those claims publicly,
do you not expect discipline from your local church leaders?
We think that And from the way that it's framed

(48:03):
in this is that they'll go after people who are
even just questioning things a little too hard, right, right,
So not to cast false or defammatory claims, but if
you're like asking the wrong questions or you know, bringing
up the wrong things, you can get a file written
on you in this committee.

Speaker 4 (48:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
And it's really comes down to like, if you're like
a hardcore like it's my way or their highway Mormon,
right where there's no chances for any sort of interpretation
of the Bible unless it's like written down by the
church itself, then you could you know, interpreting the Book
of Mormon and all the scriptures and the modern day
profits what they say, then you might say like, oh, Yeah,

(48:47):
they can land lay down the ban hammer and just
like get rid of whoever they want, you know. But
the problem is is that what they go after people
for is like legitimate criticism of policy things, not even
just scripture, things like hey, we don't like it how
the church handled this situation totally.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Do you have any specific examples of that.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Yeah, So the Mormon Church has been very reluctant to
include it. They've been opposed to any push to change
the mandatory reporting rules for ecclesiastical leaders in Utah, meaning
that say you're a bishop, which is like the church level,

(49:35):
the you know, local level leader of the church in
your area. You go to your bishop and you'd say
that some member of your family has sexually assaulted you, right,
and you you confess that to your local member. It
is not currently in Utah law that that person is

(49:57):
mandated to then make a police report that that sexual
assault happened. Now, he may try to, you know, if
he's a good member of the church, right, he may
try to put a notation in that person's record or
something like that, but he is not encouraged by the
church to make any sort of report to law enforcement.
He may do that on his own, but the church
won't tell him to do that.

Speaker 4 (50:19):
And now you said two things. You said, he's not mandated,
is he encouraged or is he not even encouraged.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
He's not even encouraged. It's basically the church tries to
keep confidentiality between members and their ecclesiastically. Yeah, they say
there's like privilege there, like you're talking to your lawyer, basically,
like And the problem is is that the way the
church works internally is that there's sometimes this impetus to

(50:48):
let's just handle it internally, right, Oh, we'll discipline this
person for whatever reason internally within the church, but we
won't get the law involved because we feel like we
can handle it. But the problem is is that there's
the chance of reoffending if that person's not put on
a registry. Right then even outside the church, people won't
know that kind of stuff. Maybe it's working with it's

(51:11):
a crime, right absolutely. And so there's this guy named
Sam Young who a couple of years ago, back in
twenty nineteen, led a protest movement to encourage Utah lawmakers
to change the law so that ecclesiastical leaders would become
mandated reporters. And he was excommunicated for that.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
So I'm trying to have it like a like a
Catholic confession basically, where it is actually privileged information between
you and your priest in this.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
Case, right, But it even comes down to, hey, it's
not the person directly confessing to you, but maybe it's
the victim, right came to you and confessed and said, hey,
this happened to me. That's not like mandated, like, hey,
you have to make a.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
Report about that, gotcha.

Speaker 5 (52:00):
So I have a question for you, West. I reside
in Utah as well, and I've talked to some current
Mormons and ex Mormons as well, and they've said there's
like a process of getting their records expunded from the church.
Is that Is there any validity to that or is
that kind of BS or I don't know if you
can kind of going on that.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
Yeah, there's a pretty complex legal route that you can
take to have your records removed from the church officially
if you don't want to be included in their like,
you know, whatever, we have this many members whatever, you know.
You can go through a law firm. You have to
have a lawyer represent you, send a letter to the

(52:39):
church and they will process the paperwork in order to
have your membership removed, but they do it in batches
where they like to do it kind of all at
one time, so the numbers kind of even out, So
they'll like remove a bunch of names all at one
time and add a bunch of names a lot to kind.

Speaker 5 (52:54):
Of keep the membership level even essentially.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Right, Okay, Yeah, so it can take years sometimes before
you officially get that letter that your name has been removed.

Speaker 5 (53:04):
Gotcha?

Speaker 4 (53:04):
Okay, interesting, guys, we're getting We have a number of
Mormons watching. Open invitation to any of them. I don't
know that we can have all of them on if
you all volunteer at once, but right now West Says
has a volunteered If anyone wants to come on, just
shoot an email to regarding Doubt at gmail dot com
and we can send you a link and we can
get you on if you are interested. Again regarding Doubt

(53:27):
at gmail dot com. So let us know in the
chat too, just in case we're not looking. But yeah,
I think that I'd love to get some back and
forth make sure that we're getting the right information. If
there's another perspective, we certainly want to hear it. But
this has all been fascinating for a couple of outsiders
for sure. And West again, thanks so much for it

(53:48):
for being on. Also like and subscribe, especially like I
see there's a lot of people viewing live, but we
don't have as many likes. So if you get a chance,
please do it that like button.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Would you guys like to move on to the to
the last section before we or do we have anything
else here to clean clean up first?

Speaker 2 (54:06):
No, that's perfect. Basically this is a look into the
bottom of the rabbit hole, right, you can get into
like all sorts of different layers of Mormon history, the theology,
you know, all these different things that you can talk about.
I'm trying to peer down into the bottom of the
hole and give an outside sider a perspective of heyre's
here's some really dark stuff that most Mormons don't know

(54:32):
about when they're in the church. But even a lot
of x Mormons that leave the church never learn about
because you have to dig really far down until you
get to the point where you're like, oh, the church
actually does spy on its own members. Just as a
final point on that Strengthening Church Members Committee, in that
interview with Caitlyn Lynn Whittaker. She says that the Strengthening

(54:54):
Church Members Committee does send covert people into like for
example x Mormon FA book groups or that kind of
thing to gather intelligence or gather information on people that
are anonymous on the internet, right, but maybe saying things
about the church that are less than faithful. And the

(55:15):
most extreme thing that has been confirmed but they go
into that interview, is that they in extreme cases will
actually hire private investigators to go undercover and to become
friends with particularly high profile dissident Mormons and try to
get get them paired up so that they have a
man on the inside. And they actually did that with

(55:37):
that guy k new named Noah, that guy who did
the internal temple Kim like he did the you know,
secret camera footage inside the temple. They actually had a
private investigator tried to become his friend and try to
figure out how he was getting into the temple and
how he was like you know, doing his whole.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Thing, accords and whatnot. It's so interesting.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Yeah, So when I say it is the Stasi, like
it is THEZI, right, it's not.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Just something that's always been silly from the outside looking in.
Is these uber secret silly ceremonies that go on on
the inside of the temple, Like, are they just that
silly that if you get approached with this information on
the outside and might scare you off, So that wait
till you're a little bit deeper in before you get
exposed to the side of the you know, Mormon experience.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
Yeah, they definitely try to downplay it inside the church,
but they definitely don't want that just being available on
the internet.

Speaker 4 (56:35):
So west as I understand it, you left before getting
to some of the higher levels where you would have
received a lot of the more advanced knowledge, so to speak.
So where does do you feel that your perspective is
limited because you haven't seen that or do you have
an inside look be just because of the family connections.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Yeah. So one of the things that Mormon's like to
say is, well, you'll understand it better when you go
through it, right, when you actually make those oaths, you
actually go through the rituals.

Speaker 4 (57:07):
They say that in scientology too.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Yeah, it'll make sense to you. The reason why I
didn't go through that, even though it would have been
very easy for me to do that from a Hey,
I'm just going to try to do this to get
along with my family kind of thing. I believe in
those oaths, right, I believe that oaths are powerful, and
that if you don't keep your oaths, that says more
about you than it does about whatever you know, you
feel like you cup you had to go through. So

(57:31):
I wasn't going to go through those ceremonies, which a
lot of my family take very seriously, and then just
disrespect them and say, Hey, I'm going to talk about
this openly and I'm going to be you know, critical
of all this kind of stuff. Because if you believe,
if you take those oaths and you believe that they
have meaning, you wouldn't be able to get on a
podcast like I am and speak openly about this stuff.

(57:53):
So I went up to the line where I felt
like I had personal autonomy to speak my mind and
still have, you know, my own opinions about things. But
I didn't take any I didn't make any promises where I,
you know, couldn't speak openly about what happens in the
temple for example.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
Right, because you didn't make those o's, So you feel
like you have more free rein to speak right, Exactly.

Speaker 4 (58:18):
Do you think there are some ex Mormons who feel
convicted to not speak like they would They would prefer
to say things, but they're not because of those oaths.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
I think most people that have been through the temple
they kind of feel like, especially if they have Mormon family,
that it's disrespectful because it's considered to be deeply spiritual
on a personal level. And so it's kind of like,
you know, if you were speaking about you know, the
last words that your grandma said when she died or
something like that, right, you wouldn't speak about that flippantly
or in a way that you know it was disrespectful

(58:52):
to your grandma. So I think a lot of even
X Mormons that kind of go away quietly and they don't,
you know, speak on the internet or anything like that.
They just and I feel like, I'm just not going
to talk about my experience in the temple because either
I don't want to ruffle feathers with people I know,
or I don't want to be disrespectful of that experience.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
Gotcha well, right, And the consequence is forced be speaking
out so you can lose your temple standing, right, So
you won't be in good temple standing. You don't have
access to that sort of thing. But if you actually
speak out against the church, then you get excommunicated and shunned.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Right right, And the shunning culture is depending on who
your family is, can be very intense, Like, for example,
on my dad's side of the family, the shunning culture
is very heavy. So I don't believe I'll get any
sort of inheritance, for example, from my dad or any
anyone in his family, because their stances is that they
write anybody who's left the church out of the will

(59:50):
out of their wills.

Speaker 4 (59:51):
Well, is there a certain amount of second level shunning?
Do people get shunned for associating with you?

Speaker 2 (59:58):
I mean, I'm not like the most popular person at
family gatherings. I guess just from the perspective of it's
kind of like you have the ick. I guess they
throw the ick on you, and anybody that gets too
close to you they might get the ick too, because, hey,
we've got this one person that doesn't think like everybody else.
You know, might have different opinions, you know, religiously, but

(01:00:21):
even like politically, right, Like, they're very cut out of
the same cloth politically as well, And so if you
get too close to that person then you might start
thinking like them. And so, you know, I was very
close with a lot of my cousins and that kind
of stuff. But unfortunately, through the process of time that's
kind of we have grown a little distant, just because

(01:00:41):
it's very difficult to maintain those family ties when you
know people are gonna start asking questions.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
Yeah, it is, so I understand there's a decent amount
of discretion in terms of how families want to do it.
Are there official guidelines for like a minimum amount of
shunning that's required.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
I think the church takes the perspective of you should
want to surround yourself with the best Mormons.

