Why Mormons Leave, by Sandra Tanner

okay they asked me to share some on reasons why people leave Mormonism what affects them and you have to understand well I'm sure a lot of you do that everyone's story is different and what affects one person isn't necessarily going to affect another person and each person's story of coming out is a little different but there are certain common threads that we see through many of the different stories in talking with former Mormons through the years I find that many of them tell me that there always were certain problems in the back of their mind things that bother them along the way that they had suppressed and in Mormonism everything has been made you're made to feel guilty if you don't have this 100 percent testimony like everyone else and so people are afraid to say much about things that bother them because if you do say something about what bothers you often the response is that there's something wrong with you is there a sin in your life is there some reason that that you're having these questions because they can't that you can't be having questions because there's any real thing to resolve if you're having questions and problems it's because there's sin in your life and that's why those of us that have left sometimes the most frequent thing that's said to us is something like who hurt your feelings or were you having a problem with word of wisdom well did you ever read The Book of Mormon and pray about it I usually find that one little humorous but usually I have read The Book of Mormon and prayed about it more than they have of course I'm able to tell yes I did read The Book of Mormon and I prayed about it and God told me it wasn't true and of course then the you didn't pray in the right spirit I mean obviously if you prayed right you'd get the same answer and so it goes into the circular reasoning that if you prayed right you would have got a testimony that was true and if you didn't get the testimony that's true then you didn't pray right and then there's something wrong with your life and there must be hidden sin so you soon learn to keep your questions and doubts to yourself and there comes a point of cumulative mass through the years these things start piling up and along the way for the person that eventually comes out they may have some friend or a family member challenged them they may give them some literature to read more and more we're hearing of people that are affected by the internet which is kind of interesting I talked to people sometimes that tell me they went on the internet to look up something for a class at the ward for instance one lady told me about she was going to do a lesson on the word of wisdom and went on the internet and googled word of wisdom and she pulled up you know all kind of sites but one of the things that pulled up with some stuff that took her to our site and so she was slightly in shock when she found that she was on this anti-mormon site but the end result was she came out and became a Christian but started from an innocent search for something for a lesson so you just never know in what way something's going to affect someone sometimes the person starts out to prove the critics are wrong because you've given them a piece of literature or they found something on the Internet and they'll say all it just can't be right it's just obviously all wrong and then so they start looking further I had one man come in and tell me that he was sure that there were answers to everything we were talking about and he said after he read days and days on the LDS apologist sites he realized they were just doing spin and that it really didn't answer the real fundamental problem that had been presented to the person and so then he finally decided well they don't really have answers all they can do is smooth it over and try to give a rationalization for the problem this last month I went back to Illinois to the Mormon History Association and which surprised a few Mormons that I was there they give you great big name tags to wear so so they know you've paid and you when you go on this the meetings everyone can see you know who you are now and people would look at me and they say senator Tanner what are you doing here and it's well like I'm to get educated I want to learn and but it's almost kind of a surprise to it but in in listening to the different sessions there's a it's a very different experience to go to something like Mormon History Association or to Sunstone conference than it is from talking to the average Mormon on the street the people in those venues know there are problems and many of those people have decided regardless of the problems they're going to stay in Mormonism they have worked out a rationalization that says the Prophet doesn't have to always be right his revelations can be revised his prophecies don't have to succeed Joseph was only human and so they can excuse all sorts of behavior because generally they they enjoy the Mormon culture that's their family and their people group and they want to stay a part of that so they find ways of rationalizing the problem areas but people you're going to talk to out on the streets more often than not don't know about all these problems and have not built up rationalizations for them and so sometimes when we bring up problem areas in Mormonism they've never heard of them and they'll say oh that's a lie you're just making that up I have people call me on the phone or send me nasty emails that say I XYZ on your site that's all lies and then I'm able to send them a reference and say well if you go check out like Richard Bushman's book Joseph Smith rough stone rolling he admits these things he just tries to rationalize the issues but he admits a lot of the same problems I talked about so we are seeing more people becoming aware of the problem areas Mormonism but it's not necessarily bringing them to Christ a lot of them are just finding ways to excuse the problems because they want to stay a part of the group here recently I spent some time with a Mormon man that has written different historical books on Mormonism and we went out to dinner he was in town on some research project and he wanted to get to know me so we went out to dinner but in talking with him I was talking to him about problems you know what I love Mormonism why the Book of Mormon just didn't make it historically and I'm going over these different things and he finally says well you know we really aren't that far apart and I'm like what and I think he's typical of many people in the Mormon historical community they know there are problems out there but they are not drawn to a Christianity that is