So during the full eclipse in April, it just so happens that I was at Adam and Diamond and I say it just so happens. It's funny because we were on a road trip and we had planned to be somewhere in Tennessee when the eclipse occurred or wherever I had plotted out the path of totality and we were gonna
be on a highway somewhere right in, in line with that and come to find out as we were prepping for travel. My wife pointed out that I had made a mistake in our plans that we would actually be at Aaman Diamon during the eclipse instead of prior to it. And um so it just so happens. We were there on that
day instead of another day. I find this interesting. So who else was there? Well, it turns out that there were a bunch of L DS people with one family had brought an overabundance of those disposable eclipse sunglasses, which was good because uh I had asked my wife to sort that out and she did not do
that. And as a backup plan, I had stashed a bunch of regular sunglasses in the car thinking that if we stacked up two of them, it might be enough. And that was woefully inadequate. And I think that there's a lot of symbolism with that as well. But it's interesting that the, this very obviously nice L
Ds man who was so nice that he had thought ahead of time to buy a lot of extra sunglasses. He ended up coming back to us several times because he was picking who to give the glasses to. And he said, he thought our family would appreciate it more than the others because our kids were actually watching
the eclipse. Whereas most of the local kids that were there just couldn't care less. They were just on their phones the whole time and didn't, didn't care. So there was also a group of people there. I saw a lot of Utah license plates. I gather that this place is almost always empty. But, um, there was
a group, uh probably a large group of, of maybe, I don't know, 30 people or something who had, had come there with Utah plates and were in the same group and at least one of them had a show far and was blowing it during the eclipse. And it was so interesting to me because we had come back up from where
we were, we were at a place called Preacher Rock. If you're familiar with the area, that's where we saw the eclipse. And, uh, we walked up when we were ready to go and that's when they started blowing the shofar. And so their backs were to us because we were in the parking lot and they were at the edge
of the lot looking out into the valley and they were blowing this so far and we were walking by and just getting into our car and leaving and I found that very interesting. So, who else was there? Well, well, I was, and I believe that this trip was very serious. Um And it, it's obviously a very serious
place and yet this sign, I couldn't help but crack up laughing. And I thought it was so funny. I had to put it in this presentation because here we are allegedly close to the place where the Garden of Eden was and the L DS church has put up this big old sign that says warning, please stay on the path
. Snakes may be present. And I thought too bad that wasn't there in the beginning. But I guess somebody learned a lesson along the way. So that's good. So stay on the path and stay away from the snakes. Um Why does this place matter? Well, I don't want to go into a huge doctrinal exposition on this.
I certainly don't wanna tell you things that uh where it's not the the right time to do so, but it's a very important place. This is the Google A I summary. Adam Ondi Almond is a place in Daviess County Missouri, that is significant to the latter day Saint Church. Now I'll stop there. It's actually significant
to all Mormon branches, but I'll continue. Now. It is the site where Adam and Eve lived after they were cast out of the garden of Eden and where Adam gathered his righteous descendants three years before his death to bless them. The church also believes that Jesus Christ will meet with his stewards at
Adam and Diam to receive the keys to the kingdom in preparation for his second coming. According to Joseph Smith, I'm sorry, I'm just noticing, I didn't cite this quote, the place where Adam shall come to visit his people or the ancient of days shall sit as spoken of by Daniel the prophet. Now, this
was a recurring theme on this trip to these church sites that there is an obvious disconnect between what was taught early on as eventualities in the gospel plan and what is practiced today. So there is no path from what the L DS church is doing today to what they say they believe is going to happen
later. It's just sort of, well, who knows how that's gonna work out. And so all the things that they do are completely disconnected from what they say will eventually happen. That's not much of a plan, is it if you had a map? And you said, well, we're trying to get to that distant mountain in the over
the horizon and then, and then you ask, well, how are you, what are you doing to get there? Well, we're walking in circles right here. Why? Well, because that's what we feel is very important. It's sacred. Ok. Well, how is that going to get you closer to the mountain? Uh, who knows? But this is so important
and it's just, it's the most wonderful thing to walk in circles. Ok. Well, that doesn't make any sense, Does it? Now, I do want to point out here one thing which is there is a completely incorrect idea uh that even it's so prominent that even the Google summary is, is including it that a group of people
will quote, hand over keys to I, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Uh to that Jesus will quote, receive keys to the kingdom from some group of people. I hate to tell you folks, but um he never lost them, he never lost them. Now, I don't care what version of the story you believe in as far as how Peter or whoever
else ended up with quote authority from Jesus. Jesus did not give away anything. He never does. God never gives away anything when he shares things with other people. I'm not sure where this crazy idea came from, but it's completely wrong. What will they deliver to the Lord at this event? Well, it says