Speaker 10 (01:01:04):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
There's even people called like Jack Mormons. I don't know
if you know this Christian Jack Mormons. They drink, they smoke,
they they don't follow the rules, but they're still culturally Mormon.
They still go to church, they still you know, show
up to word activities whatever. Those people are considered to
be like bad examples, but they don't necessarily they're you

(01:01:25):
can if you're fun and you're like, you know, chill,
like you can hang out with the Jack Mormons because
they're like they're more normal, right, they do normal stuff
when they're outside of church. But if you're like a
card carrying Mormon where you have your temple recommend You're
like trying to stay away from any bad influence, right.
I don't want to be around anybody that smokes, anybody
that drinks, anybody that might have the ick, because when

(01:01:47):
I go to my bishop and I have to, like,
you know, ask, I get asked all these questions about
whether I've been faithful and that kind of stuff. I
don't want anything to come up where it's like, hey,
we've seen that you've been hanging out with so and so.
You haven't been going out to drink on the weekends,
have you, Right, Like, you know, you don't want to
get grilled.

Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
I guess on that, Wes, if you don't mind me
asking where are you currently in terms of your spiritual journey.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
So my spiritual journey was very complex, you know. I
started out just on kind of the Mormon history side
of things, where I kind of felt like, hey, the
church isn't true because of the history of Joseph Smith
and the theology and that kind of stuff. But the
church is a good organization, and you know, you have
good community, and so you can have like your family
in the church and you know you had that community,

(01:02:36):
you have those people around you that are good people,
and so it's a good organization to be a part of.
Once I started learning about the corruption side of things,
and especially because I was able to kind of see
behind the curtains a little bit with my family, I
was like, Man, it doesn't matter what you want to
do in this church. If you feed into the system

(01:02:58):
in any way, it's not going to a good cause.
It's not going where you think it's going. And that's
where I like the money side gets into it, is
where does the money really go. It doesn't go where
most Mormons think it goes.

Speaker 4 (01:03:10):
That seems like a good segue.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
Yeah, that is a good segue. I do want to
ask about that specifically because it leads into this. But
the tithing in Mormon culture is extremely strict, like down
to the penny strict. If I'm not mistaken, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Pretty much.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
Let me pull that up for everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:03:31):
I assume that means that Mormons just include a buffer
and all their tithing, right, they do like eleven percent
rather than ten or something like that, just to give
them some buffer. How does that work in practice? I'm
sure we're gonna see a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
Yeah, in general, like most Mormons, like you get your
tax return back right or you you know, if you
break it up by month, like you break up your
income by month, and it's you pay. If you're a
letter to the letter following Mormon, you'll pay on your
gross which means before you pay taxes, before your insurance
comes out, before any benefits comes out, anything, you pay

(01:04:06):
on your your gross income. And so they'll just take
ten percent of that and they'll either break it up
by month or do it in one lump sum at
the end of the year, and they'll don't they'll give
that to the church.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
Gotcha. That's that is pretty that could be pretty intense.
Do they have it to where they have automatic drop
offs or how does that work? Or is it still
you write a check? Well, I mean, like I have
an auto tithe system that I use. It's a I
think tithely is what they call it, and that's what
our church uses. So that's what that's what I use for.
But I don't know if they have like like Mormon

(01:04:40):
auto pay or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Yeah, within the last ten years, I think they came
out with a way of being able to do it
online where you don't have to physically hand money to
the bishop, or you don't have to like bring bring
in a check and hand it to the bishop. But
some people still do that where you know, you'll see
the bishopwalking ground people you know, tap on his shoulder
and hand them a envelope with some money in it.
And it's one of those things where we'll get into it.

(01:05:05):
But people older folks, especially in the church, I've seen
grandma's you know, well up there in years receiving social
Security benefits pay tithing on their social security when they
were using that to buy groceries. Right, it's there. There's
something in the church called the widow's might. There's like
a concept where you are encouraged, Yeah, you are encouraged

(01:05:29):
to pay tithing even if you don't have enough money
to buy groceries, even if you're if you don't have
money to you know, turn on the electricity to your house,
right because they believe that the spiritual blessings that will
come from paying your tithing will outweigh the consequences of
whatever else in your life could use that money. And

(01:05:50):
so when you learn about where the money goes, it's
just that much more impactful that you have people that
you know are receiving retirement benefits and are paying ten
percent of that to this church.

Speaker 4 (01:06:01):
Now, I might be in the minority here, but I
guess I don't see a particular I don't so much
have an issue with that in principle, I guess I
do see tithe as being the first fruits, regardless of
how much you make you should I mean understandably, if
you're in a situation where you needed to buy food,
it is, it's a principle. It's not the kind of

(01:06:23):
obligation where people should be, you know, checking up on
you in the sentence. And that's never something that you
will see in protest churches certainly anything Catholic churches, I
think they're even more las fair about it. But I
don't know. Christian John, what do you guys in terms
of your tithing do you see mostly tithing on the
gross or tithing on the net, And how do you

(01:06:44):
guys view tithing just from a biblical.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
Respective personally a tie? Those usually the first fruits, as
it's mentioned in the Bible, right, But I'm not sure
if that, I'm not sure if that quite applies to
modern day where you know, we have modern tax laws
and different you know, things like that. So I don't
know exactly like how that works to the letter of
the law in like modern Christianity, Right, I just try

(01:07:07):
and keep it as simple as possible personally. But the
question I have is, let's say I'm a well to
do member of my local Mormon church. They know that
I make a quarter million dollars a year, but they
know I don't tithe twenty five k a year. So
do they give me a little nudge nudge wink week
like hey, buddy, you need to be given a little more,

(01:07:28):
or is there anything like.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
That if they knew that you were really undercutting the
amount of tithing that you were paying, and you were
doing it after they kind of you know, hey, is
all your tithing paid in full? Is what they ask
is I'm not sure exact wording, but that's what they
ask you in the temple recommend interview. And if you

(01:07:52):
answer that like, oh yeah, I definitely do pay all
my tithing, and then they've you know, had good reason
to believe that you weren't, they just pull your card
to say, okay, well, your ability to go to the
temple is now revoked. You're gonna have to you know,
basically make this all, you know, right before you can
go back to the temple. Mmm, so they they pulled

(01:08:15):
your key to heaven. Basically, that's what they will celeb.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
You just get kicked out of the celestial realm and
you get to go to the celestial realm, right because
you're not an aposta. You're just a a bad Mormon.
I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
Yeah, it's just now you've got this impetus to kind
of make it right where it's like, Okay, well, now
everybody knows, I'm gonna have to wait outside the temple
whenever we have a temple trip, or I'm gonna have
to wait outside the temple when it like my one
of my kids gets married in the temple. Like that's
a that's a that's your kids anything like that. That's

(01:08:50):
a serious shaming aspect of Like if you don't have
a temple recommend, you can't watch you know, your cousins,
your aunts, your uncles, your even your sons or daughter
get married.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
In the temple. Well, and that's something I don't know
if you know Alissa Greenfell, but she's talked about a lot,
like when she left the Mormon Church, she knew that
she could not see like any of her friends or family,
or any of them do any of their things again,
just because she wouldn't have access to the temple. So
when her and her husband were deciding on leaving, you
know that is a contributing factor, is that you will
by definition miss out on all these events with people

(01:09:22):
you used to consider your friends or family.

Speaker 3 (01:09:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
I actually got a personal story on that account where
my grandma, she was a temple worker for a very
long time in her later years, she decided to spend
a lot of her retirement in the temple because that
seemed to be a very charitable thing to do. You're
helping these other people receive these saving ordinances for them,
and so you're doing a lot of the work of

(01:09:45):
like you know, washing the garments or washing the you know,
the clothes you have to wear inside the temple. You're
you're just doing a lot of the things to make
the temple work. And so she would go into the
temple at least once or twice a week to do
her volunteer hours. And I wanted to attend with her
on that particular occasion, and she was going to show
me where the temple workers work and like lead me

(01:10:07):
through the temple and that kind of stuff. So I
go up to the desk where I'm supposed to show
my temple recommend and at the time I was I
was not a faithful Mormon, but I hadn't decided to
leave yet. I was, you know, not believing anymore. But
I hadn't like decided like, Okay, I got to get
my I have to find the exit door, right. And
so I showed what was to my knowledge a valid

(01:10:28):
temple recommend to the person at the desk, and he
scanned it and he said, oh, hold him up, let
me try to scan that again. And scan it again,
and he said, Nope, you're not authorized enter the temple.
And I was like, what, that's crazy. This must be
a mistake or something like that, because I hadn't, you know,
nobody had told me that my temple recommend had been canceled.
My uncle did it for me. He actually, after I

(01:10:50):
told him that I really didn't believe in Joe Smith
and the whole story that they talk about in church,
he had actually gone and canceled my temple recommend for me. Wow,
and didn't tell me.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
That's an interesting way to find out.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
I guess, yeah, so I was.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
They didn't try and talk to you or have any
elder meetings before that. They just kicked you straight out nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
I think he felt like, oh, there's no way he
would ever want to go to the temple because if
he doesn't believe Joe Smith was like ordained by God
or something like that, then he wouldn't want to go
to the temple. And I'm like, but by both sides
of my family are Mormon, Like, I'm just trying to
be supportive, you know, and just like go with my
grandma and spend some time with her, you know, on
a on a Wednesday or whatever it was, you know.
And unfortunately I was I learned right there, you know,

(01:11:32):
at the entrance to the temple that I wasn't allowed in.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
M That's kind of a crappy way to find out,
I guess, Dan, Yeah, yeah, all right, But all that
questions about tithing, we'll figure out where does that money
actually go.

