Was the seer stone or Urim & Thummim used for translating the Book of Mormon. Scott Vance tells why he thinks a seer stone was used. Check out our conversation…
Don’t miss our other conversations with Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqbGWEo-o2A&list=PLLhI8GMw9sJ5XhDtDEr-SKFuqaWHPPlrJ
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Seer Stones vs Urim & Thummim
GT 00:46 Because we can segue into seer stones, if you want to.
Scott 00:51 Sure. Yeah, let’s do that.
GT 00:52 All right. So, I’ve recently talked to Jim Lucas and Jonathan Neville. They just came out with a book, By Means of the Urim and Thummim. They really promote Joseph and Oliver as saying that the Urim and Thummim was used. And they have to, what I would say, discredit Emma and David Whitmer, especially, and others that say a seer stone was used. This seems to be one of your favorite topics. And let’s dive into there.
Scott 01:28 Sure. And it is a favorite topic of mine because it was something that I was totally unaware of. I considered myself a reasonably diligent and faithful member, when I was a member. I thought I knew the history as well as anybody. I obviously didn’t. But I had heard nothing about seer stones. And so when I finally read Brodie’s book, and it talked about seer stones, I was like, “Brodie made some mistakes.” Even though I left the church, I still didn’t believe that Joseph Smith had used a brown seer stone.
GT 01:57 Oh.
Scott 01:58 So, come 2015, when the church…
GT 02:00 So your team Urim and Thummim, too, or at least used to be?
Scott 02:02 Well, I was, in the sense that I was like, “There’s no way that the Church would not tell the truth about this. Because why would they be deceptive about this?” It didn’t make any sense to me. So, I was like, “a seer stone? No. No.” Anyway, 2015 comes along, and they publish a picture of the seer stone, and I’m taken by surprise.
GT 02:22 Okay.
Scott 02:23 And so I start researching the topic.
GT 02:24 Was that the white seer stone or the brown seer stone?
Scott 02:27 The brown one was the one that they published, obviously.
GT 02:30 Well, they’ve got the white one, too.
Scott 02:33 So here’s where I get frustrated, because there are accounts that they have the white one and Quinn has published, and others have published that they do have the white one. I’ve asked–is it Keith Erekson?
GT 02:44 He’s at Church History Library?
Scott 02:45 Yes, he’s in charge of it. So, he gets to keep the seer stones. I’ve asked, “Do you have the white one?” He’s like, ‘No.’
GT 02:51 Because I’ve seen, I’ve got a book with a white seer stone on the cover.
Scott 02:55 Yeah, that’s an artist’s depiction. And, in effect, yeah.
GT 02:59 Okay.
Scott 03:00 Yep. I don’t know who has seen the white one and who has the white one. I had believed, until Keith said that, that the Church had it. And at this point, I just don’t know. I don’t know who to believe.
GT 03:13 They’ve definitely got a brown one.
Scott 03:14 They’ve obviously got a brown one. And according to Keith Erickson, in one of his firesides that I attended, they have a box of seer stones.
GT 03:20 Oh.
Scott 03:21 A box of rocks, as he as he termed it. And I’m like, “Great. I would love to see them. I would love to study them. I’d love to understand anything I can about them.” They were like, “No, no.” And evidently…
GT 03:38 We published a picture, that’s good enough.
Scott 03:40 Yeah, but I guess what frustrated me more than that is, it’s not even in the catalog. So the Church has a catalog of all their artifacts.
GT 03:47 Are these like Hiram Page’s seer stones or Oliver Cowdery? Do we know?
Scott 03:52 What I understand, is that these are seer stones donated by members who want to help the Church. They say [that] grandpa died. He had this seer stone. Here it is.
GT 04:01 Oh!
Scott 04:02 My understanding, and it could be incorrect, but my understanding is this is random Church members, between, maybe, 1880 and 1960 who just said, “Hey, this Church stone is important for Church history. Here you go.”
GT 04:13 Okay.
Scott 04:15 And evidently, there’s a box of them, and they don’t know what to do with them. What they did tell me is that they said that we can’t confirm the provenance of these stones, meaning that they can’t say that it was handed down from A to B to C, which makes it a genuine historical artifact. That’s why they’re not publishing information on them. So that is a plausible reason for them refusing to publish it.
GT 04:37 But they do have provenance for the brown one.
