Vickie Speek is the premier expert on the life of James Strang, an early Mormon leader. We’ll talk about Strang’s vision, calling as a prophet, the plates and revelations he was involved with, and whether they might have been forged. You won’t want to miss this conversation. Check it out…
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Mormon Road Leads to James Strang
Interview
GT 00:24 Welcome to Gospel Tangents. I’m excited to be here in Florida in the wonderful weather with a wonderful historian. Could you go ahead and tell us who you are and where we are?
Vickie 00:35 Hi, I’m Vicki Speek, and you’re on Gospel Tangents.
GT 00:40 And we’re here in Florida, what part of Florida?
Vickie 00:42 We are here in the Sun Coast of Florida, in Port Charlotte, between Naples and Tampa.
GT 00:52 Okay. So, Florida in January, if you’ve never experienced it, I’ve got to tell you guys, it’s awesome.
Vickie 01:00 [It’s] 80 degrees today.
GT 01:01 Yeah, it’s pretty warm. Anyway, we’re excited. Vickie is one of the preeminent historians on James Strang. And we should have [you show] your book. You’ve got a book. Tell us about your book. What’s the name of your book?
Vickie 01:18 God Has Made Us a Kingdom: James Strang and the Midwest Mormons.
GT 01:23 Well, we started with Kyle Beshears a few days ago. [We talked] about one of James Strang’s wives, but we want to dive deep. I’ve also talked to Bill Shepard. What can you tell my audience? What’s the difference between, say, your book and Bill Shepard’s book?
Vickie 01:40 Bill Shepard is a Strangite. And at the time, when I wrote my book, I was a member of the LDS Church. And I had never heard of James Strang before. At the time, my family was living in Northern Illinois, and I was learning how to make baskets. It was a big deal back then. It was really a big fad, making homemade baskets. I decided that I needed some basket material. And the nearest basket-making place was in Burlington, Wisconsin, which was about 30 miles away from our home. So, I drove over to the basket craft place. And I noticed that it was on the corner of a highway and Mormon Road.
GT 02:29 Mormon Road?
Vickie 02:30 Mormon Road.
GT 02:31 Oh, wow. That caught your radar.
Vickie 02:34 I thought, “No, not Mormon Road.” I am a sixth or seventh generation Mormon, and I had never heard of Mormons in Wisconsin, never in any of my seminary classes, in any of my church classes [or] college classes. I’d never heard about Mormons in Wisconsin.
GT 02:54 Right.
Vickie 02:54 So, I went down the road and that’s when I learned about James Strang and the Strangites.
GT 03:00 Wow. Now tell us a little bit about your background. What I mean, I’m calling you a historian, but that’s not what your career was in. What was your career in?
Vickie 03:11 I went to college on a journalism scholarship. And I worked for many, many years as a stringer, or freelance correspondent.
GT 03:19 At which college?
Vickie 03:21 I went to Ricks College.
GT 03:21 Oh Ricks, oh, wow.
Vickie 03:23 I went to Ricks College
GT 03:24 Now known as BYU-Idaho.
Vickie 03:25 Now known as BYU-Idaho. And I was all intent on having a journalism career. And I met a young man from the Navy, and we got married and were gone. We met on the 20th of April, and we were married 30 days later.
GT 03:45 Oh, my goodness. You’re one of those.
Vickie 03:50 On the 19th of May. It was love at first sight.
GT 03:53 Wow, Ricks was just a two-year college. Now. It’s a four-year college. So how long did you– were you just a newspaper reporter?
Vickie 04:03 For about 30 years.
GT 04:05 Oh, wow.
Vickie 04:06 I was a stay-at-home mom for with four kids for 25 years. And then I started back to work as a features reporter and as a correspondent covering school board meetings and village board meetings, things like that. And from there, I went into freelance writing and freelance editing.
GT 04:29 Okay, so you’re a trained reporter, which weaves in pretty well with being a historian.
