Warren Jeffs vs. Joseph Smith - Mormons and Ex-FLDS Respond to Keep Sweet on Netflix - 1616

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of mormon stories podcast i am your host john dolin i am joined by the amazing jen camp hey jen thanks for joining us you excited for today ah yeah very excited yeah we have a really really special uh episode planned and it's actually possibly a series of episodes um and let's just jump right into it uh many of you will know that netflix has been airing a series called keep sweet pray and obey which is about warren jeff's and the fundamentalist church of jesus christ of latter-day saints which is kind of an offshoot of the mainstream salt lake city-based uh church of jesus christ of latter-day saints and they're known for a lot of things but mostly they're known for the modern day practice of polygamy which um at least in a legal temporal way the the utah-based lds church um doesn't doesn't officially practice um and we've covered uh polygamy here on mormon stories podcast recently several episodes with sandra tanner and in the show notes we'll have other past episodes where we've been covering polygamy on mormon stories but um this keep sweet pray and obey uh is an amazing four-part documentary it's basically four parts four hours and it's heart-wrenching and i i personally am experiencing mormon documentary fatigue um there's been the under the banner of heaven uh documentary on hulu which i have not seen yet frankly because i haven't had time and because um it's such a depressing saddening sickening topic for me i just haven't had the time or the stomach to watch it but so many people are watching that what i've been focusing on prior to keep sweet is the teal swan um the deep end documentary that's on hulu and that's about this new age guru teal swan who grew up in utah and who was heavily influenced by uh mormonism and now she's got a following of millions of followers and uh what we believe are some really dangerous practices and teachings and now we're uh you know we're also watching keep sweet and um and it's you know margie said hey john when you start the episode tonight can you please just tell your viewers and listeners to practice self-care that these documentaries can be so traumatizing so emotionally heart-wrenching and triggering that you need to just invite people to take care of themselves pace themselves jen you're nodding your head yeah yeah there's some there's some particularly for me it was this one um sweet keep sweet praying obey that even some images that came home to the tv um like almost had me like sick to my stomach so yeah it's a it's a tough one so i would i would definitely do what margie says yeah yeah so pace yourselves practice self-care uh margie booked me for a massage on saturday that's how worried she is about me and that's not normal i don't normally do massages but margie's like you need a massage anyway um so that's what we're gonna be talking about today um but um we're gonna kind of have uh our own angle because you know there are probably lots of youtube channels or podcasts that are talking about keep sweet and so we we thought about what's something that we can do that might be different or might be interesting and kind of a mormon story's angle and what we decided we wanted to do for at least this part and we may have multiple parts where we talk about keep sweet because i think it's it's meaty enough to warrant multiple episodes what we want to do today is focus on the question you know to what extent is warren jeff's we want to talk about how awful warren jeffs was as a human and as a prophet and is but we also want to answer the question to what extent was joseph smith the founder of mormonism and technically the founder of the flds church to what extent was joseph smith like warren jeffs because if you think about mainstream mormons i mean if you think about the way the lds church wants the rest of the world to think they you know the the lds church leadership want mainstream mormons to think that no two people could be more different than joseph smith and warren jeff's to the lds church it's like jesus and joseph smith as the most righteous people who've ever lived and then warren jeffs is one of the most evil awful people on the earth and so if you talk to your average mormon or frankly probably your average non-mormon they don't really make a connection between joseph smith and this awful guy in federal prison named warren jeffs and so for this for this um first discussion or review of keep sweet we're gonna we're gonna analyze that we're gonna analyze warren jeff's behavior and we're gonna kind of contrast that and so jen and i are are going to represent mormons i was 45 years sixth generation born and raised mormon served a mission 45 years as an active uh mormon pretty much faithful i i mean i had lots of doubts and eventually i lost a lot of faith but i was a i was a devout mormon until basically i was 45 with you know some small exceptions to that jen how long were you um faithful active lds um until i was 43 yeah um which was about a year and a half ago yeah and yeah active every week brought my kids up that way and um was very devout yeah until one day but you'll hear my story later yeah but i know polygamy is a big part of that for you so so jen and i are going to kind of represent um the uh lds church and who's going to represent the flds church well we're super excited to have with us today um sam and melissa from the amazing youtube sensation channel growing up in polygamy um hey melissa thanks so much for joining us thanks for having us thank you for having us yeah we're super thrilled to have you we had you guys earlier this week to do a long form interview focusing on sam's story growing up flds but melissa we were able to get a good chunk of your story in there too um but you guys have 21 more than 21 000 subscribers to your youtube channel and you've only been around like two years is that right yeah like a little less than two years yeah it's been crazy it's been a whirlwind did not expect it to grow that fast yeah so and i enjoyed i want to introduce you as well but sam and melissa well first of all we want to tell our viewers and listeners that on monday just in a couple days we're going to be releasing like a six seven hour interview with with sam and melissa and it's i learned so much that i didn't even know i did too even even stuff that i didn't learn from this documentary yeah i learned stuff i didn't know like like like flds kids put on garments when they were eight when they're baptized when they're baptized go to their wrists and ankles i had no idea yeah neither yeah so anyway we learned so many cool things look for that as a following episode but sam and melissa if you guys had to like describe your story in literally like 60 seconds what how would you describe just kind of your story and who you are knowing that we're going to be talking about that more in depth in in the next episode yeah so um i grew up uh in the flds community in hilldale colorado city otherwise known as short creek and uh i lived there until i was 18 years old at that point i chose i was not one of the ones that was kicked out i chose to leave the community because i wanted a different life for myself uh and uh yeah so at that point i mean i don't know how much more you want information a little bit more give a little bit more give a little bit okay yes okay so uh at that point i was introduced to the mainstream lds church in st george utah and i did go on to join the lds church after joining one year later this is a very short version one year later i served a mission full-time mission in chile and then it was after my mission that melissa and i met yep and i was raised lds and um yeah and sam and i met and got married in the st george temple and the first half of our marriage were just very super faithful and doing all the things lds until we started our own faith journey together and you'll find out how that ends i guess on monday and really quickly what's your channel just generally about yeah so it's uh i mean the the name growing up in polygamy it's a lot about my experiences growing up in polygamy we do tie some similarities because melissa grew up lds and i joined the lds church later on so we do tie some of the similarities and differences between the two churches as well but it's kind of sharing my experiences and also we like to bring on guests as well that can share their experiences like joanna here she was on our uh we were lucky enough to have her on our channel and and other people as well that will come and share their experiences as well and i think overall our kind of go with it other than to just share this unique lifestyle that they were raised and born into is also to kind of share compassion and let people know that you know you can look at the flds you can look at this keep sweet documentary or any other documentary you can see that lifestyle and think that is crazy i cannot believe that anybody could think like that live like that um but when you hear the stories of sam or joanna and you hear their stories growing up more and more people are realizing that they can relate and that there are similarities to you know mainstream christianity or to um the mainstream lds church and can realize that these aren't some strange crazy people that they were regular people that were doing the absolute best they can and so i feel like building compassion for people who are um in those communities and realizing that those people are good people just doing the best that they can and not the crazy fanatic that you see in war and jeff's yeah beautiful beautiful okay well we're so honored to have you and we're so excited for uh the the interview next week um now you are joined by someone who i've never met before and i'm really excited we wanted to make sure kind of that a male um representative of the flesh church was available but also someone who had kind of the woman's perspective joanna can welcome to mormon stories and can you tell us a little bit about yourself yes thank you i'm joanna fisher i'm 21. i got out of the flds when i was 17 so i was in for 17 years and the underwear thing believe it or not later on we were required to wear that from probably five like i grew up wearing it my whole life until i got out and so the whole thing like through i guess the splits and people leaving and you know the united order and the lifting up and the raid in texas like i lived in short creek at the time which is colorado city in arizona and hilda utah of course but uh i grew up there and i went through all that i was 11 when they did the whole like united order some people are members some people are not and just it got really crazy towards the end and i think like sam would left before that let me see how old were you i just missed it yeah well i missed some of it i think i would have been like seven when you left yeah or something like that so she's my cousin by the way yeah and i got out and i just i got out because i chose to i want to choose the person i married i wanted to take control of my life and that is my reason for getting out did you did you leave after you may have just said this so did you leave after warren was incarcerated yes he would have been incarcerated i think i would have been like five at the time five or six yeah so she was in for 12 more years of him being in prison and she she has a lot of the um the stories when things really got crazy a lot of the rules that warren came up with in his in his prison cell yeah okay and he would call in from prison like in the meetings right up until like through eight and nine and ten he would call in for hours we would have meeting until eight o'clock at night sometimes because he would he was able to call in that time and we would just listen to him talk from jail wow well i can't wait i can't wait to jump in and just hear hear your perspective so um uh anything else you guys want to say or stipulate before we start are you guys ready to jump in yeah i mean i would just say that uh i mean kind of like it's always been for our youtube channel um our goal never is to necessarily bash on other people's beliefs and ideas of what life should be like but it's more to open open other people's eyes and help people understand better from a different perspective you know i mean it's just i mean just telling the facts there is a lot of similarities between warren jeffs and joseph smith and and i can tell you a long list of that based on what we were told growing up and they would write joanna they would tell us hey warren is just like joseph smith because of this this this and this and we can get into that later but uh just just so that everyone knows we're just here to to share the facts and that was actually what i was going to share as well is that um not only just sharing facts but one of the reasons why we thought this was like an important uh discussion panel to have is some people may look at it as oh we're trying to draw these conclusions to make you know joseph smith look bad but really warren jeff's constantly compared himself to joseph smith and so the comparison really comes more from the feldia side where they're constantly comparing and we felt like it was important for people to realize that the things warren was doing how he justified it was oftentimes through using the image and the precedent set by joseph smith yeah and i think another thing to mention like people that were there we did not know why he was in jail we were told that he was falsely accused we had no internet connection we had no outside connection really so for us we didn't even know what was actually going on so people watch these documentaries and they watch these things but for me i i didn't even know why i was in jail until months after i left because we believe like we're taught that he is god on earth to us he is god's mouthpiece and so he is the prophet to us even like even if he's in jail he was falsely accused and it was the devil trying to put down god's work that's what we were told yep love it super helpful okay so um for those that i'm sure there's gonna be a few people who listen to this um and and have not yet seen the documentary and if they have they won't even understand the difference between the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints and the fundamentalist church of jesus christ of latter-day saints so i'm going to ask one of you to do something almost impossible which is to kind of summary summarize the the schism and and the history of the break off in like a minute just to give kind of that super high level overview does that mean does that make sense yeah yeah the break off from the the flds from the mainstream lds church right yeah so i'll start so once upon a time joseph smith started the mormon church in 1830 the church jesus christ of latter-day saints that's what it eventually was known as and um and then he died and then the church moved uh west eventually to utah and for a long time the church kept practicing polygamy there but the federal government started getting super mad and started fighting the church and eventually it took the church about 15 20 years to actually stop it but around 1890 the church the the utah church told the world it was going to stop practicing polygamy um and then for another 15 or 20 years it practiced it secretly but at some point the flds church was born so tag team one of you take it over from there yes woodruff well he broke off so wilford woodruff was the one that signed the manifesto which was stating we will as a church no longer practice polygamy but at that time the church did not stop practicing polygamy they just kind of sent the people that were still practicing it a little bit southern to kind of hide them away in a place that was a little bit excluded so that people wouldn't necessarily notice that the church was still practicing polygamy because at that time that wilfred woodruff signed the manifesto he himself and several leaders of the church and other members were already had several wives so story has it that they just said okay for all for us to still have actually more than one wife we will continue to practice polygamy but we're not going to marry anyone else to more than one wife and so the ones that practice polygamy in a way kind of hid it from the world so but as far as the church splitting off at that point that's not really when the flds church split off believe it or not it was actually two prophets later i believe joseph f smith that stood up and said okay we are done we are not practicing polygamy anymore we're putting a complete end to this if we don't the the government will destroy us and we will not be able to continue on as a religion and so he stood up in the pulp on the pulpit or at the pulpit and said we are no longer going to do this and at that point that's when the flds said okay you know what we were taught by joseph smith by brigham young by john taylor by wilford woodruff that the only way to return to the celestial kingdom and live with god is to practice polygamy or in other words live the celestial the celestial law of marriage and so at that point the flds was established and my uh grandfather actually charles zitting was a big part in helping the the church kind of split off and the flds began at that point do you remember who all the prophets were down to i do actually yes i do you're gonna put me on the spot here aren't you okay what are what are cousins for right yeah so uh after after uh um i'm sorry so it went i guess that i mean the the did we consider wilfred wilford woodruff no wilfred woodruff was no longer a prophet because because he signed the manifesto so it was joseph smith brigham young john taylor and then it was john wooley and then lauren wooley and then john y barlow and then roy johnson and then ruling jefferson and warren jeffs you were testing me oh okay i didn't know it was a test okay so anyway unless i've missed someone i believe that's how it went that's perfect i don't think you did but i'm not so well-versed on that anymore so and just to get people up to speed so so warren jeff's dad rulin jeffs uh was a prophet before him and as the film talks about he got sick rulin jo warren got really close to ruling so that when rulin died warren was there kind of poised to take over so that's the brief history and what the documentary really focuses on is kind of warren's early life um his early you know getting close to ruling ruling dying and then basically the majority of the documentary is is warren jeff's taking over for rulin and his rule from taking over uh from rulin to his imprisonment basically correct yes where he is right now correct okay so we've got that brief history out of the way you did great a plus thank you thank you thank you for that amazing history um we want to welcome everyone in in the comments both on youtube and facebook we're grateful for the live stream we're also welcoming all the viewers to sam and melissa's uh youtube channel uh we we love that channel so so to you guys do you guys call your your listeners or viewers anything do you have a name for your viewers and listeners i don't think so no amazing wonderful people that's what's going on that's that's all we've done comment section there you go yeah now they have homework as well let us know what you want to be called they can name themselves yeah okay okay so uh so i'm gonna list some things that i notice about warren jeffs i'm gonna invite sam and joanna to talk about it and then and then we'll follow up each point by by jen myself and melissa being able to talk a little bit about joseph smith and of course sam and joni you're welcome to join in as well i'm hearing a tiny bit of an echo from you guys maybe if you turn your speakers down a tiny bit there may not be quite of an echo or you can make sure in your settings on um stream yard that your settings are set to echo cancellation make sure echo cancellation is turned on otherwise uh try turning your um speakers down a tiny bit if that doesn't work it doesn't work um okay um all right so i'm gonna start and the first thing that i kind of noticed was that warren jeffs and joseph smith had some similarities in their early years so there was um infant trauma first of all and so i i thought it was interesting that um that basically uh warren was born prematurely as i understand it joseph smith's infant trauma was more uh with his leg and with his wounding but also visionary parents so obviously warren's dad was prophet whereas joseph smith's dad was kind of a visionary guy kind of like lehi in the book of mormon and then also um you know both were favored sons so warren was a favored son to rulin and and you get the sense that joe joseph like nephi were kind of favored favored sons to rulin um and the final thing was early reports of sexual impropriety for both so let's just that's kind of some of the things i noticed about warren's early years sam and joanna what do you what do you guys have to say about that yes i agree that did seem to be the case that uh it seemed that warren was always kind of the favorite he was always by his father's side he was always the one that if someone always the one to talk for his father i guess you could say so it definitely seemed like he was his favorite yes okay yeah i feel like that as well and another thing is in in the early stages of like you know warren kind of taking over he was very charismatic and a lot of people said that about joseph smith he had a very charming charismatic personality and he was he was genuinely like a sweet guy at first and that's what everybody thought i think that that was something similar yes every time i met him in person and shook his hand i thought he was the most wonderful person ever i mean obviously i was taught my entire life to look at him as this amazing person you know first the the prophet's son that was doing these amazing things and then and then secondly the the prophet of god so for me was it different for you but for me it i i thought that i was feeling this really strong amazing spirit around him so for me i would have been very young when he went to jail that's true but we would listen to his teachings and he always had this very like melodious voice now if i hear that i get sick believe it or not but back then it was like it was very calm and soothing and they compared that to joseph smith a lot yeah it was like they both they both both had a very you know smooth character or whatever that was something that a lot of people said they had and they were both supposedly you know god's mouthpiece on earth i hear that they both walked above the earth like i've heard that a lot weirdly enough so we'll definitely we'll definitely be getting to that let me ask you about his personality so i i listed this as a difference but i'm curious what you all you both feel about this we didn't get to hear or see joseph either we don't know what his voice sounded like we don't know what he looked like really other than the paintings or photos or whatever but none of us got to see vid video um but we probably get the sense that he was kind of handsome and charismatic and um charming but to us and and jen i'm curious your view and melissa you can chime in as well when we look at warren jeffs do we see a handsome charismatic charming guy i'll ask you first jim um not for me thank you ben said it jen said it more nicely than what i'm using what would you say melissa no not at all like when i see pictures even as a young child i think the first time i ever saw a picture of warren i was like he