a critical of false doctrine they want a Christianity that's warm fuzzy broad-minded and accepts everybody and so then Mormonism can fit into that bra under that broad umbrella of anyone that's a good person can say they're a Christian sort of an idea so our job in talking with our Mormon friends is to be specific that there are real problems to resolve and if we believe there's truth at all they demand a solution and a discussion I believe that the historical background of Mormonism is so bad that it will cause a person doubt if they start seeing and looking into it the Mormon Church today is kind of adopting a philosophy of well it didn't work to suppress all the history and the Tanners and people like that have this shock value of showing someone the different accounts of the first vision so we'll take away the shock value and we'll just put the information out and give a spin to it so they can still believe and so they're trying to go that route now and so now more and more they're letting the documents out they're publishing their different accounts of the first vision they're opening their archives more they're building this new library and they have this Joseph Smith papers project i but the assumption is I think the assumption is on their part that if you take away the shock value the people won't be bothered by the information and from my perspective okay you just got rid of part of the problem you've taken away the shock value but the problem is information is shocking but how do you rationalize Joseph Smith approaching teenage girls and women that are married and have living husbands and telling them they have to go into polygamy and by the way be sure you don't mention this to my wife and the Mormon scholars all know this this is not a historical thing that they challenge they just have to well this fellow I had dinner with I said to him how do you avoid the conclusion that Joseph Smith was a sexual predator and he says well I was pretty strong and I said but how do you avoid that conclusion if you look at the story it it seems obvious that that's what you have and he says well I believe he was sincere he thought he was following God kind of thing and I said well David Koresh was probably sincere and you could name all the polygamists are sincere there's all kind of people out there that are sincere but that doesn't mean they may not be promoting something that's very very wrong and opposed to Christianity but if you want to stay in the camp you have to have find a way to rationalize and say Joseph's a man and we have to make allowances in general things are getting better the church is a nicer Church now than it ever was and it's sort of like they're growing into being more true and from my position you know it either starts true or it isn't true I don't think you start with a mess and gradually spiff it up and then then it becomes a true Church but I find many of them are they like the Mormon concept of gods and ISIL guy and he loves everyone he lets everyone into heaven and there's no real bad news in the system and so for them the Christian message is not good news because it demands a decision it demands a life change it demands you that you stand for something and they want this fuzzy flowing sort of generalized let's all just be nice sort of thing but the missionaries don't go out with that message the missionary comes to your door with it's really true Joseph actually gave revelations that came true he gave direction from God that were critical for you to observe and the missionary is still presenting it as a hundred percent accurate so my child and I tell this to the more liberal Mormons when I talk to them but the missionaries don't go out with that liberal message they go out with an only true message and so we're responding to the specific claims of the Mormon Church they still present it that way that they are the only true church one of the things we find is that a person may start out thinking after they've been confronted with some different problems all I have to do is resolve the Adam God doctrine or he may be seeking to resolve the first vision problems or the Book of Mormon archaeology or maybe he's been troubled by the problems with the Book of Abraham but then as you go to Google and you start looking up these things or you start reading Mormon apologetics or something you start realizing that's not the only problem you have and that's one of the dangers of people going to things like Sun stone or reading magazines like dialog and journal Mormon thought because you may only have one question that you're troubled by but suddenly you realize there's dozen questions out there that bother me and now you've got more things you've got to resolve than just the one issue you may have started out to answer hopefully as this process goes along someone some Christian is on the scene to help put to them the reality of Christ not just what's wrong with Mormonism and that's why I think the little video on the Bible verses the Book of Mormon is so valuable if you haven't seen it you really need this because it has this first part that does a very good job of establishing a reason to believe the New Testament of the Bible as a whole I am specifically the New Testament because the Mormons have been told it's been changed and corrupted so much you can't trust it therefore they aren't going to come to your brand of Christianity because they don't trust the Bible to give them accurate information about God and that the core second half of that video that deals with problems for the Book of Mormon its historical document and I assume most of you realize and are aware that the Book of Mormon does not teach Mormon doctrine the Book of Mormon is really the worm on the hook to get you to accept Mormonism that's the function it serves in Mormonism it is the most Christian sounding thing they have to offer you so they go to the door and ask you to read the book of Mormon and pray about it they don't hand you a Doctrine and Covenants and say read this and pray about it they don't hand you the pearl of great price and say read this and pray about it because they're going to give you a little by little Mormon doctrine and we see this in their letters we get from people that they didn't know what they were joining it was a gradual process of being Rhian doctrine ated into mormon thought as the person continues in this search and study though they make it finally come to the point where they see that the church leaders are not inspired but then at that point there is the fear of what is this going to mean in my family am i going to be rejected by all of them well my wife divorced