Speaker 9 (01:11:54):
For many years, the Mormon Church has been stockpiling one
to two billion dollars of surplus time into a reserve
of the reserves inside a five oh one seed three
nonprofit called Enzyme Peak Advisors. This year twenty nineteen, Enzyme
Peak Advisors grew passed one hundred billion dollars in market based,

(01:12:17):
non real estate allocated capital, with approximately forty four billion
dollars in US stocks, twelve billion more internationally, twenty seven
billion in bonds, six billion in private equity, ten billion
in hybrid instruments, three billion in portfolio cash, and another
four billion in treasury cash. These investments have been producing

(01:12:40):
annual turns close to seven percent. That means that Enzyme
Peak Advisors grows by seven billion dollars each year from
capital gains, dividends, interest, et cetera, plus another one to
two billion dollars each year from excess tithing, which operations

(01:13:00):
consumed between five and six billion dollars per year of tithing.
It is officially finally true that the Mormon Church could
tell every member in the world to completely stop paying
tithing now and forever, and it could continue to fund
every current program in full without drawing down on reserves.

(01:13:22):
In other words, Ensign Peak Advisors would continue to grow.
This is true in large part because, as a five
oh one C three Enzign Peak Advisors has enjoyed a
tax exempt status. It has garnered about twenty billion dollars
in tax breaks in total from the American public.

Speaker 8 (01:13:41):
All five o'h.

Speaker 9 (01:13:42):
One c threes, regardless of their classification or type, have
an expectation of doing something religious, educational, or charitable, something
in the public good with their assets from time to time.

Speaker 8 (01:13:55):
Enzign Peak Advisors has never.

Speaker 9 (01:13:57):
Spent even one dime on anything religious, educational, or charitable
in twenty two years since it was incorporated in September
nineteen ninety seven, which is one month after Times magazine
wrote its cover story entitled Mormon's Ink, exposing some of
the Mormon Church's assets. At the time, Enzyme Peak Advisors

(01:14:18):
has no tax exempt purpose. It has literally no liability stream,
no calls for capital, and no plans for using the
money at all.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
So this is an investment firm under a five oh
one C three that's making seven billion dollars.

Speaker 4 (01:14:36):
This is brilliant.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
I'm taking Yeah, we're day trading. We're day trading Mormons.
Now that's our next job.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
Actually, the Mormon Church is the second largest private landowner
in the United States. So I believe black rocks number one,
and like the Mormon Church, Mormons.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
We have white rock, white and blonde Rock, and then
we have black rock. Wow.

Speaker 9 (01:15:02):
The mandate given by the first Presidency and the Presiding
Bishopric is to only focus on financial growth. EPA employees
are told that the money will be used after the
second coming of Jesus Christ or during armageddon.

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
Wait, is that actual doctrine that we're saving the money
for for Christ's second return? I know, I don't see
a couple of Mormons in the chat. Is that real?

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
I don't think they get up in front of church
and tell everybody, Hey, we're hoarding this money. But they
want it to rain like gold. Like it's got to
be like when he comes back, We're throwing the biggest
worldwide party.

Speaker 6 (01:15:41):
On the planet.

Speaker 4 (01:15:41):
There's no reason why that couldn't work within just regular
role of Christian doctrine. I need to I need to
start one of these.

Speaker 1 (01:15:48):
This is this is brilliant. Jesus got to get those rims,
the spinners.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
Few private jets.

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
People are talking about. It's like the next DLC is
just rating more, not the Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve has
no money. The Mormon Reserve, that's where it's at. Baby.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
They do have they do have vaults on the side
of a Mountain. They actually dug out a huge part
of the one of the mountains, and they actually have
huge vaults.

Speaker 5 (01:16:18):
That's the Lockheed Super Mormon soldiers. Dude, that's where they
come from.

Speaker 6 (01:16:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
Bro, they've been breeding those boys for years, for generations. Okay,
they are super soldiers in there. I don't think you
want to mess with that security team. No, but that's funny.
We talked about this a little while ago. But the
Catholic Church is the richest when you include assets for sure,
like the architecture, the land, all that is incalculable, the icons,

(01:16:43):
the just incalculable. Right, But number two, at one eight
hundredth the size of like Protestants or one four hundreds
of size of Orthodoxy. Number two is the Mormon Church. Yeah,

(01:17:03):
brilliant investment schemes, rigorous tithing, you know, almost no expenditures
because I believe most of the ecclesiology is unpaid.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
Yeah, it's volunteer.

Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
Yeah, so they don't pay on cleaning services like for
the for the churches or anything else like that. It's
all volunteer work and such like.

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):
Oh yeah, so I can give you some history now
if you want of like the church's financial history a
little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
I gotta I gotta run for one second, so I'm
just gonna hop off, But yeah, feel free to talk
about that and then I'll come back and I can
play the video. All right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
So basically, I don't know the whole history of the
church's finances, but I can tell you that the church
was broke several times throughout its history. It was bankrupt,
and they actually the history of teaching tithing in the
church kind of follows the church's financial history, or when
it was on tough times, it kind of emphasized tithing

(01:17:57):
more where you know, maybe it was a little bit
more flesh was fun us emphasized a little bit less.
But the last time that the church was really on
dire straits financially was in nineteen seventy three. Now, in
nineteen seventy three, the church was almost bankrupt or practically bankrupt,
and the church was like, man, we're in this cycle
where we emphasize tithing. We get a lot of tithing in,

(01:18:19):
but then people kind of, you know, fall away from
doing tithing as strictly, and so then we kind of
get we start hurting for funds, and so they said, well,
we really need to start investing this money. So they
start emphasizing tithing a lot, but they decided instead of
just directly putting that towards expenses and saving the extra,
they decided they were going to invest, and they specifically

(01:18:40):
decided they were going to invest on J. Street. So
this coincides conveniently with when they decide to allow Blacks
to receive the priesthood back in nineteen seventy three, almost
as a condition that hey, J Street will take your money,
but you have to change your doctrine so that it
you know, we were not dealing with, you know, people
that are kind of outside the mainstream at the time,

(01:19:03):
and so they changed the doctrine. This was a big,
you know, quote unquote revelation, huge change in the church,
probably one of the base changes ever it's in its history.
And then suddenly they get in bed with J Street
and start investing to the tune of twenty billion dollars.

Speaker 6 (01:19:16):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:19:17):
So, yeah, I still don't like that camera, dude. That
thing freaks me out.

Speaker 1 (01:19:25):
Well, it tried to track me out the door, and
then when I came back in, it was like looking
up into the corner. So I had to manically bring
it down by that.

Speaker 5 (01:19:36):
I think we can run it in the video.

Speaker 9 (01:19:40):
Ed and right before he would come again. The IRS
would not view these as legitimate taxis have purposes.

Speaker 8 (01:19:46):
In addition, Enzyme Peak.

Speaker 9 (01:19:47):
Advisors has engaged in two misapplications of funds that are
contrary to its articles of incorporation and therefore unlawful. In
two thousand and nine, it built out Beneficial Financial Group,
owned by Desert Management Corporation, which is owned by the
Mormon Church, with a six million dollar check that came
from Enzyme Peak Advisor's treasury account, which contains only never

(01:20:11):
invested tithing surplus. The second misapplication of funds went to
cost overruns associated with the City Creek Mall, with one
point four billion dollars being paid out over five years
to finish construction, despite many public statements to the contrary.
This was also paid for using never invested tithing surplus
from Enzyme Peak Advisor's treasury account. Enzyme Peak Advisor's tax

(01:20:35):
exempt status may be pulled even retroactively for having never
made any religious, educational, or charitable distribution in twenty two
years and for two very serious misapplications of funds. In addition,
the Mormon church's tax exempt status may also be pulled
into question, as it would likely not pass a quote
commensurate test with the irs, meaning that it is now

(01:20:57):
so financially large and entangled that it actually behaves more
like a business than a church and should be taxed accordingly.
The more In Church has made several intentionally deceitful statements that,
in my opinion, do amount.

Speaker 8 (01:21:09):
To fraud, especially by its presiding bishopric. For example, mister
Jerral Causey.

Speaker 9 (01:21:15):
Presiding Bishop, gave a talk in twenty eighteen entitled Financing Faith,
which is available at newsroom dot Church of Jesus Christ
dot org, which quotes him quoting President Hinckley, quote, the
combined income from all these business interests is relatively small.
It would not keep the work going for longer than

(01:21:35):
a very brief period.

Speaker 1 (01:21:37):
Close quote.

Speaker 8 (01:21:38):
This is very disingenuous to say.

Speaker 9 (01:21:40):
In twenty eighteen, it is clear that the combined income
from Enzyme Peak Advisors investment returns alone, to say nothing
of all the other revenue producing assets of the Mormon Church,
is greater than all the tithing that is contributed.

Speaker 8 (01:21:57):
By members each year. It is enough to keep the
work going for much longer than a very.

Speaker 9 (01:22:03):
Brief period right now and going forward, it can support
the work in perpetuity. The monthly dues for missionary service
are increasing from four hundred dollars per missionary per month
to five hundred dollars. With seventy thousand missionaries, the total
annual dues are three hundred and thirty six million dollars.
The reserve of the reserves in enzyme peak advisors grows

(01:22:24):
each year by twenty three.

Speaker 4 (01:22:28):
What does that mean? Cost of missionary service?

Speaker 2 (01:22:31):
So mission Mormon youth are encouraged to serve a mission.
It's two years for men, it's a year and a
half for women. And you pay to go on a mission.
You or your family, Yeah, have to finance your mission.
You actually have to pay the church. And sometimes if

(01:22:51):
there's like a member of the church that's not well
off financially and they want to go serve a mission,
the church will come together and finance their mission. The
church could pay for every missionary they have actively serving preaching,
you know, the Mormon Gospel out there to the world,
and it would not even be a rounding error to
the amount of interest they make. And that's on top

(01:23:13):
of it, they make you clean the ward buildings.

Speaker 10 (01:23:16):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:23:16):
They can't even pay a janitor to like, you know,
employ one of the hard off Mormon members to just
clean the building.

Speaker 6 (01:23:22):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
They couldn't even do that. It's like, oh, you got
to come up, come on Saturday. I did this a
lot growing up as a kid, Like I'd have to
go on Saturday. Hey, you know, I love to go
play with my friends, but we got to go clean
the church building.

Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:23:35):
So West, did you go on mission?

Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
Uh No, I didn't serve a Mormon mission. That's a
prerequisite to going on your mission is going through the temple.

Speaker 4 (01:23:47):
Ohka, gotcha's only for post Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:54):
My bad, Sorry I was neeted there. I was gonna say. Yeah.
So the church brings in seven billion dollars a year
an inch on this EPA, you know, conglomerate to a
different you know, stocks, bonds, land, whatever it might be.
And then the entire cost of their seventy thousand missionaries
is only thirty three hundred and thirty six million dollars, right,
So yeah, twenty three times that amount just an interest

(01:24:18):
that they pull in.