Scott 04:42 Excellent provenance for the brown one; I also have reason to believe that they possibly have the green one, but they’ve denied that one, as well.
GT 04:49 The green one?
Scott 04:50 Yeah. So, Sally Chase…
GT 04:53 Okay.
Scott 04:55 …if I’m getting this right, and there’s so many different sources, that I’m just trying to piece things together as best I can. Sally Chase had a seer stone. You remember the story. Joseph looks at Sally Chase’s seer stone. All he can see is the seer stone that he’s supposed to go dig up, when he looks at her stone. So, he goes off and he digs up his first seer stone, which most historians believe is the white one. But some people disagree.
GT 05:19 Okay.
Scott 05:20 And then after he gets the white one, a couple of years later, they’re digging a well on the Chase property, which some people think they were actually digging for treasure on the Chase property. But regardless, they’re digging.
GT 05:32 Digging for something.
Scott 05:33 They’re digging for something and somebody in the well, [there are] different accounts, [which] say a different person digs it up, but Chase says, “By gosh, it was mine.”
GT 05:43 “It’s on my property. It’s mine.”
Scott 05:45 Yeah, and I think he also claimed to have dug it up. But it was the brown seer stone. Most historians believe that brown seer stone was dug up there. And usually it’s referred to as Chase’s well.
GT 05:58 And that’s the one that Joseph used for the Book of Mormon?
Scott 06:01 That’s the one that most historians believe he used for most of the Book of Mormon. There is disagreement, and that is fair, based on all of the competing quotes.
GT 06:10 Okay.
Scott 06:11 But most historians believe, I believe it’s the David Whitmer account, where he says that after 116 pages were lost, Joseph didn’t use the Urim and Thummim, i.e. the spectacles. At that point, he transitioned totally to the seer stone which…
GT 06:28 I thought that was Emma that said that.
Scott 06:31 There may be multiple people who said it, but the one that I’m thinking of right now, I believe, is David Whitmer. I could be wrong.
GT 06:36 Okay.
Scott 06:38 Yeah. So, after the 116 pages are lost, so all of the current Book of Mormon is translated, probably, with the brown seer stone.
GT 06:47 Okay. And so, if Jonathan Neville were sitting here….
Scott 06:52 Sure.
GT 06:53 What would you say to him?
Scott 06:56 I would say that if you privilege Joseph Smith’s accounts and Oliver’s accounts, and say that they’re telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then your conclusion is correct. Meaning if you only look at those sources, then they are talking about the Urim and Thummim. Those Urim and Thummim are the spectacles. And that’s what Joseph used. But if you trust any or all of the other sources, then you have to come to the seer stone conclusion.
GT 07:27 Why is that?
Scott 07:28 Because they consistently talk about the seer stone and talk about the seer stone as being the only source after the 116 Pages were lost. Early on, it looks like the glasses or the Urim and Thummim were used. It looks like they were used by placing them in a hat. So, they were used the same way as the brown seer stone. But it was the actual spectacles that were placed in the hat. And it appears that at least one of the lenses was removed, and then placed in the hat. And that actually makes a lot of sense. Because if you look at the size of the spectacles, and you look at the size of the hat, they don’t fit in a hat.
GT 08:02 Right.
Scott 08:02 So you have to take the lens out and stick it in the hat if you’re going to use it.
GT 08:05 Okay, so I think you told me about an account that Oliver Cowdery said, about using a seer stone, so tell me more about that.
Scott 08:16 So, it’s not actually about a seer stone, but it is an interesting account. And it does differ from his later account from 1834 onwards. So, there’s an 1830 account, which, bonus, it’s linked in the Gospel Topics Essays.
GT 08:30 Okay.
Scott 08:31 So, if you look in the Gospel Topics Essays and look for links that are not hyperlinked, then you’ll find all sorts of interesting content.
GT 08:38 Okay.
Scott 08:39 One of these is an account by a Shaker, who was just writing in his journal in 1830. ‘Hey, this preacher came to town. He was talking about this new book of Scripture, the Book of Mormon, which was translated from golden plates. The guy who’s the preacher, his name is Oliver Cowdery. He’s the guy who was acting as the scribe,” he said, when this book was written down. The way that he said it was translated was that Joseph looked at these gold plates. Then he stuck his head in a hat, and then the inspiration flowed.’
GT 09:15 Wow.