looks like a creep like um yeah no definitely not handsome did not seem charismatic and so this is interesting because conditioning has to play a role because sam and joanna you you experienced him differently is that right yes i would say that is right definitely yes oh and it might might be partly because i was older and you know had a little bit more experience with him as far as one-on-one and helping do the landscaping his yard and you know and things like that but i don't know that i really as a young boy growing up i didn't really pay attention to how handsome he was or not handsome he was but it was something that to me because of the way he spoke i assumed that it was he spoke in that weird tone because that was more christ-like and kind of how god would want him to talk right and and i i think he also used that voice to manipulate people uh because it it worked on me i mean it sure seemed like it was coming directly from god yeah and i think another thing too is like when i looked at him it wasn't you know i was a child and it wasn't like he was handsome it was more what he represented yeah that made him that way so it was conditioning i think yeah so it sounds like you can almost put anyone in that office and they're going to appear powerful and spiritual by virtue of the power in the office that's given them i agreed and i will say one thing about his personality uh something that was talked a little bit about joseph smith as well is that he was a kind of a fun guy a good sense of humor good personality and that's something that you'll often hear about warren as well that he he was a funny guy he liked the crack jokes and he supposedly had a good personality i never personally witnessed or experienced that good personality other than he always seemed very somber around me but uh but a lot of people will talk about him having that kind of personality okay all right well those are a few uh personality things there was that there was a creepy part early in the documentary where they talked about people going to rulin and basically saying hey it looks like warren's getting too close to his sisters and there was sexual connotations there do you do you have anything to say about that honestly that one it's a little different it's like i hear different stories and i hear different things i personally never experienced anything like that but like i said i was very young and i hear from his daughters and from you know his sisters that it was that way and so i think like you can't really discredit that but i personally do not have any evidence to back that up or any solid anything solid to back that up yeah and for for me i it just kind of helps me realize when i think back on my childhood i never once saw warren in his own element like in his home and what he acted like around his children what do you act like around his wives what do you act like around his sisters and so it kind of helps me realize how little i knew about this guy all i knew about him was what was being said over the pulpit about him and him personally talking over the pulpit about things we were supposed to do and not do yeah even his family didn't really socialize a lot with the community they're always kept a distance they were kept in if you've been on their in the big compound like the house is behind the big wall and he always moved them to different places in the united states and texas and so they never did really communicate with the community so we never got an insight on his family personally and because of their family kind of being separated from us i always assumed that that just meant they were better than us and that's why they couldn't mingle with us folk that weren't quite so righteous fascinating okay um let's see uh yeah of course jen and melissa you would be familiar with the fannie alger affair where joseph smith was caught in an adulterous affair you know in 1833 1835 before the sealing power or the polygamy revelation had even been you know given yet and there are other reports without emma's knowledge right right yeah and there are other reports as well of um of possibly people kind of thinking that joseph smith was acting out sexually is that is that your understanding jen yeah with joseph smith yeah yeah um that was actually my shelf breaker miss fanny oh okay fanny alger so um i actually looked ever into her story into detail and in depth following every footnote everywhere i could um so it was definitely like it was never taught to us like i didn't even know about joseph smith's real polygamy while i was in the church in the lds church but as soon as finding out about the polygamy and then looking into it um he definitely started that um right away so yeah i think that's very interesting because for us like we were never taught about that incidents we were taught that joseph smith took took wives when god directed him to and he did god's will like that was that was it he just did god's will did you guys ever hear the name fanny ogler no i never did no not until now wow so you you didn't know about that you didn't know about that either i did not okay jen and i are soul sisters yeah we're so melissa yeah it's interesting that you mentioned that because yeah i dug deep too and when i found out the timeline the timeline did me hang because i had had you know a hard time with polygamy before and when i heard about fanny elgar that was like okay that's really tough to swallow but as j um just as john was talking about the timeline when i was looking at the timeline and i was going into dnc and i'm reading like okay this revelation was given this time this this timeline doesn't match up i think 132 was revealed in 83 like a full eight to ten years after joseph smith had his first his second wife you could say apologetics are like well he had it earlier on but he just didn't write it down until then and they'll give all all sorts of tries to like um say joseph already had it at the time but when you you know you can go with that or you can um use your agency and look further into the little details and you can debunk that pretty quickly by multiple accounts um that yes he was doing something with fanny in the barn emma found him a big whole thing happened um it's very very clear i i suggest you whoever doesn't know that story to look it up for themselves um and look into that but it's it but it is interesting that all of us were you know information about joseph was kept from all of us that's true yeah yeah it seems like a lot of information is coming out these days as the as there's you know a lot more put out there that sources directly from the church even it seems like there's a lot more all of a sudden coming to light that we weren't aware of several years ago yeah i mean that's the way i feel anyway yeah absolutely like the gospel topic essays on polygamy when sam and i were going through our journey and i read that on polygamy and i was like i remember actually printing it out from the computer and underlining things and writing notes and then when sam came home from work i was like i read this but i think that all of these reasons are bull crap read it read my notes and tell me what you think because something doesn't add up here and that timeline was definitely one of them well it sounds like something we all share is that is our churches kept information about joseph smith from us and that's that's important or our founders in your case uh sam and joanna it would be joseph smith in some cases and warren so yeah that's interesting yep um okay so um the next parallel that i wanted to talk about was of course just this really basic idea that both warren jeffs and joseph smith claim to be prophets of god which means that they you know they you know warren jeff's particularly claimed to speak with god and for god um and that with that came a belief that they had special powers now sam and joanna did you you know to what extent do you have any commentary on um you know your belief that warren spoke to and for god and in some ways kind of had special powers go ahead i mean there was this story uh it's my stepdad told me once he said one of his brothers were walking with warren and they were it was when they were building texas the yearning for zion ranch down there the branch down there in texas and he said it was raining and it was muddy and he looked down and warren had no dirt on his shoes and me the child was like okay how is that possible and he said warren walks above the earth as did joseph smith that was interesting i haven't heard that story at all but it doesn't surprise me at all both joseph smith and warren jess were both put on this really high pedestal i mean it was like it was like joseph smith and then yeah sure prophets and then warren jeffs like it seemed like they were the two main the big the big the big deal here so and i think we were taught like joseph smith was the founder and he also was considered the holy ghost and then warren was supposed to be the last prophet that was supposed to help with the lifting up and the bringing you know of the cleansing of the earth which i don't know if you guys are taught about that uh but he was supposed to be the last they were supposed to both represent a big i guess peace in the gospel and the restoration of the gospel yep that was a big question jed and i had is like like how much emphasis was placed on warren versus on joseph smith if you had to like do a pie chart percentage warren percentage joseph smith and if you even had to rank them in heaven just about how amazing they were how would how would warren and joseph stack up for for you be both like uh god's seat is kind of you know because warren is the restoration like joe smith is a restoration warren jeffs kind of seals the deal i guess in the end and so they're both kind of saviors to the church i think like they would both be right there yes if you were throwing if you asked someone they would probably say that they were they were about equal but the vibe you got in the community was warren jazz is above all yeah definitely he was the most talked about he was the one you needed to obey if if joseph smith says something that warren now didn't agree with you would follow warren without any question so the vibe was he was a little bit set a little higher even than joseph smith i thought i think that a little bit too and it was because like they were like times are changing you know warren has more knowledge than joseph smith he has given more revelations that joe smith were not was not given so i think that would have been a little bit but in my opinion they would both be at the basically at the throne about the same yeah yeah yeah well that's uh that's interesting for for mormons for for lds church members today i think jen you tell me jenna well you tell me if you disagree i think joseph smith trumps any modern-day prophet so whether it's russell nelson or thomas s monson or um you know or gordon b hinckley or any of those modern prophets it's pretty much always going to be joseph is that your experience jen yeah yeah it's it's always joseph i mean we have we have songs for him um but there is a there is the same um that we're taught that the prophets speak for god like even um president nelson's last thing um that he did with the video with the little children you know it's called um oh what's it called exactly um prophet speaks for god or something yeah it's like all the prophets follow the prophet he speaks for god yeah something exactly stating that fact so yeah that's interesting in our community also we wrote songs about warren yeah a lot of songs about warren so yeah yeah i would say that when it came to the way i grew up with joseph smith and then the modern prophet i would say i i don't know like i agree in the sense that joseph smith was most important because he um restored the gospel but i would also say that like as i was getting older it started shifting to where now the modern prophet um whatever they said was the most important i felt like that was kind of shifting and that was something that was kind of um hurt my shelf a little bit too was the idea that as these modern day profits as uh new profits were coming along and they were able to say oh what the last prophet said didn't matter that like really bothered me in my journey and so um even now like i feel like as they're kind of almost separating themselves more from how joseph smith um originally restored the gospel and then how he even spoke about the office of a prophet i mean if you had asked joseph smith what a prophet was and what his role was he would say that he spoke for god the same way that you know warren jeff says he does if you as president if you ask a mormon or latter-day saint now um if russell nelson speaks with god or speaks for god i think there's going to be a slight more hesitation and that there's going to be more emphasis on like it's revelation rather than direct words from god through the mouth of president nelson i don't know if that's just me no i i would agree with that i would definitely agree with that i think um they try to put praise back on joseph smith for starting the religion and and the restoration of it they talk a lot about about that but i do agree with melissa that in the recent years they've started to be like um when i was young it used to be whatever came out of the prophet's mouth that was right from god and it would never change like what they said was what it is and um and now it's moving more towards um whoever is the prophet now what they're speaking is what we follow and do so i would i would agree with muslim on that um i don't i'm interested to know though this is something for me i'm interested to know if in the flds did they ever tell the story or the quote from joseph smith where he says that he he is the only man in history that has um created a church and and kept it through the times kept it together yeah i kept it together even jesus couldn't do that that's a quote for him like i can read the whole quote i haven't pulled up here from the church history site but that's basically what he says he says like he he was even better than jesus at keeping together the gospel i've heard that quote the joseph smith said that which was kind of surprising to me but but i don't remember them saying i don't remember them using that for warren jeff's though do you i yeah i don't think they ever used that did you hear that quote i never heard okay so that's new to you personally yeah that's a that quote is something i i heard later on i don't i don't believe i ever heard that in the flds okay i'm just wondering that cool so um in terms of uh in terms of kind of authority joseph smith originally derives his authority originally is from his treasure digging and perceptions that he had power to see you know buried treasure underground and angels and that sort of thing but really you know he claims his authority from claiming that an angel visited him that an angel gave him golden plates and that god and jesus eventually the story grows to where he claims that god and jesus visited him in the documentary keep sweet you know all that you really get a sense of you don't hear about god and jesus visiting him warren jeffs you don't hear anything about angels giving him golden plates all you hear is that he got close to ruling and then when rulin dies he says well rulin chose me as the the successor but sam and joanna can you talk at all about any teachings around warren literally seeing or talking to god seeing or talking to jesus or being visited by angels i guess for me like we heard a lot that you know god spoke to him but he never described it in picture form it was never like i saw an angel i saw god it was more god has directed me to give this revelation and then he would give a revelation and say this is from god speaking through my son the prophet my mouthpiece warren s jeff's and that was kind of how it was yeah he uh for me he i mean there was a little bit more than that uh even even in his own prison cell before giving one of his sermons he would say that god visited me in my prison cell last night and this is what he told me to tell you i did hear that phrase as well it was never like pictures like right i guess it was never like and he looked like this and there was a light like this it was never described like that it was just god visited me and then the way he gave his revelations was like he was talking as though he was god himself and then he would say i give these words to my servants yes or in jesus exactly he would he would talk sometimes as though he was just standing there possessed or his body was possessed by god and his mouth his mouth was moving because god was making him move and even some of his sermons he would stand up there and just kind of pause for a while and then look up and start talking and it was to give us the the idea that it was god taking over him to literally have him say his words and uh and i remember when my older sister married roland jess his warren's father visiting their home i was under the assumption at that young age that there were literally angels in their home at all times with them communicating with them and that god the heavenly father and jesus christ would come to his home and communicate with him at certain times so it was definitely an impression given that they were in communication directly with heavenly beings but uh but like you said they never tried to explain exactly what they looked like that i can remember yeah got it makes sense okay well um you know we talked a little bit about i noticed some similarities one big one just being that but both the modern lds church and the flds church both had the practice of putting pictures of the prophets on the walls clearly warren uh encouraged that but also songs about the prophets we referred to and just a general culture of of never disagreeing with the prophet probably private or in public was that was that your experiences sam and joanna yes uh to question the prophet was to be damned basically yes that was a place quite literally meaning that uh you are no longer well in the in today's world you're no longer allowed to be in the community and be a part of the church that would mean that put a stop to what you were doing within the church and it also meant that on the other side when you passed on that you would be thrust into hell basically yes we were taught that men that didn't follow the prophet would turn into a son of perdition which is where the devil punishes you for eternity and then women become nothing like they don't exist their soul is used to create other souls that's intense wow but he would warren would use very harsh teachings to get people to be so afraid to disobey him and i think it really started with warren i don't remember ruling ever talking like that yeah we had ruined sermons i don't think he ever mentioned something like that and the first time i heard that i was terrified like the thought of being like i guess recycled for another soul like terrified me to death but i was like this is horrible like even when i was a young kid i was like this is horrible and i want out but at the same time like i was also very scared and did believe like i went against my beliefs a lot and was like i don't like this but this is the way it is i believed it even if you know i didn't like it i guess but kind of had to right yeah yeah yeah weren't there some like i'm trying to think of certain sayings that they made in the movie about uh obedience um you know in mormonism they're they're sayings like in our tradition like obedience is the first law of heaven that that you should obey with exactness are you aware of like sayings that people would say and i think the documentary had a few of these that reflected how oh oh didn't warren say led by a hair yeah yes he said obey as though you are being led by a hair what did he mean by that uh to not question or even doubt in your mind like if you were doing something and you were being led by a rope pretend it was a hair like you cannot stray at all or that will snap and if you do that then you're off the straight and narrow i mean to the point that to not even start to think of i mean you most certainly should never vocalize any questions or doubts but even thinking these questions and doubts could cause your damnation yeah i remember there was one saying it's like someone from back and i don't remember who it was i was really young but it was a saying where he said he doubted the prophet for 15 seconds and he didn't even allow it to get to 16 because he knew it would them his soul like so there was like stories like that and things like that right and it's one it was a way to i guess force us to not i mean if we started to have questions if we started to have doubts it put this fear in us that we can't really think about that and look into it because if we do then it will ultimately damn us and we will be you know we'll be kicked out in the community of if you don't understand it put it on the shelf just forget about it sort of you know pray about it but if you don't understand it and it seems weird put it on the shelf just just don't worry about it like that was used put it on the shelf if you don't understand it one other one other comment i remember from the documentary was one of the young women saying i'd rather die than disobey warren but let me ask you melissa and then i'll ask you jen you know to to put it in modern terms about how how to what extent we're allowed to to disagree with joseph smith um melissa cast yourself back in kind of your orthodox mormon upbringing can you imagine ever standing up in church in soccer meeting or in sunday school or relief society or young women's and saying hey i just want to say i disagree with joseph smith on these four points oh my word no no definitely not um i feel like so much of my growing up and my youth was built around receiving and keeping a testimony of joseph smith and he was very important in that aspect because you know without him the church crumbles and so i remember like when i gained my testimony of joseph smith i remember it was i was at efy at byu and i was in the choir and we sing praise to the man and i felt it all and i knew that you know joseph smith had to be the prophet and those type of things those environments i feel like especially for the youth you definitely were constantly given opportunities to receive your testimony of joseph smith and to have them be reaffirmed to you over and over um because of how important that was and to try to say anything about that um yeah i can't even imagine trying to at a young age honestly so let's just say you know um and jen i'll ask you this and then i'll throw it back to you melissa let's just say a modern mormon was gonna say well let's could they stand up in church and say something like this what would happen like you know sunday school raise your hand you know joseph is great but i don't like that he had 30 wives or i don't like that he married other men's wives or i don't like that the book of mormon he wrote in the book of mormon that dark skin was a curse uh for wickedness or i don't like that he had so much power or that he lied to emma about polygamy and i don't like that he drank alcohol you know in his lifetime the night before he died when they asked me not to drink jen what in your experience what would happen if if if a mormon ever said any of those things in 2022 what would happen um well in my 43 years i never heard anyone stand up and say any of those things um never not one of them okay none of them i mean those are those are reasonable things to reasons to not like