Speaker 6 (01:24:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:20):
Yeah, they're they're so stingy with the money. And there's
but their investments are so good, and they keep their
costs so low by just not paying anybody that they've
amassed this insane fortune off of only a million members.

Speaker 2 (01:24:35):
Yep, right, Yeah, it's it's just really they got in
bed with the right people. You were gone, John wall
I was talking about the church's financial history, But they
actually sold out to j Street back in nineteen seventy three,
and so Jay Street has been basically handling their finances
and handling their investment since then. So they've got the

(01:24:55):
best of the best working on their their finance.

Speaker 1 (01:24:59):
See that that's my base. He's a Mormon in chat says,
looking at it all wrong, it's an opportunity for members
to serve. While I agree with you, maybe that's the
most generous framing you could possibly imagine. Like, for instance,
our tiny local Baptist church sends people on missions. It doesn't,

(01:25:21):
you know, make them pay for it. Yeah, seems strange,
Like we sup like we actively support our local missionaries
and you know, charities and whatnot not ask them to
pay us for the privilege of doing it. It just
seems strange. It seems backwards to me if you ask me.

Speaker 2 (01:25:39):
Yeah, and the whole missionary work like that's obvious. Like
if you're going to have people go out there and
spread you know, the your good word, right, you would
at least want them to make sure that they have,
you know, clothes on their back, right, pay for their clothes.
If they're going to have to ride a bike, you know,
pay for their transportation, right if they're you know, if

(01:26:00):
if they're basic living expenses just eating you know, food
every day, and you know they're lodging and that kind
of stuff, you'd think they would pay for all that.
But maybe except for the lodging, maybe they pay for
the building they sleep in. But they have to pay
for their clothes, they have to pay for their bike,
they have to pay you know, everything that you see
is what their family like gave them as they walked
out the door. And so it's just one of those

(01:26:21):
things where knowing Mormon missionaries, you know, family members, that
kind of stuff. You know, it's they try to get,
you know, we we'd all say like talk is members
of the family and be like you gotta get a
trek bike because you're gonna be on that bike like
all the time, Like you're gonna have to get something good.

Speaker 1 (01:26:34):
Well, like listen, like this This is a perfect marketing
move right, So not only do the people evangelizing for
you have to pay you, but the people they convert
then also have to pay you. Yes, yeah, but this
is great. This is just, this is just this is
a wonderful money making scheme. I love this. So maybe

(01:26:54):
we get Christian science fiction or Christian fan fiction. This
is amazing.

Speaker 5 (01:26:58):
Maybe I'm getting to the weed scirp. Say, like, you're
on mission in a foreign country here, and you're riding
your little bike around and you fall and you break
your ankle, Like, are you do you have health insurance
or anything through the church or is that all on you?

Speaker 2 (01:27:09):
I'm not going to speak to whether or not.

Speaker 1 (01:27:11):
The church will well I can sorry, go ahead, good.

Speaker 2 (01:27:15):
I can't speak to whether or not the church will
like facilitate your medical treatment. But as far as I understand,
there's no benefits that come along with, you know, being
a warmed missionary. It's not like you sign up for like, hey,
here's your health insurance plan and that kind of stuff.
I'm pretty sure that's out of pocket.

Speaker 1 (01:27:33):
Yeah, okay, So a video I was watching again Alyssa Greenfell.
She told a story about being on mission and the
kids were, you know, because they're eighteen years old, right,
they were playing games too hard. You aren't allowed to
play a lot of sports for fear of getting injured.
So they were playing what's that hacky sack game where
you like flip it or are you trying to bounce

(01:27:54):
that out of your opponent's corner? What not? Just a
generic school yard game. But they were playing too hard.
So the elder where the person in charge of their
little mission group, told them to stop playing. So they
are very sensitive to you getting injured because they do
not want to everything for that.

Speaker 4 (01:28:12):
What is the international mission scene like in the Mormon Church?
I see it as being mostly a Utah phenomenon and
then more broadly an American phenomenon. Is there a large
group of Mormons internationally? Is that something that they're trying
to increase the population of What does that look like West?

Speaker 2 (01:28:30):
So the church is really mostly successful in the English
speaking world. It's very difficult for the church to really
gain much of a foothold for a long time in
places like Latin America and that kind of stuff. They
may have a lot of members on paper, but they
have very very little retention. Where you might have a

(01:28:51):
you know, a branch or something like that that's supposed
to have two hundred members and it only like forty
people show up, right, And so the church is very
reluctant to per its roles of inactive people because there's
a lot of them, especially in foreign countries, because the
missionaries that go down there, they stay for you know,
two years, but they get moved around and they're encouraged

(01:29:12):
to get as many baptisms as possible. And there's a
history in the Church of baseball baptisms where like missionaries
would go down to places like Mexico or Guatemala or wherever,
and they would start like a baseball team or like
they get all like the local kids to play baseball
and then they would baptize them in order to be
like a part of the baseball team or something like that.

Speaker 4 (01:29:35):
Surprised dunks them in the ball.

Speaker 2 (01:29:37):
Yeah, So it's it's one of those things where the
numbers outside the English speaking world are kind of nebulous
and there's really not a really sizeable presence. There are
a couple of places that have a sizeable Mormon population
by percentage that's actually kind of surprising. So like Guam,
for example, Guam actually has a sizeable Mormon population and
some of like the Polynesian islands.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
Yes, a tong is one that they basically dominated by
basically being the first to bring Mormonism an outside religion,
and then you know, like schools and stuff like that.
So it's almost like that they took over. They colonized
the island of Tonga, which is quite funny, like it's
very very high percentage of the population. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 5 (01:30:26):
Yeah, we bring up like owning property and whatnot to
and out here in Utah, the church buys a little
portion of land on pretty much every single high school
and they erecked a seminary school as well, which they attend.

Speaker 2 (01:30:43):
Yeah, it's kind of part of your not your school curriculum,
but there's a time slot cut out of your day
where you go across the street and you go to seminary.

Speaker 1 (01:31:00):
All right, let's finish out this.

Speaker 8 (01:31:01):
I suppose times that amount. The Mormon Church, via mister
Dollen h Oaks, boasts that it annually spends forty million
dollars globally on all humanitarian aid efforts. It puts fifty
times that amount each year into its longest term Piggybank,

(01:31:22):
which is already now passed one hundred billion dollars. The
real estates in agg reserves INK and property reserves INK
are another twenty billion dollars approximately. There are many other
reserves such as Desert Trust Company, Desert Management Company, Reserve Trust,
other holding companies, and many other property reserves. Speaking conservatively,

(01:31:43):
the Mormon Church is now larger than two hundred billion
dollars in assets. More than half of that is in
the very highly liquid securities inside Enzyme Peak Advisors. For
the full expos please read the seventy four page PDF
that you can download from the LinkedIn this video.

Speaker 9 (01:32:01):
That expose contains sixty two well referenced footnotes, fifty nine endnotes,
and thirty four pages of exhibits featuring documents obtained from
Enzyme Peak Advisors itself.

Speaker 8 (01:32:13):
I've also created a much.

Speaker 9 (01:32:14):
Longer video that walks you through the full story with
some personal commentary, which is also available using a.

Speaker 8 (01:32:21):
Link beneath this video.

Speaker 9 (01:32:22):
This and hundreds of supporting electronic files were handed over to.

Speaker 8 (01:32:26):
The irs and to the media.

Speaker 9 (01:32:28):
Please like, subscribe, and share this information and your views
on social media.

Speaker 2 (01:32:34):
Yeah, so that's the that's the whole expose that came
back that came out in like twenty nineteen, and it
was a big thing inside Mormon land, inside Utah, that
kind of stuff, because people I kind of talked about
how much the church was worth and how big the
temples were getting, and how much money they were spending
on them and that kind of stuff. But that almost
seems like small in comparison to when you learned like

(01:32:56):
how much their actual assets are worth. Something that was
interesting in that at the end was the church used
to only donate forty million dollars of that money every year.
They you know, would give that to charity or give
that to you know, relief disaster relief efforts and that
kind of stuff. And people used to talk about like, oh, yeah,

(01:33:17):
my tithing is like going to charity, man, Like you know,
that's why I give tithing because that's going to a
good place. And they recently increased it to one billion
dollars after this exposa came out because they were like, Okay,
this looks bad. We're only giving like a fraction of
a fraction of a percent, and so they increased it
to a billion dollars. But that's still you know, a

(01:33:38):
very small part of what they get in tithing. Every
year they get at least one to two billion dollars
in excess tithing on top of their operating expenses, and
so it's you know, they're not even giving of the
interests that they get off of those.

Speaker 1 (01:33:51):
Investments, right, what's funny because yeah, that forty million dollar number,
that is one half of a percent, right, half of
a percent, just over a half percent of right there
there there their their annual interest on their one hundred
billion dollars. Which is funny because if you remember Bono,
you two singer, he has a charity called one which

(01:34:14):
is famous for giving away one percent of its uh
annual revenue and actual charitable donations. But that's still twice
as good as the Mormon Church up the persantly, So
that is quite funny.

Speaker 2 (01:34:28):
Yeah, and it was crazy because an internal person inside
the church had to basically leave employment with the church.
We know, one of their financial people inside the church
that managed this fund, and he was like so surprised
at how the church ran its finances internally that it
he actually reported it to the I r S. There's
actually an active lawsuit against the church, you know, through

(01:34:50):
the I R S that their finances are so whack
because there's a there's a thing where it's like in
America there's a separation of church and state, and there's
there's a documentary that just came out about, like, you know,
all the different tax loopholes that churches use to have,
like a a private jet that's for the church, or
like they have like a four hundred acre you know,

(01:35:14):
private estate that's the church's estate, you know, but the
founder happens to live on it, right. You know, there's
like lots of different things in weird things in American
law that makes it so that you can have these
weird you know, televangelists that have you know, two private jets,
a four hundred acre estate and it's all tax free. Right.

(01:35:34):
But the church, the Mormon Church is almost institutionalized that
where they've gotten so good at like end aurrounding the
tax law that they can have a hundred billion dollars
savings account that generates like seven billion dollars in interest
every year and it's all tax free.

