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So, uh I just made a video, it's gonna be part one of a playlist here. So check that out. If you haven't seen it, it's much more important than anything I'm gonna say in this one. But if you have watched that one and you're continuing on, here's an addendum. So, uh I just wanna show you a little bit of uh a selection of some of the books that I've studied uh and trying to get to know more about Joseph Smith. Now, of all of these, I think that the most I've gotten out of is the book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl. A great price and the words of Joseph Smith. Now, this one's out of print, it's actually a bootleg copy. There are some PDF S floating around out there. Uh But if you can't find one, you'll be able to find that these books were absolutely instrumental in my journey towards God. And uh I think it's a shame that so much is available and so little of it is used and appreciated . Um If you dive into those and feast upon them and get something out of it and align your life totally to that. You may get to the point where you're ready for more Joseph uh said that he had revealed very little uh of what God had taught him to the public. And so even with this wealth of information , we have very little uh as uh compared to what he knew and taught. And so where do we go from there? Um As you dive into these things, the answer is God, that's where you go from there. Um But I wanna help you with something because as you dive into these things, what is going to happen and you won't be aware of it necessarily uh you the way our understanding works. Uh We have these phenomenal brains that God gave us and quickened by the spirit. There's so much that we can understand. The problem is that our understanding is uh much more shunted than we can realize by our present beliefs. And so often this is why in the book Mormon, it speaks again and again and again about um the harm that false traditions can have. And, and uh it, it uses that to explain how hard it was to teach certain people certain things. So um my journey, as I was studying all these materials and more um many books I don't own. Um I came to compile AAA list of questions that I had because what I was reading uh from the words of Joseph Smith, uh differed in some ways from what I was being taught at church or what we can soften that even to say what I had heard through church. So, in, in uh L DS culture, we'll say . And um whenever uh contradicting ideas present themselves, the possibility is possibilities are that one is right and one is wrong or that they're both wrong. So, um the solution is to figure out which one is right or to find something better if they're both wrong. And for anyone from a Mormon perspective background, that should sound very familiar because it's exactly the process Joseph Smith went through when uh he was searching for greater light and truth before the first vision. So, um the problem is that as you ask for more information, you pray about these conflicts that you see, you are not going to be aware of just how, um how overwhelmingly shunted that your thinking is on these topics because of your, your uh sort of spiritual muscle memory that you've developed through tradition. And um you will not be able to see very clearly um uh things that you believe or even passively. I'm not saying necessarily that you've studied them out, but you, you won't be able to sense just how deeply these things affect you thinking and they block you from considering what God would tell you if you were more open minded. Now, all of this, it will raise red flags in the minds of people um who expect that . What I'm about to say is something crazy. I'm not saying anything crazy. I'm saying you open up teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith and it says something about, I don't know the Holy Ghost or priesthood or you know any of these topics that you're very um familiar with as far as words go, but you'll see ideas that you've never heard before and, and some of them are gonna conflict what you've heard or what you, what you sort of uh your preconceived notions about these things like, like revelation. Can you get revelation on any topic or just some topics? So, so no, Mormon bats an eye at uh praying about who you should marry. But uh are you allowed to pray about things like what is the gift of the Holy Ghost mean or um any other sort of doctrinal question that is absolutely completely relevant to your eternal state uh or is that prescribed for only certain people in the church to be able to know and you just have to trust in them? So, um it's things like that. I'm not talking about some secret doctrines or whatever. It's just stuff that's in the scriptures, stuff that's in the teachings of Joseph Smith. And you just won't realize how um siloed, what you're willing to consider is uh as you read these things. So what happens is, um people get exposed to things. Um You know, we're in the internet age and these things are jarring because they're so far from what they've heard before and they have no foundation to be able to process