joseph smith right if they did putting myself back in there i would probably take in a deep breath and be like oh my goodness what are they reading like what anti-mormon stuff have they been reading you know they need to go talk to the bishop something's not right in their life they're not reading their scriptures something's going wrong there because what they're saying i've never heard before okay that's probably what my reaction would be they'd probably get trouble maybe shouted down maybe told to be quiet maybe asked to leave yeah or said it like someone would make sure they were talk the bishop talked to them after like something something to that that's what would be and if they kept bringing that type of stuff up in church regularly what would happen um they'd probably have a council and excommunicated right yeah yeah okay i mean it could be but i i would for sure say that the priesthood leaders would definitely be on on top of that yeah and in that way i think we're very similar to the flds church um melissa is there anything that you would would add to that or do you think we're being exaggerating no that's not exaggerating at all and i actually um in our one of our awards i remember there were a couple women in my ward that um started saying just the tiniest things and some of them weren't even anything that could be considered like anti-joseph smith i'm just wanting to include like that before the first vision happened that he was you know taken by the devil and he had that battle with the devil i remember one of these women particularly being like don't you think this is an important part to the story and in in sunday school and they like brushed her aside and they were like no like they wanted to focus on rainbows and butterflies um not even the darker sides that are in the scriptures um anything need to do with joseph smith and they kind of put a target on their backs and everybody in the ward was kind of honestly and at this time we were true believing and i remember thinking we were just waiting to see what was going to happen to these women because they spoke up even the tiniest bit and then all of a sudden we started hearing rumors that you know they're talking to the sick president and everybody knew that like disciplinary council was coming and that if they didn't fall back better into line that they would be excommunicated and yeah it was like a rumor meal that like everybody was just kind of waiting because they spoke up about these type of things even if it was things that were within mormon doctrine that are very like well taught normally like i don't know how to describe it but it was intense the only time i've ever seen people stand up and everyone was waiting for their dismissal yeah i think i think it's a it's it's a really stark similarity between our two faiths how unacceptable criticism of the prophet is and that's all the way till 2022 so i think that's a fair um that's a fair comparison and i think it's one of the most um unhealthy things about the lds church and and i think it's almost identical to you all okay so let's go to uh you know we already talked about um both warren and joseph claimed to talk to and for god um as prophets but let's talk specifically about revelations now so um you know many who know the lds church know that there's this whole book of scripture called the doctrine of covenants where where joseph smith wrote down revelations that he claimed were directly from god um you know after he received the book of mormon he wrote those revelations down and it became this book of scripture called the doctrine of covenants that sits alongside the bible and the book of mormon can sam and joanna can you all talk about how it was that warren jeffs received and wrote down revelations and how they were shared with the membership so i think up until the end there uh or up to close to the end he did speak a lot of them like in meetings from jail and a lot of them he would print out in pamphlets as well and he would give them to the members only and they were like revelations which was kind of interesting because i had a brother that was our caretaker at the time because our stepdad was kicked out interesting story um but he one day came in with a folder and he went and sat behind everybody and he was like i've been directed to read you a revelation from our prophet he said but you cannot look in this folder unless you are a full like member you know and he read from it and it was uh just another book and they were considered words of god they were considered you know revelations like the doctrine of covenants but unless you were a member it was like you were it was going to burn your eyes out if you saw those without being a member and then when i became a member i got those pamphlets as well joanna really quick do you want to describe to john because john and jen might be a little bit confused when she uses the verbiage like of a member because in lds we think of a member as anybody who it's gonna yeah anybody who's baptized right then they become a member but what do you mean when you say the word members anybody who's been baptized and you want to kind of give them just like a little bit of context to when you say that okay weird story i was baptized when i was eight everybody was considered members then but they had a thing that they called their restoration or restoral no yes i think they baptized everybody and they're basically given a clean slate later on when i'm 11 this happened when i'm like 9. later on when i'm 11 they did what they called members and non-members and you went in you shook hands with lyle who was the bishop he's warren's brother younger brother and he would ask you if you were clean and pure and i mean i was 11. i said yes some people said they said no but he was given supposedly revelation from god if you were worthy and then they hand selected people like half of my family was members half were not and then you went and got re-baptized and then you got to continue to go to church and be a part of the church i guess you got to go to church and be a part of you know the priesthood projects and you got to learn more about the the gospel and what we were being taught through warren and the other people did not until they were considered worthy that's fascinating i'm curious i'm curious just as i don't want to stray too much but joanna what what tell us again what age you got out and how did you avoid getting getting married to someone and we will have you if you're able we'll have you back on mormon stories but i i'm just dying to know just because i'm dying to know well first of all i i want to say thank you to the wall sisters for testifying against horn jeff's because i do believe that if he was not put in jail i probably would have been married into the church or and you know when i was still there i left when i was 17 but when warren went to jail he was the only person who could perform marriages so all marriages stopped when he was put in jail yeah well that that i should have put that math together because i knew that and he told me how old you were when he was put in jail but uh thanks for connecting those dots for me but when we talk about the differences between joseph smith and warren jeffs i didn't have that as a difference but that's a major one that that when warren wasn't we talked about this uh sam and melissa in our interview with you when when warren jess wasn't getting any sex nobody was getting any sex or getting married for that matter or touching each other as you guys said and that's that's a major difference yeah stop to all of that happen when he went into prison if i remember from sam's story um yeah in mormonism we call that a tender mercy that that warren jeff's stopped stopped marriages and sex uh when he went to jail were you gonna say something uh joanna yes i was gonna say the like sexual relations didn't stop until probably 2010 actually so it was it was many years later and it was a revelation that he gave from jail and the reason being was he said that the people were not pure enough and so we were no longer allowed to raise children in the order until we were considered worthy so no more sex because we only have sex who have children right and you would have been you would have been how old when that revelation came down probably nine or ten okay so still still yeah yes all right um okay so when we talk about revelations um one of the things that i noticed about joseph smith once i was willing to look at his revelations with more scrutiny is that they were often self-serving so it's like oh he needs some money well he's commanding martin harris to give him money or he wants someone's property he's you know implementing united order or whatever or the biggest most dramatic example jen you probably have it with dnc 132 32 what would you say about that when he wanted other people's wives then he may made dnc 132 or just more women in general and when he wanted when emma wasn't complying with his polygamy lo and behold what she was damned 11 times in in dnc 132 if she did not follow it i think it says it 11 times that emma would be damned if she didn't follow now maybe that's god but but a critical skeptical person would say hmm it sounds like joseph smith may have been attributing to god his own desires is that fair well yeah and there's so much i could say about that but in the in that little thing about that in that revelation um you know it tells him that you know it would it that he couldn't take any wives unless emma okayed it you know and that was a no-no but you know but there was no damning of him you know if he did you know that would be emma being damned because she didn't say yes you know it's just so so over the top it's over the top wrong in every way yeah yeah so sam and joanna i'm curious to what extent could could you guys look at warren's revelations and kind of now go unlikely from god more likely warren just wanted something and that's where the revelations came from yeah i would say that uh what i was gonna say is like there was a revelation that he gave and it was one where it was directed towards women and it said in there if you disobey your husband he can lose his priesthood because of you and your disobedience yes it definitely seemed like a lot of the blame was put on the women if they did anything wrong it was the woman's fault the men if they did something wrong the women shouldn't say anything about it other than just try to be there for him and support him so that he can be a better priesthood man but the revelations from warren 100 seemed like they were self-serving looking back now obviously at the time i thought oh this is what god wants this is amazing we're just doing his work and everything was great but looking back now i mean he would call on the community to give him thousands and thousands of dollars and say that it was for the building up of the kingdom of god but obviously looking back now and seeing what he was doing during the time that he was running from the law he was obviously using this money for his own self whatever he wanted to do at the time yeah they would give revelations where it'd be like this is a revelation from god i've been directed to collect 3 000 from every elder and any extra money from any family member that you have and we would get together and put our pennies like break our you know piggy banks we saved money when we were kids and give all the cents that we had and little dollars and we'd give it all to the church because warren needed it to build zion and that we'll talk about later what we learned from the documentary about what warren was doing with that money but we'll wait that comes later um okay i'll i'll ask about this so there's this idea of revelations that are self-serving there's also this idea of revelations that don't come true um in the mormon church you could have some examples let's just say joseph smith um you know prophesying that they'd sell the book of mormon copyright in canada but it never got sold i think he prophesied that they would find some treasures in boston or new england that never got found of course the whole independence missouri was supposed to be the gathering place where jesus would come back that never happened um and and so there are lots of examples of oh in zion's camp where joseph took a bunch of people down to missouri to fight you know the missouri government allegedly but then they ended up running away with their tails between their legs so there was a lot of failed prophecies with joseph smith and whenever there were failed prophecies there was this thing called blame reversal which cults or high demand religions do which is they blame the members when when the prophecies don't come true did i get that right jen yeah for not being obedient enough it was them you know not praying not reading their scriptures like that it was blamed on the members instead of the prophet's revelation just not coming true right like them getting it wrong yeah yeah yeah so sam and joanna um did that apply to warren jeffs and if so talk about failed prophecies and then talk about if you use blame reversal to blame the members you know it doesn't seem like uh the mainstream lds church does a lot of prophesying exact dates anymore and i think there's a reason for that but going back to uh joseph smith's day kind of the same thing uh there jo warren jeffs would prophesy of things happening on a specific date and i think his reason for doing that was to make us feel like oh he knows what's about to happen we better we better straighten up we better do things as he tells us to do them or else we're not going to be uh we're not going to be lifted up off of the earth in some cases while the earth is destroyed or whatever the prophet prophecy was but every time it didn't happen it was always the fault of the members it was always our fault and we we just felt guilty and shame for not being righteous enough uh because it was always turned on us yes there was a revelation uh we were told that in 2012 there was going to be the destruction of the earth the cleansing of the earth and lifting up and i remember at the end of 2013 like watching the clock crossing my fingers being like you know what 2011 right yes so it's 2012 and it was going to happen it was the first 2012. so it was like new year's eve and i was like okay here we go like the destructions are gonna happen one more minute and everything's just gonna crumble like i remember having those fears in those thoughts and then it just didn't and then next sunday it was like the revelation given was if the lifting up would have happened then there would have been no one for jesus to come and see because no one was worthy and that's why it didn't happen yeah that's so sketchy um thanks for sharing that joe and i hadn't heard that the one that comes from the documentary that to me was really shocking and samuel melissa we talked about that year in your episode it was warren prophesying during the time of olympics do you do you say that same one yes no that's a different one because that was 2002. sam do you want to do you want to kind of uh re retell that story just really briefly yes so in 2002 the olympics were to come to salt lake valley at that time there were a lot of flds members living in 2001 in 2000 and before living in salt lake and there was actually a fairly large community up there and warren saying that he was prophesying at this time for ruling jeffs told everyone that if they did not move out of salt lake city and move down to shore creek that they would be destroyed along with salt lake city because we were told that if the olympics did come to salt lake that the city and everyone there would be destroyed so we were everyone that was there i was already living in short creek at this time so i just remember a lot of people all of a sudden showing up a lot of homes being built all of a sudden and a lot of people moving in and uh so it was just like okay wow i mean i fully believed it but uh of course when salt lake city wasn't destroyed uh it was once again blamed on us and we were told that we just didn't have enough faith and that it was our fault that that christ didn't come and that that the uh i guess the place wasn't destroyed i think that revelation was given a couple times i mean with the same sort of you know fair energy where the end of the earth is going to happen because i if i remember right it happened in 2010 as well so i guess yes so it wasn't just going to be salt lake city that was destroyed i'm sorry it was going to be the entire earth and everyone needed to be in short creek because shore creek was going to be the place the safe haven to not be destroyed yeah the earth was going to be lifted up yes that's that's something that people don't realize about religious psychology you would think that it would ruin a religion any time like an end of times date was prophesied about and then it came and went but what we learned from the jehovah's witnesses they've had that happen three or four times during their history or more and every time if you add the blame reversal after the failed prophecy you actually strengthen people's allegiance to the church not weaken it and that that helps explain why so many people would follow joseph smith on treasure digs and even though joseph never found any treasure you would still have many of his followers claim that he still had powers they just never saw any treasure and and it was blame reversal that joseph would also use when the treasure wasn't found he would blame the the diggers and the participants in the treasure dick he would blame them for the treasure not being found and that's why they still believed in him afterwards jen were gonna add something i just was just going to add that it is also like passed down to um patriarchs in our lds church where i'm just guessing but i'm guessing probably 99 of patriarchal blessings they give you this blessing from god you know it's supposed to be right from god to you and at the end of every one it says these will only happen if you are faithful and obedient and so it's you know so now all these people have these personal blessings that they keep with them they memorize them it's their you know personal you know letter from god to them and if if things are not happening as it's laid out for them in that blessing that is so hard for so many people and if it's not happening it's them and that causes so much harm to so many people but that's the same thing you know it's a revelation but it's always stated that way it's always because you were not good absolutely it's not coming true because you aren't good enough absolutely so it's in our church we have those i don't know if you guys have that in the flds yeah sam thinking about my interview with you um you you it was either your dad or your or your grandpa that were actual patriarchs is that right and and did did your patriarchal blessings in the flds church have the same kind of blame reversal conditional fulfillment as as ours do in the lds church yes so it's my uh father and he um i never got a picture of a blessing out there i never i guess reached the age or when i did reach the age i wasn't worthy enough or something i don't know all the details on why i didn't get one but um i couldn't say exactly what was said in the patriarchal blessings in the flds because uh though my father was a patriarch and though i know he gave many of blessings i did i didn't ever hear exactly what was on them did you get a picture of a blessing joanna oh sorry my mother did your mother did yes and the difference i think with that one is it tells you like all these great things you will receive but also brings up struggles and hardships that you must overcome so with my mom she had a mental illness and that was mentioned in her patriarchal blessing which is kind of ironic because she was already diagnosed but uh they were like you will struggle you know with this mental illness and you will be fighting the devil and da da but if you stick it out to the end and you pray and you're good these will be your blessings if not of course you know you will continue to struggle so do you know who gave her her blessing i do not okay just curious all right okay well that kind of covers similarities between joseph and warren regarding failed prophecies and blame reversal let's talk about money now um you know uh of course in the in the lds latter-day saint tradition with joseph smith he's he you know he he used warren jeff's i mean sorry he used martin harris from the very beginning as someone who helped finance the book of mormon he was always finding wealthy influential people to help finance uh his work the temples were built with people's donations a lot of sacrifices were made um and of course we know about united order where ultimately joseph smith implemented um just kind of like i i don't want to say socialism or communism but but basically this principle that that everyone shares all finances which basically means joseph smith gets to control all the money and you know that's that's what joseph smith implemented now sam and joanna to what extent did that apply uh to warren oh man uh 100 go ahead you were right there going to say where to start um so we were right down to food stamp fraud i don't know if you heard about that but we were told to give everything to the church and they would give you back what you needed so we had government food stamps because we had a million kids you know and we would go spend and max out the food stamp card at the first of every month and turn all of that food into the storehouse because we were required to you didn't even get to keep your own food no i mean and then you would go back to the storehouse and get what you needed holy moly yeah yeah i'd heard about that that that started after i had moved out so i didn't have to deal with that but even when i was out there it was very obvious you would see some of the men that warren had closest to him were successful man with very successful companies and he would keep them as his counselor or his uh bodyguard or whatever the case may be it seemed like a lot of these men that were always around him were very successful and had successful companies so i i saw that part of it and i also saw the part of it where um they did want well warren himself actually started taking over a lot of these companies and forcing the man to turn them into the church so the church would have complete control over the finances and of course the men were expected to keep running the companies and making sure that everything runs smoothly but they just didn't have any control over the money at that point yeah hey joanna um i have a question for you when you you got all the food stamps and or the food from the food stamps and you took it to the warehouse could you then go through the warehouse and take whatever you wanted to a degree so there was like a limited amount for like depending on how big your family was and then towards the end there they did what they called uh storehouse requests and you would fill out a paper every week of what your family would eat and then they would bring it to you and a lot of times it was half of what you needed or it was like we didn't have as much of that so you don't get that this time so at the end there they delivered food all the homes and you just got what you got okay i just wonder if it was the same as that our church kind of does it now so i was just wondering that yeah one of the that was a great question jen thanks for answering joanna one of the one of the parts of the documentary that was most shocking