Speaker 4 (01:35:51):
I mean, frankly, I appreciate the hustles. This almost goes
for pro.

Speaker 1 (01:35:56):
Coblem crazy crazy money they're making. I mean, it's just
funny that it's wrapped up in a quote unquote church, right.

Speaker 2 (01:36:03):
Right, But when I say, like, this is why, I
felt like I couldn't like contribute to this organization anymore,
and I felt it was really scummy when they were
taking like some grandma's you know, social security or something
like that. This is why, because I saw the inside
from knowing. You know, my grandpa who earned a who
was given a stipend by the church of being a
general authority. He's one of the few while he was

(01:36:26):
working at church headquarters, he was one of the few
people that actually get paid by the church. And so
he got paid by the church. His car was given
to him by the church. He got church lodging, you know,
the place he lived, the apartment that he lived in
downtown Salt Lake was paid by the church. So he accepted,
you know, received a lot of benefits from the church.

(01:36:46):
And to explain this to average your average member, think
about it like this that you know, there's the meme
of what what I receive and what you receive. Right,
So the church receives ten percent of your income, right
growth if you're you know, paying it like you should,
it is gross. Yeah, you give you give ten percent gross, right,

(01:37:08):
and what you receive is you get to clean the
building on Saturdays on a rotation.

Speaker 3 (01:37:16):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:37:16):
You have to pay for your mission. Uh if you
serve a mission. And if you go to the Mormon's school,
you get discounted tuition, but you don't get free tuition.
So you get you still have to pay to go
to the to the Mormon School, go to BYU, right, and.

Speaker 1 (01:37:34):
All of that so that they can pocket six billion
sorry dollars an interest every year on their portfolio. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:37:40):
And so if if you believe like that's a fair deal, right,
if you feel like you're getting, you know, all of
that money and more in return, and you know there'll
be Mormon self swear up and down. Yes, I get
all the eternal blessings in heaven. I get to go
to VIP heaven.

Speaker 6 (01:37:53):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:37:54):
It's like this pyramid scheme where it's like, Okay, I'm
going to pay my way into a better spot in heaven.

Speaker 1 (01:37:59):
Basically, right. Well, so that's my base six one four
in chests. Is I understand the frustration about the church
having a lot of money and the poor person tithing.
It is certainly a sacrifice. Well, I think that what
James was talking about earlier is I understand the altruism
of people wanting to give donations to tie to be
you know, all the sort of things. I totally get that.

(01:38:21):
What I don't like is the apparent abuse and taking
advantage of those people's charitable donations, right because those people
are giving out of the kindness of their heart. They
are doing what they believe to be the right thing. Right.
So it is in this case the Mormon's Church their
responsibility to be good stewards of that money, not for

(01:38:41):
the sake of making more money, but for you know,
I would hope to do something positive with that rather
than just stack up ones and zeros in some make
account somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:38:50):
It's all for the party at the end of the world.

Speaker 3 (01:38:52):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:38:53):
Well as somebody else in that video commented in that
video that we said is like, well, I'm not really
sure why they're saving up money for the end of
the world because at that point, I'm not sure how
much that money is really worth.

Speaker 5 (01:39:03):
Dollars going to be a buyer starter.

Speaker 1 (01:39:06):
I don't know. I don't know about that.

Speaker 4 (01:39:08):
To your point, John, like, I don't have an issue
with the idea of of I thing as a principle,
like I don't like designating tithe funds. When I tie
it to the church, I tithe to the general fund.
If I tie it to a specific capital fund or
something they're trying to get land to build a church
like that, that's not even what I would consider part
of my tie that that would be something. In addition,

(01:39:30):
I tie to the general fund because I do think
that there is an element of trust built in from
the giver's perspective when it comes to tithe and I
think that's a good principle. So I totally am am
aligned with the idea of that is good for the
soul of the person giving. The question is how is
that money being used that that principle rests upon a

(01:39:51):
trust in the organization to do to be a good
steward of that money. And if that crumbles, if your
faith in that organization, as I think it did for
you West, then yeah, I think that you should question
even the principle of giving to that organization.

Speaker 1 (01:40:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:40:09):
Can I talk about fast offerings for a minute. So
there is an element of charity in the church, but
it's not done through tithing. And this is the thing
that you even it breaks it down even better for
people outside the church of tithing is not for charity.
That's not what the church sees it as, and that's
not what they use it for. So what fast offerings

(01:40:30):
are used? So fast offerings are something that you give
an addition to the ten percent gross of tithing. I,
as a young man would go round on Sunday mornings
and knock doors of faithful Mormons and ask for fast offerings.
Because fast offerings are is money that you give to
the church that stays local in your area. It stays
within your local branch or your local group of churches

(01:40:53):
and is used to help less fortunate members of the
church with electric bills, you know, car payments, you know,
whatever the church sees fit to pay for. And those
fast offerings are gathered within your local area and they
stay local to your area. But the church never sends
money back, It never sends money from headquarters to your

(01:41:15):
local area to help with charity work. Your local area
has to come up with the money in addition to
the money that your members are already paying in tithing.
So what I'm trying to say is that if it
was really all for charity, right then the tithing would
come back. Right, You would see some Hey, look, I'm
you know, paying out and tithing. But this is helping

(01:41:37):
the last fortunate in the church. This is helping members
that really need it. This is going to the global
you know, global effort, you know that kind of stuff.
But no, it's going to this bank account where it's
just accruing interest, because that's really all it goes to. Right,
you know, even if they pay an you know, a
billion dollars. I'm telling you that in the I r
S letter, the letters to the I R S, it

(01:41:58):
exposes all this, right, The money doesn't come back like
it goes to that ensign peak advisories advisors, and they
run off of interest. The church runs off of interest.
It doesn't run off of typing. So it's just one
of those things where to your regular member that sounds crazy.
It sounds crazy. They're like, oh, man, tithing doesn't go
to these charitable things I've been told about. It doesn't.

(01:42:21):
If the church is giving to charitable causes, it's giving
off the interest it made on your tything, if anything. Right,
But that's just a portion of that.

Speaker 6 (01:42:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:32):
The idea of fast offerings where that comes from is
you donate a portion of what you would have spent
on the meal on that day when you fast. But
the main thing is it's like that's people give in
well in excess of what a meal would cost to
help less fortunate members. But you have to be you know,
there was really faithful moments that would give well in
excess of you know, what they would normally give, because

(01:42:54):
they're paying ten percent already on their gross and they're
giving fast offerings to help people locally. So that's that's
a lot of burn to bear.

Speaker 1 (01:43:01):
Yeah, Originally when you said fast offerings, I was like, oh,
like click pay or something like that, and I didn't
know what that was. But I mean to be completely
fair though, I mean, I know we're talking about this
in the context of Mormonism, but tithing is something that
should be taken seriously across all denominations, right, whether it's like,
you know, if you want to point to like Catholic
indulgences in the Middle Ages, or like you'll hear it

(01:43:22):
in like some your local church. Oh the secretary got
caught inmbezzling money, right, it's kind of the same thing, right,
So these people giving out of their goodness of their heart,
you know, hoping to try and do something noble for
their locale or for the church as a whole, and
then the people at the top just abuse the money. Right,
And it's not purely just a Mormon problem. It's a
problem with all churches.

Speaker 2 (01:43:41):
Yeah, well, the church does take really seriously about the money,
like they take like they have clerks, which is like
a position, a volunteer position in the church, but it's
one of the most serious positions at your local church level.
Every church building has a clerk that is responsible for
keeping track of all the money. And if a bishop
like in bezzels like money somewhere and doesn't give it
all to the headquarters, like that is the fastest way

(01:44:04):
for you to get kicked out of the church. Like
they may not excommunicate you and go through all that stuff,
but like you're going to be on the outs, you know,
in a minute. But when it goes to the headquarters level,
how they manage the money, there's no transparency, right, they
tell you they pass an audit, but they don't have
to turn over anything. They don't have to turn any
documentation over to the government because they're tax free, right,
they don't have to turn any documentation over to the

(01:44:26):
members because they just get up in the tachmmittee meeting
and saying God told us to spend it this way,
so this is how we spend it. So until this
letter to the Irs came out, we really didn't know
where the money was going. And so that's why this
was so significant.

Speaker 1 (01:44:42):
And this is still a legal case that's ongoing right
as to whether or not they can actually continue to
operate as a tax free five oh one.

Speaker 2 (01:44:48):
C three right right, there might have to be some
restructuring because there's never before in American history been basically
like a hedge fund that claims to be a church.

Speaker 4 (01:45:00):
And what's the name, Enzyme Peak Advisors. That's such a.

Speaker 2 (01:45:04):
Insign is like a flag, so you're like the standard bearer.

Speaker 4 (01:45:08):
And insign not I thought it was yeah, a biological term,
right right, like a hormone type thing.

Speaker 1 (01:45:17):
Yeah, Civil Incorporated, five one C three.

Speaker 2 (01:45:22):
If you have anybody that wanted to jump on, and.

Speaker 4 (01:45:25):
We've got a number of people in the chat. I
know log Dog is doing a lot of commenting, but
he says he's working a swing shift.

Speaker 1 (01:45:31):
That's my bass, Yeah, that's my bass. I'd love to
have him on here. Just to chat in general, because
I have questions not only about like the finance and stuff,
but I'd love to just I'd love to hear other
people's religion.

Speaker 4 (01:45:43):
We're nice guys, We're pretty fair. I think we joke around.
But yeah, even if you want to come on later,
the email address is open. Feel free to shoot us.

Speaker 1 (01:45:53):
Yeah, we can.

Speaker 4 (01:45:53):
We can put you on in the future. We could.

Speaker 1 (01:45:55):
We can do whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:45:56):
We can have west back on.

Speaker 1 (01:45:57):
Like an impromptu debate or something like that. Not like way,
but just like a discussion about the differences between you know,
Christianity and Mormonism will be fun.