that information. And it opens up a huge gap where nefarious people can leverage the information differential to steer you into uh evil, wickedness, unbelief, apostasy in the true sense. Turning away from God. Right? And um this is a tool of Satan in information differentials. So he knows more and he uses that to um if you think about like Eden, he uses that to selectively expose people to information, but he picks and chooses just the things that he knows are going to be too much for them and to steer them in the wrong direction. Whereas if they knew the full picture, it would be much harder, right? And that's one reason we, we can't be saved in ignorance. We'll be overcome by anyone who knows more than us, right? Any who um as these topics collected through my study, uh I felt inclined to take notes because I'm trying to learn things and as my notes compiled into more and more, um it struck me that very few people were going to take that kind of time and have access to those resources. I was actually a student at BYU at the time uh grad student. And so I had access to that library. It's the largest collection of Mormon literature in the world. And so it dawned on me that uh I was compiling something that might be useful to someone else. And so I actually want to read , um, the beginning of this is the pre this is from the preface of a, of a book I wrote summarizing these notes. It says, uh I can't think of anything I'd want to do less than write this book. The idea first came into my mind as a result of a conversation I had with a family member, I was making a poor attempt at summarizing dozens of hours of research on a gospel subject. So I was just one subject of all the stuff I was studying at the time trying to persuade him to arrive at the same conclusion I had come to. He said to me, in effect, you can't just refer me to books. I'll never read. I don't have time to study these things just because you say I should and I'll say, and it, this is the problem as information gets more complex, the path to finding out the truth gets harder. And the reason is because there's a lot to look at and very few people are willing to take the time. And then uh a certain degree of, um, processing ability has to be present, to be able to get through it all and, and put it all together. It's a, it's a skill of reasoning and logic in that conversation. And in subsequent others, I realized that people's beliefs are not simply binary uh switch it. That's a typo. It should be a simple binary switch, but a complex multi layered web, a mixture of facts, faded, recollections and highly charged emotions injecting new evidence, particularly conflicting evidence into this web is like knocking a perfectly balanced fast rotating drum. It's really going to mess things up. It's not a light thing to wrestle with well-established belief systems. My relative was right. I could not expect people to consider significant changes to their belief systems without an exceptionally well crafted and succinct argument. Such an argument is very difficult to achieve in conversation. As you can tell by this video, a book would be required both for the length of the content and also the degree of organization needed. I knew from the onset that I would need to revisit years of notes from gospel study originally written for myself to add the missing detail necessary for others. I knew I would have to reread a shelf worth of books and spend countless days googling topics that I hadn't taken complete notes on. I knew I would need to spend significant efforts developing my ability to phrase things in a way that would allow honest evaluation without outright dismissal, tactfully dodging emotive landmines to permit rational thought to occur in a sea of trained predisposition. So the more significant your web of beliefs and the stronger your emotions about them, the harder it is to crack into that nut to give you any more truth than you already have. And it doesn't matter how true the truth is actually, the more true it is the harder it is to get into your your web. And so God faces all these challenges and in going through these ideas and in talking to people like this relative of mine, it became very apparent to me that there is an immense danger. So this, this was in 20 I think I wrote this in 2014 when it was all done. So I started before that um years before that fact, um because it took quite a while to write. But back then, there weren't massive numbers of people leaving the Mormon faith. And I say Mormon faith, I know the L DS church doesn't like that these days. But, but in all these, these videos, I'm not speaking just to the L DS church. Any, any faith that claims the authority or ideas, beliefs of Joseph Smith. I'm talk it all the shoe fits all of them. So, um but anyway, um so the, the L DS church doesn't like the term Mormon anymore, but that's what I'm using is the blanket , all people who believe in the book of Mormon and who believe that their church uh was established by Joseph Smith. So, um back then, there weren't masses of people leaving the Mormon faith. And um we were just at the beginning of the, the