for me it was well of my interview with you you and melissa sam that we're going to air on monday was just to hear how like if you started a successful business at some point under warren you had to give the business over to warren he would own the property on your house he would own your business he would own everything that that was shocking to hear and if you want to hear more about that viewers and listeners check out sam and melissa's interview that's coming up soon but then also just in the documentary the the point where they're like sending in what three hundred thousand dollars a day rolled up in like tomato cans and are a week sorry at 300 000 a week they're sending to warren while he's on the run rolled up in in tomato cans so so sam and jonah do you do you all want to just talk about a little bit more about some of those extreme circumstances where basically the church you didn't even own your own house you didn't even own your own business you know right everything that we had was given to us by the church so uh i mean the the home we lived in the the wives that were given to men were given to them by the church so therefore in a way the church owned your spouse and owned the children that you had with that spouse so it was in a way set up designed so that the church or the people of the church felt like they didn't personally own anything that it all belonged to the church in a way did you have that same feeling i did and another thing is like a lot of people were directed in which career path to take in the church so uh like my uncle he's one of the most successful dentists in the world uh dan dr dan fisher he was directed to become a dentist and he did and then he ended up inventing like some tools for orthodontics and he has his own teeth whitening but he was directed to turn that in and he refused so he was then told to sell the company which he refused and of course left yeah wow i'm inspired by stories of defiance because the the power was just so so comprehensive also john can i just add in there that whenever i hear these stories um of this happening i can't help but think from my childhood that these people are just living the higher law because in church history like this is the law of consecration this is what joseph smith had tried and failed to do and so the first time i was hearing about this and sam was telling me about it i'm like you guys were doing what in my mind and all growing up i was told is like this higher law if only everyone could be righteous enough to make that actually work and so it was something that was always like glamorized in my mind and so the fact that they were actually trying to do it obviously not successfully either but it always reminds me of church history i had the i had the exact same thought i actually wrote it down as she was talking because i wanted to make sure i said that i said consecrate everything to the church temple ceremony like in our temple ceremony we we say that every time we go through the temple yeah so to give everything we covenant to yeah give everything to the church and so we're making that same promise but we haven't been asked to do it yet i remember covening even to give everything even your own lives if necessary for the building up and strengthening of zion was it that way with you yeah but but yes but but just to kind of close out this point even if the modern lds church is not practicing this level of financial control there's a little bit of that because it's 10 of your income for life and you pay if you serve a two-year mission for the church you still pay to serve a mission that's kind of bizarre that the church has hundreds of billions of dollars and missionaries are paying their own missions in addition to 10 percent of their income for life and fast offerings but but admittedly it's not as severe as what warren jeffs and the flds people were doing but joseph smith set the precedent of literally all things in common which meant almost total financial control and so in that sense joseph and warren were a lot more similar than the modern day lds church is to joseph smith does that make sense yeah well if anything too like not only are warren and joseph similar in that aspect warren is fulfilling what joseph prophesied would be the best way to do it right so he's kind of warren's fulfilling joseph's prophecy and what he said is important yeah the restoration and i think that warren probably had he not gotten caught and thrown into prison i think he probably would have been successful with it and he probably would have said ha i'm the only one even joseph smith couldn't do this no one could do this i was able to make it happen and you know so it was something that was actually working until the raid and the law enforcement made everyone kind of split up there at the ranch no we even had papers where we sacrificed what we called time you wrote down how many hours you spent working blessing others how many hours you spent playing or wasting time and why at the end there and you had to turn those in every month like right down to consecrating time is what they called it yeah that's another sam another really powerful part of your interview is just to hear as soon as you're of age you quit school and you start working on construction projects i think we called it construction culture a little bit but make sure and check in um check out sam's interview because he talks a lot about that that was a really fascinating part of your interview thank you yeah um yeah and and and melissa what a great point that in so many ways warren jeffs was a better mormon and was more true to joseph smith than the modern-day lds church absolutely yeah i think a lot of times again on our channel especially people look at these people and they think okay it's so crazy it's so far-fetched and um sam says this i know to a lot of people and they say well what's the biggest difference between the lds and the flds and he he normally replies with the flds are living the restoration as joseph smith intended it better than the current lds mainstream yeah that's the biggest difference people don't like that answer but if you look at it you know before before it all came crumbling down right that warren's last power moves you know it was very similar yeah okay so the next big topic we have is patriarchy and this is a really important topic and i just want to begin with joseph smith on this one and jen i you know i know you feel really passionately about this and i'm guessing melissa and joanna will as well this is like you know why why is it cool to have a prophet it's cool to have a prophet because then you get god's will right you get what god's wants you get god's pure word you don't have to deal with any of the cultural stuff any of the problems you know exactly what god wants and so we have this opportunity now where um you know joseph smith claims to be talking to god and and we get to set up the church exactly as god wants it right god can do whatever he wants right god's all powerful right jen right and god can do whatever he wants yes and god loves everyone equally yes and so what god chooses to do under joseph smith is to implement a super patriarchy where not only are women second class citizens but they literally can't have the priesthood they can't have any of the major offices and you know that you know they're second class citizens and their wives to their husbands and they're not encouraged to get their own power they're not encouraged to get their own source of income instead they're encouraged to have as many kids as possible as young as they can um which then you know leaves them obligated to the church and powerless and completely dependent and that's that's what god wanted in his one true church and that's patriarchy jen i imagine you might have a thought or two about that yeah it doesn't yeah i don't know like when i was in the church like it all made sense that that's the way that god wanted it and that's you know was taught that was indoctrinated in me um and then stepping away from the church like you see you see how wrong it is you see how wrong that is you see how that came from man not god and um how like so many more important things were like could have been said it could have been told to joseph could have been restored or like um put in place at that time and that's what god chose to do yeah no that's what joseph chose to do that's what joseph told to do and i know i know a lot of you know my heart my heart is like i want to say things but then because i know that um growing up in polygamy has followers that are still active lds members like there's a part of me that like doesn't want to say all the things i'm saying today because i don't because i remember how hurt and devastated i was finding out all of these things and um so i'm i just i'm sending love to all the um active lds people right now but there's a lot there's a lot that i now believe came from man um and there's a lot that was interesting to me that was put in place by joseph smith um that said came from god um like women in the church up and tell um i can find records and tell um joseph um well why joseph fielding i think joseph f smith was a patriarch i can't remember um i'll look at my notes right here in just a second but um joseph fielding smith so joseph fielding smith was the patriarch and women would go around doing the healing blessings like women did the rituals um in the temple so yeah the healing rituals in the temple um they and these healing blessings and rituals that they did um didn't have oil didn't have do you didn't need to have um have the priesthood they were just taught and the women could do them there's just so many things that i find going back and looking at all of these things that are interesting how that same patriarchy that was made by joseph smith um in making the church how that's kind of evolved and gotten worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse instead of getting better yeah over time how you think it would right but it's almost like it's being more strict and more strict even until today where were like the women started to ask about heavenly mother and they were shut down yeah like i'm just sorry no that's great that's jen going off on a rant about patriarchy and women and so that's a really important part of our history that people don't know about there's a really important article dialogue article i think it's called a gift given and a gift taken away where it talks about how actually mormon women in some ways had more power and authority earlier in the church's history to be able to give blessings of healing to be able to do washings and anointings before like a child birth and that that all was taken away that was all was taken away in kind of the early 20th century yeah but um but but but yeah joseph smith implemented a super patriarchy and um i just want to say that just like you know and it's still the true in 2022 yeah it's completely a super patriarchy no bishops no stake presidents no stakeholder counselors no melchizedek or ironic priesthood holders no general authorities and no prophets or first presidency members or uh apostles can be women and i just want to say it's as outrageous that you can't criticize a a mormon prophet in a mormon church it's as outrageous as that that in 2022 women in a a civilized you know multi-hundred billion dollar organization women are still totally sec you know for second-class citizens and bringing it back to the flds um you know if if mormons are keeping the patriarchy at a 10 the flds take it to an 11 or even a 15. and so let's let's bring you guys in sam and joanna to talk about the the role of women and the super patriarchy in the flds church this is all you so uh for us women they up up to the end there they told us how to dress right down to the plaid like the material everything had to be a solid material how to comb our hair had to be completely up on your head and then when it came to marriage sex and having children it was when your men wanted it it was when he wanted a child it wasn't up to you it wasn't up to you who you married or really like the dynamic if you know if you had a punishment for the child it was okay through the father or priesthood head then you could go through with it so i think and like even like we worked on priesthood projects and stuff but a lot of women were discouraged from getting jobs a lot of us did in the end because we had to but they discouraged a lot of that we were taught that our role was to be a housewife and to bring as many children into the gospel and to this earth as possible um yes sam yeah no that was my experience as well uh not as a woman obviously i uh didn't really get to experience what the women had to go through and but i did see that it would very simply put the man had the final say uh in our home for example if we wanted something and we went to one of the mothers and said you know hey can we have this it was always you need to ask your father and uh so we would work up the courage to make that phone call and try to call him and ask him hey can i have a cell phone i'm 16 now i'll buy it myself you know and uh it's but but it had to it was always his final say uh the women were there to enforce his rules so so the homes were very patriarchal i'm here hearing you say the the father um i remember you telling a cool story sam about how the entire family would get together and celebrate your father's birthday once a year but then i asked you whether you ever did that for any of your your you had three four four mothers for any of your four mothers what was your answer no i mean it was it was something that uh their birthdays were kind of like the children's birthdays you know they were recognized and uh if you're lucky you get a cake or something but there wasn't a lot of celebrating going on yeah and just what about church leadership so like profit first presidency you know top leaders in the church how many of them or even bishops or anything to what extent did women have representation there in the flds church none zero that's all you get i i would say i mean yes it was very rare to see a woman even be able to voice her opinion about something so to be completely honest with you i don't know if this talks about it in the keep sweet uh documentary keep sweden obey or if it was a different one we watched but when naomi jeffs who was warren's wife stood up to say that and share her opinion that she received this revelation that warren was to be the next prophet i remember throughout the community it was like uh but why do we care what she thinks about it right so it wasn't until i mean i can't speak for everyone personal opinion here when it wasn't until warren himself stood up and said hey i am to be the next prophet my father told me that i would to be was going to be and that and i received direct counsel from god that i really felt okay i believe him now and in my understanding she only got up and voiced that because she was directed too by warren he thought that it might help the community believe him yes yeah which was weird because we never saw women at the pulpit like unless it was a funeral and you were telling a story about the deceased or the loved one i never saw women at the pulpit like ever not even i don't remember even seeing a woman bear her testimony in church we did it in families family groups but i don't ever remember seeing a woman do you did you ever see a woman bear a testimony in church not that i can remember no yeah and i i think it was a crazy long time in the lds church before women were allowed to pray in sacramento meeting i don't people don't know this because it's like pre-1980s really my understanding is it and even praying in general conference the first instance i do remember that women praying in general conference was actually relatively recent um and of course women speaking in general conference for a long long time they just didn't even today the ratio of number of women who speak at an lds church general conference versus men i mean it's like 10 or 20 to 1 that ratio right and they can't um just have their own meaning without the priesthood there yeah really quickly melissa we want to give you a chance to speak out on the patriarchy either your experiences in the lds church's patriarchy or your experiences or or uh knowledge about the flds because you know you know quite a bit about the fws church melissa yeah at this at this point i'm uh definitely getting there um don't have the personal experiences but i have the awesome opportunity to hear from not just sam but awesome cousins like joanna and a lot of sam's sisters and i've had a lot of heart to heart a lot of people that um don't feel comfortable sharing their story even on youtube and stuff i've been able to have heart heart to hearts with so i really feel for especially the women um and a lot of sam sisters and stuff so i love any opportunity to be able to be an advocate for them but as far as the patriarchy goes in the lds church um for me it was really interesting growing up i feel like it was something that um is there's so many women out there that are advocating for you know women to have the priesthood and to get further in the church and i was kind of raised the opposite way that the whole purpose of the like it's a restored gospel and so restoring back to new testament times means that the women wouldn't have any power no matter what society is like now and that any progression towards women women having more of those opportunities was um like troublesome to the fact that it was a restoration and it's troublesome that we're changing with the times so just as an example like i remember when i went to have my endowment um for myself and in the washington anointings there was a woman that placed her hands upon my head and it was probably the most uncomfortable portion of my entire first temple experience because i had spent my entire life defending the patriarchy and defending why you know we get to be receivers of the priesthood and be a part of it without holding it right we get to sharing the blessings of it and i was about to be sealed in the temple so i was going to have my priesthood holder for all eternity that i could get reap the blessings um of his priesthood without needing to hold it myself and so i guess i had bought into that so much growing up that any progress for women i looked at as a negative thing rather than a positive which is crazy to me now because yeah like dnc 132 drives me nuts um and obviously i feel very differently about that but that's the mindset that i was in growing up which is similar to the way that flds grew up as well i think you're just taught that that's how it is and that that is god's way yep i'm thinking of okay i thought of at least three things while you were talking melissa one is that um uh one is that in the in the modern lds church the one that you know we just you know we're kicked out of our left there's still no such thing as a mother's blessing father's there's a there's a yearly ritual of father's blessings but if any of you you know melissa or jen did you ever hear of a mother's blessing a ritual of an annual mother's blessing does that exist why is that because we don't hold the priesthood i don't know i guess it was done back in joseph's time a little bit and women can't heal the sick but men can heal the sick you know there's just so many things a second thing uh um a second thing that i uh thought about was your amazing story melissa and and you guys are gonna love melissa's story melissa you were different than the average mormon you know teenager slash young women woman because you ended up getting a really cool job uh at in and out and you rose through the ranks of leadership quite quickly in a way that most you know mormon teenage girls or mormon young women don't get to do and um and you were you were on your rise to corporate success and then what happened when you found the love of your life then when i found the love of my life well then my goal was to have children and to stay home with them and be with them yeah so your career disappears now i'm not saying you're happy or sad about that but but um you know that's something that's kind of interesting and important yeah that was definitely something that um i never felt was like a religious pressure as much as but i mean looking back everything's religious pressure right like when you're raised that way you don't think of anything else um as anything like that but that was something that i was super excited to do to be able to stay at home with my babies so it was never a thought my entire life to um never i thought to stop excelling at my job even though i knew that it was at the end of the road i was going to take a step back and bsa at home mom and stop that i would say my career choice actually was dictated by that because i had the option to continue to go to school and i remember um getting ready to go into my program at byu and i was a manager in and out and decide making that decision i remember thinking being a an accountant is going to be harder for me to put on the shelf as a mother than if i make money now and invest in real estate i can continue to do that so even my decision in deciding like college or the workforce and to continue moving forward and making money and making those goals all was centered around the knowledge that when i had children i was going to be at home with them yeah fascinating so um so it's time to turn to our favorite topic everyone's favorite topic which is polygamy and i'm going to start by asking it this way i i talked about patriarchy right before polygamy because i have a theory and i want jen i want you and joanna and melissa i want you to test my theory i have a theory that if women were given equal representation in decision-making then polygamy would not be the outcome structure of marriage to discuss discuss each of you take a turn am i crazy there or is there something to that who wants who wants to get started i'll just say 100 from jen you so you wouldn't you wouldn't choose that jen if you could choose a marriage a celestial marriage structure you wouldn't choose polygamy no no no okay i'm just i'm just making sure nope that's a that's a nope that's a no no no no no no no big nope okay melissa and joanna what about you what about you both uh that was something my whole life that inside of me was ick but it was you know the heavenly law no i would not i could not share my man just couldn't will not i don't care if i go to hell in the end at least i have him here on earth by myself so that's uh that's that's hard no it's a it's a big no for for for joanna is that right yeah all right melissa your turn you can save you can save polygamy this is your chance melissa yeah absolutely not um there is no way and even as a active member i remember thinking that because i still believed that there was going to be polygamy on the other side so even though we didn't practice it on this earth there was a chance in the other side and i still remember being like there's no way like on the other side if that was asked to me like i'm with joanna i'd be sent to hell over living in the celestial kingdom and having yeah having sister wives no way i'm gonna i'm gonna drive this home this point home just a little bit obnoxiously more and i'm gonna ask an obvious question but i want i want you guys to give like an honest straightforward answer that's going to be largely obvious what's wrong with polygamy why not what's wrong with it what's wrong with that what's wrong with polygamy should i take this one yeah you take this all