Vickie 04:37 But I guess the historian part came when I wanted to find out about the Mormons in Wisconsin. When you go down Mormon Road, you come to a little cemetery. And there’s a cemetery marker there that says Voree Cemetery. And then, there’s another marker a little bit further away that talks about the hill of promise, where James Strang found ancient, buried records in the ground. And he dug them up and translated them. I started to become very suspicious. I went down a little road a little bit further, and there’s the Voree home. And it talks about the baptisms that were performed in the White River. I thought, this is like deja vu. And I wanted to find out more about it. I went to the Burlington Library, and I started to research James Strang. I found out all the different books about James Strang. I started to read them, and started to research about them. And I found out that James Strang had five wives at one time, all at the same time, and four of them were pregnant at the time he was murdered.
GT 05:56 Oh, I didn’t know that. Wow.
Vickie 06:00 And I thought, that’s terrible. What happened to those women? And none of the books that I read could tell me what happened to those women that no longer had a husband. So, that started my research. I started going to all the different places around where I could find information about the Strangites. And I just wanted to know what the story was about these women. And what I found out was that these women were parts of families who had joined James Strang. So, it wasn’t the story of the women that I was looking at. It was the actual story of the Strangites. And that’s what I wanted to write. It’s kind of like family history.
GT 06:51 Yeah, yeah, definitely. That’s very cool. So, can you tell us the timeframe? What year was this where you were [writing about Strang?] They always make a joke about, “So, did you take underwater basket weaving?” But you took above water basketweaving.
Vickie 07:08 I did.
GT 07:08 What year was this, approximately?
Vickie 07:10 About 1992.
GT 07:12 Okay.
Vickie 07:13 And I could not start writing that book for 10 years. I did 10 years of research.
GT 07:18 Wow.
Vickie 07:20 Because I had four kids to take care of.
GT 07:23 Okay.
Vickie 07:24 And then I started working. So it took a long time, to be able to have the confidence to be able to write it into a book. Actually, what happened was that I went to Beaver Island, and I talked to the head of the Historical Association there. His name was Bill Cashman. And Bill Cashman invited me to write an article about the five wives of James Strang. So that’s when I really started doing the research, so I could write the article for him. One day I was writing. I was driving to Madison, Wisconsin, and I suddenly had an epiphany. And that epiphany was that I was actually looking at the story of the Strangites, not the women, and that it belonged in a book.
GT 08:13 Okay.
Vickie 08:14 The article became a book. And people have said that it’s similar to a family history. And I suppose, in a way, it is.
GT 08:26 Yeah, and Bill Shepard’s book is more of a theology book. Right? It’s the revelations of James Strang and that sort of thing. So, you’re [writing] more of the history.
Vickie 08:34 I’m more of the history, I’m really not interested very much in theology. That sounds funny, but I really am not. I don’t care about the different ways of belief, and the different, “Well, you can only worship this way. And you can only worship that way.” I just want to know things like, “Well, what families had twins? And there was one Strangite family that had three sets of twins.
GT 09:04 I think you mentioned that in your presentation. Right? Yeah. Because you’re doing a census of the Strangites.
Vickie 09:11 I’m doing the story of the Strangites and I’m not taking a side, whether they were good, whether they were bad. I just want to know what happened to them. I found out Charley Douglas was Elvira Field, who was dressed as a man. She tried to learn the accordion, but then it was not good, and she returned the accordion.
GT 09:38 (Chuckling)
Vickie 09:38 That’s the kind of stuff that I was interested in.
GT 09:40 Oh, wow.
Vickie 09:42 Not the theology, and I realized that theology is what made the Strangites, Strangites. But I just wanted to know the story.
GT 09:53 This is why we get along, because this is how I am with all the Restoration groups. I just want to know. There are so many people that fight about, “Well, is it true? Is it false? Who’s got the true doctrine?” I mean, I’m interested that there are differences. But I’m not here to settle the fight. I don’t care.
