We will never get a man into space. This earth is man’s sphere and it was never intended that he should get away from it. The moon is a superior planet to the earth and it was never intended that man should go there. You can write it down in your books that this will never happen. Joseph Fielding Smith, stake conference Honolulu 14th May 1961
I sat on the stand, just to the right of the bishop. I sat suffering through yet another Sunday. The day before, like too many Saturdays before it, I had become sick to my stomach knowing that I had to wake up the next morning, go to bishopric meeting, PEC, sacrament, Sunday school, interviews, and visits.
I needed it to end. It had been over eighteen months since my accidental research had led me to the painful, yet inevitable conclusion, that my faith since childhood was based on fraud, misrepresentation, superstition and deceit. I had been candid about my questions, research and fears. The bishop had struggled with me. But in the end, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t believe and I couldn’t fake it anymore. Requests for my release were ignored and delayed. The only official response was for me to stop researching history ...
That morning, I had to force myself into the shower. I put on my suit, grabbed my church briefcase and headed very reluctantly to my car and drove the dreaded seven miles into the parking lot. As I got out, I glanced at the temple just behind the chapel. Once upon a time, it had meant something to me. Now, well it seemed so pointless an edifice ...
I was just an empty suit in an empty religion ...
I was startled by the emotions I had begun experiencing. Depression was replaced with a surging anger. I hadn’t felt this level of annoyance in many years. Adrenalin surged through me.
My ability to exist in that atmosphere, already strained, reached the breaking point in that very moment. My impulse was to stand and leave. I looked down at my wife and children. I turned to the bishop and asked why he had betrayed me in this way. He mumbled something and began sweating ...
The bishop had been previously fair with me. But I emotionally could not endure another second of it. Walking off the stand would relieve me, but embarrass my wife, children and the bishop. I fought the urge. I turned to my left and whispered to him that after sacrament meeting I was leaving. He nodded.
The meeting ended. I picked up my briefcase and found my wife. Her face reflected an acknowledgement that a boundary had been crossed. I told her that I loved her but that I couldn’t be a Mormon anymore. I left the building and headed north. Skeptical (Odell Campbell), board post 26th October 2007, ‘My Last Sunday Attending an LDS Church Meeting’
In my late twenties, I decided to search for the happiness I was told could be mine by gaining more education. Since church members are admonished to seek wisdom and knowledge out the best books, for me that meant the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants and the Bible.
So, I began an in-depth study of the scriptures. In the process, however, I found major contradictions, particularly between the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, both which the church claimed to have been revealed by God ...
So, I began searching other church publications, such as the Journal of Discourses and the History of the Church and was perplexed to discover prophecies of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young that were not, and never could be, fulfilled. I also came across doctrines taught early in the church that have since been abandoned ...
In my early thirties, I became aware of emotional, physical and sexual abuse in my extended family – and also of denial and cover-up of that abuse by my family and Mormon bishops. I wondered how my adulterous brother-in-law could repeatedly receive temple recommends from church leaders who were supposed to be able to discern his worthiness through revelation and inspiration ...
I believed that ultimately the validity of Mormonism rested on its claim that the Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith from gold plates. I decided I had to know for myself if what the critics were saying about it was true.
So, I began to dig even deeper. I spread many potential sources of the Book of Mormon across my dining room table. Maps, pamphlets, books, manuscripts, first editions and the like, soon covered it completely ...
The three-hour meeting, on September 9th, 1993, with Oaks and Maxwell was very disheartening. Before they would talk with me about my concerns, they swore me to confidentiality. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? ...
I deeply mourned the loss of my belief. I also wondered how, in good conscience, I could remain a member of this organization. The answer was simple: I could not. I knew the time to leave had come.
Finally, I was free from prying church leaders and their demands on my time and emotions. I was free from outside forces pulling at our family. The impossible expectation of perfection was lifted, the magnifying glass of ‘what will others think’ was broken and we all were set free to be ourselves ...