three of you what's wrong with them you start joining her um the women have no say in every single polygamist cult or religious belief the men have complete control they can have as many women as they want but if a woman sleeps with more than one man she is considered a harlot or [ __ ] uh it is very patriarchal and the children do not get the proper like there is so many kids and and the kids raise the kids it's just it's not a healthy family dynamic polygamy is not healthy for children okay melissa oh goodness um yeah i mean i agree with everything that joanna said i think that even more than it actually being polygamy itself it's all of the things that come with polygamy you know i know there's people who have polyamorous relationships and stuff but for some reason when it comes to religious polygamy it always comes down to the power of a man over a woman it is never a consensual decision in any way and i mean even if they say that it might be because that's the way they were raised um you actually don't have the type of consent that people think of right um and so no it it causes so many problems beyond the actual marriage to more than one woman it goes so much deeper than that and those are all things you just can't ignore like she said not healthy for anybody involved but especially the women and the children that are being raised to uh to be that way and polygamy especially is very big on the fact that a woman's all of her value is in having children and that contains so many problems because if women can't have children you know then it's dishonorable um if they're having them as frequently as what they are in flds that poses huge health risks and isn't healthy for a woman's body either so there's so much more than just the i don't want to share my man part to polygamy it's everything that comes with it that is unacceptable and not okay amen [Laughter] no i agree with everything they've said um i just don't i even forgot what the main question was like that yeah okay oh um it's all about the man in every way i i don't know how else to put it it's there's nothing for the woman and i know there's going to be people in this that would say differently um but they're in it and i i don't know if they have um the critical thinking part of it to be able to you know look at it objectively but it's just it's all about the man it's it's about about the man in every way it's about the man in um in sex in control in um family structure in decisions in money in um you know what's important who the kids go to what the kids do where say like i don't there's so much that goes along with just polygamy especially within within the flds and lds that i've come to find in my research is that it it all goes together like this all goes together you can't live in polygamy healthy within these two religions um even if someone wants to argue with me of polygamy being okay in a different setting like within these religions it it removes a woman from being human and being over her own desires needs agency there's so much that goes along with it um within these religions even thinking polygamy in the eternal aspect because according to that the lds mainstream right now like we can't even talk about heavenly mother we can't pray to her we like the prophets somehow have no talking ability to god about our mothers you know up there and so even in the eternal realm we're still silenced we're still only you know um birthing out these spirit children for the rest of all eternity and time as the men get to create these worlds that you know will have our spirit children inhabit with new bodies and that you know all these things and they'll be praised and like prayed to and they get to talk to their children and there's there's this like bond with you know god and them and and we're just silenced we're just silenced we're just removed from the picture and and there's nothing like how did i believe this for so long like it tears my heart it really does turn my part it tears my heart for the people the women that are still in the church that want that bond so bad because i remember wanting that when i was in and it to think that way to think that god would remove you from your children is like hell like who would do that like i just it just doesn't make sense to like in any way you look at it now and it and polygamy is attached to that that's every that's every god with all of his wife's that's the celestial thing that is talked about in the religion it's all of that it's so much it's so much and it's so wrong within these two religions how it's set up and i don't i could go on and on and give you facts and things to look at and pog has to watch but just you know just find out for yourself that's all i would say and i'm saying this with love to you all but it's to remove women from their children in an eternal sense and you're talking about you're talking about the idea that that mormons can't pray to mother in heaven and they don't know her name is that what you mean by removing children yeah there's no communication with children in an eternal aspect you're just kind of gone forever after you die you're gone forever in a polygamous relationship with lots of sister wives and one one male god and then here on the earth it's all the other things that we've all talked about before and sorry that's another gen ramp for you today on mormon stories podcast okay i'm gonna um i'm gonna ask two questions believe it or not i once heard an argument kind of a feminist argument for polygamy and i think it came out of a religious motivation to come up with to try and look progressive um but there were there were two arguments that were made and i want to see what melissa joanna and jen think about each of these allegedly feminist arguments about polygamy feminist argument for polygamy number one is that men have stronger libidos than women and so women women don't have the libidos that men do and so one of the benefits of polygamy is that a man can have his needs met fully and then women because they have less of a libido they get their needs met as well they're not having a sex as often as the men as the man but but they're getting it as much as they as they need i know that's i mean i know people might but that's one argument i've heard um any any response to that my face is like not hiding anything so i'll get my jaw up off the ground and say i cannot even believe that someone would say that i am like personally offended saying that someone would dare try to guess what my sexuality is like and whether or not i can keep up with my husband like you mean your libido right yeah yeah that my yeah the my libido is drive whatever yeah that my libido um isn't enough for a man or any man or my husband or the fact that someone would make a blanket statement like that about women and try to claim that women don't have the same libido or that we don't have the same needs is like i just can't even believe someone would try to say that i'm in that same boat like no offense i've been with people where i want them more than they did just saying so to that argument i think someone just i mean i think every individual is different every woman has a different sex drive and i believe that for men as well so no i do not agree with that statement at all so you find um you find a mate that matches your libido yes in order to be i mean i i'm not saying that's how it's always going to be but i'm just saying like the idea that you're just gonna not like i don't know sorry go ahead jen i can't even with this question yeah i would say the possibility of maybe that statement coming from a man that doesn't know how to please a woman maybe yes thank you yes i mean so i would have to say a hard no on that one in my experience yeah okay i would say my husband and i are both great very compatible very compatible okay yeah all right all right thanks for the reports about that the other the other and i think it's important to dispel stereotypes that's why you're bringing them up yeah definitely the second stereotype or feminist argument for polygamy that i've heard is if it's gonna be that someone has to stay home and take care of the kids and if it's going to be that that generally speaking the man has the profession that having multiple women at home allows you to number one have built-in friends that are there but it also allows division of labor in the home so that different people can take uh responsibilities and that maybe even some of the sister wives can be career women too so so it can give either make it so the the you know each of the sister wives has less household or or children chores overall and or more ability to have extra hobbies or even um you know even pursue careers uh because there's other other women around to do the work arguments about that go ahead i was like no sorry i have to go my husband is my partner and he's the one who shares those responsibilities with me and household responsibilities belong to a household and if you are with a partner who believes in that and i am very lucky to be married to someone like that our household responsibilities belong to both of us and i do stay at home with our children and his job during the day may be one thing and my job is to make sure that our kids are happy and healthy and that does not include the household chores those are things that we share together and he is my partner in that and i don't need another wife to be the one to do that for me go ahead joy i'll say if that was the case like in any polygamy experience you might have as many children as possible correct so all of the women are having 13 kids in my experience tell me in any shape or form i don't care how many women there are how are you going to be able to make that a healthy family dynamic that's a good point like how can someone go out and be a career woman if they have 13 kids of their own and the other mom also has 13 kids that's when the children raise the children and that's how polygamy is powerful powerful joanna anything you want to add to that jen or is that that kind of cover for you yeah that's that was powerful i think we should stop on joanna's statement there podcast over no way we've got more that was purple joy let me just ask you really quickly can you speak to the relationship between sister wives is some might want to romanticize the fact that you've got built-in best friends that are you know other women in the home i imagine that sometimes the sister wives can really get along and be a good support to each other i imagine other things might be true sometimes as well do you want to speak to you know the idea of multiple women living in the home together uh sharing one man with what the dynamics can also be do you want dynamics and opinions or do you want my experience yeah your experience both both sorry uh in my experience no there was always jealousies there was always one one's opinion meant more than the others one's children were considered a little bit better than the other mothers in my experience it is different as well like i i am from a different father than the rest of the siblings because my mom's husband was kicked out and she remarried her sister's husband so i don't know i've heard of family dynamics where they were all happy and loved each other but then you talked to actual like older siblings in that family and it was like no behind closed doors people did not get along so in my experience no it's it's not loving it's not there's always i guess they always have roles to play some are higher than others and it creates very much jealousy and drama and then the children get to experience it in parents you hear about like a favorite wife kind of deal and i also want to bring you in sam because you you experienced multiple mothers in the home sam what what is there anything you want to add about the dynamic between sister wives and is is this idea of a favorite wife more common than not well as a child within this polygamous family of course my assumption was that my mother was the favorite right of course but but no they're that i actually kind of felt that way to be honest i i felt that my mother was was uh would go on trips with my father and was kind of the one preparing his special meal when he got home from work so i did kind of have that feeling oh my my mom's the favorite i can't speak for my other siblings but i don't remember any of them ever coming to me and trying to suggest otherwise but i will say for the for the wife going into the family it's one thing but for the for the wives that are already there there have been extreme jealousy uh issues within the families even within the flds church where the wives are supposed to just keep sweet obey no matter what um for example my own mother went father because she is his second wife when when he took on his third wife i was told of stories that i mean she almost just left she almost just took her kids took her things and walked out the door because she couldn't handle the jealousy aspect there because there's a new wife fresh meat so to speak and and of course your husband is now spending a lot of time with this new wife as well and so it definitely creates some drama and some issues yeah in my experience my mother was not the favorite wife but then again she also came from a family where she used to be the only wife and she was the mom so it was very difficult for her but she definitely was not the favorite so i i saw that in a lot of families okay so you kind of felt the opposite in your situation okay yeah it goes both ways but every family is different you have to that's something you have to remember in the flds is every single family is unique very true very true okay that's uh that's super helpful um all right so we we haven't even gotten to comparing joseph smith and warren jeffs as it relates to their practice of polygamy and just really quickly um melissa what were you taught about joseph smith's polygamy in all of your years in the church okay let me think back to before i learned anything i was taught that joseph smith practiced polygamy because it was something that god commanded that it was so so so hard for him to do that that he didn't want to do it with every fiber of his being he didn't want to do it and he tried multiple times to say no to the lord and that he was going to do it until the lord threatened him with his life if he did not fulfill what god intended with polygamy and that it was something that was always meant for the salvation of the women that there was no sexual relationships with the other wives it was purely for their salvational purposes and um yeah i guess that kind of those are the main things and melissa i'm going to say you're a bit of an exception to the rule in my experience um because i went 45 years in the mormon church and literally never once in any meeting ever in any general conference in any sunday school in any seminary class in any byu religion class in any elders quorum ever was there ever any mention or by my parents or anyone that i knew any friend any leader there was never once any mention of joseph smith being a polygamist at all in my entire mormon upbringing brigham young was a polygamist but there was no mention of joseph smith and certainly no mention of any of his wives and that is the that's the experience that i believe even up until the past you know few years and maybe even to this day is the most common experience within lds church members jen i want to i want to give you a chance to say what you were taught about joseph smith's polygamy uh in your years as a member yeah so i was taught that um there was joseph and emma and i was i only heard about joseph and emma until i'd probably say i was like 40 for the first 40 years yeah i never heard anything other than just no no i knew that there was polygamy um i was thought that there was polygamy coming over to utah that they like there were so many women and like men in like all the attacks on the lds religion men had died and um so there was a lot of women and they just needed like protection and someone to watch over them on their trip over to utah and so they would be sealed to these men like just eternally like eternally sealed to them no marital relations with them but they were sealed to them and they brought them over to utah and then they kind of took care of them until they died kind of story um that's what i was told about polygamy and then the ones that like when the prophet said we no longer um practice polygamy that the ones that rebelled and still wanted to do polygamy um moved and they formed the flds so that's kind of where like the story the condensed version of the story i was told um about josephine is yeah polygamy yeah perfect and were were any of where any of you did any of you ever hear a story in church or a mention in church of any of joseph smith's wives no melissa oh sorry we muted you guys melissa no worries i'm not in church that i remember all of the stuff that i learned was all in um seminary in seminary they addressed it when we went over the doctrine of covenants obviously they mentioned his wife named some of the some of his wives oh sorry doing names um no i don't remember any names in particular just that he had multiple wives jen no okay yeah okay so i think you know i think at least in in my generation's case we were all that information was held was withheld from us right and we were we were taught that when there was polygamy it's because there were way too many women on the frontier and not enough men and god needed a way to have the women have husbands and so that's why we did polygamy mm-hmm yeah um okay so let's now do a contest who was the better polygamist joseph smith or warren jeffs jen and melissa what's your understanding of how many wives joseph smith actually did have melissa you go first what's your understanding oh i wanted to say it was in the 30s or 40s but i don't that's my guess like game show guess well this is saying somewhere between 30 and 40 jen what's your what's your guess like in knowledge now yeah oh i'd guess 36 okay yeah that they put numbers i think somewhere between 34 and 40. yeah so i think you're both right ding ding ding a-plus for melissa and and ten okay pam and joanna what's your understanding of how many wives to this date warren jeff has well if it's a competition between warren and joseph smith warren won because i i was told that at his peak he had up to 80 wives that's what i was told 82 is what i was told okay yeah and even brigham young i think had in the 50s if i remember right so warren jeffs is a is a ninja black belt level polygamist it was something you weren't just out joseph's joseph smith basically yeah well he was kicking out all those men yeah yeah i i would just point out speaking of uh warren jeffs and uh all of that you're asking if uh polygamy if melissa or jan had heard about joseph's wives in the flds that was a topic that was talked about all the time because that was a way to justify what they were doing joseph himself did it that's all we're doing we're doing the same things he did this is what he taught this is the gospel restored to the earth so it was talked about all the time in my household i don't ever remember them giving us a number of how many wives joseph smith had because i we heard that he had some that were not even mentioned or on record but right i don't remember a specific number per se but i do remember his several wives talked about uh and i do remember several of those names being thrown around yes yeah yeah all right and even if even if warren out joseph smith's joseph smith in terms of 82 versus 34 or whatever joseph's no slouch right right he's no slouch no you deserve some polygamous props right yeah i think so right melissa right well i mean he founded it so you gotta give him he gets like an extra an extra bunch of points for that bonus points for sure for not only founding it but uh yeah for revealing it the way that it was so that it continued this long i mean like i said i think he gets warren's points in addition because warren still did what he did because of what joseph smith did basically joseph's the og right right he is the og he's polygamous og okay next question um melissa and jen um what's your understanding is to joseph marrying underage women melissa you go first um my understanding now or what i was raised no we're doing now we're doing okay yeah so um obviously fannie alger um but then definitely oh why did i lose her name kimball right helen helen mark i'm glad i'm keeping keeping it in my head it's been a while since uh my original uh faith journey and looking up all this but um that story what about halamar kibble oh the fact that she was 14 years old and the fact that um she was told that she was going to be destroyed and that joseph smith was going to be destroyed if she didn't become one of his wives and that her family's eternal salvation depended on it and when i was reading through that story um you know i come across a story and in the beginning of our faith journey and it's also mentioned in their um topic essays in the lds because of course i was only searching on lds.org for all of my answers and i remember reading that and they said she was just shy of 15 and i was like that's a really sly way of not wanting to say she was 14 years old um but throughout that story it reminded me so much of the flds because i thought oh my goodness a 14 year old who is told that the salvation of her family is dependent on marrying an older man and that he's going to be destroyed or you know his priesthood whatever you want to call it that he would be destroyed and that she would be destroyed if she did not consent to it and so yeah that that was my main understanding of his underage wives and fanny who obviously was kind of out of the picture before the revelation and before he continued on um practicing plural marriage the top of my head i don't know if there were more underage girls beyond that i i don't know as many details that was enough evidence for me at the time to be like nah that's messed up jen what's your understanding of like how how frequently how many of joseph's wives were were kind of teenagers or underage um i i'm not recalling uh because i know i have a document on this because i was very i think me and melissa are the same person i think we went through the same faith crisis um because everything she says i pretty much did too but um i don't know off the top of my head i'm thinking 11. yeah that's that's my understanding somewhere around 10 10 or some around 10 teenage brides at least two as i understand that were 14 but there were there were others that were you know 50 16 yeah you know that sort of age if you want to what i would tell you um like i have quotes here but i i don't know if i want to go go there because i can take a long time on that and maybe we can do another podcast about about that but um helen kimball if you she kept immaculate journals and um go back and read them and your heart will be like twisted out of your chest they're just heartbreaking and um the apologists always say oh well she at the end of her life she said how great it was and how how wonderful it was and what i would say to that is um elizabeth smart it only took her nine months so a 14 year old girl they were both 14 and if it took elizabeth only nine months to stand up for her rapist and the person that stole her from her family um i don't i don't condem or you know have any hard feelings against helen kimball for what she said when she was older if you read her journals from the time she was 14 when this happened you will never look at polygamy the same again so that's