Vickie 10:13 That’s the same here. And a lot of people have said, “Well, do you think that James Strang was a real prophet?”
GT 10:18 Oh, I get that question a lot.
Vickie 10:20 Or do you think he was fake?
GT 10:21 Yeah. How do you respond?
Vickie 10:23 It really doesn’t matter to me. Because the people who followed him thought he was real. They thought he was a prophet. And so that’s the way that I approached it.
GT 10:33 Yeah. I remember hearing you say that you approach that as a reporter, trying to be unbiased, and fair.
Vickie 10:43 Right, trying to be unbiased and fair. And [tell] both sides of the story on Beaver Island and in Voree.
GT 10:51 And so how have the Strangites received your story?
Vickie 10:55 The Strangites have been very, very kind to me. I purposely did not talk to them when I was first writing the book, because I did not want to be influenced by them. I tried calling a prominent Strangite and asked to see some records. And I was told that they were being put into a vault and being classified, or catalogued and I could not see any of those documents. But the other Strangites, later on, were very, very kind to me. I purposely went to a John Whitmer Historical Association Conference, and I believe that was in either 2000 or 2002. I purposely went to meet Bill Shepard.
GT 11:52 Bill is awesome.
Vickie 11:55 And my book was almost done. And I thought it’s time to have it verified. So, I went to Bill’s session at Nauvoo, and we were in the upstairs of the Red Brick Store.
GT 12:09 Really?
Vickie 12:10 He did a presentation, and I went up to him afterward. And I said, “My name is Vickie Speek, and I’m doing a book about James Strang.”
Vickie 12:22 And he said, “Well, I’m really pleased to meet you. Come on. We’re going out to lunch. You want to come with us?”
GT 12:29 That is so Bill.
Vickie 12:30 It’s total Bill. So, I said, “Yeah.”
Vickie 12:36 It’s He says, “Well, come on, let’s go.” So, we went to a little diner that was in Nauvoo. There were four Strangites, two RLDS, two LDS and an Episcopalian.
GT 12:54 Okay.
Vickie 12:55 So the Strangites were David and Sue August, Bill Shepard and his wife. there was Jerry Gordon, who was a descendant of Warren Post, who was one of James Strang’s apostles. I can’t remember the other RLDS, but the two LDS were Richard Bennett, and me.
GT 13:18 Not me, though. The short version of me.
Vickie 13:23 And then Mel Johnson.
GT 13:25 Oh, Mel’s awesome.
Vickie 13:27 So we had quite an interesting lunch and everybody shared our information. And we got along very well.
GT 13:36 Yeah. That sounds like a fun group.
Vickie 13:39 It was a really fun group. And then afterward, Richard Bennett and I walked around the Nauvoo Temple.
GT 13:47 I think he was my third, fourth interview, somewhere around there. He’s a good guy.
Vickie 13:53 He is. He’s a very good guy.
GT 13:54 Yes. I call him my name twin.
Vickie 14:00 So and I have found those people to be so accommodating.
GT 14:04 Oh, yes.
Vickie 14:05 And Bill Shepard said, “Well, come on up to my house and you can go over any files you want.”
GT 14:12 Wow. Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me at all, because Bill is so kind.
Vickie 14:16 It was only 30 miles away from where I lived. So, the following weekend, I went up and I stayed at his house. And I spent Friday night and all-day Saturday, looking through all of his files that he had. And we went over to the Strangite Church, and he let me make photocopies. He was just very accommodating and very kind to me. And then he invited all of the–it must not have–I went to church on Saturday.
GT 14:46 Oh, yeah, because they meet on Saturday, yeah.
Vickie 14:49 I went to church with them. It was very nice. And then we all went out to dinner, because that’s a big thing that they do on Saturdays after church.
GT 14:57 Oh, really?
Vickie 14:58 They all go out to dinner. They all go out to eat.