me well my kids disowned me well my father disinherit me and I can tell you I know people that have had all those things happen to them we don't do this work glibly we realize it is a very costly thing for these people to make a profession of faith in Christ as opposed to just following Mormonism and I don't minimize that to people but I try to encourage them that if we're going to use the name of cry in any way shape or form if in any way we're going to claim to be a follower of God we have to be willing to stand for truth and as we stand for truth it will put us in opposition with loved ones and that's a sad thing but we have to also be confident that God and His mercy will be working in our loved one's hearts as well it's not that he cares any less for them than you do but it has to be the right time right place for them to see what you saw there were times before this point that you decide you can see their mormonism there were times before that as someone who had approached you that you would have told him drop dead but also my true thoughts so it's timing and of course ultimately we know it's the Holy Spirit that draws someone out of Mormonism for each one of us there was that point at which God spoke to our heart and it may be when we're young and maybe when we're old I came to Christ you're out of high school my mom came to Christ in her old age a week before she died and God can work in anyone's heart and with my mom it was so amazing that all the years that she fought against Christianity I really was running out of any hope that she really would come to Christ she left Mormonism but she went out in the world like many of them became agnostic rejected God in the Bible and everything but in her old age through a whole set of circumstances that would be too complicated explain here God had reached into my sister's life in her midlife when she had been out and out of Mormonism into the world brought her to Christ and the last person in the world that I've thought would lead my mother to Christ would have been my sister and yet that's who God used I mean you just don't see down the road how God will work things out also along the way you hope that people will start to realize the spiritual life of mormonism so I want to tell you about two men from Idaho that came to visit me a few years ago they were struggling with Mormonism they were feeling that something was drastically wrong they were feeling the spiritual lack and they called and asked if they could make an appointment to come in and talk with me so they make a special trip from Idaho down to meet with me we spent three hours talking we discussed the differences between the gospel is understood by Mormons and what the Bible teaches we discussed the eternal nature of God and salvation by grace but the sad thing was that when we got to the end of the three hours one of them said but if I were to follow God like you are saying I would probably lose my wife and my children I agreed that that was a possibility but we must put our trust in God to honor our commitment to put him first in our lives I pointed out to him where would the world be if Paul had felt it wouldn't be worth the cost to leave Judaism and his family God has got to be important enough to us that he is worth the price I don't know what eventually happened to these two men I hope in time that they have come to faith in Christ I know that some feel that even after accepting Christ they need to keep a low profile gradually backing out of Mormonism and hoping that in time they can witness to their family and I think we have to be willing to let the person go at their speed Gerald and I gave up Mormonism before we gave up the Book of Mormon and as Christians we held on to the Book of Mormon for a couple of more years before we God brought us to the point where we had to deal with whether it was truly a historical book always finally set it aside but there were Christians that we met through that two years that did not believe we were really Christians because we have not given up the Book of Mormon and needless to say we didn't fit at other churches and we didn't broadcast that we still believe the Book of Mormon we just visited around and the password come visit and then that way you're out of Mormonism great praise God you know I only stole a book Mormon you know and so it made a certain certain challenge for pastors of what to do with us but in time God worked and brought us out of that error and it's just like if you were a missionary in some area where they believed in animism or whatever there would be elements of that culture in that religious belief that would take time for the new Christian to work through and to set aside and so it is with Mormonism especially in a Utah community where it's so heavily influenced by Mormon thought it may take the person time to work through the doctrines of Christianity and what parts of it they do or don't believe I mean the day I accepted Christ I was listening to a radio program and after I accepted Christ I'm sitting there in my living room thinking okay what does it mean what does it mean for me to say I'm going to trust Christ what should I believe now that I didn't believe 10 minutes ago and this doesn't just automatically follow you don't automatically know the answers to these things this happened to me in Southern California and I didn't know a single X Mormon in the area I didn't know a pastor that knew anything about Mormonism there was no one who come alongside Gerald and I in our early struggle and helped mentor us through this process I mean pastors we met were concerned but then they weren't informed on any of the Mormon issues and and for many they many Christians they say well just get over it yeah you know yes all Mormonism not true now you just scrap that and go on with your life and they don't realize what a lifetime of teaching that you have to overcome and this is why it's so critical for someone to have a Christian in their life hmm hopefully as we're able to invite Mormons to our services or to a Bible study or something we can help them experience true worship what it means to hear the Bible preached they don't hear the Bible preached in Mormonism their talks at church are very oh they may be a talk on honesty or on motherhood or why you should be in the priesthood or who knows what they'd be on but they don't preach in the sense of going through and discussing a chapter of the Bible and expounding on that they have not been exposed to that kind of teaching when my mom was having questions when I was a teenager she used to take all her scriptures to church now back at this point this is I'll be