June 2022 - LDS Discussions on the Mormon Stories Podcast

Listening to the Mormon Stories podcast became a regular activity I pursued during my work hours. I spent much of this time hearing the perspectives of others and reflected on my own journey quite deeply. One such guest came onto the podcast who went by the pseudonym Mike from a website called LDS Discussions where an extensive website pieced together a systematic timeline of historical events of the early days of the church. The website is a great resource to refer back to after listening to the actual podcasts, at least for me it was. A list of the episodes can be found here.

The seer stone the church believes Smith used.

The series first starts with information regarding Joseph and activities that he got up to, including something I never knew about him: treasure digging as a legit way to earn money. Yes. The prophet who was to usher in the gospel and the true church dug for treasure using a variety of folk magic techniques, including the use of a seer stone which he found on a neighbouring property and kept against the will of the neighbour. The picture above is from the church of what it looked like. So, a piece of tiger's eye rock?

This was probably one of the first times I felt an actual disconnecting feeling with Smith's divinity as a prophet. I was taught he "got up to childish follies" but I never knew it was this. I knew he used a seer stone, but was taught it was one of two found in the cement box with the gold plates with glass-like properties. I didn't know he had his own stone and used it to find treasure buried in neighbouring properties, often charging money and spending days searching, performing a range of folk magic rituals, and then producing nothing and blaming the crew for not doing the incantations correctly. It was not great finding this out. I understand why this is omitted from the church's correlated learning material, including material taught to people investigating the church. Imagine leading with this information when teaching about the Restoration of the gospel. I wouldn't have had any success as a missionary.

I also found out through this series that Smith was taken to court over disorderly conduct while performing one of his expeditions with a man named Josiah Stoal. Basically, Stoal was promised treasure, and Smith charged him lots of money to find it, and produced nothing.

The series led further into the way Smith could have produced the plates, the Book of Mormon, and the translation order including translating the beginning of the book after the loss of the 116 pages. The series dove into the anachronisms (like a picture of Abraham Lincoln using an iPhone) contained in the Book of Mormon and detailed the changes made to the book since its publication. One such bit of information that I had also not heard of was the material that was around during Smith's time, including a book called View of the Hebrews, a story written in language almost identical to the Book of Mormon, and the local story that was shared to explain the mounds of dirt all over the state of New York called the Mountain Builders Myth. This story is basically the plot line for the whole Book of Mormon, detailing a superior white race that is totally extinguished by an inferior dark race and buried in these mounds. Sounds like excellent material to inspire a great story.

I highly encourage everyone to give this website and these episodes a read and a listen. They cannot be condensed here in detail, but should be viewed and compared with church correlated material. Reading will help see where Mike is pulling from, listening will help hear the genuine concern in his voice as he unpacks the material.

While I do not attribute much of my reasons for turning away from church to be because of church history, this new information certainly informed my now new view of the Restoration and its subsequent evolution. That the church was founded by a guy whose god was cool with dabbling in folk magic and defrauding people through illegal treasure hunts. As I continued to inspect up close the brick wall of the gospel foundations, cracks were being discovered, cracks that would help me see that leaving is the best thing for me to do.