Scott 09:16 I’m paraphrasing, but that’s roughly what he said.
GT 09:19 Okay.
Scott 09:19 So if you believe this person–
GT 09:22 This Shaker account.
Scott 09:23 Yeah.
GT 09:23 So was it easy to say, “Ah, it’s not Mormon. We can throw that away.”
Scott 09:29 Well, the thing about it is, he didn’t like the Mormons. He didn’t hate the Mormons. He didn’t have any skin in the game.
GT 09:38 Okay.
Scott 09:38 So, he had no reason to hate the Mormons, no reason to love the Mormons. He was just like, ‘Hey, guess what? They came through town. Here it is. Here’s what he said.’
GT 09:46 And 1830 is an interesting year.
Scott 09:49 Yeah, I believe it was late in the year of 1830. So, this would have been one of the very first missions of the Church when Oliver was sent off to convert the Lamanites and on the way, he just preached to random crowds.
GT 10:02 Okay, so this is an account, if you believe it or not, with Oliver Cowdery saying, as early as 1830, [that] Joseph was using a seer stone.
Scott 10:14 Well, he doesn’t say he used a seer stone. But he did say he used a hat.
GT 10:16 Yeah.
Scott 10:17 And he didn’t say that he used these magical spectacles, he said, “it all happened in the hat.” So, based on this account, I hypothesize that Oliver is changing his account over time. And you see this in the record, as well, that the term Urim and Thummim doesn’t show up until 1832. It looks like in the first account, they’re borrowing terms from the Bible, because it’s speculative in the first account, and then later, it becomes more definitive in terms of calling them the Urim and Thummim.
GT 10:46 And Urim and Thummim was biblical, so, therefore, it’s better than a seer stone.
Scott 10:50 It’s totally better. But the other thing you have to keep in mind here is you’ve got the New York saints. Uou’ve got the Kirtland saints. And then later, of course, you have the Missouri groups and things. So, in 1830, all of the saints are from New York. In New York, seer stones are cool, kind of normal. Others have documented it, but a lot of people use seer stones in New York and Pennsylvania, however, not in Ohio. Seer stones are not cool there. Seer stones are fringe, as far as I can tell.
GT 11:22 Okay.
Scott 11:23 So, Sidney Rigdon had a much more mainstream congregation than Joseph Smith had in New York. So, when that congregation is converted to Mormonism, I hypothesize that maybe they’re really not into seer stones. Maybe they don’t believe in seer stones.
GT 11:37 That’s like, 1831, if I remember right.
Scott 11:39 Correct. Yes. I believe that’s correct. It could be late 1830 or 1831. But it’s very early.
GT 11:45 I think Sidney got converted about December of 1830.
Scott 11:49 Sounds right.
GT 11:50 So his congregation [joined] soon after.
Scott 11:51 Yes. What I hypothesize is that at that point, Joseph starts de-emphasizing seer stones, at least with that crowd. And you see that in the Church quote, which the Church likes to use all the time, when they say that Joseph Smith chose not to talk about the seer stone. Because at the first general conference, when they were in Kirtland, Hyrum says, Joseph, tell everybody how the Book of Mormon was translated. And Joseph, according to the record, says, “It’s not meet that I should give you all the details.”
GT 12:02 In order to placate Sidney Rigdon’s congregation?
Scott 12:15 Yes, because if he’s telling the details, he’s going to tell them about the seer stone. And they’re going to say, ‘that’s weird, we don’t believe in seer stones.’
GT 12:32 So this is why E.D. Howe and Philastus Hurlbut, who are Ohio residents and seer stones aren’t cool, published Mormonism Unveiled and say, “Hey, these guys are crazy.” Right?
Scott 12:51 Possibly, that could have been possibly part of their motivation there. The seer stone is mentioned a couple of times in that book, as I recall.
GT 12:58 Right.
Scott 13:01 One of those is Chas’es account, but I don’t remember the other ones offhand.
GT 13:04 Okay. So, you argue that by looking at all the sources, including this Oliver Cowdery source, which I think is pretty cool, that Joseph did use a seer stone. He did use the Urim and Thummim for the lost 116 pages.
Scott 13:23 Parts of that. I think he actually switched very early on. So, I would have to speculate in terms of how many pages, but only a very short time period with Martin Harris, it appears.