back in the dark ages of the 50s yes I'm that old my mom would take all her scriptures to church now Mormons take their scriptures to church a lot more than they did back then but back then no one took their scriptures if you brought your scriptures it marked you as a troublemaker because you had to read the befores and afters of whatever was in the class lesson and we have little manuals to study for the lesson and if you needed more than that it showed some sort of questioning spirit so we'd get up Sunday to go to church and my mom and pick up her scriptures and I think oh my word it's going to be one of those Sundays you know mom's going to go make trouble at the ward house again now they take them more I didn't she probably still would have got in trouble though because she she was reading the befores and afters asking questions fact they got mad at her one day in the hospital doctrine class and one guy jumped up and shook his finger at my mom and says only an adulterous nation seeks after a sign and she didn't feel welcome in the class so she and my aunt started going to the investigators class and the missionaries were stationed in our ward and so they started going the investigators class that didn't last long because they were asking questions finally the bishop told him they couldn't go to the investigators class because they were already members and she says we're investigating God that's a count so anyways huh three years ago a man sent me this letter and I want to share parts of it with you I converted to the Mormon Church in 1972 when I was a senior in high school I had grown up Catholic and attended catechism and regular Sunday Mass one of the things that most disappointed me about Catholicism was its attitude toward searching for truth whenever I asked a tough question I was told that it was a mystery and that I simply had to accept many issues on faith the Pope was infallible and I was safe as long as I stayed in the Catholic Church I was not trying to be critical in my search but I was honestly searching for greater understanding and knowledge God gave us all our brains and I think he expects us to use them in a legitimate search for more knowledge one of the things that appealed to me about Mormonism was the doctrine of eternal progression among other things as a member I was expected to read search study and continually strive to increase my knowledge it was my responsibility to learn truths and find things out for myself and I might interject here see that's the assumption you have going into it but when you carry that too far then you start getting in trouble just like you did at the Catholic Church for asking too many questions in the 70s I was taught that Joseph Smith said to search for truth in all good books over the same time period I have been a missionary for two years seminary teacher for four years a temple worker gospel doctrine teacher for four more years a high priest bishopric member and more I am well founded in Mormonism and I have no access to grind with any church leaders or members something that has begun to trouble me over the last few years is the subtle or maybe not so subtle switch in the church's attitude towards searching and accepting truth the church is obviously struggling with the truths revealed by science concerning the Book of Mormon and the pearl of great price there are no DNA claims supporting the American Indians dissent from any semitic origins the other debunking of all mormon claims of archeology geographical cultural or linguistic claims from the Book of Mormon the pearl of great price may have even bigger problems with the discovery of the original documents and the fact that the documents is not what Joseph thought it was and is clearly not translated properly this information is becoming commonplace and cannot now be quietly ignored I watched a History Channel program just recently on the Necropolis located across from Alexandria Egypt the Egyptologist was in a tomb that was dug through during the period of Roman rule in Egypt the commentator remarked that the tomb paintings that were on the wall behind him showed Greek and Roman artistic influence he explained that the subject matter was the same as earlier Egyptian book of breathing's documents but during this later period the detail and artistic quality of the larger tomb murals was not as good imagine my surprise when the commentator turned to show the murals and they appeared exactly like the ones on facsimile number one from the Book of Abraham so much for the claim that the Book of Abraham was written by his own hand upon papyrus what really concerns me is not that the challenges have arisen to these teachings in the church but its response in dealing with them too often I am beginning to hear things like the geography of the Book of Mormon maybe a matter of faith and we are better off not trying to search for the issues or the Lord has not seen to reveal the truth of this issue at this time he will do so through the Prophet at the proper time now I am beginning to even hear things like the current profit on apostles can overwrite or clarify the meaning of established truths of apostles that are now being reinterpreted not only the Bible but also the words of past prophets and scriptures are reinterpreted under the authority of present-day apostles and prophets I find this attitude to be strangely reminiscent of the position of the Catholic Church took back in the 60s and 70s when as a Catholic I saw it often attacked for its teachings and the infallibility of the Pope I fear the church has very rapidly turned completely within itself for the only measure of truth history has shown that this is not a healthy position for any group or organization to take from a family to a church to a government now all that being said I am NOT running down to the local Ward and renouncing my membership I probably would not have the wife children and now soon-to-be grandchild that I have today if it had not been for joining the Mormon Church I am NOT ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater so he sees the problem but he doesn't want to go beyond that because he can see the cost it would be hopefully in time he will come to a realization that truth demands that we take a stand that we can't ignore facts forever and we hope in time that some Christian will cross his path and help him to come to faith in Christ but he's typical of many of the people we see in Mormonism today that are going to this very liberal sort of well it's true enough and so I'm going to stick with it let me share with you a letter from a lady in England I never imagined that I would ever be writing