what i would suggest that you all do her journals are available in um online and you can read right from them so i'd suggest you do that yeah there's a really good graphic um there's a there's a really good graphic uh just if you if you were to google the wives of joseph smith everybody and i can actually uh try and share it um on the screen just to give you a sense uh for for what it looks like um but but there's here it is um it's a it's a really cool graphic and it goes into detail about ages and um you know it it lists you know there's there's a 16 year old a 14 year old 17 year old um yeah and then it talks also about some of the other dynamics as well i just will include a link to that in the show notes but but i think that's a really uh important graphic okay so we all were aghast when we think melissa wants to say something oh um melissa yes uh please jump in so sorry i just wanted to kind of piggyback off of jen just one quick comment um yes jen we are the same person i feel like but um and jen you could probably tell me if i'm wrong but when you were talking about hillmar's kim uh helen mark kimball's journal if i remember right um it was her that she you know she kind of like fought against it and they kind of had to keep her in the closet about the fact that she was a plural wife of his because of her age and at one point she became sick and was so deathly ill she thought she was going to die and she prayed to god that if he would heal her that she would never say anything negative about polygamy again and i can't remember it was her if it was a different plural wife but i remember reading that journal entry and being like this is how apologists say you know and she never did and she continued the rest of her life saying that polygamy was good and i thought what kind of constraint is that being put under if you believe that um your only reason you were healed and then you're for the rest of your life dedicated to saying that something is good that you don't actually believe but you were forced to because of a circumstance having to do with health and you believing that god saved your health to stand up for that so those are the type of situations i think happen a lot with the flds as well you know you hear marianne just that they say oh the 12 year old girl she wanted to be married she said how badly she wanted to marry warren and even at this point she's still out there she may say that it was a great decision that she loves it but how much can we trust that perspective without knowing the full story of how they came to that dedication to the polygamy and the kind of constraint they were put under the kind of pressure they were put under and when you see the full story like jen said it's absolutely heartbreaking and anybody who watched keep sweet pray and obey can know how heartbreaking when you hear that a 12 year old says that that they want to be married to him and any person any adult that tries to tell me that marianne really feels that way that she really believes that with all her heart and that we should leave that poor child alone because she says that in that moment i can't imagine a single adult saying that and that needs to be taken into account when we look at these other cases of polygamy as well that we don't know the full story and if we did we would be hoping that they would be wanting to protect those children as well beautiful yeah that was beautiful melissa and you're correct it was helen i want to i want to send this to sam and joanna because as as as skilled as joseph was at marrying teenage brides warren warren hasn't beat but uh i was so disturbed in the keep sweet when during the trial they're trying to blame the teenage girls the underage girls as wanting it and that was the legal defense that they wanted it um but but uh yeah the most disturbing part of keepsweed for me was the videos and the and the pictures and the coverage of the young girls that warren married so sam and joanna you guys want to take over and talk about how warren took uh marriage of underage girls to a whole new level that's something i wanted to bring up is like people will say you know they wanted it but what people fail to realize is this was happening six generations back like we were taught from the time we were born that that was our salvation like it was more of a saving grace to get married no matter what age you were because that was your destiny that was your calling and like people will be like that's crazy like you won't think that way and it was weird because like i personally when i was six i had a really like icky rebellious like feeling about it but if i even spoke that who knows like they were like even kids can get kicked out you can go out and live with some strange family if you want to doubt the prophet so like you say that because and it it doesn't feel like force to some of these girls it does especially if you are interested in another man you don't end up with that other man i remember having early crushes and praying that warren would marry me to that person and wanting to get married at a young age but and you think you're an adult but you're not but like it's just in your mind there is no other way so it's not really i wouldn't say like if you had other options would you choose that if marianne knew about like going to high school and having a normal life and falling in love if she knew there was another option do you think she would have made that choice oh man i uh i witnessed some of my sisters that after they got the phone call or or went into father's office to talk about the fact that they had been selected to be married off to a man and both of them coming out shaking pale and crying all the same time and nothing i could do nothing my father could do i mean who in our minds who can stand up against god's word and that's that's all i can say about that yeah and it was your salvation and like i said i i always feared about getting married to some old guy at a young age that was a huge fear but at the same time i wasn't allowed to voice that fear or even feeling that fear made me feel guilty because that was bad to have those fears yeah for me one of the creepiest moments of the video was to see some of these 80 year old men you know pictures of warren or even his dad roland kissing these 12 year old girls and seeing the photos of these 12 to 13 year old girls with with babies yeah i actually started like i started dry heaving it was so bad you guys like i'm watching the pictures come up on the on the screen and it physically like when i say i'm was sick it really made me sick it made my heart sick it made my stomach sick like i couldn't i had to close my eyes when the pictures came on and then when they started talking about which i'm sure we'll get to at some point the young girl in the temple that was recorded like oh like i oh my like still even right now i'm having a hard time like thinking about them yeah like that's tough that that's tough that's no way you look at that can that be from god like in no way let's go ahead and talk about that because that's something that i didn't have a full understanding of and it's for sure the most disturbing part of the entire movie um i i believe they're called celestial sessions is that what they're called uh sam and joanna would you would you all mind and and listeners and viewers i'm just going to warn you this is the most disturbing part we're going to give a warning if you've got kids listening if you're sensitive to it matters of rape or trauma or child abuse this is the time to practice self-care to pause to turn this off or to uh maybe monitor who's listening but um but sam and joanna would you mind would you mind talking about this part of the documentary this one is going to be hard for me um i guess the scariest part for me is they teach you you know they don't teach you anything about sex like safety they don't even teach you how it is and so like when you like that dynamic i guess like that was the scariest part for me it's like you know we had animals and i kind of felt like it was instinct for me how things worked but i had a sister that was like how does it work there were some girls that thought you got pregnant from kissing so you go from that to like marrying someone and then having these heavenly sessions and i don't know if you watched uh the preaching evil documentary if you don't mind for those who haven't watched it can you just tell our viewers and listeners just at a basic level what a heavenly session was and then continue with whatever you were saying so in my understanding like we didn't get taught about that that was something warren had with his wives and it was it was done sexually and there was multiple women in the room to my understanding and it was kind of a way of bringing him he would say he would get punished for the sins of the people and they would bring him back but for girls like i don't know how they would go through with that because like i said we weren't taught that so like for us it's like a shock to learn about that and be like okay but like you have no other experience to say that's wrong like in your opinion you just go with it because that's what you're taught right that in the temple at the at the highest level of the temple there's a bed and when warren would take a new child bride 12 years old whatever there would be women around and he would sexually abuse that child on the bed in the temple with people watching am i right am i wrong did i get that wrong so they were all their wives of his yeah so sister wives yes and in my understanding i've never experienced and they didn't teach this let alone we didn't know this until we after we were out like we had no idea this was going on so even like still i don't know like we had no internet we had you know and so in my experience there was other women that he had selected and i i don't know exactly what he did from what we have seen from um sam and i watched a documentary called preaching evil with naomi jess who is one of warren's wives and was the scribe and um she didn't go into explicit detail as to what happened but from my understanding too these did not start in the temple they actually started heavenly sessions just in warren's bedroom so it wasn't strictly and purely in the temple from the recording obviously that one was a heavenly session that was in the temple later um with marianne um but from the understanding of what she explained because again no one in the flds outside of his wives knew what was happening but naomi described it as um they all circled around him on his bed and they all deroped and then he asked different sexual favors of them for them to revive him out of his atoning for the sins of the people so he would be close to death and then they would sexually arouse him back to life um and from what she said it was not only to and with warren but with one another as well so that's i mean like i said again i hope that's okay that i explained it but we're going off of what naomi just said but for me like my mind doesn't even fathom so i'm like having a hard time even understanding this because he was god he you know and now i obviously do not believe that in any form but it's just it's my mind still trying to catch up personally to all these truths that are coming out yep and i i agree i mean i i only know what we've seen in these recent documentaries or what some of the people that were involved in these so-called heavenly sessions were uh we're doing because obviously we never heard about any of this stuff as a member of the flds community it was very well kept secret but uh but yes uh obviously very disgusting things that he had going on uh like melissa said not only for him but things that he could just sit there and watch uh that the other women would do to each other yeah super disturbing and it makes joseph look less a lot less bad yeah still horrible but that's just like it's yeah it's like unthinkable like yeah i just like who would you think that and then and then it's compounded and by it being 12 like a 12 year old girl 12. and and it's hard for me to understand a 12 year old girl being on that bed or in that room even with all those women and everyone derobing and him making her touch him or him touching her or or some accounts being raped on the bet like i like any of that is so horrifying in every way that like i don't even know what to say like there's no words like available to say how wrong how wrong that is and then that they're so indoctrinated that not even the women would say anything and it just breaks my heart it does i don't know this is so hard for me the subject but it's just so hard to understand that that's how bad it was like that's how bad it got to not only to none of his 80-something wife said anything like and i don't know maybe it's only a select 12 that got to do this with him or something but still like i don't know it's just so hard for me that was so disturbing to me that it still is disturbing to me just thinking about it even knowing and hearing that before when i was trying to look more into that to make sure that you know as far as we know that's really what happened and it's just so so sad and and don't and not to forget as well that he was forcing one of his wives naomi to either record these sessions or write down exactly what's happening he wanted he wanted record of this stuff he didn't want to just experience it in that moment he wanted to keep record of it well i'm really sorry um i'm really sorry for bringing it up i mean i'm not sorry for bringing it up but i it's such a difficult thing joanna melissa jen specifically uh this is a very triggering and just heart-wrenching topic and sickening and violent and i'm sad that we have to be talking about it and i'm sad that you all have to be talking about it yeah there's nothing definitely nothing heavenly or from heaven about those sessions yeah yeah just love to the victims yeah definitely and i hope my hope is that when he hopefully passes away and maybe some outside world can get in there somehow that or maybe maybe even when he's been in prison hopefully this has stopped hopefully this isn't going on zil right now as we sit here and talk about this um hopefully something can happen hopefully we can all figure out how to help the victims that need help right now to heal um i just i guess that's where my heart is with them yeah it's probably worth mentioning that there are incredible non-profits that exist to help victims of fundamentalist polygamy one that i'm aware of is called holding out help um sam and melissa are you all aware of nonprofits that are trying to help heal these broken lives yeah that's actually the one that we typically recommend is holding out help it's the main one we know of all right well we'll make sure and include holding out help in the show notes um and again we're sorry to our viewers that we have to be so graphic but um melissa i'm sorry joanna is there anything else you wanted to share i i know that this is particularly emotional for you i'm sure um i just like i appreciate like i know these are hard to talk about but i feel like bringing awareness helps more people be able to speak up like i never experienced anything like that personally think thank god for that but just like the fear of like you know that was a possibility i think is huge but i think another thing like bring light on is like yeah there was no knowledge of this and there is even people still believing people still there they don't know this going on because they're directed not to look it up it's like even for me like i didn't know why he was in jail and i think that's something that we need to recognize when we look at these people and not judge them for following a leader like that because they're oblivious to a lot of that there yeah yeah yeah and i'm sure there's going to be believing mormons and even progressive mormons who get mad at me saying this but joseph smith started this he's the one that started marrying not just having polygamy but marrying teenagers and underage girls and warren was only excelling at what he knew joseph smith did he just took it to another level but it started it started joseph smith is that am i being unfair no that's exactly where it started so all right well uh there's a couple more just really quick things about polygamy that we wanted to just run by and some of these actually don't know uh the flds's position on it um so um in terms of um marrying other living men's wives one of the most troubling um things about many people's faith crisis which actually doesn't make sense many people are troubled by polyandry polyandry is um is is when um joseph smith is marrying women who are already married to other living men and feminists and just women in general remind us that we shouldn't be more revolted by polyandry than we should polygamy it's all revolting and it's it's not more revolting that a woman would get to have sex with multiple men so so having said that i think the reason why many people find that revolting is because it's one thing for joseph to take on multiple women and take on underage girls it makes no sense that he would if angels are commanding him to take these wives and even if um he's doing it to make to raise a righteous seed or to have lots of posterity that still doesn't make sense but that's a justification why in heaven's name would he need to take the wives away from from women who are already married other men and it turns out that joseph smith married at least 10 to 12 women who were already married to living men and that's called polyandry and it makes no sense i'm not going to say it's more sickening than just regular old polygamy um but that's what joseph smith did and something that i don't have any understanding for is whether warren jeffs actually married women who were already married to other men whether warren jeff's practice practiced polyandry and i'm wondering if sam or joanna even know um all i know for sure is that he would force men out of the community and then he would either marry some of these women himself or he would force other men or force these women to marry other men so he had the power and i know some people may say that joseph smith forced men on missions and then married their wives so i guess in a sense that's a similar uh similarity there but but he had the power to get rid of man and then do what he wanted with the wives so yeah with my daddy was he was sent to go and then she remarried and she was still legally married to him up until i think 2017 2018 or something so explain explain that one more time what happened with with your dad and mom so with my role that he got kicked out he was sent to what they call sent on repentance and she remarried but she was still legally married to my birth dad and she married who again her sister's husband has a third wife yeah so it's it's fair to say that that perditious practice of reassigning women to other men it it it directly flows to joseph's practice of polyandry because once joseph crossed that line of basically saying send you on mission i'm going to now get sealed to your wife while you're on a mission that would have been where warren and others would have gotten the idea that that reassignment and marrying women who already married other men was even possible is that fair i would dare say that warren probably um is in a better situation um ethically i don't know if that doesn't make sense warren and ethics don't match but at least he was completely getting rid of the husband and then remarrying them as his own where joseph smith was marrying them a secret and having them remain married um to both men so warren was at least keeping it as a marriage rather than trying to like have this dual life for the woman the woman was literally taken from one and placed in another instead of you have your husband but you also have me over here doing both if that makes sense i'd say it's interesting that warren just kind of made it more clear-cut and and dry of how it was that the women belong to the priesthood rather than trying to put them into a false security of like oh you still have them but you have me as well i would like to add to that because that was how it was like when my mom remarried we didn't even have pictures of my dad i didn't know what he looked like for most of my life first time i met him i didn't know he was my father because he strictly kept that very separate like once he was sent to go and kicked out you no longer had any communication no longer any sexual relation not at all like just nothing with that previous man yeah this actually was an area where i felt like joseph might be in some ways worse than warren which is hard to do it's hard to beat warren you know what i mean and and this polyandry thing may have been one area where joseph was worse any final thing you want to say about that jen are you no okay yeah okay um let's go ahead and just quickly talk about you know jen one of the things i remember really clearly when we were with sandra tanner talking about dnc 132 which by the way what what mormons many active latter-day saints in our church don't recognize that polygamy is still in mormon you know mormon church doctrine that if any any lds church member goes to doctrine and covenants section 132 they're going to see all this spelled out as doctrine today in in the modern mormon church it's still doctrine so in that sense we're still a polygamist church not to mention the fact that our two highest-ranking leaders russell and nelson and dominic jokes are sealed to polygamous wives in the eternities that's also true but when you read doctrine and covenants 132 jen i was just struck with how women are talked about in terms of them being almost like property or cattle jen do you want to do you want to talk about that just really briefly your your recollections of that conversation and then melissa and sam and joanna if you guys want to talk about dnc 132 i want to hear your thoughts on that um first i would say that um it was interesting to me how i never knew that doctrine how i never knew that that was still in place you had never really paid attention to dc132 even though it was there all along no and when we would be like have a lesson on dnc 132 um in church we would never we would never learn it or discuss it as a whole chapter like we wouldn't like read through it and go over every every verse um we would always learn it and talk about it in little chunks um or the lesson would stop before the end of dnc 132 where um a lot of the um where emma is you know will be condemned or i forget the exact word is that the word is condemned and damned or damned yeah um where a lot of that happens um but going through it with sandra tanner um bless her heart like verse by verse understanding it um reading through it i would suggest you go back and watch um that series it's a three-part series that we did with sandra tanner um we go through each verse and we we play what the apollo apologists say about it and then we read the scriptures and then we go through the verse and we actually break it down um what it's meaning what it's saying how it builds on each other um because you can take little pieces of it here and there and you can make it seem all fine and dandy but when you look at that in a historical aspect what was going on um how it was written why it was written who delivered it to emma what emma's response was like if you look at the whole picture um it's nothing more than fulfilling the sexual fantasy of joseph smith and that's why it was the revelation was written down and given and um it was yeah i don't know