GT 13:35 Okay. Because my big thing was, didn’t he use both? And it sounds like that’s what you’re saying.
Scott 13:44 He did use both, but he transitioned very early. And for the current Book of Mormon, what we have, what’s published today, it looks like it was all brown seer stone, possibly white seer stone, but basically seer stone and the hat.
GT 13:56 Okay. It seems like you also talked about that you agreed with Jonathan and Jim. People always kept the seer stone separate from the Urim and Thummim, because that’s one of the things that they argue.
Scott 14:15 Yes, so there is a quote that you can pull up from the late 1830s, early 1840s, where Joseph Smith is showing the seer stone to, perhaps, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, perhaps Wilford Woodruff or whoever. And he probably used the term Urim and Thummim at that time. But, in general, for the early witnesses, for David Whitmer and Martin Harris and them, they always understood them as two separate terms. They always understood them as two separate objects, that the Urim and Thummim was the new name for the spectacles and that the seer stone was separate.
GT 14:48 Okay, so who is the first one that started conflating these two together?
Scott 14:56 B.H. Roberts is an interesting guy. He serves a mission in the UK. He does that because he gets arrested on polygamy charges. And so, he skips town the next day and he’s on a mission. Voila! Which means he’s not in jail. Can you blame him?
GT 15:13 What year is this approximately?
Scott 15:14 This is 1880s. I believe it’s around 1883. But it could be off.
GT 15:18 Okay.
Scott 15:20 But there’s this other guy who’s over in the UK mission by the name of, I want to say Edward Stephenson.
GT 15:26 Okay.
Scott 15:27 He is the same guy who was a convert in, like, 1833, and who knew Martin Harris, and who traveled out to see Martin Harris and to reconvert him to the Brighamite branch, whenever that was, maybe the 1870s? I’m not sure.
GT 15:47 Okay.
Scott 15:48 Anyway, he’s buddy-buddy with Martin Harris, which means he knows all the stories from Martin Harris, including the stories about the seer stone.
GT 15:56 Okay.
Scott 15:57 So I hypothesize, but I cannot show, that Edward Stephenson was the editor of the Millennial Star in the UK. Whether he crossed over with B.H. Roberts, or whether there was a six-month gap, I don’t know. But regardless, B.H. Roberts would have been aware of his writings and things that he’d published in the Millennial Star. Because after B.H. Roberts heads over there, he takes over as the editor of Millennial Star.
GT 16:23 Okay.
Scott 16:23 And so you have an account, which is a faith-promoting account, the story of the brown seer stone and how Martin Harris tested to make sure that Joseph Smith was a real prophet.
GT 16:34 Oh, that’s right.
Scott 16:36 It’s published twice. It’s published once in Deseret News and once in the Millennial Star. The accounts are different.
GT 16:42 Oh!
Scott 16:43 Which is fascinating; because the one in Deseret News, it talks about how Joseph had a stone, which he sometimes used to translate, and how when they needed some time to rest after translation, because translation was a tedious process, they would go out and skip stones. One time they’re skipping stones. Martin Harris found a rock that looked just like Joseph Smith’s seer stone. So, he picks up the rock, sticks it in his pocket, and they go back, and he switches out the stone in the hat without Joseph seeing. Joseph goes to translate. And he’s like, “I can’t translate. What’s the problem Martin?” Joseph said, everything is as dark as Egypt, indicating again, that Egyptian was this mystery language, and which comes in with reformed Egyptian and also comes in with Egyptian with the Book of Abraham later. But regardless, the differences, that I wanted to highlight, between the two accounts, was just the hat. Somehow in the Deseret News account, they happen to not mention the hat anywhere, where it’s mentioned four times in the Millennial Star account. I hypothesize that that was edited out, specifically, because even though they wanted the faith promoting story, they wanted to de-emphasize the hat. It seems like in all the accounts that you see published in Deseret News and in B.H. Roberts’ works, the hat is generally removed from the story.
GT 17:57 Because it just sounds weird?
Scott 18:13 I think so. I think that the seer stone was weird enough, but the hat was a step beyond. There is one mention of the hat in B.H. Roberts’ work from, I believe, 1909, A New Witness for Christ, Volume Two, which has a large section on the translation, which talks about the seer stone. But what I hypothesis is B.H. Roberts had direct information about the seer stones, so he knew that the seer stone story looks legit. And so, because of that, he had to figure out a way to make both stories work. Because prior to that, the Urim and Thummim narrative had been emphasized. And the seer stone had been completely written out of the record between about 1860 and about the 1880s or 1890s. But they start publishing this faith-promoting story because Joseph Smith couldn’t translate with the wrong stone. Therefore, we know that Joseph was really a prophet, because he can only translate with the real stone.