GT 15:02 I want to go. I need to go there sometime. I’m trying to plan a trip to Beaver Island. Are you game?
Vickie 15:10 Sure.
GT 15:10 Okay.
Vickie 15:11 It’s been a long since I’ve been there.
GT 15:12 We’ll try to get you, Kyle, I know Casey Griffiths wants to go. John Hamer, I think, wants to go, which just those four people alone would be just an awesome trip. So, we’ll see. We’ll work out the dates off camera.
Vickie 15:27 Something that I’m trying to do is to draw up a map of where people lived on Beaver Island. So, I have some maps and I’m trying to put, “Well, this was where the print shop was. This is where Strang lived. This is where the stores were. This is where the Prindle house was.” And I’m trying to put all that together so that I have an accurate description of where the sawmill was, all that kind of stuff.
Early Life of James Strang
GT 15:57 Very cool. Well, let’s jump into the life of James Strang. It’s been a few years since I interviewed Bill Shepard. And when I talked to Kyle, we just went over it very briefly. So how did James Strang become acquainted with Joseph Smith?
Vickie 16:12 James Strang grew up in New York. And he was only, maybe, 100 miles south of Palmyra. So, he must have known about the Mormons when he was a young man. James Strang was born in 1813, in Chautauqua. His parents were very good parents. They had three children. He was enormously intelligent. From the time that he was a young man, even an infant, he can remember things. He had a photographic memory. And he could remember his mother and his aunts talking when he was a baby. And he could recall the conversations and they verified it when he was a baby.
GT 17:10 Wow, when he was a baby. So, he had a photographic memory that’s interesting.
Vickie 17:12 He married a woman named Mary Pierce, or Perce or Pierce, and her relatives were Aaron and Moses Smith, who were early members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Pierce family moved to Burlington, Wisconsin. And when James got married to Mary, they encouraged him to come to Burlington, as well. James Strang’s best friend was Mary’s uncle. So, they’re all related in there, somehow.
Vickie 18:01 But in January 1844, James Strang was a lawyer, and he went to Ottawa, Illinois, to litigate some kind of case that was there. And he was friends with the Sanger family that lived in Ottawa. Aaron Smith was also there, and he invited James Strang to go to Nauvoo. So Strang and Aaron Smith, both went to Nauvoo, where they met up with Joseph Smith. And I know that James Strang had dinner with Joseph Smith and his wife, Emma. And they talked about the Church. And it turned out that James Strang was baptized by Joseph Smith, in the unfinished basement of the Nauvoo Temple.
GT 18:56 Oh, wow.
Vickie 18:57 And then he was confirmed by Hyrum Smith, at the end of February.
GT 18:59 [He was] the Assistant President of the Church at the time. You said, this is January?
Vickie 19:08 This is February 1844.
GT 19:10 Okay.
Vickie 19:11 And in March 1844, when James Strang was still in Nauvoo, the Council of Fifty was organized. So, he was aware of that. James Strang knew about that.
GT 19:24 Wasn’t that a secret organization?
Vickie 19:26 Yes.
GT 19:26 How was he aware, if it was secret?
Vickie 19:28 Because he knew the people that were there.
GT 19:29 They didn’t keep secrets very well.
Vickie 19:30 They didn’t keep secrets very well. He knew about polygamy, too.
GT 19:33 He did?
Vickie 19:34 Because one of his relatives was involved with polygamy.
GT 19:38 In Nauvoo.
Vickie 19:38 [Yes]
GT 19:39 I haven’t heard that before. Because he was pretty anti-polygamy, when he started.
Vickie 19:44 Moses Smith’s daughter was married into polygamy.
GT 19:49 To…
Vickie 19:50 I think, Jonathan Edwards
GT 19:52 There’s a Jonathan Edwards that is a theologian. But this is a Mormon, Jonathan Edwards, okay.
Vickie 19:58 He was a nobody in Nauvoo.
GT 19:59 Okay.