so right before it, they'll give an accounting of their stewardship. Now, this has already happened before and it's a, it's a pattern of something that happens all the time. Not all the time is in every day, but every time there is a person who actually does what we're supposed to do here. What am I
talking about? Well, the, the first time it happened was when Adam met with several members of his posterity and we know at least some of those people who they were because it says so in the scriptures and he met with them, they were not living together. That's a story for another day. But that's also
very clear from the scriptures. So he summoned them and they came and he summoned specific people and there were other people who were not invited. This is all in scripture. OK? And when they all gathered together, the Lord appeared in their midst. Now what was Adam doing? I don't pretend that this is
the full story, but it was the first example of a pattern that we see in other parts of the scriptures. For example, with Abraham. Do you remember when the three beings we don't really know exactly who strictly from the scriptural account, but three messengers from heaven or angels. And some people say
that at least one of those people was the Lord himself. But whoever it was three holy people came to Abraham. And you remember the story, he brought out a sampling from everything in his estate. He got people that were with him to do certain things to produce products that he then brought to these three
people. And what was he doing? He was showing that he had been a righteous steward that he had helped everything under his domain reach the pinnacle of its potential. He was providing proof of that. That's a lot of unintentional alliteration, but he was providing proof proof that everything within his
domain had reached its potential. He got his wife to do something. He had a young man do something. He went and got certain products that had already been prepared and he was showing that he had done well with what the Lord had given him. And I will hear, I think this is the first time I've talked about
this, I might be wrong. I'll here tell you the true meaning of what it is to multiply and fill the earth. If you look at the Hebrew words of this phrase, people think it means to be fruitful and multiply means to have as many kids as you can. That's not true at all at all. It's to bring out the best
in everything in your domain for some people. That'll mean having very few Children or none at all for some people. It will mean having many Children, but it's not a question of even kids alone, let alone number of Children. It's about what you do with what you have access to and what he wants is for
us to help fill the measure of creation in all things to bring everything into the best it can be. And that's what Adam was doing at Adam on diamond. So long ago, he brought the best of his posterity to show the Lord what he had spent his life on and the fruits of it. What will Adam do in the last days
at Aaman Diame the same thing? But it's different in some ways and I won't go into details about that right now, but I'm giving you an awful lot to think about. Ok. Well, let's move on. Now. Here's some loose thoughts. So I told you we were at this place called Preacher Rock. I meant to put a picture
. You can look it up. It's an enormous rock and I spend a lot of time with rocks on my property and I've learned to come to appreciate them. Uh It's interesting that even with a tractor, there are limits to the size of rocks you can lift. Obviously, there are significant lift, uh limits to what you can
lift with your hands. And those vary from one person to another and not everyone has a tractor and not all tractors are the same size. I wish mine was bigger. I don't wish to pay for a bigger one. But hey, so there we were at, at Preacher Rock and that's where we decided to watch the eclipse and we were
watching it and as we were, the kids would take turns at first we only have one pair of sunglasses, but that nice L DS guy just kept giving us more and, um, we were taking turns looking through them and it just, it was interesting because if you didn't have the glasses, you couldn't actually see the
eclipse, not just because you shouldn't look at the sun without special glasses. But even if you tried, you couldn't see the moon, you couldn't see the actual eclipse happening. What you could see was that everything was getting darker slowly subtly. And for me, the most, the most significant difference
was it felt so much colder and in the end it at it didn't get to totality. I think we're at 90% there or something. But at the apex of the eclipse, it was um quite cold. Now, it looked visibly so I was uncomfortable because it was cold. It was that cold. It got that cold where it was nice and springtime
warmy there. Um But it looked like dusk. So you could definitely tell that it was a lot darker than it had been when we got there. But in the meantime, the kids were just running around playing just like kids do, you know, and, and we had done a lot of driving so they had an extra increment of pent up
energy. So they were getting their wiggles out and interestingly, uh I tried to, I was trying to give them little games to play. So that they could get even more energy out so that they wouldn't be all wild in the car. And so I pointed out two trees and I told them to sprint back and forth and to see
who could do it the longest. So they started this and one of the, one of my kids fell and he fell pretty bad. He's a tough kid. He usually doesn't react to pain. Um, and he was, he was having a hard time so he hit his knee pretty badly. There was a little bit of blood. But um what was interesting to