a letter and a friend they wanted that to you two and a half years ago my husband and I were fully active Mormons we had been members for 15 years since our teens met whilst in the church and married in the London temple and had our for our third child we totally believed in a trust of the church's doctrine and teaching it really was part of our whole life and we were totally involved we had held many responsible positions in the ward and stake and tried to be diligent in living the faith after an additional meeting with a Christian fellow who challenged us about the Book of Abraham of which we realized we knew relatively nothing we were led into a serious study of our beliefs to try and find answers for this fellow to prove to him that we were right and he was wrong we had to study material that we had never bothered to read before and of course when we came across Joseph Smith begins his works Volume one and two which by the way is a photo reprint of the first printing of the Book of Mormon and the first printing of the Mormon doctrine covenants we began to get a bit concerned see because they start seeing the contradictions and changes on top of that I wrote off to the British Museum to ask them their view on the Egyptian alphabet and grammar and their repot reply really got us worried so I'm assuming they wrote back and told them they saw nothing in Joseph Smith's work on Egyptian that would be taken serious by any scholar back to the letter to cut a long story short after an extremely long and difficult struggle to come to terms with our findings and the awful feelings of betrayal confusion and fear we came to a point a month ago where we finally made the decision to have our names removed from the church records we are now totally dependent on Jesus for our salvation and realise that he alone is the truth and the way there was a point where we even despaired that anything was true anymore and that we wouldn't fit in anywhere again but the Lord brought us through in his time and we are stronger for it now we feel we are now however more aware of the danger of Mormons finding out about all the deception and suppression and having no support from an ex-mormon Christian to lead them into a new trust in Jesus alone and not an organization we nearly lost our faith in God at times and didn't know anyone who had gone through it like us before and come out the other side as an act and that's why it's so important as we witness to our friends family community or whatever that we're available to talk with a person later on they really need to have a Christian that they can share and talk with another man that wrote me said I have been a member of the LDS Church since I was 8 I'm now 39 I was born in Provo Utah into a large family of generations of Mormons I have been an elders quorum president along with many offices in the church I was a full tithe payer and gave of my time I read your book the changing world of Mormonism on a challenge to disprove your claims I was vacationing in Key West Florida at the time and figured I would start reading after about only 2 hours my life was shattered I broke into uncontrollable tears I knew it was the truth but also hard to accept as I rejected my lifelong faith in the church I rejected my faith in Jesus it was if I had been deceived this long all of it was untrue I certainly was wrong I never knew the real Jesus or God I'm so happy now that I found him you have played a great part am I being born again and this is again an illustration of how Christians in challenge and Mormon throw them into this spiral of doubt and they will struggle with whether they can believe anything again and that's why our standing alongside of them is so important as we can share with them reasons to believe the Bible and reasons not to believe the Mormon scriptures here's the letter I received from a convert a lady in New Mexico dear Christian friends I cannot say that I am a new Christian but only newfound for I have always known that Jesus Christ was my Savior but for many years now I have kept him trapped in the web of Mormonism I first joined the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints in 1972 then left it in 74 I returned to it in 77 and was rebranding interjecting here this another problem we see that people can leave Mormonism but if they don't leave with a firm faith in Christ many times they'll be drawn back into it because of family pressure an acceptance and reasons like that in 1981 I went to the Salt Lake Temple and received my endowment but over the course of the last few years I have come to feel a great spiritual emptiness the first six years I was very active in a singles ward but when I moved to a regular family ward four years ago that the changes that I went through in the transition made me wonder if my previous commitment had been more social than spiritual I began to have questions where was Christ in this church why were testimonies often born of everyone and everything but Christ where was the christ-like love and fellowship that should be evident among the Saints and the joy they should feel having the fullness of the gospel why we're meeting so boring why did I never feel any prompting to do temple work that was so vital to my ancestors why could I never find the courage to share the fullness of the Mormon gospel with others when I had no fear at all when proclaiming myself a Christian why had it even become difficult to tell the story of Joseph Smith which now seems so unbelievable why did I have no great love for that most corrective books the Book of Mormon and found it difficult to read why could I not bring myself to pay my tithing accept callings or going to the temple regularly I was even beginning to find it difficult to pray I could not seem to be comfortable in my temple garments any longer at first I thought the problem was me until I began to think about what bothered me and why and what I really believed to be spiritual truth I soon realized that the only things that troubled me were those things that were unique to Mormonism after reading several books by former Mormons and studying the historical church writings that were referred to in the books like journal discourses and history of the church I came to realize I could no longer remain in the Mormon Church I have stopped wearing the Temple garments and have no intention of attending any future meetings I am presently seeking a church that teaches the gospel Jesus Christ and none other but leaving something that has permeated your life for a dozen years is not easy even though my commitment is firm and unchangeable I know that I will have to withstand those