internet explosion of church history that no one had ever heard about and which they heard a lot of different things about from official sources before the real stuff came out and then, you know, I'm not saying everything that came out. Like I've got all these books here. They're not all original or correct. Right. There's, even the history of the church has been changed after the fact, um, you know, rough stuff, rough stuff, rolling, rough stone, rolling. Some people call it that. Uh it, it, it's a very, it's got a perspective. OK. Um So, so my personal view is, um if you want to reason something out, you need to hear it from the perspective of the person that believes it. Um But anyway, the point is there's a lot out there and it absolutely overwhelms people and I saw it that early before. There was really tons of evidence for it happening. I said, man, the internet is going to make this stuff get out there and it's not gonna be here. Seven volumes, read it and decide for yourself. It's gonna be, here's a cherry picked sentence. Now your faith is destroyed because you don't have all the context and you haven't spent the time thinking about it. So I wrote this book, Teaching For Commandments, The Doctrines of Men. It's a thick book. Uh It's, let's look at it. There's tons and tons and tons of footnotes. I'd say probably 35% of the book is footnotes and they're put on the page so you can read it as you read the book. Uh It's not just like, take my word for it because no one's ever gonna check at the end of the book. Um And the point of the book was to say, as a thesis, there are traditions in the Mormon faith that are interpreted as doctrine from God, but they're not doctrine from God. And they're nestled among extremely valuable actual doctrines from God. And if you don't know the difference, you're going to be in big trouble when someone confronts you with evidence that that tradition uh where it came from or how it differs from the actual uh words of God as in scripture uh in the revelations received by Joseph Smith. So that was the, the thesis of this book was uh maybe something can be done to help people navigate the situations that are going to occur. So they don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. The book's not an expose, there's nothing like that in there that I know of. It's merely a summary of a whole lot of history and a lot of scriptures. It's more scripture than, than history uh to try to help people understand that even ideas that they treasure and value as what they would describe as the core of their faith might not be the core of what Joseph Smith revealed might be quite different from it. And you have to, you have to prepare yourself to tie yourself closer to God himself and not be so reliant upon people because people are flawed and they make mistakes. And here's a whole bunch of ideas and here's where they came from. So it's not just, hey, here's the idea and here's what scripture says about it and there's a difference. So what are we gonna do about that? It goes through the history to trace. Who's the first person that said anything about this? What were the circumstances? And the amazing thing I was amazed by it about uh les church history today is that there are so many resources that for a whole lot of topics, a whole lot of ideas, you can actually dig down to who was the first person to talk about this. And there is a likely source somewhere in a diary or something where they talk about where they got that idea from and then that's the shocker. OK. So spoiler alert is that um there are ideas that are perpetuated as doctrine from God that the authors of those ideas never claimed were revelation and often explained that they were just their own ideas. But over time, they were promoted into the status of revelation. And you will be shocked if you haven't looked into this as to exactly what topics fall under that heading. And that was the point of the book because so many people, even then I saw it was gonna come. So many people are fleeing the Mormon faith for what they call faith crisis, historical crisis, whatever. And it's just because they're ignorant of the faith, they profess and if they actually knew the background and ideas of what they believe and they lived it, it would be a non-issue. Right . So that brings us to the elephant in the room. So, um, how'd that go, Rob? Well, um, before I get to that I just wanna like uh read. Uh But by the way, let's just pan through this. Sorry, I didn't script this. But if you, if you go through this, let's see if I can angle this book and do this one handed . So look at the, can you see this? Uh uh jeez, this is not gonna be easy. Look at the table of contents. Um I'm not sure if that's reversed, mirrored or not. Uh Man, this is really limited but look introduction, searching for further knowledge, persuasion and argument, revelation. No poor among them . Uh The preeminence of Joseph Smith's teachings, the gospel of Christ apostasy, le of Pharisees prophet title or description. Church history temples follow the prophet witnesses. Lord chosen people. Where do we go from here? There's nothing