Ex-Mormon explains why he suddenly left Mormonism...[after 47 years].

hi my name is Paul Adams and I just wanted to do this really no-frills video I'm 65 years old just turned 65 March the 4th 2018 and I want to do this little video to explain to my friends and family why I decided to send my resignation letter to the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints so that they have a full understanding of why I did it let's start at the beginning I joined when I was 17 years old okay it took me maybe three weeks to investigate the church I was given the discussions by the missionaries a year and a half later I went on my mission to France and Switzerland there I had many experiences wonderful experiences spiritual in nature I was administered to and I administered to others so there were miracles involved and I read the book of Mormon extensively I read it six times I read the Bible twice the doctrine of covenants the pearl of great price I forget how many times but I was a district leader in every town I was in except for the first one Avignon in France and I served a very honorable mission and the only person you could say that I was led to convert was a Jewish man by the name of Robert : okay so fast forward a bit to 1975 a year after I returned back from my mission I went to university pre-med the first year pre-law school the second year and I ended up in Business Administration and the third year I tended to be more of an artsy guy than a business guy I aced philosophy for exam I also did very well statistics and economics so I went on to sell real estate I bought my first home on 10 acres within six months of selling real estate and from there my whole life has been involved in sales okay was a stock broker for eight years project finance Investor Relations for over 20 years I had my own company many ups and downs a lot of downs a lot of downtime I was proposed to twice during my lifetime and I couldn't say no in total I've been married five times I know that's a bit much for some people to to swallow but it is what it is and perhaps all this wouldn't have happened had I not been a member of the church that's moot that's moved so that's me by way of my involvement in the church I have served in every calling imaginable that a man can serve an award with the exception of being a bishop or being a council counselor to the bishopric and I have studied extensively the Book of Mormon up until April the 5th of this year I was in my 53rd read of the Book of Mormon 5-3 ok I know the book among I know it I've studied the the Bible six times during my lifetime cover to cover I've taught the Bible I've taught the Book of Mormon the Doctrine and Covenants and I've studied other books in the church like Jesus Christ the articles of faith the Journal of discourses and I watched conference I was in the last regional State Conference where ironically we were instructed to read the book of Mormon daily pray daily and be of service daily things that I was doing already church in fact four months ago I found somebody a Kenyan brother from Kenya and I introduced him to the Book of Mormon I gave him a copy in English and a copy in Swahili I've worked in the temples I know the ceremony backwards and forwards had wonderful experiences in the temple and I'm not here to denigrate any of those experiences okay I know that the Lord helps those who help themselves and incidentally I should also add you know with my penchant for philosophy I did write a book back in 2000 called G is for God's it's an essay 8 a little booklet which some may consider it to be an apologetic for the Mormon Church it didn't turn I didn't start out that way but it turned out to be an apologetic but in that booklet I used primarily reason rational discussion I did not rely on scripture or historical incidents to come to my conclusions so it's not like I don't have an inquisitive mind it's not like I was born yesterday it's not like I haven't been around the block a few times it's not like I don't know anything about marketing or sales you know and I know the difference between a tie down takeaway and a trial close okay and and I remember when I was a stockbroker we used to have a rule that you know because for one of the companies that work for we were actually market makers so we had bought shares for our own account as stock brokerage firm and then we would resell it to retail clients and so one of the axioms was full true and plain disclosure we had to disclose the fact to the client that we owned the stock and we were selling it to him from our principal position we also had to tell him that this was a speculative stock that there was no guarantees that there was a lot of risk involved you know that there's no stock that goes up in a straight line there's going to be ups and downs and things like that so that the client would not come back to us later and say hey you know what I just found out you're selling stock from your own account why didn't you tell me this material facts had to be disclosed at the outset okay and I think that's the case with most businesses most corporations when they get into a contract with a counterparty they have to disclose their positions full true and plain disclosure and now we're getting to the reason why I left the church it didn't take me very long it took me right after April first when I watched conference and I heard about you know the rearrangement of the priesthood quorums merging the high priest with the elders and also no home teaching no more visiting teaching it's gonna be ministering I'm telling you this so that you understand that I was clued in ok then I'm not making this up as I go along I don't like biessing I don't I really don't and right after April 1st I stumbled upon a little video about the CES letter that somebody had written and it opened up my eyes and one thing led to another I watched other videos I saw their websites I want to thank a few people here who are X norm X Mormons X latter-day saints Gerald and Sandra Tanner for one and Lee Baker and there's a couple others I will note them under the video here so you know who they are but I'm eternally grateful to them for their work their tenacity so long story short I discovered that there were salient material facts germane to the whole proposition that the church is true that were withheld from me and from others intentionally so that the image of the church would not be tarnished so that people would not leave the church so that people would join the church more readily because all this information been presented to me at the outset when I was first investigating the Church of the missionaries at age 17 I can tell you point-blank I would never ever ever have joined a church no way okay so to find out after the fact you know 48 years later it's very painful it's very painful they're people who are up to their eyeballs they're all in there going to you know their temple excursions they've got genealogy that got missionary work they know they're fully invested in the church and this will hit him hard hit him really hard there's a lot of cognitive dissonance that goes on when you are confronted with this the church likes to use parables you know to make a point and so did the Savior Jesus Christ I have a video on here of my near-death experience and my testimony of Jesus Christ but I want to use a couple of parables just to put it into context before I give you the reasons why I decided to sign my resignation letter let's suppose that a man goes in a showroom and he buys a rose Royce from this car dealer whose credentials are unknown and the car dealer promises delivery of the car the following week and when the buyer receives the car he looks under the hood and sees that the the