me with all this imagery, it was just an imagery overload was here, we are and somewhere around there, the, the legends go that there were altars or an altar and here's this giant rock which I don't want to get into the topic of altars and rocks, but we, we'll just glance off of it and who knows if this
thing was ever used for anything. But here my kids who don't know any of that, um were jumping on that rock and running all over it, jumping off of it, running all around and it was anything but a reverent sight right now. They were just being kids. They weren't, you know, sacrificing one another or
doing anything crazy like that. But um it was interesting that it made me think about how this place, this place, a very, very important thing happened here and a very important thing is going to happen here somewhere around there. Right. If any of these things we've been told are true. And yet at that
time, the closest thing to it was some random guy blowing a shoar in a group of people that had no clue about anything. And, um, that's just very interesting to me that AAA large group of people trying to do the right thing were actually often in left field and the innocent ones who just don't know any
better are treating it like any other place. Meanwhile, there's this sign happening in the heavens that no, no one can actually see with their naked eye. You need special tools to see it. And there's, it's funny because you can look at the imagery with the guy with the lenses from two directions. One
that an L DS guy is walking around, passing around things to intentionally blind people to block the light right on the other. A random guy is trying very hard. He's gone out of his way to go through all this extra trouble under the anticipation that there will be people he can help to see more than
they otherwise could through what he gives them. And it's just highly interesting and even the people that had come there to see that a bunch of them just couldn't care less to the point that they wouldn't even accept a free gift, even though they were there intentionally on a day where this big eclipse
was gonna happen. I just find that there's so many layers of symbolism there. But anyway, as far as timing goes, it doesn't matter that it's a sacred place until the right people are there and it's the right time. It, it doesn't matter. And it's like a lock. A combination lock has tumblers in it or even
a key lock. There are, there are teeth in the key and those parts of the lock have to be pushed. Everything has to be present in the, in the right place at the right time for that thing to come unlocked. And I just found it to be a wealth of imagery. So, on a final note, you might wonder why I didn't
announce that I was gonna go there. Why not give a talk there? Why not invite anyone who might want to come to come? I thought about all of that because it is a significant day. It was a significant day and it is a significant place and um there are a few considerations there, not the least of which
is, I think with the exception of one trip to BYU, I could be mistaken. But I think this was the first time I've been on L DS property since I was excommunicated. And uh I don't think that it's a good time to get in trouble with L DS people legally. Um I know if I went into a church and spoke during
fast and testimony meeting, for example. Um II, I was informed during the excommunication process that they would seek legal um means to prevent me from speaking on church property if I attempted to, that I, I'm invited to go to church property, but I just can't say anything. So that's interesting. Um
I don't know if that's just limited to, to, to meetings, but I don't believe that I'll ever find out. I just don't care. I don't see myself as doing anything that would, that would cause me to, to learn anyway. Uh, I thought about the fact that it's kind of far off in the middle of nowhere. Uh, in fact
, it's very interesting that, that, to get there, you just drive for miles and miles and miles and there's nothing. And then all of a sudden here's this property. There is more imagery, imagery in that because it's, it's basically unkempt fields for miles and miles and miles and miles a little road until
you get to the site. And then all of a sudden you see that everything is very well kept and there's a sign but it's, you could drive right past it. It's very, not obvious at all. And then once you get onto the property, it's a huge property. And like I said, there are a couple of signs but it is not
well marked. It's easy to not know if you're just on some random person's farm or you're still on the church's property. So that was really interesting because it was not easy to find. But then once you're there, it's not even really obvious that you're there. It's very easy to go off course. And, um
, anyway, so he, there are specific spots there like Tower Hill or Spring Hill that you have to look for. Even once you're on the property, you're not done yet. The search continues. So I found all of that very interesting. But um I thought about who might come if I announced it and it would be people
who live more locally who could more easily get there. And it would be people who are very happy to expend a significant effort to get to things like this. And in neither case is that necessarily the kinds of people that would most benefit from it. And so you, you can actually hurt people by doing things
like that rather than help them because you're inviting people to use their resources in ways that aren't the best for the people who go over the top and you're inviting people who just happen to be local. And it doesn't really mean anything to feel like they're special in some way when maybe they're
not and no offense, particularly to anyone that lives close by. So I decided not to do that. And then as far as saying something, um that's one that I'm not in charge of. And so I asked the Lord if he wanted me to say anything while I was there and there was nothing. So I didn't. But all of these thoughts