Speaker 2 (01:46:06):
I promise to any faithful members, like I'm not going
to buy two year off right, like all my family,
both sides, still faithful. That kind of stuff. You know,
I have Thanksgiving with them every year and that kind
of stuff, and we were very cordial and that kind
of stuff. It really just comes down to when you
want to show people this stuff that most people don't
know anything about, and even Mormons know this, Like there's

(01:46:28):
inside Mormon world and there's outside, and so like most
Mormons know about like or most people on the outside
know about like the magic underwear, and they might know
about the missionaries who wear like the white shirts and
ride the bikes and that kind of stuff. They wear
the name tags, but they don't know much about the theology,
or they don't know much about how the church works.
So this is just a deep dive into how the

(01:46:49):
church operates. Where the church doesn't respect, you know, their
individual members. They will spy on you if they think
you're saying something controversial. And the money side of things
is they'll take the money and use it however they please.
They'll they'll invest it into whatever J Street thinks is
most profitable that year. So I just think it's it

(01:47:11):
needs to be transparent to anybody that's trying to get
into the or that is hearing about the church, that hey,
this is a much bigger machine that you don't see
from the outside. This is the second largest property private
property owner in the United States.

Speaker 1 (01:47:28):
Well, this is talking about some of the other businesses
right that they're part of. Like there are many Mormon
businesses if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 2 (01:47:35):
Yeah, there's a Destret Industries, which is kind of like Goodwill,
but it's owned by the church. The church has a
lot of like positions and different things, like it talked
about there. How they helped build the City Creek Mall,
which is like in downtown Salt Lake City. So they
have a position in that they have a big landholdings
where they hold a lot of farmland and that kind

(01:47:56):
of stuff. And there's actually people that go and work,
members of the church that go serve missions and like
work those pieces of property. Sometimes just different things like that.

Speaker 5 (01:48:07):
I mean, you do have to give it to the
Mormons too. They do have strong family values. They have
a lot of children, and I mean Utah is a
very clean state, except for Salt Lake Cities a little
get going downhill a little bit. But you got to
give them some things.

Speaker 2 (01:48:20):
Yeah, I will say, like the Mormon members are great.
Like I've had very positive experiences with a lot of
Mormon members, you know, just growing up in that space
and that kind of stuff, and even living in Utah
for a time. All the people around me were very
friendly to me, and I didn't feel like out of
place at all. I didn't feel like people were like

(01:48:41):
breathing down my neck or trying.

Speaker 4 (01:48:42):
To That's very interesting. So you know, one thing any
Mormons that I've interacted with in person, I used been
a summer swim lead growing up, and there were a
few Mormons on the team, and they were all just
like the nicest people that you ever will meet. And
that's what I've heard across the board when I talk
to other people. One exception that I've heard, just anecdotally,

(01:49:02):
people have told me that in Salt Lake City sort
of when you get Mormons amongst other Mormons, I have
heard that they can be very too duplicitous, very very
two faced. They'll talk about you behind your back. Is
that a fair accusation or is there some truth in that?
Or were missing something from the outside.

Speaker 2 (01:49:22):
Yeah, So Mormons really try to present a really nice
face to the outside world, and they're generally good people,
like in general, like your average Mormon would give you
the shirt off their back if they felt like you
were in need. But the church creates a very toxic
internal environment where, for example, the church doesn't have any
good communication methods within the own within itself, within your

(01:49:45):
own ward, for example, you're within your own church building,
where if something happens and somebody you know is having
marital problems or something like that, the way it's handled
in the churches, you're supposed to go to your bishop,
and you're supposed to tell your bishop like, hey, I
had a fight with my wife. All this stuff going on, right,
But the problem is is that it kind of leaks
out right some that's supposed to be a closed door meeting,

(01:50:06):
nobodys supposed to find out about it, but somehow it
gets into the to the current right into the gossip world,
and the gossip world in Mormonism, it will give you
like a PhD and how to like say stuff behind
somebody's back. Like it's just like the gossip is intense
because you're not supposed to talk about each other's problems.

(01:50:26):
You're all supposed to put on this great face and
you know, present yourselves as you know, very perfect people,
or at least trying to be perfect. But everybody's got
those skeletons in their closet that you know, people are
whispering behind the scenes about. And so I think the
gossip in the room or mill is is really intense.

Speaker 1 (01:50:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:50:44):
One of our Mormon chat members tends to agree, is
that something is gossip something that is actively condemned, you know,
in in official doctrine, it means that something that you guys,
is it just an accepted part of culture, or is
it something that's seen as a problem from within the church.

Speaker 2 (01:51:02):
Saying as within the church as a problem, it's just
difficult to root it out because at a certain point
it's actually necessary because say you're a bishop, right, You're
a bishop that was chosen through you know, it wasn't
like everybody voted, right, it was basically somebody chose you
to be the bishop. Somebody above you in the church

(01:51:23):
chose you to be the bishop, and now you're the
bishop over this you know, maybe three hundred people, right,
and you have to make sure everybody's not fighting all
the time, right. You have to try to make sure
that those people sit over there in church and those
people sit across the room over there in church because
they don't like each other, and these people, you know,
they have problems with those people. So we got to
try to keep all of this together. The only way

(01:51:45):
you would really know about that unless they came and
told you, is that you have to kind of be
within the gossip, right, You have to kind of hear it,
and the bishop kind of needs people within the church
to come and tell them, Hey, I heard this from
so and so. A little partie told me this is
what's going on with so and so. Then you can
bring them in for a meeting and say, hey, what's
going on. I heard this about you know your family.

(01:52:07):
What's going on? Are you fighting with this other family?
So it's very difficult to root out because it's almost
necessary based on how they've structured their their environment.

Speaker 4 (01:52:16):
Well, and to be fair, this is a problement you'll
see in Christian circles as well to various degrees.

Speaker 1 (01:52:23):
So that.

Speaker 4 (01:52:28):
Good deal. I mean, you know, any any closing thoughts,
any any other questions. There's all kinds of things we
can get onto. And we haven't even talked about the
underwear and and I mean you know us at Mormon
wives and yeah, there's all kinds of things we could
get I.

Speaker 1 (01:52:43):
Talk a passion for you, one question for you. Okay,
So a lot of Mormons call it their shelf right,
which is like a place where they put the things
that don't quite jive with their worldview or don't quite
make sense, and then eventually there's a breaking point for that.
I am curious, what was the thing that broke your immersion?
And then what was the first thing that you put
on that shelf quote unquote?

Speaker 2 (01:53:04):
So the first thing that probably went on my shelf
or things that really maybe question was I was in
weight training class one day in high school and I was,
you know, getting ready to leave or getting ready to
go into class. I can't remember, but I was in
the locker room and a friend of mine or somebody
in my weight training class just came up to me
and said, Hey, did you know jose Smith had forty wives?

(01:53:26):
And I was like show. I was like stunned, because,
like as somebody who had been a member for you know,
almost eighteen years, eighteen years at that point, I was like, man,
like this is this is new to me? Like I'm
the person that's supposed to know everything right, and this
person from outside the church that knows nothing about it
just walked up to me. And so I googled it
and sure enough, you know, he had close to forty wives.

Speaker 1 (01:53:48):
I think it was thirty four. Yeah, it was the
number of official wives that he has.

Speaker 4 (01:53:52):
I'm surprised. That's not tough. I mean, it seems like
you would want to prep people to be able to
defend those sorts of facts, even to their own mind.
So there isn't an active internal apology that's presented for
all of these classic I mean, it seems like everyone
outside the church hears about these things, but that's kept
from the internal catechemens.

Speaker 2 (01:54:12):
Yeah, that's not talked about in church. Like you're not
gonna you're never gonna get a Sunday School lesson about
Joe Smith's thirty four wives or whatever. And so there
is a scholarship on it. There's like you know, Mormon
faithful apologists, you know, academics that kind of write about
these different subjects, and you can find like articles online
where they try to defend oh, you know, well, he

(01:54:34):
didn't sleep with his wives. It was just you know,
they were spiritual wives, and you know, it was really
all about heaven and you know, he's going to have
thirty four wives in heaven, and you know, yeah, he
was marrying people that were already He was getting married
to people that were already married. Which was something that
most people don't know about, is that he would send
some of these husbands on missions and then marry their

(01:54:56):
wives behind their back.

Speaker 1 (01:54:58):
And that was this started some of the riffs in Mormonism,
is that the people would come back and then their
wives would be married to Joseph and it's like, well, this,
this isn't exactly what I signed up for. You sent
me over here and then screwed with my wife, Like
what's going on? And again you could some of the
women were as young as I think fourteen was his

(01:55:18):
youngest wife at fourteen.

Speaker 4 (01:55:19):
Yeah, it reminds me of the old joke from Norm
MacDonald where he's the setup is that he's talking about
how he people would tell him that he had a
cult following. He's like, well, that sounds really nice. I mean,
especially when you consider that when you're a cult leader
and you have a cult following, that means that people
worship you basically as a god or at least a prophet,

(01:55:40):
and then eventually you get to sleep with all the
women in the cult if you want to, you can
sleep with all the men in the cult. I mean,
being a having a cult following and being a cult
leader is great. But when you're a comedian, apparently all
having a cult following means is that most people hate you.

Speaker 1 (01:55:56):
Yeah, it's a little different.

Speaker 2 (01:55:59):
It's there's it's an interesting part of church history actually
about what happened with jose Smith's wives after he was martyred,
And I think it kind of shows like a turning
point where if things hadn't been handled in the way
that they were, if things had been handled differently with
Joseph Smith, that the church probably would have ended back
in the eighteen sixties or whatever, you know, shortly after

(01:56:21):
Joe Smith died. The idea of having scores and scores
of wives was a very rare thing after Joseph Smith,
and one of the only other people to really have
that many wives in the church was Brigham Young. But
Brigham Young was the prophet that came that was chosen
after Joseph Smith. But he decided to take all of

(01:56:44):
those spiritual wives quote unquote that Joe Smith had and
bring them on as his own, which was actually, at
the time a very noble and responsible thing to do
because you had to understand that after the Joe Smith died,
nobody was going to marry these women. Right after Joe
Smith had died, and these women were left on their own,

(01:57:05):
they were almost, you know, kind of seen damaged goods. Right,
You're you're already been married, but you're married to this
guy who's been killed. I don't want to get second
you know, the second chance on that. So they basically
said Brigham Young said, look, we're not doing this anymore
where you know, the each prophet's not going to have

(01:57:26):
forty wives, right, But I'm going to take these these
women into my you know, residences, so that they have
a place that they're taken care of. They have a
place to sleep there. You know, their children aren't taken
care of. Right that way, they don't starve. Because this
is going to look really bad to everybody else in
the church if Joe Smith dies and then all of
his wives suddenly are you know, just cast to the

(01:57:49):
cast outside, cast.