Vickie 19:59 But it still was polygamy.
GT 20:02 Okay. So, you think he knew this as early as 1844, when he was baptized?
Vickie 20:10 Yes.
GT 20:11 Oh, really?
Vickie 20:11 [He knew it] after he was baptized. He was very astute, and he could pick up on things very, very quickly.
GT 20:18 Hmm. That’s interesting.
Strang’s Letter of Appt to Wisconsin
Vickie 20:21 Very quickly and he was very, very smart. So, Strang went back to Burlington. And apparently, he had been asked by Joseph Smith to see if Burlington would be a good place for the Saints to go, because it was becoming very apparent that they were going to have to leave Nauvoo. So, James Strang was supposed to go back and give Joseph Smith a report. Well, it just so happened that James Strang had a lot of acreage in the Burlington area. He said, “Yeah, it would be a good place for them to come.”
GT 21:12 Was that a conflict of interest?
Vickie 21:15 Maybe so.
GT 21:22 Because, even with Joseph Smith, there was a charge with Kirtland and Independence and Nauvoo, Joseph was in the real estate business. Would you agree with that?
Vickie 21:37 Yes.
GT 21:37 The idea was, he gets in early, sells the land to the new people, makes money.
Vickie 21:42 And they’re all safe. And they all have everything in common. So, they’re good. And supposedly, on June 18, Joseph Smith wrote a reply to James Strang saying, “Well, I really thought that I was going to send you an answer saying that no, I don’t think that we’re going to go up to Voree. But everybody around me, Hyrum says that I should say that, yeah, we should go to Voree. And everybody says that we should go up to Voree. But I didn’t think so. But then the Lord told me that I should make a favorable reply to your letter. Because I feel like we’re going to need to [move] to some place of safety. And the people would be in the land of safety, if they came up to that area. And I want you to be in charge of the flock.”
GT 22:54 This is known as the Letter of Appointment.
Vickie 22:56 This is called the Letter of Appointment. And basically, it’s two pages, written on three sides. And then the envelope was the back of the fourth side. And some people say that it was merely Joseph Smith telling James Strang to go up and start a stake, or a ward or branch in Voree, and that he should be in charge of it. But James Strang said that he was supposed to be the leader. But it really shouldn’t have surprised Strang to get that letter. Because the letter was written on June 18. And it was mailed on June 19. It arrived in Burlington, I believe on July 4. But on June 27, Joseph Smith and his brother were murdered. And at the very time that they were murdered, an angel came down to James Strang and anointed him to be the leader of the Church, at the very moment that Joseph Smith died.
GT 24:21 So, I want to ask you a little bit about this Letter of Appointment. Because when I read it, it reads very vague. It doesn’t read to me as Joseph Smith saying, “James, you’re the number two. You’re going to be in charge.”
Vickie 24:39 “Even though you’ve only been a member of the church for four months.”
GT 24:42 Exactly. I mean, that’s kind of strange, right? I know John Hamer has said that if anybody was going to be the next Prophet after Joseph Smith, it was going to be Hyrum. But, of course, Hyrum was killed at the same time Joseph was, and that’s what threw it open for almost anybody. Do you think James Strang took advantage of the situation?
Vickie 25:06 Now you’re asking me to take a biased opinion, right? You’re forcing me into an opinion.
GT 25:13 I know. That’s what we have to do, right? As a reporter, you can respect that.
Vickie 25:18 Yes. My personal opinion is that James Strang went to Nauvoo for the first time, and he saw the things that Joseph Smith had done with Nauvoo, and how this country boy, Joseph, had become the leader of these people. And James Strang thought, “Well, I’m a whole lot smarter than Joseph Smith. I can do this, too.” And he went back to Wisconsin, and he did copy everything that Joseph Smith did in Nauvoo, including finding buried records and having them translated, including visions, including baptisms, including everything that Joseph Smith had done.
GT 26:10 Okay.