GT 19:12 [Yes.]
Scott 19:13 Well, that means he translated with the stone, right?
GT 19:15 Not spectacles.
Scott 19:17 Exactly. So now they have to admit that there was actually a stone, and they used the stone some of the time. That’s what B.H. Roberts argued. It’s like that stone. It was basically a Urim and Thummim that worked the same way. So Potato/Potahtoe.
GT 19:16 Okay.
Scott 19:17 So, that’s his argument, but he does keep the seer stone narrative alive. It stays alive throughout his lifetime. And then, as soon as he dies, within a year or two, the narrative disappears from all Church literature. So, I argued that B.H. Roberts is the reason that the Church talked about the seer stone between about 1895-ish and 1936, including in Sunday school.
GT 19:53 Okay.
Scott 19:53 There are at least five Sunday school lessons that talk about the brown seer stone.
GT 19:57 From the 1920s or something?
Scott 19:59 Yes, 1920s, and funny enough, there’s this gap of, like, six years where they don’t talk about it. That’s when B.H. Roberts is on a mission and not in Salt Lake.
GT 20:07 Really? {Rick chuckling}
Scott 20:08 Yeah. So to me, that’s pretty compelling evidence.
GT 20:11 That was polygamy mission?
Scott 20:13 No. So, he wrote, what is it, about the Book of Mormon? What is it called?
GT 20:24 New Defense for the Book of Mormon? No?
Scott 20:28 That could be the title. I’m not coming up with the title. But it was first published around 1980, even though B.H. Roberts wrote it in 1920. Do you know what I’m talking about?
GT 20:37 Oh, I know what you’re talking about. I can’t remember the name of it either.
Scott 20:39 Studies of the Book of Mormon, I believe it’s called.
GT 20:42 Okay.
Scott 20:42 Anyhow, he did that. He presented that to the apostles. And it sounds like the apostles were not thrilled with the idea that Joseph Smith had the capacity to write the Book of Mormon. And so they sent him on a mission to the east coast for…
GT 20:54 Six years?
Scott 20:54 Six or seven years. I don’t remember. Yes. And during that time period, they continued to publish Sunday school lessons, none of them talked about the seer stone. And then when he gets back, suddenly, the seer stone stories are there again.
GT 21:06 Okay.
Scott 21:09 Anyway, that’s my working hypothesis, that B.H. Roberts was the main force behind the Church talking about the seer stone during that period.
GT 21:14 And then he dies in 1936?
Scott 21:17 I believe it’s ’36.
GT 21:18 And then we don’t talk about the seer stone.
Scott 21:21 There’s an article the next year by Francis Kirkham, who was a lawyer and who had a brother, I believe, who was maybe a Seventy, but I don’t believe Kirkham was. He was interested in Church histories. He published another book, which had early source material on the Book of Mormon. Anyway, he published something in, I believe, The Improvement Era, an article saying that ‘the only sources we really have for the seer stone is these old guys using old memories. David Whitmer, Martin Harris, can you really trust those guys? We need to really trust Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, the seer stone, this stuff, it’s rubbish.’ I’ve paraphrased, obviously.
GT 22:06 So the Jonathan Neville and Jim Lucas of the day.
Scott 22:10 Yes. So, after that article is published, I think, based on the rhetoric, that he heavily influenced Joseph Fielding Smith. And so, Joseph Fielding Smith, parrots what he said, when he talks about the seer stone in Doctrines of Salvation, saying that, “Yes, it’s true. They had a seer stone, but I don’t believe they used it, because why would you use the seer stone when you got the Urim and Thummim and it’s so much better?’ Again, I’m paraphrasing from Doctrines of Salvation.
GT 22:37 Okay.
Scott 22:38 So, anyway, that’s how I believe the history happened.
GT 22:40 Okay, so from, can we say 1940, until the Gospel Topics Essays in 2015 or so?
Scott 22:50 Yes.
GT 22:51 We don’t talk about seer stones, except for Fawn Brodie and people like that and Sandra Tanner and those sorts of people.