Speaker 10 (01:57:50):
Of the cold.

Speaker 6 (01:57:50):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:57:50):
So how long did it take for polygamy to officially
become condemned in the church?

Speaker 2 (01:57:56):
That's a good Google question. I don't know the year when.

Speaker 1 (01:57:59):
Well, that was a big contention, which is why they
were forced to move west for a long time before
eventually settling in Utah. Was they wanted to, They wanted
to kind of start their own city state almost and
then they had to get pushed out and there was
a kill order on them for a little while in
one of the states. It's a very very wild story.

Speaker 2 (01:58:19):
Yeah, eighteen ninety is when polygamy officially ended in the church,
and there's a lot about that where I've actually got
a polygami marriage in my family history, where in the
trek over to Utah from the Eastern seaboard, one of

(01:58:40):
my great great great you know, having many great grandmas,
her husband died in the trek over to Utah, and
she remarried to a man who already had a wife,
and she you know, basically joined him for the rest
of the trek, made it to Utah, and lived basically
with him for the rest of her life. So I

(01:59:00):
don't think they had any kids. She had already had
kids at that point. But a lot of Mormon people
will say, well, polygamy was just practiced in extremists, right,
like just when you needed to have polygamy, because there
were so many Mormon men that were like getting sent
on missions that had join the Mormon Legion as a
part of the army. The Mormon Legion was like a

(01:59:21):
group of conscripted Mormons that fought in the American Mexican War,
and so they were getting sent off to war, they
were dying of you know, malaria or whatever, trying to
cross the plains, you know. So therefore we had all
these women and children around and we had to practice
polygamy to like make sure that everybody was taken care of,

(01:59:42):
and to some extent that's true, but when Joe Smith
did it at the beginning of the church, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:59:47):
What it looks like so well, And that's kind of
an interesting question talking about the extra wives, because the
women can only be sealed to one man. So what
happens to the thirty four wives that were sealed to
Joseph Mormon or Joseph Smith sorry, and then also sealed
to the next prophet after him.

Speaker 2 (02:00:08):
So what happens is is that the church has a
sealing and cancelation committee, which my grandpa was served on
while he was at church headquarters, and that's how he
met Elder Dykes. So that's that's where their common connection.
And basically what happens is, say you know a husband
and a wife in the church, they get divorced and

(02:00:30):
it's for something super serious like spousal abuse, you know,
something like that. Right, the wife can petition the church
to have her ceiling canceled, meaning that she can say, like, look,
I know that I'm divorced legally with this person, but
I would really not like to spend all of eternity
with them because they're kind of a turn back.

Speaker 1 (02:00:50):
Yeah, so who were those women sealed to then? Were
they sealed to Joseph or were they sealed to bring them?

Speaker 2 (02:00:55):
So I guess the church probably says now that they
were sealed to Joseph. But then whichever one's remarried to
Brigham Young, their ceilings were canceled and then they remarried.
They are they are sorry their ceilings were their ceilings
were canceled, and then they got remarried to Bringham.

Speaker 1 (02:01:18):
Wait so wait, so does Joseph not have any wives
in the afterlife?

Speaker 2 (02:01:22):
Whichever ones, whichever ones didn't get remarried.

Speaker 1 (02:01:25):
I guess Okay, I was gonna say, you can imagine
dying being like, well, at least I for all eternity,
and then later on you're like, bring him. He took
all of them, every single one forever celibate in the afterlife.

Speaker 2 (02:01:41):
That's funny, Yeah, but it's it's really hard to get
a cancelation of the church. Like, there are a lot
of women that petitioned for years, a lot very stringently
to get their ceiling canceled. My mom and dad divorced
just happened to be my Grandpa was in charge on
that committee, so that was pretty easy for her. But
unfortunately a lot of a lot of Mormon women in

(02:02:04):
the church really try to you know, like, look, I
really don't want to be with my rapist for all
of eternity, Like can you please cancel this?

Speaker 4 (02:02:10):
So what is the church's stance on divorce? Is it
similar to the Catholic Church? Or do they allow divorce
for civil reasons?

Speaker 2 (02:02:21):
Yeah, basically their stances like divorce happens. The rate of
divorce inside the church is about the same as it
is now outside the church. They can look at the
statistics on it. It's it used to be that Mormons
would stay together much stronger inside the church, maybe twenty
years ago, but the statistics now show that it's about

(02:02:44):
the same. It's about fifty to fifty. And the real
reason for it is because Mormons get married really fast.
The usual. It's very unusual to see somebody that's been
dating for more than six months and they haven't already
made plans to get married. In in Utah, especially where
if you're a return missionary, if you're a man right

(02:03:06):
Utah County for example, where byu is there's one man
for every four women in that county just on population alone,
not saying every one of those people in it's Mormon,
but just in that county alone, based on population stats,
every man has four women. So you know, it's the
youngest place in America around byu because there's Utah Valley University,

(02:03:27):
which is like a local school, and then there's Brigham
Young University, which is like the church school. And so
those two colleges combined make that part of Utah one
of the youngest places in America. And so when you
come back from your mission as a return missionary, this
is from what my cousins tell me that I've come
back from serving missions, it's kind of like you have

(02:03:49):
your choice, right, Hey, you know, do I like this girl?
Do I like this girl? But you have met through
requirements for marriage, right, So you're going to have a
lot of women that are going to be pursuing you,
and there's gonna be a lot of you know, pressure
to like choose one, right, because before you can have
any sort of you know, just based on Christian uh

(02:04:11):
theology and doctrine, you're supposed to get married before you
have any sort of uh sexual relationship, right, And.

Speaker 1 (02:04:18):
So there's a buddy or something.

Speaker 2 (02:04:22):
Like that unless you've been the rules somehow with like
soaking all sorts of.

Speaker 4 (02:04:26):
Okay, so tell me, is soaking really a thing or
is that just a you know, an outsider attack or
is that really.

Speaker 2 (02:04:33):
It is a thing that happens sometimes in b YU,
they Mormon youth try to come with all sorts of
like end around corner case ways that they can basically
break the rules without breaking the rules.

Speaker 4 (02:04:47):
And and what's the basis for that?

Speaker 6 (02:04:48):
For no.

Speaker 1 (02:04:52):
Movements? Right, somebody else's bouncing for you?

Speaker 4 (02:04:57):
Is that based on a particular text of scripture or
Book of Mormon? Or where does that come from?

Speaker 2 (02:05:03):
So it's really about like the Mormon Church comes up
with rules, but the rules are kind of ambiguous. So
for example, like the tea and coffee thing, so it
used to be that almost everybody in the church kind
of understood like you don't drink tea and coffee because
of caffeine, right, And so people like avoided soda because

(02:05:23):
and like energy drinks like red Bulls right because it's like,
oh man, like the caffeine must be bad for you,
and the Church doesn't want you to drink caffeine, right,
but then they came out and clarified it, and there's
there's some weirdness about they might have taken a position
in pepsi at the same time where they decide to
invest in pepsi. But anyways, the point is is that
they came out and they clarified, Actually, soda is okay,

(02:05:45):
red bulls are okay, Monster energy drinks is fine. We
just can't drink tea and coffee. And everybody was like, well,
that doesn't make any sense because like a red bull,
you can be like chugging red bulls in like five
hour energies all day, but like tea and coffee, that's
like no, go, can't it have some you know, can
s coffee on your break, but you can drink like
a five hour energy Like that's crazy. So anyway, the

(02:06:08):
rules don't always make sense, and so some people try to, Yeah,
people try to like find loopholes where they can where
it's like, well, maybe it doesn't really mean that, right.

Speaker 1 (02:06:20):
Well, that's like trying to follow the letter of the
law will obviously obviously not following the spirit of the
law because it's like, well, technically I'm not moving, she's
not moving, we're you know, like, I don't know, man,
It's kind of like in modern day Judaism where they
they transfer their sins to a chicken and then kill

(02:06:43):
the chicken to satisfy the you know, the penalty or whatnot.
It's kind of like if you're trying to trick God
by using the absolute letter of the law, Like I
think you're off base. You're doing something wrong there.

Speaker 4 (02:06:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:07:00):
I feel like Mormons. They have a lot of rules, right,
and some Mormons really try to. They pride themselves in
being like a rule follower, right. They're like, I follow
all the rules. I even follow the rules that nobody
really follows, right. You know. I don't watch R rated
movies because I'm told not to, but I don't even
watch like movies with like Gore in them. Like I

(02:07:22):
can't even watch a PG thirteen movie if it's like
too gory or something like that. Or you know, some
people are like, oh, you know, I can't have There's
like old rules that I heard from my grandparents where
it's like they couldn't my dad growing up, couldn't have
playing cards because like just the insinuation that you might
use them for poker and you might gamble with them.
So they couldn't have like playing cards in the house.

(02:07:43):
I wasn't allowed to have an Xbox or like any
sort of gaming, but I could have a PC. Like
I could have a gaming PC, but I couldn't have
like an Xbox growing up. So there's there's different rules
that don't really make sense, but people kind of like
try to follow them to like really trick standards.

Speaker 4 (02:08:05):
What about birth control? What's the Church and birth control?

Speaker 1 (02:08:09):
It's very good question as many kids as possible.

Speaker 2 (02:08:14):
They they really don't take a super strong position on
birth control. They kind of, I think learned that they
should kind of leave that up to a doctor. Basically
they say that you can do whatever is medically necessary.
And I mean, if you're a Mormon woman and you
don't and you want to have any sort of birth

(02:08:36):
control prescribed to you, and you know, basically tell your
bishop like, hey, you know, the doctor told me I
had to have it, and whether that's true or not,
that the bishop kind of just leaves it there. Usually,
so it's not a super controversial thing in the church,
at least not anymore, because for the most part, they
just say, do what your doctor tells you. What about abortion,

(02:08:58):
Abortion is definitely. On the other side of things, they're
very pro life. They say, like you shouldn't kill your
baby for any reason except for like the utmost medical necessity,
and even like cases like rape and stuff, they're kind
of wishy wash you on, like maybe you should have
the kid and just give it up for adoption or
you know that kind of stuff. But I think the

(02:09:19):
Mormon Church when it comes to like cultural issues, I
would agree with them like nine out of ten times.
But there was like an interesting time during COVID, right
where like COVID happens, right, and they tell and the
government tells the Mormon Church to shut down all the churches,
and this is like a chance for the church to
like stand on its principles and be like, no, we
will not go down without a fight us versus the government.