Vickie 26:11 And I think that, at the very beginning, he was probably out for profit.
GT 26:19 Oh really?
Vickie 26:20 I believe that he started believing his own stories.
GT 26:25 Oh, wow.
Vickie 26:25 And became convinced that he was a prophet.
GT 26:30 A kind of a self-delusion?
Vickie 26:32 Yes.
GT 26:33 Oh, really? That’s interesting. That’s interesting.
First Mormon Forgery?
GT 26: You know, the Letter of Appointment, I will tell you from personal experience, if you want to tick off a Strangite, ask him whether the Letter of Appointment is a forgery. But I feel like, as a good reporter/journalist/whatever/podcaster, I have to ask the question. Do you have an opinion on that?
Vickie 27:00 You do. I think it’s a forgery.
GT 27:01 Okay.
Vickie 27:02 I think that somebody sent a letter to James Strang. And there was the envelope page. Page number four had a blank page on the other side of it. So, whoever wrote that letter kept the envelope page, and wrote their own letter on three sides, the three other pages and put it together. Because the two pages of paper do not match. They’re not from the same tablet. And understand that Joseph Smith had scribes who would sign his letters for him, copy his letters for him. But apparently, the block printing of Joseph Smith’s name on the letter is something that’s very unusual that most people have never seen before.
GT 27:58 So, it doesn’t look like Joseph Smith’s signature.
Vickie 27:59 It does not look like Joseph Smith signature.
GT 28:02 But it’s interesting that you said that some of his scribes did sign. And they were just really good at Joseph Smith signature.
Vickie 28:08 Right.
GT 28:09 Oh, that’s interesting.
Vickie 28:11 So they would copy letters for him or transcribe letters for him. So, that handwriting doesn’t have to be in Joseph Smith’s hand. But the signature would have to be in his hand, because I don’t think that they copied Joseph Smith’s signature for him, his scribes. They would say “Here. Sign this letter.” And he would sign it. But in this case, the letters were in block print instead of in cursive.
GT 28:43 So, yeah. There’s also a very interesting story about the postmark, which some, I’ll say Brighamite opponents of James Strang said, “Oh, this is a clear forgery.” But it ended up kind of backfiring on them and said, “No, this is authentic. This is proof of authenticity.” Tell us that story.
Vickie 29:08 All letters had to have some kind of a postmark on them. The postmark that came from Nauvoo was red. And it just so happened that on that day, a speck of dust or a little bit of debris of something got into the postmark seal. And so, every letter that was mailed from Nauvoo on that day, had some kind of a little mark in it that was in every single postmark that was sent from that day from Nauvoo. So, the postmark is real. We know that.
GT 29:46 Okay, and so, what Brighamites used to say, “Well, this, this speck is proof of a forgery,” later became “Oh, because it’s on all of the other letters, it’s legit.”
Vickie 29:58 It’s on all of the other letters. However, I did find somebody later on who said, that Strang’s law partner wrote the letter. Both Caleb Barnes and James Strang were law partners and that they concocted a plan to have the Saints come to Voree so they could sell the property. And Caleb Barnes was the one who wrote the letter.
GT 30:28 So, the implication is, James Strang had a bunch of land, wanted to sell it to the Mormons. He goes to get baptized, conveniently, “Hey, let’s go to Wisconsin. There’s great land up there.”
Vickie 30:40 It’s great land up there and you don’t have to cross the plains. You don’t have to go on into Indian Country. You’ve got sick people in your house. You’ve got old people. Come up to Voree. And that was the intent.
Voree Plates
GT 30:56 Okay. What do you think of that story? Is that true? Is that what James Strang was trying to do?