Scott 22:59 Yes, correct. But we do have a few, you have The Friend article in 1974, which talks about a brown seer stone that Joseph sometimes used.
GT 23:07 Okay.
Scott 23:08 That is, in my opinion, the most straightforward and direct acknowledgment of seer stone that the Church did in this whole time period. Beyond that, you have an article in 1979 by Richard Anderson, where he goes through the various theories, and he mentions the seer stone. And then he says, “But let’s listen to Joseph and Oliver. They were there. They would know.”
GT 23:32 Okay.
Scott 23:34 And then after 2005, Jack Welch publishes a book. The title is not coming to me,[1] but it’s basically a bunch of first-hand accounts of the Restoration. And if you read that book, which was published by, I believe, BYU Studies, so it’s not really by the Church. It’s not an official magazine. It’s not anything that normal members would see. But if you’re an enthusiastic scholastic member, you might see it. If you had read that book, you would understand that seer stones were likely.
GT 24:04 Okay. So only to the scholars and aficionados, this is known.
Scott 24:11 Correct. And let me back up just a little bit, because in 1987, D. Michael Quinn published, what is it? The Magical Worldview?
GT 24:21 Yes.
Scott 24:21 Mormonism..
GT 24:23 Early Mormonism, The Magical Worldview.
Scott 24:24 Yes, and in that book, he goes into seer stones in detail. And he says, ‘Yes, this brown stone was a seer stone [that] was used. And this was the way the Book of Mormon was published.” At that point, everyone who was a scholar knew that the brown seer stone was used. After that, another five years and D. Michael Quinn is excommunicated. A lot of people hypothesized that he was excommunicated because of his writings under post-manifesto polygamy. But I think the seer stone also played a role.
GT 24:55 Oh, I thought it was women in the priesthood.
Scott 24:58 Well, yeah, that too.
GT 25:00 He had done a lot to get excommunicated for.
Scott 25:02 Sure. He did. Absolutely. But the reason I think that the seer stone played a role is because, within the next year, there were two speeches given by General Authorities that vaguely mentioned the seer stone, if you know what you’re looking for. One is given by Nelson. The other is given by Maxwell. The one by Maxwell wasn’t widely published until it was published in 1997. But the actual speech was given in ‘92 or 93. So, the timing of this and lining up the timing with Quinn’s excommunication. I believe that they were reacting to Quinn’s publications.
GT 25:09 Hmm. I always thought it was Maxine Hanks’ book, “Women and Authority,” because he has an article in there, Women Have Held the Priesthood Since 1843.
Scott 25:45 Sure. And single-cause fallacy, let’s not go there.
GT 25:50 Yes.
Scott 25:51 There’s lots of reasons why the Church may have wanted to excommunicate him, and was one–is it 40/60, or was it 30/30/30? I don’t know.
GT 25:57 Yeah. Okay. So it could have been a factor is what you’re saying?
Scott 26:01 I believe so. Yes.
GT 26:02 Okay, but the average lay member doesn’t read Michael Quinn.
Scott 26:11 No.
GT 26:12 They don’t read Maxine Hanks.
Scott 26:13 No. And if you say the name…
GT 26:16 Most don’t even know who they are.
Scott 26:17 Exactly.
GT 26:18 And so, really, and well, I mean, it’s interesting, this Friend article coming, because that’s for little kids. Why would they put it there? The adults aren’t going to see that.
Scott 26:29 Leonard Arrington, right?
GT 26:31 Is that who did it?
Scott 26:32 Well, it’s an anonymous article. So, we don’t know who did it. But we do know that Leonard Arrington was in charge of the history department at that time. We do know that D. Michael Quinn worked as an intern there right around that time, as well. I don’t know who did it. But D. Michael Quinn, even from the 1970s was saying, ‘hey, we need to inoculate people.” It’s a term that the Church has started using after 2010. But D. Michael Quinn was using it back in the 70s.
GT 26:58 Okay.
Scott 26:58 He is saying that if you teach the accurate history from the Church’s perspective, then you don’t have to worry about people like The God Makers, because Church members already know the history, and it won’t draw them away from the Church. Which is why I don’t understand why the Church still doesn’t go with a completely accurate history.
{End of Part 4}
[1] The book is titled “Opening Heavens” and can be purchased at
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