what else to say from it for me what was disturbing about it was um that women are talked about you know they're referred to as handmaidens i think or hand yeah like a servant like servants um uh and it heavenly father or jesus if jesus is the author of you know scripture revelation he's talking about women being given to one man but then if the man's not righteous they're taken away from that man and given to another and they're talked about as like glory that that the man will increase in his glory the more women that he has and there's no nothing really talking about the the value of the woman no the woman's talked about being damned um being a servant and giving giving away property yeah yeah and so joseph smith with doctrine covers 132 set the precedent that women are just literally cattle or chattel or property and so um you know let's go ahead and bring bring our guests in sam and and melissa and joanna what what do you guys want to say about if there's anything you want to say about dnc 132 but then really specifically sam and joanna what do you want to say about the treatment of women as property or cattle in the flds church i want to bring bring up a phrase that was used a lot and it was uh you young women are being raised as calves in a stall that was that was said and we always thought of it as though you know we're being i don't know like i don't know why we thought of it different than actually what the words mean but like you know we were you know gloried and we were like being groomed another one that was used was you know you are unpolished gems and your men will polish you to fit like what you need to be to make it to the celestial kingdom those were a few phrases that were used wow section 132 of the doctrine and covenants was a was a scripture that wasn't the the flds they didn't try to hide this scripture this was one they would bring to the light like hey this is how it needs to be so that 132 was a very well known scripture throughout the flds community and one that they would talk about a lot tnt 132 is a big time shelf breaker for me and it's very very hard for me to read and i feel like um anytime i talk about polygamy with another woman i say just go with an open heart and an open mind read dnc 132 and just listen to your heart and it'll tell you yeah okay so um you know it's time for us to kind of you know we're we're going to be coming close to three hours but we've got over a thousand people joining us like it's it's red i just want to say sam and melissa and joanna it's rare we have a thousand people joining our live stream it's uh it's almost unheard of there's just a few big events like natasha alfred's communication or a couple you know like the brad wilcox stuff like it's really hard to have over a thousand oh wow so that's right but we also want to be respectful of your time so is it okay if we just take maybe 10 minutes and just hustle through just a few more points that similarities absolutely yeah melissa are you okay or or yep we're good enjoy it yes okay i promise i'll i'll cover these final things fast i just i sometimes really want to dig into this stuff too much okay really quickly in terms of um in terms of power well um i i guess when we talk about high demand religions or cults we talk about the bite model um by b ite so the b stands for behavioral controls like dress or food or sex or behavior i stands for information control which which is limiting the the knowledge that the members have the information about the history the behavior of the leaders because information bad information or harmful information leads to thoughts that the church might be true or that the leaders might not be inspired so you got to control the information to control the thoughts and then you got to manipulate with fear um you know um and that sort of thing i don't think we need to go into that i think the documentary goes into a really good detail about um about uh you know the bite model and control um i want to thank doug vincent he's making the point that if all the youtubers listeners or viewers right now or on facebook hit the like button or hit the subscribe button that could really increase our our viewership on youtube but um uh because i know we're short on time uh you guys can watch the documentary about the ways that people's behavior information thoughts were controlled and the way that they were manipulated really quickly uh sam or um um sam or joanna is there anything you want to say about that sorry could you ask the question one more time well about the control the ways that behavior and information and thoughts were controlled through emotional manipulation oh goodness i i mean there's so many ways i'd say the fear of like internal damnation or becoming nothing if you even doubt the profit like it goes severely and it's really weird because i you know it i i don't know i'm going to ask melissa a question in in the lds they believe in forgiveness yes but they're like there there are things you cannot be forgiven for and they we also believe in forgiveness but then they like bring in a lot of fear so it's like you have agency to choose the wrong but if you choose the wrong you're damned so it's like is that really agency and then as far as like the dress like women were directed how to comb their hair and how to eat there were certain foods we couldn't eat right down to you know all the hair up on the head and so a lot of things were controlled and i think it starts with you know that fear of not doing what we say and then also there was another phrase that was used and it was like if you could even imagine like imagine the greatest glorious thing in the world like the glorious blessings are gonna be ten times that so just put up with the hardship because the glory is like you know beyond imagination but the damnation is the worst yeah there was no no like background yes the flds seemed to be very direct but there were some subtle things they would use as well um for example the music the music was very much follow the prophet you know and just keep sweet no matter what he the prophet is the one that will show you the way and you have to i don't know about for you but in my household the music was something that wasn't just you listened to on occasion it was always on in the vehicles when we woke up for uh for example we had this intercom in our home that we would use to try to reach someone on the other end of the house that we didn't have time to walk 15 minutes to and and asked them to come to the kitchen or something but uh so we would dial a couple numbers and then get on the intercom and talk to over the speakers my mother would use that in the morning and she would just put a cd player in front of it and play the music from warren jeffs and his wives and that that they would sing and blast it over the intercom as a way of helping us wake up in the morning i don't know if you experienced that too but it was always on there was always the music and then the devotionals i don't know there's millions of recordings of devotionals and what we they call home economics where warren would groom women in those home economics and they were playing constantly throughout the house so there was no way to really get away from that like it was bad to sleep and listen to those about to fall asleep while the prophet was talking and they were constantly playing those kind of things and any sort of like i got in trouble for listening to the radio so any outside music was a no-no bad bad bad bad yes i got into some big trouble listening to what they would call gentile music or worldly music so that was not allowed good old taylor swift and hillary duff oh yeah of the devil how dare i another thing i'd love to mention is they made us feel like that we were the one elite we were the one group that was going to heaven like they taught us that the lds church was the wicked and abominable great and abominable church talked about in the book of mormon yes and so we were the one elite so like we had so many blessings and so many promises and then so many damnations and so many like you just have like a lot of pressure yeah you've got a very narrow path that you had to stay on and it was it was very much dictated and there was there was no wiggle room it was very much you do this or else yeah and and it was cut and dry but i feel like in order to make us stay and always be obedient to those things they would also throw in little subtle things here and there as well like the music or that where they would kind of slip this information and have it always going over and over in our mind even funerals were not about like they would tell subtle stories here and there but they'd be like i want to take this time to read you know scripture or document it was like even that was used as another reason to preach about the gospel and about i feel like like it it really angered me and my brothers you know because they did that i just remember being like can you just talk about when he did this one great thing and they would read a scripture instead i would say it was all about what comes after this life and that's something else i would was going to point out is they would not focus on this life so much that you just need to endure this life it's all that matters that you enjoy this life depending on how you do here will determine what your life is after here and you it'll either be this most amazing thing you can't even possibly comprehend right now or it will be the worst imaginable thing possible and so that was why we just kept chugging along doing what we were told yeah and so whether it's you know telling people that jesus is coming any minute so you better be righteous or you'll be burned when jesus comes or you'll suffer in heaven and outer darkness or in hell that you won't be exhausted or even just being told you won't be able to live forever with your family or being worried about in this life that you may have your spouse taken away from you you may have your kids taken away from you at any moment just the amount of fear that was used to manipulate and control is was just unbelievable and i would say the lds church has a lot of that um but it's but it's more oriented at the afterlife than it is on this earth um but it still can be significantly influential and powerful to to mormon church members so i think we excel at the byte model just like you guys do but of course i think the flds win in terms of overall adherence to the byte model you agree jen yeah yeah definitely win that one okay really quick we're going to end with just a couple of things um one of the things that i think is a really stark fair comparison between joseph smith and warren and honestly i think joseph may even win on this is the degree to which he had total control and what i'm talking about is total control over the church but he was also joseph smith was mayor now i know that that's different than warren because sam i remember you telling us that your dad was mayor so joseph smith was prophet and president of the church he was mayor he was judge and he had his own army he was actually the head of the navu militia and he would march that militia around neighboring towns to intimidate them and of course his own law enforcement um and so i think this is an area where joseph and joseph had himself ordained king of the world towards the end of his life literally king of the world so i'm gonna i'm gonna put a stake in the ground and i'm gonna say joseph actually seized more total comprehensive power than did warren but i was just stunned at how much you know power warren had to the point of his own police force and um you know total control of hilldale so sam and joanna do you guys want to talk anything about the not to mention that joseph smith had a bank you know his own bank and and warren of course had his own financial exploits but sam and joanna do you want to talk about war and jeff's total power within the community uh i would just say it doesn't matter who the mayor is if you have total control over that person and that's kind of the way it was for warren i mean yes he had his people in all these different areas but he had 100 percent of the control if he said something that happened so i feel that he at least over the community his followers he had 100 of the control at all times i would like to add in some places like we were taught that the president of the united states doesn't mean anything compared to warren true so like he he was considered everything and he had he did have his own police force he directed who he wanted to be police and even all the mayors of the town that were part of the community did as warren said as well so if he wasn't the mayor he still controlled the mayor he was perhaps maybe more of a puppeteer rather than trying to go and be all these things like you were saying joseph smith was like rather than going and being those things himself he i would say almost as a little more cunning right joseph smith that's very obvious what he's doing and what kind of power he has but i think it's almost a little bit more sly and cunning and i'd give points per se to warren to make it look like they had a regular police force he's not in charge of the police he's not look there's a different mayor i'm not in charge of the mayor i'm not in charge of the judicial system i'm not you know like but while he actually did have the control over that so he was just a little bit more cunning while kind of having a lot of the same control that joseph smith did and he had his own security as well which drove around and followed all the cops and everybody that went to town and scared him out so and does the mayor want to lose his family no so he's going to do what warren wants right yep right so he's either better at delegating or creating the appearance of delegation is that what you're saying that's what i would say personally but still super powerful okay okay um i'm going to read through a bunch of these as a way to kind of summarize the ending of keep sweet but one very important similarity that warren jeffs and joseph smith both had is how much legal trouble they were both in towards the end of their lives and this is something i didn't learn until i read fond brodie's no man knows my history um and of course this is covered in joseph smith roughstone rolling as well but joseph smith was always running from the law he was convicted of crimes multiple times throughout his life um sentence you know convicted of crimes he was a criminal joseph smith was a criminal um from before he published the book of mormon to his final days um he towards the end of his life he was in so much trouble that just like warren he was on the run uh because the the the state and federal you know law enforcement whoever it was would be coming into town trying to find him he would have to be moving from from place to place he eventually was caught he was eventually as imprisoned he even gave revelations from prison whether it was in liberty jail or carthage jail and he you know ultimately he ended his life in prison i think it's pretty safe to say warren jeff is going to end his life in prison joseph ended his life being killed by a mob while he was in prison and i think warren jeffs is as you informed me sam um and melissa warren jeffs is right now in solitary confinement but he apparently is soon going to be released from solitary confinement where it's rumored that he is likely going to be killed there and so in that sense scary scary parallels in terms of joseph smith's legal record criminal record and the way his life ends and i want to give sam and joanna a chance to just fill in any blanks you want to add about warren jeff's final um final months and years free and then his life in prison you know it's interesting is they would actually the leaders of the flds church while warren was on the run while warren was being prosecuted while he was preaching from his prison cell and all of these things they would often times in the flds church talk about how similar it was to joseph smith they would say see it is just like in joseph's mistake we are being persecuted the law is after us and it's just because just like with joseph smith the uh the evil people of the world are trying to destroy god's work and destroy his church so they would often compare those two all the time actually yeah all the time yeah so i mean i don't know if there's much more to fill in than that but uh but i definitely see the comparison there and that's something that was talked about i think watching the keep sweet parano bay when um elisa says that she felt like after the trial she kind of um helped reinforce the flds fears and she didn't like the fact that what happened to her was used to build the aphildius faith right and i feel like it's very similar with if warren when warren most likely dies in prison he is going to be considered a martyr and it's going to be a fulfilling prophecy of that he was just as valiant and as righteous and as wonderful as the prophet as what joseph smith was and so while the rest of people are like please take him out of solitary let it happen like we're right he needs to be destroyed um at the same time that is going to seal his fate as a martyr and so it's just an interesting thing to uh recognize the way that the flds people are going to view that compared to the way the rest of the world is going to view that let me ask joanna joanna you talked about like giving food stamps to the church did you see part four of keep sweet joanna i did it was a little bit ago okay it was kind of late when i was watching it tell me if you remember the part where he's on the run with an entourage and he's like going to disneyland he's going to vegas they say he used prostitutes or strippers sex workers or you know went to strip clubs potentially um he's kind of like partying it up um you know receiving up to like 300 000 a week in like tomato cans while he's like ringing and starving and taking every cent from from the flds church members back home joanna can you talk about what that was like when you saw that and when you learned that knowing what life was like for you back home and then sam you can add to that honestly i was pretty angry um i was like wow like i have friends that are still paying off loans that they got to give that three grand every weekend to him and so i was like we like i you know don't want to use any bad language but i did use bad language you can use bad language you can use it i i called him a sick [ __ ] and why'd you feel that way tell us why you felt that way because we i we were just living the best we could like i had one dress for years i watched every night because we just didn't have money and materials for more so we just gave everything and i thought that it was building zion i thought that it was building a greater future for us and he's out doing these things that he tells us are horrible and bad and will destroy us and he's out doing those things i don't think anyone that followed him aside from those that were actually with him at this time had any idea uh there were there weren't even rumors i mean generally speaking there would be some kind of rumor like like oh i actually heard that warren is uh in vegas a party or something you know but nobody had any idea and even if even if i had heard that rumor i would have never believed it yeah that's just the truth you would have never even considered that because he was god yeah we put him on a similar pedestal as god and himself we really thought he was that good and we were taught that those sort of pleasures just like destroyed your soul listening to music going to disneyland anything recreational was just bad like towards the end there first there was sports and there was fun things but towards the end there we couldn't even have rollerblades or trampolines or do anything that was considered like recreational they said no recreation that was used no fun even the word fun was not allowed yeah so the fact that he did that and so that made me wonder whether he was like knew knew that he was betraying everyone and whether he didn't even believe what he was teaching everyone and so i this is one question i just wanted to make sure i asked you all before we ended i hear rumors that he tried to die by suicide while he was in prison and then i hear rumors that he actually acknowledged at some point that he wasn't really a prophet while he was in prison and then there's just a general question do either of you sam or joanna have an opinion as to whether he knew he was a fraud and was knowingly but you know pulling one over on all his on all his members do you believe you have opinions about all of that including the death by suicide in jail and him admitting that he wasn't a prophet i i believe he did i believe he felt some guilt i believe that he even like in the what they call heavenly sessions like i guess in those he was preaching some like you know i i bless you with these blessings he was using that as a way i think that it caught up to him and he i believe he did start feeling guilty and i believe that he actually did believe in the end there that he wasn't a prophet and then his brother came to him was like no this is just a hardship this is just this like everybody's counting on you and he kind of kicked him back into that role and he had to step up because he had no other choice but honestly i do believe that he he believes he's a false prophet i believe he feels some guilt yeah and i would agree i think that down deep he knew that he was a false prophet and he was just making up a bunch of lies but at the same time if you tell yourself the same lie enough you believe it yourself uh i think that had somewhat of a role in there as well and that's i think that he convinced himself on some of the things maybe not when he was in prison but before he went to prison and he was always escaping the law and and all of these things were kind of working out for him i mean i don't know about the partying i can't imagine how he would think that he was a man of god and doing those things right but but before the before all of that maybe he had convinced himself to some extent no i didn't he was a prophet i do think in the beginning he believed it was a prophet i do i just think that it all started catching up to him and at some point i think he started to feel the pressure and the guilt but once you're in that deep i don't think there's really a way out yeah and so i think that's why he tried to commit suicide was he just felt there was no way out and then you're right he started to get his brother came in and he got some really good lawyers and all of a sudden he was back ready to start preaching his sermons again and i think the support of the people as well like us giving money to the liars and us supporting his phone calls i mean all of that i feel like that if if someone had that kind of loyalty and support they would have no other choice but to step up and say continue like i think continue to preach and continue to be that role how did you how did you all feel when that so after he's in prison and all the flds women are going on you know larry king and and good morning america saying how awesome and how happy everyone is and and particularly the part where the woman who they proved had actually delivered babies from underage brides stands up on national television and and proclaims that she never saw any underage marriages let alone babies of of underage brides how did you feel when you saw the members tell bold-faced lies to the world i wanted to slap people across the face straight up you know it it was a good reminder of