ridiculous about like it's not like, let me tell you about the secret of like polygamy and we'll live this thing and let's all wait for a spaceship behind a comet or something, right? And then you flip through this. Let's see if we can do that. Uh It's not, it's not gonna be easy. Ok? I was hoping to hit some chapter headings and stuff. Good grief. This is gonna be like a blind man who designed this phone that you can't flip it around. Um, look, I'll just read some of the headings. All right. Truth can come from anywhere. Boy, that should, that should shake some people up. Huh? Unbelief. True doctrine bears fruit. I'm just flipping through the book. I don't have this marked revelation is information, not emotion. Um Real revelation frequently causes negative feelings, uh respect of persons. That's on the chapter about caring for the poor living president versus dead prophet. What else do we have here? Sorry, I'm doing this one handed. This really isn't ideal but welcome to real life. Uh Can't find another chapter heading. Suppressing history. That's an important one, misrepresenting history. Ok. So there's not really anything that should, should rock too many boats as far as the chapter headings. Um But you know, I'm sure there are some in here that would um but let's, let's skip to the last section of the book and I'll wrap this up. Ok. So the last chapter is called, where do we go from here? It's like, ok, so there are some, there are some things that we took as doctrine that maybe aren't so doctrinal. But what do we do about it? So, um I'm just gonna skip through this. It's a short chapter, but I'm one handed and you didn't watch this video to have me read you this book. Um All right. So, uh what's the advice at the, at the end of the book? What's the point? Um I wrote, stop listening to men. They don't control your eternal salvation. Only God does that. Your task is to find and obey God's word, not man's word. The distinction is of utmost importance and something you need to take responsibility for because you will be held accountable. Give heed to what Joseph restored. Read the book of Mormon. Pay attention to what it actually says and try to forget what you've been told. It says, study what Joseph wrote and spoke, find it online. Find it in words of Joseph Smith or the Joseph Smith papers project. Study the other scriptures. Don't forget the Old Testament. It's not earth shattering advice. I mean, that really shouldn't bother anybody . Right. Well, I got excommunicated for writing this. I was pulled in by my state president and he said, you need to either retract this book or we have to uh hold a trial for your membership. And I said, I don't understand. I said, uh you know, I'm not a historian, but I spent a lot of time on this . Is there anything in this that's wrong? Because if I've made mistakes, I would gladly correct them. But, you know, as I went through this project, it became more and more apparent that this was something that God wanted me to do. And I can't not do this because if I pull it, I will feel like I'm breaking a commandment from God to me. But if there's anything wrong, I will immediately change it. And he said, I haven't found anything wrong in this book. And I said, then I don't understand why are you not only asking me not to, to publish it, to pull it from publication, but I mean, you're giving me a pretty big threat here. And he said, um, he said, nothing you've written is wrong. And frankly, I agree with a lot that you've written in this book. I wish more members would understand these things, but you can't name names. I said, what do you mean? Because I quote general authorities to represent, you know , what people actually believe today, what's actually being taught today? He said, that's right. If you hadn't quoted them, you wouldn't be in any trouble if you just paraphrased the idea and said, members believe this today. You wouldn't be in any trouble. I said, look, I have talked to enough people about these ideas that I know that this is what they do. Step one, they say there's nothing wrong with believing Xyz. And then when you show them that there is something wrong with believing Xyz or you know that it deviates from what, what God said, step two is to say, well, no one believes Xyz it happens every single time if I did that, if I blurred out the details and just did the straw man, people believe this and we shouldn't, everyone would read that book. They would believe Xyz. They'd see the arguments against XYZ. They'd say I don't believe Xyz and no one believes Xyz. And then they'd just go on doing XYZ for the rest of their lives. You have to pin it down. You, you, it's like a, you know, asking the ancient prophets to call people to repentance without mentioning the sin. It's like, well, we don't have to name names. We don't have to actually say what people are doing. Just tell them to be better. It's like, well, that's not good enough because they all think that they're being better right now. You have to show them exactly what you're talking about. You have to pin it down. Well, that wasn't good enough for him. And if you want to read