So, this is where I am. I live now, in the present moment, fully experiencing all my senses. Mary Ann Benson, board post 6th December, ‘From Mormon Patriarchy to Personal Peace: How I Came to Leave’
... there was apparently no reference to Joseph Smith’s first vision in any published material in the 1830s. Joseph Smith’s history, which was begun in 1838, was not published until it ran serially in the Times and Seasons in 1842. The famous Wentworth Letter which contained a much less detailed account of the vision appeared 1st March 1842, in the same periodical. Introductory material to the Book of Mormon, as well as publicity about it, told of Joseph Smith’s obtaining the gold plates and of angelic visitations, but nothing was printed that remotely suggested earlier visitations.
In 1833 the Church published the Book of Commandments, forerunner to the present Doctrine and Covenants, and again no reference was made to Joseph’s first vision, although several references were made to the Book of Mormon and the circumstances of its origin.
The first regular periodical to be published by the Church was The Evening and Morning Star, but its pages reveal no effort to tell the story of the first vision to its readers. Nor do the pages of the Latter-day Saints Messenger and Advocate, printed in Kirtland, Ohio, from October 1834 to September 1836. In this newspaper Oliver Cowdery, who was second only to Joseph Smith in the early organization of the Church, published a series of letters dealing with the origin of the Church. These letters were written with the approval of Joseph Smith, but they contained no mention of any vision prior to those connected with the Book of Mormon.
In 1835 the Doctrine and Covenants was printed at Kirtland, Ohio, and its preface declared that it contained ‘the leading items of religion which we have professed to believe’. Included in the book were the Lectures on Faith, a series of seven lectures which had been prepared for the School of the Prophets in Kirtland in 1834-35. It is interesting to note that in demonstrating the doctrine that the Godhead consists of two separate personages, no mention was made of Joseph Smith having seen them, nor was any reference made to the first vision in any part of the publication.
The first important missionary pamphlet of the Church was the Voice of Warning, published in 1837 by Parley P Pratt. The book contains long sections on items important to missionaries of the 1830s, such as fulfilment of prophecy, the Book of Mormon, external evidence of the book's authenticity, the resurrection, and the nature of revelation, but nothing, again, on the first vision.
The Times and Seasons began publication in 1839, but, as indicated above, the story of the vision was not told in its pages until 1842. From all this it would appear that the general church membership did not receive information about the first vision until the 1840s and that the story certainly did not hold the prominent place in Mormon thought that it does today. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought I iii 31-32
Senator Dubois: Have your received any revelations from God, which has been submitted by you and the apostles to the body of the church in their semi-annual conference, which revelation has been sustained by that conference, through the upholding of their hands?
Joseph F Smith: No, sir; none whatsoever ... I have never pretended to nor do I profess to have received revelations. Reed Smoot Hearings US Senate 1904
The inhabitants of the moon are more of a uniform size than the inhabitants of the earth, being six feet in height. They dress very much like the Quaker style and are quite general in style or fashion of dress. They live to be very old; coming generally near a thousand years. This is the description of them as given by Joseph the Seer. Oliver B Huntington journal vol 2 p166
Some things that are true are not very useful. Boyd K Packer, The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect address 5th Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators’ Symposium 22nd August 1981. Prior to this, Mormon history had been enjoying what some call its Camelot Era under guidance of historians like Leonard Arrington. Some Brethren, however, did not like this free-wheeling examination of church history, and Elder Packer was among them. This was open declaration of policy of ‘Lying for the Lord’.
The tragic reality is that there have been occasions when Church leaders, teachers, and writers have not told the truth they knew about difficulties of the Mormon past, but have offered to the Saints instead a mixture of platitudes, half-truths, omissions, and plausible denials. Elder Packer and others would justify this because ‘we are at war with the adversary’ and must also protect any Latter-day Saint whose ‘testimony in seedling stage’. But such a public-relations defense of the Church is actually a Maginot Line of sandy fortifications which ‘the enemy’ can easily breach and which has been built up by digging lethal pits into which the Saints will stumble. A so-called ‘faith-promoting’ Church history which conceals controversies and difficulties of the Mormon past actually undermines the faith of Latter-day Saints who eventually learn about the problems from other sources. D Michael Quinn, church historian
Mountain Meadows: the Mormons opened fire ... in less than half an hour one hundred and twenty people had been butchered. Ken Burns, The West IV, PBS 1996