when i was out there as well that we felt that we were above the law and when it came to protecting the prophet of god when it came to protecting the church itself we could say or do whatever we needed to do to protect the prophet to protect the church because that's that's what we were we were told was the most important yeah and that's true we were but me as a woman i'm like i do i want to slap some reality into some people looking back now and seeing that people were lying about those type of things i mean yes we may lie about uh taxes or whatever the case may be you know and that's that's the food stamps and that's awful as well but but to lie about rape and to lie about the type of things that these women were lying about that is infuriating and like to see a mother i guess like watch a child a little body deliver another body and lie like how can you be a mom and still lie about that and still support that yeah and since we we try and remember it's systems not people that maybe all these women who lied and men who lied were victims i want to bring it back to joseph smith because as hard as it is for mormons and ethious people to hear this joseph smith was the og liar he lied to he lied about fede alger he lied about his polygamy to emma he had married like 22 women before he ever told emma about polygamy which violated what eventually became dnc 132 he lied to his counselors when oliver cowdery called him and it caught him in an affair he denied it and he excommunicated all over caldery and he only shared his polygamy with the inner circle and he lied to not only the world and the media but to his own membership when he was bold-faced asked if he was a polygamist he lied to the membership and then of course when the naboo expositor revealed that he was a polygamist um and he could from one of his insiders he had the printing press destroyed so so we have to put that on joseph as the og liar he was a phenomenal skilled uh and compulsive liar am i being unfair am i being too harsh no but unfortunately you don't you don't learn you don't know any of this when you're in the religion because you're told to only only look on lds.org um don't go to outside sources um don't listen to them like i didn't know mormon stories existed um i knew nothing of john dolan um nothing of anything tanner you know no one no one i knew no fun brody no man knows my history any of the books todd compton in sacred loneliness even also really any of the books that you would learn about this stuff about we're told or dangerous and scary even the gospel topics essays mormons don't know about no or believed that the church was hacked the church's website was hacked right right yeah yeah yeah it's just we don't know we don't know about it we don't know anything about joseph being con convicted of anything we don't know about him being a compulsive liar compulsive liar we don't know any even the little tiny things like we don't know about him drinking wine before he was you know killed you know there's just there's just like even little teeny tiny things that really don't matter right like we don't know yeah about them they keep them from us so yep okay um anything you you sam and join i know we're trying to end anything you guys want to add about that particular point or i think we covered it pretty well yeah just the same thing like we didn't know anything either when we were in yeah it's not it's not the people you know the people that are it's so easy for anyone to say like oh i would never be able to be deceived like that right um but you just never you never know and especially with limited information it's it's too relatable i guess is just never think that you're not capable of being fooled because it can happen i often think if only i was there and know what i know now you know i would have done things so differently but it's easy to say of course once you're out but looking back if i really look deep into my feelings not just what my knowledge now but the actual feelings it was my feelings that were keeping me there you know my feelings that were directing me to follow because those were the feelings i had at birth and it just kind of continued continued on and increased and got stronger as time went on yeah and nobody can deny another person's spiritual experiences and i think that happens in every religion right if you have a spiritual experience that tells you um with certainty that something is true you're going to continue to go along with all of those other things and everything else that comes with it and so so many times um especially in the lds and the flds we're told that it's the spirit but we're not the only religions that that have that those sense of emotions that um keep you believing and keep you being willing to do whatever it takes to keep that faith i guess like i believe like you know you create your own experiences and your own energy in those experiences so when someone manipulates your mind like i remember how i felt when i came out of the water for the first time being baptized now always remember that but what i've what now i recognize that as an experience that i created in my mind and i created that energy myself because of false beliefs things that were in my mind because you do you create the feelings you have and as a child if those are manipulated those are the feelings you have that is profound joanna brilliant thank you for sharing that okay two more questions and they're gonna be very quick okay first question many mormons today in the lds church many apologists will say no the church is true because everyone who is around joseph smith even after he was killed continued believing and there's no way that if joseph was a fraud that people around him after they saw him in trouble saw him go to jail even saw him killed there's no way that if he was a fraud not only would people still believe but that the church would have survived so sam and joanna what do you guys think about the argument that joseph smith was still a prophet of god because there are still people who believe in him after all the problems happened i believe it happens for generations like if your parents teach you that and it goes back like i said it goes back six generations for us or even more so like if your parents teach you that from a kid and then it just goes on and on i think that's how it continues it has nothing to do with how it's established it's about who continues it and people that choose to because their parents choose to and it just goes on i would say that the persecution is a testimony builder for the members of the church because they're taught their entire lives maybe because they're nervous that something's going to happen down the road with the law or whatever but we're taught our entire lives that the the people that these evil wicked people out in the world are after god's people and so when they're put into prison or whatever the case may be then it's just like oh see it's true it's true they're after god's work and because we're being persecuted that only means one thing that this is the only true church on the earth today yeah i think the leaders also create that illusion by breaking the law knowing the consequences so then they put that into revelation that's a good point yeah y'all are so brilliant so and to put a fine point on it sam and joanna do each of you have close family members or friends who in spite of all that's happened to warren jeff's including the rape and the felony charges in this conviction that are still devoutly believers today yes i've over half of my family over half of mine are one following are still following warren jeff's and believe that he is a prophet and don't believe any of this information that has come out and if they did watch the any of these documentaries they would sit back and say ah that's all fabricated all these apostates that left the church are just out there trying to attack god's people and they have turned into these evil dark people you can tell that they don't have that shine around their face anymore because they're just trying to destroy god's work yeah if i try to talk about anything to my mom she shuts me down she won't let me because she doesn't want to hear it yeah so i try to just like respect i guess her beliefs because that's the only way i can even talk to her which is very very seldom and very few because to them when you leave you're dead to them and then eventually kind of some families come around but you have to be very careful if you want any communication with your family yeah i've learned with this experience of having to leave my family behind that it is very difficult to win a religious argument because it's all based on people's feelings it's not like joanna said her mother doesn't want to hear it i mean it's not whether or not it's true she doesn't want to hear a period because she feels that what she has is the truth and so to try to go to her and say hey this is a lie you're living a lie good luck with that argument yeah they just their beliefs are solid i guess so if the apologist says well uh joseph's polygamy was good because some of his former wives testified that they still loved him and that they had a good experience with polygamy or if mormon apologists say well joseph's ministry was of god because the church survived and even thrived after he was dead you guys would say what based on your experience um like i said before they they break the law and then create um revelations to confirm what happens to them for those consequences so then we believe it and as far as polygamy and saying they loved him uh people cheat all the time because they love people it doesn't mean it's right yeah oh yeah i would say with the polygamy aspect of it um you know if you have to look at these flds women you know the mormon apologists look at those flds women that you know are lying and the what they're saying and take into account how much you believe their account and why you would feel in your heart that um they're not being honest or truthful or the reason that they might be saying that and i think it's the the same as before and just because something can survive does not mean that it's true yeah survival does not equal equate truth or followers remaining devout does not make anything true correct oh exactly all sorts of things that doesn't even just apply to the lds and the flds you can find people who follow and believe all sorts of things that if you went to a modern day mormon you said well do you believe in this god that has eight arms and da da and they'd say well that doesn't make any sense of course i wouldn't believe that but there are people who do like you can't do that with beliefs because there's always going to be a group of people who believe differently than you and believe in a way that would seem absurd to you but your beliefs make perfect sense to you and so anytime you're dealing with beliefs um you can't negate other people's spiritual experiences and everybody has such different experiences that navigate their faith journey there's no way to say that anything is their truth or not true based on that and just because what you feel makes perfect sense and isn't at all weird or strange doesn't mean that someone from the outside looking in isn't out there thinking how could anyone believe that that is the most strange thing in the world for example you know growing up flds it didn't seem strange or weird to me i i thought it was perfectly normal that's what i was raised with and and and i i hear so many people say oh my how are these people doing this how are they following along with this crazy nonsense it's obviously not true well that was our normal easy to say from the outside yeah and i think like no religion is like no religion is for everybody in my experience you yours you save your own soul i think sort of because there are so many religions there are so many things and going through so many different experiences every single person kind of saves themselves i think in their own eyes mike trump mike dropp other way to say that is no one who's in a cult thinks they're in a cult right nobody ever thinks right yeah there's a friend of mine he was a branch off of the coal and he grew up in what we call centennial and he said it like this he said saying you will never being cold is like saying you will never being a bad relationship you're too close to the problem to recognize the problem that was calvin wayman he does a lot of things like this but that was something he said and i loved it the way he said that yeah it's like a toxic relationship you don't choose to be in one but you continue it a lot of times because you don't recognize that you're too close to it so powerful so powerful okay so if we had to summarize jen i'm gonna ask you this question first and then i'm going to ask samuels and join in to weigh in it'll be jen then melissa then sam then joanna what we've been trying to talk about today is how similar were joseph smith and warren jeff so this is the final question of the day if there was a venn diagram where all of joseph smith's beliefs and practices were one circle and that was joseph smith if all of joseph smith's beliefs and practices are one circle and all of warren jeff's beliefs and practices were another circle what would the overlap be in terms of a percentage jen you go first oh goodness a percentage of overlap in belief in practice 100 but you're saying 100. that's just going right jen goes right for 100. i'd say 100 and then warren's like even like expanded that circle and he's like 157. you're saying joseph's 100 and warren's like 157 okay all right melissa your turn what's the venn diagram percentage for joseph and warren being similar i would say warns about 90 of joseph smith because joseph smith and warren's temple ordinances were so vastly different that warren didn't quite get that right okay all right uh sam what's your vote venn diagram oh my god i know this is supposed to be an easy question but um i would say carter you guys got to see warren jeff's up close and i think i think a lot of listeners would want and a more objective answer that would say objectively warren was worse than joseph and so i i think a lot of our listeners and especially believing ones are progressive mormons are probably going to put the number more at 70 or 80 percent like yes there's a lot of overlap but warren was way worse in in in several fundamental ways and the reason why i didn't want to poison your answer or like alter your answer but you got to see you sam and joanna got to see warren up close so if you two had to say how similar versus dissimilar were they you would probably know better than me me melissa or jen that's what i was trying to do yeah and if okay if i put myself back in the shoes of a young sam flds member loving my life out there i would i would say probably joseph smith was eighty percent of war and jeff's in the sense that joseph smith did everything or war and jess did everything that joseph smith did plus some yeah okay and joanna i would say they're one and the same because it doesn't matter how much you act on if you have those intentions and you put out that kind of like dictatorship and we are doing you know we're doing the restoration that joe smith described but he came up with it right warren practiced it right i'd say they're one in the same say 100 yeah warren is the logical conclusion of what joseph smith started or warren jeff's just did joseph smith it's sometimes even better than joseph smith did but powerful answers okay joanna i think a lot of our listeners have already fallen in love with you and think you're amazing from your intellect is what i'm saying and your wisdom is what i mean by that if people want to support or follow you joanna and any awesome things you're doing in your life how can people support you how can they reach out to you if you want to be reached out to if you just want to live a private life and be left alone that's okay too but also if you've got a venmo or a paypal or an instagram or a blog or podcast or anything how can people show you their gratitude and support for what you've shared with us today well i am growing my social media because i am a real estate agent here in las vegas now um and i've gotten a couple clients off social media and i would love to continue to help more families get into homes uh my instagram is joannafisher16 the last name is spelled f-i-s-c-h-e-r which is a little different um if you have any questions like feel free to reach out i am an open book and i want to be someone that people can come to for answers and to shed a light on some of these things so that i think that would help um i do want to grow my social media for that purpose to bring a light to different things and yeah of course i'm a real estate agent so if you need a home please reach out well i will personally i will personally fly to las vegas and have dinner with the the first person who either buys or sells a home through joanna okay i'll make that burn wow i like that thank you um from this show okay perfect is that all right and and joanna say one more time how they get a hold of you uh my instagram is joannafisher16 okay just dm me for my number okay i don't put it out there all right that that offers good for the next five five years at least so um whoever that is whenever that is i look forward to hearing from it and i hope that helps joanna okay thank you sam and melissa you have a freaking awesome podcast how do people follow you and then how do they give you money well you can follow us on youtube but growing up in polygamy i was also going to plug that joanna has been a guest on our show before so if you want to know more about her story and leaving it's awesome and amazing and it's on our youtube channel um for growing up in polygamy we are on spotify as well in podcast form but we typically do youtube and money yeah well we're creating a a we're creating a website right now so that'll be available soon and we're hoping to have ways to donate there as well uh but for now do you own the domain name of that website so that we can link to it and people who listen or view later will will know where to go or do you not know the url of that website yeah we actually have the domain name so it's growing up in growing up in polygamy.com but i'd say for donations right now um on youtube you can become a member on youtube or do super chats or donations through youtube as of right now and then hopefully soon we'll be able to get a website up where we can offer more resources and a way to be able to continue to do more interviews with amazing people like joanna and give them the power to tell their stories and empower them through that and so we're looking forward to building that website and hopefully having you know a donate button on there if people want to support that cause and thank you all so much for your support we really really do appreciate that we love doing this type of thing and hope to be able to do more interviews and this type of thing in the future as well well all of you live in vegas right yeah yes come visit us if at least a hundred people donate to you through mormon stories or join your youtube group through mormon stories we'll figure out a way to come to vegas to bring some smart or cool people and to show vegas lots of love um as a way to reward everyone for their support of you how does that sound that would be amazing thank you john okay all right well uh sam and melissa thank you for your amazing uh youtube channel please listeners and viewers believe me we are going to be releasing in the next few days our interview with sam and melissa it is absolutely still completely new stuff and worth listening we go into way more detail so please check that out but also please check out growing up in polygamy because it's it's an amazing channel with again over 20 000 subscribers and we want to grow it because oh melissa i'm going to share a stat that you shared with me which is that you have you have been told that there's over 75 fundamentalist polygamist groups throughout the united states that have 5 000 members or more yes it was actually at least a wall from that um the documentary that shared that information with me which means that there's over there's between three at least three to four hundred thousand fundamentalist polygamists out there and the need for education and awareness and support for this bad situation is going to grow probably not shrink with the death of warren jeffs is that fair to say absolutely i think so and we're kind of already seeing that a lot of people from the flds community are already some man standing up and trying to lead some of these groups some of the people and creating their own groups so we're seeing that happen right now actually and we definitely want to be there for help and support and community okay well uh so for all those reasons thank you sam melissa and joanna please support growing up polygamy and let's just do our best to get the word out please share this episode please subscribe here and there please like us and please get the word out and let's figure out a way to stamp this out as much as we can but most importantly sam melissa and joanna you three are lovely amazing humans and can i just apologize joanna and uh and sam and melissa for keeping you way longer than i should have that's rude it's discourteous it's it is okay we are happy to be here most of our viewers ask us to have more information more in-depth conversations so i'm sure they're loving it so no problem at all happy to be here moana will you forgive me and is there a way we can make it up to you uh it's my pleasure to be here honestly so thank you for having me well we still got 900 viewers uh even even three and a half hours into this episode people love people love you all okay thank you sam melissa joanna you guys take care thank you so much we adore you and we wish you all the success um thanks so much and jen thanks for joining us today as always bye everybody good to see you it's good to see you you're awesome jen uh we love what you bring to this episode and all that you make possible so thank you thank you and also shout out to maven who is producing or at least uh kind of moderating the live chats in this episode we we appreciate maven and we also give a shout out to bill reel and rfm and mormonism live for all that they do all right everybody thanks for your support support them but also um thanks for everyone who supports mormon stories we couldn't do this without you we benefit from your donations as super chats to youtube you can always donate through youtube you can click on the stars feature on facebook that's the way we pay for people like jen like gerardo and others so please support us if you can thanks if you do if you don't support us you can go to mormonstories.org click on the donate button become a monthly donor and we'll keep providing this type of content to you but please also support growing up in polygamy and please buy all of your future real estate from joanna um be good to each other be kind to each other love each other polygamy thumbs down underage underage non-consensual um abuse of children thumbs down healthy consensual relationships between uh consenting adults thumbs up uh we love everyone and we'll see you all again a soon on another episode of mormon stories podcast take care everybody thank you

Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast

Views: 489,173

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Id: TBKF7dqcYGM

Length: 216min 22sec (12982 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 24 2022