who will try to call me to repentance I have no fear of this in itself but I would like to be prepared to witness to those good people of the truth that I have found and to do so effectively and then she goes on to ask for recommendations for some books now I want to share with you a letter from a lady that tells how Christian neighbors played such a part in her coming to Christ this remote lady named Betty and Nevada I am a convert to the LDS Church joining when I was 19 years old and have been married three years I had two little girls and another on the way my husband joined the church a year later I have been a member of the church now for 15 years and I am presently a visiting teacher and primary secretary over those 15 years I've had to admit to a lot of unhappiness and lack of fulfillment there were of course weeks at a time when I felt close to the Lord and got a lot out of church but for the most part I had to admit to growing restlessness and a feeling of frustration in 1966 and then she gives her husband's name my husband and I were sealed in the Oakland temple along with our three daughters I was disappointed with the temple ceremony and left with the throbbing headache several hours later I had vented the temple four or five times since then one year ago a couple moved in next door to us and after a few weeks we got to know them better she was very religious and as we talked I expressed to her my prayer failure and general frustration at not being able to have the real power of the New Testament church in my life and yet I knew that I had the true Church this led to more frustration and confusion I went a few times with her to her church the First Baptist Church I loved their worship and saw how much they really did love the Lord sitting in our own meetings especially sacrament meetings hearing talks on food storage travel logs etc but never hardly hearing the Word of God priests made me feel even worse my neighbors had gone to Australia for five months on a job so I didn't get back to church with them during that time my sorrow seemed to increase I couldn't understand what was wrong we couldn't seem to make the gospel work in our home our children were rebellious and didn't want to go to church we couldn't even hold family home evening without a fight my girls couldn't seem to fit in with the kids at the ward and they were unhappy then our neighbours returned from Australia again I saw the glow on her face and wished I could have what she had why did she have such happiness and extraordinary answers to her prayers here I had the true gospel of Jesus Christ and she didn't and she was the one getting all the blessings I felt cold and dead inside I started going with her to her services again once in a while it was then that I really got desperate I wanted to be happy so badly I prayed to God that he would reveal the truth to me to reveal his will in a manner I could not mistake I didn't care how much it cost me or where the chips fell I just wanted to be on his side no matter what I am sure that that's the first time I had ever prayed like this nothing particularly happened for about a week I kept telling myself that I wasn't going to worry about it because the Lord would take care of my problem I kept telling myself that I had to learn to wait patiently on the Lord well then my neighbor borrowed your book Mormonism shadow reality from a friend of hers at church and I saw it laying on her Bureau in her bedroom she was embarrassed and said she wasn't trying to offend me but she just wanted to find out more about my religion I told her she wasn't going to find out much reading anti-mormon books but I did agree that I would be happy to discuss any of our religious doctrines with her husband I knew I could defend my religion as well says I was well-versed in it I wasn't worried at all I decided to debate on a particular subject and started doing research then I decided I had better know what the opposition was so I borrowed the book from her well I spent almost three days and nights reading the adjectives used in the back of your book such as devastating and utterly crushed were so true my husband and I spent days discussing what the book had brought to light at first not believing then not wanting to believe could it possibly be that we had been deceived how could it be I asked the Lord to confirm this in fact that this was an answer to my prayer within an hour I received an unmistakable confirmation from a completely different source I was scared and yet happy we are now in a position of having to face reality not knowing exactly what to do about it I have resigned as primary secretary and both of us have thrown our garments away we know in our hearts that what you have written is true so you see the kind of there are similar things that happen in the different people's lives as you go through the stories whether the challenge by a book or a friend that there comes this point at which something made them stop and evaluate the Mormon truth claims as opposed to the Christian truth claims and that could be through a tract it could be through a Christian witness it could be through literature it could be through TV the internet a video any number of things but as long as the Mormon keeps thinking himself as a Christian as well he doesn't have to make a choice the Mormon thinks of you as having half a glass of water he has the full glass of water you have nothing to give to him he has something to give to you to fill up your knowledge to come to truth and so there has to be some challenge on some area that Mormonism does not have more truth in the Christian what they have is a false gospel that it is not in alignment with what the scriptures say and I keep trying to point out to Mormons the Bible was here first I have to use it as my guide and direction and testing prophets and testing their message Joseph Smith came after the Bible he claimed to be restoring New Testament Christianity then he has to meet a certain standard he's got to be in conformity what was there before and then when you start putting them down on problems of inconsistencies in Mormon doctrine that don't match the New Testament then they switch to what we believe in modern day revelation and God gave further light and then I remind them what you can't be a restoration and change everything if you're restoring New Testament Christianity you can't add more to it it's not a restoration and you guys that love old cars you know if you're going to claim to have a restored 47 Chevy you don't have loud pipes on the side and humongous wheels and jack up the back end it that's not a restored Chevy and yeah so and that's