engine is not a Rolls Royce engine it's a Fiat engine and then he does some more research online and discovers that the whole assembly of the car was put together by some nondescript hacks without any mechanical background no certificates so what do you think would be his remedy at this point in time what should the buyer do okay that's the first parable the second parable just to bring it on home here let's say a man has a daughter his only daughter and he gives her to marriage to this one guy mr. Z let's call him mr. Z has a large family now the father being very protective of his daughter he wants to know all about this family and who mr. Z is before they get married and try as he may he cannot find answers you know all he's given is the bright spots of mr. Z's life he stole the family's heritage goes back to royalty and you know everything is hunky-dory pristine clean so they get married mr. Zeeb marries the man's only daughter and years pass and then one day the father gets a letter from the family and the letter is entitled mr. Z's official life history and in it he finds out that mr. Z has been in jail five times for armed robbery pedophilia extortion grand theft what do you think the father should do at that point what is his remedy okay you get the gist of it so when I found out two very salient facts about the history of the church the first one being that the Book of Abraham which Joseph Smith purported to have transcribed from some papyri that described Abraham's journeys and revelations when I discovered that this papyrus which was certified to be a funeral rites papyri by Egyptologists when I discovered that this whole story was bogus that was reason number one and then to add insult to injury when I heard Jeffrey R Holland one of the apostle's of the church explained to BBC exactly why he thought this was coincidental that it had nothing to do with anything when he said that to him you know he's not an Egypt ologist she doesn't know anything about it Egyptian Allah or hieroglyphics and he really doesn't care what the origin of the document contained as long as the translation was Holy Scripture when I heard that I knew I was being caught okay because what he is essentially saying is he doesn't care what the origin of the document is it could be a cake recipe it could be anything as long as it's translated into Scripture how does that make sense to anybody I really don't know and I really don't understand how these men live with themselves I don't I really don't okay that's that's number one very crucial and then to learn about Joseph Smith's personal life you know they say character is everything you know Bernie Madoff made off with with a lot of money he's not going to start a church anytime I'm soon based on his character is he now Joseph Smith apparently these are verified accounts from journals he was married to over 40 wives the number is in material over 40 over 50 over 60 it doesn't matter it's how he was married to them the circumstances in which he was married 11 of these women were married to living men these were not deceased men these were living men so they were already married and he married them not only did he marry them but he did it behind his wife his back Emma's back it was all done secretly some of these women were even threatened that if they did marry Joseph Smith they would be forever damned eternally and their families would be turn Allah damned so that's coercion right there and to boot he also married a 14 year old and these are just records that we have found there's probably other records that haven't been found yet okay and then to delve into the book of warm a little bit more deeply and find out that entire sections of the Book of Mormon are nothing else than paraphrased paragraphs from a historical book that was probably read by Joseph Smith at the time and then to realize that some of the themes in the book Ramon were prevalent during his lifetime to realize that Nephi his first dream was nothing else but a transliteration of Joseph Smith's father's dream to realize that a lot of the scriptures that are quoted from the Old Testament are nothing more than word-for-word plagiarism of the King James Version with all its flaws to realize that all this was done to create the illusion of a text a sacred text and to also realize that he never actually took the golden plates as a reference point to translate them but actually had to simply look into a hat and look into this seer stone a round brown stone and that this is how he translated purportedly the Book of Mormon by looking into a hat and focusing on the stone is beyond the pale now I've already had my my moments of you know angst anger and it and this is just the first three okay this is just the first three that there's there's other minutiae that we can talk about at this point you know any other topics like priesthood to the blacks is moot anything to do with priesthood is moot because there is no record of the priesthood being restored there are no dates in fact the book of Commandments which was then transcribed into the dr. and covenants makes no mention of any priesthood restoration at all at all at all this I find out only now and for the church leaders to tell us that well church historians and church leaders have known about all this all along is Mufasa t'v that there was a concerted effort to conceal material facts because if they had known about this all along they should have disclosed it in General Conference State Conference in Sunday school classes it should have been front and center because these are material facts so my question to you is what should be my remedy I lost forty-eight years of my life I've invested time money and effort into this organization I feel like I've bought a Rolls Royce with a nice looking exterior but with a Fiat engine okay that's all I have to say there are some truths that are still valid truths no matter how you approach them whether by logic or by prayer and this is thankfully this is why I think the Lord had me write this little book G is for God's because by logic I have arrived at basically the same conclusions that the Mormon Church has arrived at and and you know the fact that there's eternal progression the fact that we can become as gods you have to realize the church has some very interesting aphorisms that the it uses to propagate its culture it's as many as God once was and as God is man may become truth is reason truth eternal and the glory of God is intelligence so these these are what propel it forward and give it the aura of authenticity of course you know the name of the church that the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints is self-evident you know it's it's it's a great caption and all these all these hooks baits are meant to lead one into the church to suck them in and then hopefully they will not find about the more salient salacious details that the church has in its history and I find that very disturbing very disturbing as for me I'm not interested in any kind of organized religion I'm looking forward to the second coming of Jesus Christ and I love them I know he has paid for all my sins he is the Redeemer of the world the Son of God that I know that will never change

Channel: 444age

Views: 298,949

Rating: 4.1649075 out of 5

Keywords: mormonism, lds church, joseph smith, mormon missionaries, book of mormon, book of abraham, book of moses, pearl of great price, polygamy, polyandry, gospel topic essays, mormon apostates, mormon temples, lds doctrine, mormon church, mormon stories, sandra tanner, general conference, exmormon, ex-mormon, anti-mormon, mormon apostate

Id: C4DiLjSHwY8

Length: 25min 21sec (1521 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 20 2018