(02:09:40):
Like we will not shut down the churches. We will
have in person meetings. And they just folded.

Speaker 4 (02:09:45):
They just cave well in many such cases, so they're
not unique in that. But but yeah, it is an
active charatige nonetheless.

Speaker 2 (02:09:51):
Yeah, because there was a lot of members that were like, man,
we got to stand up for this. We gotta say
like religious freedom, you know, we can have religious services,
you know, no matter what the government says. But nope,
they just said do what the government says, stay locked down,
take the jab, you know, do whatever you know the
government tells you. And that's why I just say, like,

(02:10:12):
if you if you're a Mormon and you think you're
a part of like this based you know, insider group,
like we're gonna be like the Amish, We're gonna like
survive to the end, right, We're gonna be like the
spark that rebuilds America. It's like, well, the problem is
that your church has already sold out. That's the problem
is they're already in bed with the same people that
are making the country the way it is.

Speaker 4 (02:10:33):
Do you know the rules on Plan B.

Speaker 2 (02:10:36):
I have no clue. I I haven't heard of anybody
like I know that has taken Plan B. I don't
know what their public stances on it. But interesting, I
think it kind of falls under birth control where it's like, oh,
if you get prescribed by a doctor, then that's the doctor.
M But i'd really, you know, I'd like to come

(02:11:02):
back on if you have another person that wants to,
you know, bounce things off and you know, say hey,
I think you were wrong about this, and you know,
I can try to give another perspective. But the hardest
thing is like a lot of this Mormon stuff is
like very dry where it's like, you know, you can
get into the minutchave, like the Book of Abraham, for example,

(02:11:25):
was the funerary text the Egyptian that Joe Smith claimed
he transcribed and translated the Book of Abraham from. Does
that Egyptian actually translate into what he said? He It doesn't,
by the way, it's totally different. He totally made it up.
He looked at it and he was like, oh, yeah,
this is probably this, and it's probably that. And then

(02:11:46):
we actually got through Rosetta Stone, we're able to translate
Egyptian and it's like Nope, that has nothing to do
with it.

Speaker 4 (02:11:52):
Were you taught any of that around the Book of Abraham,
any of the apologetic for how to defend it? Or
were you taught like the cattle or catalyst idea where
maybe he just it's not supposed to be a translation,
but it's just like the he saw the text and
that inspired him to write what he ended up writing.

(02:12:13):
Were you taught any of that or did you just
learn all of that stuff after the fact.

Speaker 2 (02:12:17):
It's all after the fact, like the church really doesn't
want to bring up these things to Mormon members because
it starts putting questions in your head, and the more
questions you have, the less satisfactory answers you're going to find.
But there is like a whole sphere of like the
Mormon blogosphere where my dad was actually a part of it.
Like he had like a Mormon blog where he would
like post articles of like this is how you explain

(02:12:39):
the Book of Abraham and this kind of stuff and
different things, and they just come up with these different
mental gymnastics of like what makes sense if you think
about it this way?

Speaker 1 (02:12:48):
Right?

Speaker 4 (02:12:49):
So yeah, I mean I would just encourage all of
the people watching, you know when it comes to Christianity.
I mean you certainly will. You'll see some issues. Uh,
there there are people that don't want to talk about
certain things because of scandal, But in general Christianity is
pretty open to a fair examination of the facts. But

(02:13:13):
from what I hear in Islam, certainly in scientology and
and and from what we're hearing today and in in
Mormonism as well, and pretty much any of the more
illegitimate culty religions there is a strong aversion to doing
your own research and uh and looking into it because

(02:13:35):
that might lead you to a different conclusion, whereas some
Christians individually will will push against that. But but on
the whole, there is a much stronger culture of introspection,
of of research, and of a serious desire to know
the truth. I mean, that's largely what this show is about,
is trying to actually look at the facts that they
are and understand what uh, you know, what what really

(02:13:57):
is true?

Speaker 2 (02:14:01):
Yep. Yeah, I really appreciate that there's people that are
going through and really hold true to their faith and
they feel really deeply about it. Because when you talk
to somebody who's knowledgeable about their faith and they can
tell you, you know, why they believe in it and
why they think it's you know, why they think they're
a better person personally about you know, because they believe

(02:14:23):
in their faith. I'm always like, that's good for them. Like,
whatever you believe in, if if you feel like it
makes you a better person, then that's really what I
feel like is where you should be the problem with
the Mormon Church is that it's never going to be
a mainstream Christian quote unquote Christian church as long as
it holds on to this very orthodox way of seeing

(02:14:45):
the world, which is the Mormon Church is the only
true church ever, right, Like you had Jesus Christ to
like restore the Gospel, and then there was like apostasy
for like a long period of time after Jesus and
his first you know apostles died, and then Joe Smith
brought it back. And so a lot of Mormons basically

(02:15:06):
dismiss the wider Christian you know, theology, anything that other
denominations have to add to Christian Christianity because they say, well,
that was all apostasy, and so Mormons have the only
to interpretation that's allowed basically.

Speaker 1 (02:15:32):
Truth talking about haven't they Adventists? Yeah, Yeah, that's another
fun one as well. At some point in the future,
would be cool to have a member on and talk
about or a former member on to talk about something
a little bit more in depth.

Speaker 4 (02:15:46):
We're getting some comments on Plan B, so let me
just step on a soapbox for just a second about
contraception in various forms of it.

Speaker 5 (02:15:54):
James Ria, let's go.

Speaker 4 (02:15:56):
So as I understand it, Plan B is abortive and
that that's gonna be pretty typical amongst your Christian your
different groups, some people would would take different stances. But
essentially what Plan B is doing is it is preventing implantation.
So there's two stages in terms of pregnancy. There's the
initial conception and then there's the implantation where the actually

(02:16:19):
the the egg first gets the egg and the sperm join.
That's conception, and then it has to implant on the
inside of the urine wall. And you can increase the
mucus layer around the urine wall to prevent implantation, which

(02:16:41):
is something that happens naturally as well. You will have
a lot of times eggs that are that do have
the sperm that that do not actually get implanted, So
that's something that happens naturally. You'll very often have multiple
eggs and only one or two will get actually implanted.
But you can act actively take hormones to increase the

(02:17:02):
thickness of that mucus to where it will not implant.
And so and that's the whole purpose of Plan B
is to take its hormones that increase that thickness, as
I understand it, to prevent implantation. So the whole point
of taking a Plan B drug is to snuff out
the life that you have created. If you believe that
life begins that conception, which Christians traditionally do, then the

(02:17:26):
whole point of taking a pill after the fact, after
you've already had sex and you're just questioning it and
you don't want to have a kid, so you take
a pill to essentially snuff out that life, to prevent
that life from implanting and then growing. So there is
a there are a lot of important ethical considerations when
it comes to that kind of thing, but I do

(02:17:46):
think that intent plays a huge role in it. So
there's another question around, like the classic birth control pill
typically has a dual effect, where it again birth control,
it's just hormones. You're taking hormones, or you're taking pills
that will induce your body into doing things in ways

(02:18:07):
that are slightly augmented from what it would naturally do
in terms of its hormone creation. And so the traditional
birth control pill will typically the primary intent is for
it to prevent conception, but then it has a potential
secondary effect of also increasing that mucus layer and preventing implantation.

(02:18:30):
And so some people consider even the traditional birth control
pill to be abortive in that sense, whereas because if
you are considering intent, then if you're taking birth control,
for the intent is to prevent conception, but they're you know,
as a potential side effect, you might have a lower

(02:18:53):
percentage of implantation, which again is it part of a
natural process, but you're just increasing the likelihood of that.
But the intent is to prevent conception, then some Christians
will see that as being okay, whereas Plan B is
always bad because that's the intent is solely abortive. It
is to snuff out that life that you've created.

Speaker 2 (02:19:12):
So yeah, I did, oh, so I took it. Did
a quick Google search to see if the church had
come out with a statement or anything like that. The
Mormon Church specifically, and they haven't come out with a
position on Plan B. Specifically, they say that any decision
about let's see, decisions about contraception are private matters between

(02:19:36):
mary couples and God. So basically they haven't come out
they're pro life, but they haven't come out and said
specifically that life begins at conception. And so because they've
been kind of ambiguous about where life begins, it's kind
of up to you to determine whether or not you
think Plan B is an abortion or not.

Speaker 4 (02:19:59):
Yeah, interesting, it'd probably be worth doing a stream in
the future because that is a it is a fascinating
discussion around contraception, around even natural family planning. Even within
the context of the Catholic Church, which is very pro
life and very anti contraception, the fact that they do

(02:20:21):
allow natural family planning is very interesting when you look
at the other theological reasons for being against contraception in principle,
it's it's definitely a worthwhile discussion and pretty interesting. Maybe
for another stream.

Speaker 2 (02:20:39):
Yeah, well that's that's a little look into the Mormon
Mormon world.

Speaker 1 (02:20:44):
So well, yeah, I really appreciate you coming on West
and reaching out to us and giving us all this
symph and insight. I mean, it's been a great chat
and I'm happy to have you on in the future.

Speaker 8 (02:20:53):
Man.

Speaker 2 (02:20:53):
All right, well, my dms are open.

Speaker 1 (02:20:55):
Appreciate it. Thank you, sir.

Speaker 5 (02:20:56):
Thanks man, take it easy.

Speaker 1 (02:21:00):
All right? Are we already pressed the out button, James,
unless you got something else you want us.

Speaker 4 (02:21:03):
To Oh, I think I'm yeah, I'm ready to close this.
But again, the email address is open regarding Doubt at
gmail dot com and anyone is welcome to shoot us
an email if you have a desire to come on
for any reason but specifically relating to this stream. If
you are a Mormon, a current faithful Mormon, and you

(02:21:23):
would like to provide a response, whether that's directly to
West or to just provide a different perspective, we would
love to hear from you. And if you have any
other topics that you think our of interest, feel free
to send us. Send that our way, and yeah, we
appreciate you all hanging out with us. Go ahead and
hit the like on your way out if you haven't already,

(02:21:45):
And thank you all for being with us. Christian John,
thanks again

Speaker 1 (02:21:49):
Yes, sir, good Nick, God bless