the, uh, I, I can't call it a transcript but after the trial, uh I wrote down everything I could remember about what was said and you can read it on my blog. OK. Why does any of that matter? As I started this by saying, there are so many blocks that while you believe these things, you can't actually believe God. That's what it comes down to. And uh while you don't believe certain things, you can't actually believe God. And, um, people need to realize that those, that a lot of the things that they believe fall into these categories. And if you can't get past that, you're absolutely limited in, in, uh, how close you can draw to God and what you're going to believe when he tries to tell you, you're gonna just sweep it away and not listen. And even if he sent you an angel from heaven, you wouldn't listen. And it definitely, if he sends you an angel on earth, a mortal messenger, uh, you're not gonna listen because you're gonna say, well, if that's true, the church would have told me and if that's true, the church wouldn't tell me this and that, which they've told me that contradicts what you're saying. So, um, if you are of a Mormon background, I believe that this is the most important book you can read. And the reason for that, the reason I would put it ahead of this one and even these is because you will not believe what this says until you believe that it might say something different than what the church is telling you. If this is not what you take as the truth, then what else matters. God's word is what matters. But the problem is you can read this 1000 times and your mind will skip over all the parts that are contradictory, contradictions to what church has taught you. They'll skip right over them. And that's not to say like what I would say. They mean, I mean, what the holy ghost is trying so hard to tell you and it's plain, it's not some crazy interpretation. It's, it's radical thoughts like you are actually responsible to help people in need. You can't just pawn it off to the church. You're not clear from that by paying tithing to the church radical thoughts, right? But you can read that every time and then you'll walk right past a a homeless beggar like thousands and thousands of people do on Temple Square every single day. I used to go to the temple all the time. There. I lived right there happened all the time and I wanna tell you something, I didn't mean to get into this, but I'm gonna say it. Uh while I was, at that point in my life, I met a friend of a friend and we were over his house. He was just chatting very spiritual guy, faithful member of the church, um high priest, whatever, older guy wise man. And he says he starts going off about what I just mentioned, the beggars on Temple Square. And in my mind, I thought , well, there's homeless shelters, there's this, there's that it's not, you know, whatever, these are just uh whatever. And I'm ashamed that I thought that, but I'm telling you what I thought. And so I had this wall and then he started quoting scripture and I felt so convicted immediately, just stand . There was the living room. And I said, Lord, I am so sorry, I will never do that again. And what this guy was inviting me to do without inviting me to do it was uh to treat these people like human beings. So you don't have to give them money. You know, you don't have to stop what you're doing and make it your life's purpose to help them. But like why don't you know what their names are? Like if you go to the temple three times a week and you see the same people three times a week, you could at least know what their names are and say hi to them. And so I said, I promise God, I said every time I come , I'll introduce myself to one person and I'll talk with them for a minute before I go into the temple and then through time, like, I'll know these people and then I'll know if there's a new person and I'll, I'll be able to see if there's anything I can do to help. And so I started doing this and I don't want to tell you the whole story, but I met an angel who was there on Temple Square and he was uh he was disguised as a homeless person. And uh well, I mean, look, if you want experiences like this, you've got to actually believe what's in here. You gotta read King Benjamin and say, you know, we need to do something about people that need help and uh we need to care about people, right? And that, that's not like I'm not just saying like, hey, uh lovey dovey be kind to everyone. I there's so many doctrines in there and it's already too long, but you gotta cut the anchors off of your understanding and let God teach you, let God teach you what He needs you to know. Don't just outsource your faith to other people. They can't save you. Only Jesus can now you can learn more about Him through other people that know Him better than you. I'm not saying that that's not the case, but they don't have it figured out for you. It's on you. You have to know Him. Eternal life is not to know someone who knows Jesus. It's to know Jesus. So go get to know Him and you won't be able to do that till you cut the strings. All right. There's one more video to make. I'm gonna split it though.