what I keep trying to get across to the Mormons you can't have it both ways either you're restoring New Testament Christianity or you have a new deal but it doesn't match what we have in the New Testament now okay get them all on time so I'm going to skip over to something this just happened this month a fellow came in the other day and was sharing his story with me and a couple of years ago at his ward the church leaders were encouraging the people to watch the new PBS special on the Mormons and so he decided that all right I'm going to watch that it is this but then he's watching it and they start talking about polyandry and he never realized that the Mormons taught plural gods and it was that that got his attention and sent him back to the Bible to see what the Bible taught about the nature of God and that became the catalyst for him for him to leave Mormonism and come to faith in Christ so you just never know what way God's going to to use something a fellow that was in just yesterday a couple from Maine came by and when they came in the bookstore the wife grabbed me and hugged me and she started just bawling because she she wanted me to know how thankful she was that we had done the ministry we had because it had been a part of their coming to Christ but so let me tell you some of how their story worked out the husband has been a student at BYU I believe he was older at the time that he was at the school I had already I think served a mission by that time but anyways he decides he's going to get knowledgeable on his faith he they were both converts into Mormonism so he decides he's going to take a history of Mormonism class so he goes the class and this one day the professor gets up and he writes up on the board the first vision and then he turns to the class and he says now how many accounts can you tell me about for the first vision and he proceeds to write up on the board seven different accounts of the first vision and this conference in there what what do you mean seven accounts of the first vision you know they missionaries didn't tell me this I mean if you saw God I expect this would kind of impress your mind and you remember when and how it happened you know so that was the start of his questions well then he signed up for a class on the Doctrine and Covenants and the professor tells everyone they got to have a doctrine of covenants for class and he comes in and so then they start going through the revelations and the teacher says okay everybody turn to section whatever and you'll see that it says the revelation was given to so-and-so now everybody take out your pen and scratch out that guy's name because it wasn't really given for him it was really given for this other guy and it gives the name for that guy and by the way the dates wrong the dates been changed because it didn't work out with the first guy and so Joseph reissued the revelation for this other guy and changed the date in the name and then he says now turn over a little further and this other revelation you see here was originally three different things Joseph wrote that he brought together to make a revelation out of and so note that and now this other section turned to that now the heading up there is all wrong and and they're going through the door check how do I sell all this stuff with this fellow's head swimming Wow wait a minute I thought this all was direct from God and and now I've got a class's telling me all about the differences in the Doctrine and Covenants well he started having very serious problems and somewhere along the line he found out about us and about our big book Mormonism shadow reality well he came to the store to buy it and his wife was sitting in the car she absolutely refused to get out of the car and come in and meet me and so he bought the book and took it home and of course it just caused all kind of havoc in the home but finally he got her to look at it you know we need to go through this together we need to both look at this we need to deal with these issues into slide if we really can believe this or not well finally God started speaking to her heart and she started thinking about well do is Mormonism right do I really know God as I should and she said it was like God had spoke to her heart and you already know the truth and she thought about that and she started remembering all the Bible stories she had been taught growing up in the Methodist Church and they all started coming back to her so she went back and started looking at the Bible more and realized that she had had the truth all along she had got sidetracked into Mormonism into something that wasn't based on the Bible and so in time they both gave up Mormonism they came to faith in Christ and at this point and they've been Christians now for I think a couple dozen years all their children now have come to faith in Christ and come out of Mormonism but one they have one son in Salt Lake that is still a devout Mormon that they were there to visit with but they're hoping and praying in time the son will see what's going on in the rest of the family one of the other problems we find is the internet more and more we're getting people who found that to be a problem so I'm trying to side which of these letters to tell you okay here's an internet story in the year 2000 there was a period of time when I considered joining the LDS Church at the time I thought the LDS Church had a lot to offer I did have some questions that I just couldn't seem to find answers to from people I talked to so I started to look around on the Internet that is when I found your website your extensive research really helped answer the questions I had about the history of the LDS Church and changes made to the book Moorman after some time to think and pray about the path I wanted to take in life I decided that the LDS Church was not the right road for me I would like to thank you all for your research in such a complex subject I really helped me to sort out the questions in my mind your you work hard and help people in this world more than you realize we see that the Internet is a tool that helps the Mormon it can help the non Mormon and what we're finding now is anecdotally reports of how it's affecting the missionary growth in Mormonism and a couple of years ago there was an article in dialogue journal Mormon thought about missionary work in Japan and I'm sure the same story could be told of other mission fields but this just happened beyond Japan and they tell in the article how that when the missionaries go out and make contacts with people that by the time they go back then for their first meeting more often than not the person will say to them