Vickie 31:02 A lot of people went to Voree. But that’s because, in the same manner of Joseph Smith, James Strang had a vision of ancient, buried records, brass plates that were buried in a box under a tree. So, he went out and he got four of the best-known, most respected men in the community to go with him. And they went up to the spot where James Strang said he knew where these plates were buried. It was in a huge oak tree. It was, like, a foot in diameter. And he told them where to dig. Now, they all examined around the tree, the grass was undisturbed. There was no sign, at all, that anything had ever been buried underneath that tree. When they started taking down the tree, there were rocks. They had to cut out tree roots in order to get down in the ground. And there was no way that anybody could have put those in the ground from above. But when they got down to a certain point, a foot down, two feet down, they found a flat rock. And underneath this flat rock was about a 12-inch rock of about three inches in diameter, three inches wide. And underneath was a small case of hard packed clay. And the case deteriorated. It broke apart when they tried to take it out of the ground. The ground underneath that case was hard packed, so hard that they had to hit it with pickaxes. How did that get in the ground?
GT 33:00 So, seemingly it had been there before the oak tree was there.
Vickie 33:02 Supposedly, it had been there before the tree had grown up. And those are called the Plates of Voree. There were three or four of them. I can’t remember which one. That’s terrible.
GT 33:18 I think Kyle’s said six, but anyway.
Vickie 33:19 Yeah, it could be. Well, anyways.
GT 33:20 Three to six plates.
Vickie 33:24 They were little teeny, tiny things.
GT 33:27 Kind of like the Kinderhook Plates.
Vickie 33:28 Yes, little tiny plates. And they were written on both sides. Some of it had artistic work, and there was a drawing of a man with the stars above him and a scepter and the message was supposedly, there was a great battle that had happened on that hillside. It was called the Hill of Promise and that the people had all died. They’d all been murdered. And they were directed to put these records in the ground, because the leader will die and then the next person will come to lead the people. The person who finds these plates will be the next leader.
GT 34:15 It’s got a lot of Hill Cumorah echoes.
Vickie 34:19 Yes, a lot of Hill Cumorah.
GT 34:20 Did the people name themselves (do you remember) that were in this battle?
Vickie 34:25 Yes, it was supposedly written by the Rajah Manchou of Vorito. I really laughed at that. I thought, “Holy cow. This is so stupid.”
GT 34:34 And so convenient.
Vickie 34:41 Well, if you’ve got a man as smart as James Strang and if the only thing he can come up with, the only name is a Rajah Manchou of Vorito, well, obviously he’s a fake.
GT 34:54 Right.
Vickie 34:55 But then I got to thinking, “Well, how did he get those plates in the ground? It’s hard packed clay.
GT 35:02 How did he get the tree to grow around the rocks?
Vickie 35:04 How did he get the tree to grow around the rock? It’s got the trees, the roots, the grass is undisturbed. It’s all hard packed clay. And these records are in this clay box that falls apart when it’s touched. How on earth did that get in the ground? And that haunted me for a long, long time, because I couldn’t figure it out. And as a matter of fact, it was the cause of my faith crisis that I had with the Mormon Church.
GT 35:34 Oh, really?
Vickie 35:35 It really was.
GT 35:37 Now, remind us what’s the name of the Strangite Church?
Vickie 35:40 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
GT 35:42 And what’s the difference with our church, the LDS Church?
Vickie 35:45 It’s the spelling.
GT 35:50 We’ve got a dash, a lower case D.
Vickie 35:51 You’ve got a hyphen and a small d on day and the capital D on day with the Strangite Church.
GT 35:59 That’s the only difference in the name.
Vickie 36:00 Exactly.
GT 36:02 I had a Facebook comment and it was like, “There’s only one church that has the correct name.”
GT 36:08 And I was like, “That’s actually not true.”
GT 36:10 “From the Doctrine and Covenants.”
GT 36:13 I’m like, “There’s actually two, or three, because I guess the RLDS Church used to go as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And it wasn’t until the polygamy prosecutions that they tacked on Reorganized, because they didn’t want their property taken, getting mixed up with LDS Church.
Vickie 36:30 Exactly.
{End of Part 1}
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