Oh in the meantime I've looked you up on the internet and I'm not interested anymore and they're having a very hard time growing in Japan they have something like 120 some thousand members supposedly but only a fifth of the church membership is actively in any way participating in Japan in the church services I think that would be true of most mission fields they can make conference very quickly but they aren't necessarily sticking and not necessarily because they become Christians but because Mormonism doesn't meet their expectations of whatever they had going into Mormonism and they go back to their own life and some will go on to become Christians it's a mixed bag on the results of that but when the Mormons tell us how they're growing we have to understand that's a PR campaign and the growth rate isn't the phenomenal rate that they give to it it is impressive but not that great they have a tremendous problem with retention they have a tremendous problem with in activity in the church numbers so when they say that there are 13 million members in the United States they would be lucky if half that number were active in the church and active I don't mean going to the temple I mean just showing up once a month they have their own set of problems but they like the Muslims they are able to grow from internal growth they have large families and so they reproduce themselves and are growing from that way the rest of the world has slowed down on the size of their families and so the Mormonism looks more impressive because of the internal growth is going on so I just want to encourage you that people are coming to faith in Christ it is we fact a guy that came in just the other day from Logan said to me is it just me or does it seem like there's a lot more people that are leaving Mormonism and I says well I think that's true and he says well I'm surprised up in Logan how many times I run across different people and find out they aren't going to the church anymore and he was impressed just in casual acquaintances how the the percentage was going down and that he was meeting more and more people that were rethinking Mormon issues so I hope it will encourage you as you share your faith in Christ with the people in your community or in your outreach this week that we can model the love of Christ to them to do Atma spirit of kindness but we have a beautiful gospel of grace to offer people that are very burdened down with a list of rules and the most common thing I find people say to me becoming Christians out of Mormonism is that such a weight has been taken off their back about because of the oppression of becoming perfect so many of them know they are not becoming more perfect they struggle they try and they'll tell you on trying well how you doing on that you know still having struggles so it's a beautiful message of grace we have for them I remember witnessing to one young man for oh I don't know an hour to one time in the store and I we went over at grace and works and it and he said to me oh that would be so beautiful if that was really true that would be so wonderful but now it's not that easy and and he left it huh now we don't know what will eventually happen with him but I had a good chance of sharing with him the beauty of the Christian message of grace and hopefully in time that will have an impact on his life you may not see it this week with people but you start a process that hopefully in time will bring them to faith in Christ so did you have a few minutes you wanted to take two questions Karen the witch problem Oh Canadian revelation yeah oh okay many of you would are familiar with the name David Whitmer he was one of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon and in the latter part of his life he wrote a little booklet called an address to all believers in Christ and he tells how Joseph's changed the revelations and changed the doctrines and that's why he left Mormonism and even though he still believed the Book of Mormon he believed everything after the Book of Mormon was wrong but one of the things he tells in his book is that during the process of getting the Book of Mormon ready for publishing Martin Harris have not been able to sell his farm yet to pay for the printing of the Book of Mormon and they were running up against deadlines on raising money and so Joseph Smith takes the stone the seer stone that I used to translate the Book of Mormon and he puts it in his hat and he gets a revelation that several of the men are to go to Canada which was just over the border from them they were in New York they were to go into Canada and they would find a guy and be able to sell him the copyright to the Book of Mormon first off I find it kind of curious that you would sell the copyright to God Scripture but anyways they went looking for this guy to sell the copyright for the Book of Mormon so they could get the funds to print the Book of Mormon and when they come back they say Joseph we weren't able to find anyone to sell the Book of Mormon copyright to how could your prophecy how could your revelation fail and Joseph Smith says at that time some revelations are of God some are men and some are of the devil okay there's a clue so obviously this one wasn't from God because it didn't work out okay when I've raised that story with different Mormons through the years often they will say oh well that's just David Whitmer he's apostate you can't believe how do we know that story is true now it is mentioned in one other guy's early writings about the revelation but he too was an apostate so they tend to discount the story well then some of you may have heard about the Joseph Smith papers a project the Mormons have they have this thing on BYU TV now I think every Sunday night where they talk about the Joseph Smith papers and the church is going to open the archive supposedly and they're going to put out all this manuscript material on Joseph's revelations and things well we have been told that one of the revelations that will be included in their next volume will be a copy of the Canadian revelation now up until recently we didn't even know the church had a copy of this revelation we thought we were dependent solely on the testimony of a couple of of apostates for the story even though Mormon historians had accepted the story is true we didn't know that there was a document relating to this evidently in the manuscripts that the church has in their archives of the different revelations Joseph Smith gave is a copy of this revelation and it will be published in volume 2 of the Joseph Smith papers which is going to give us all the ability to use a church source to show them that some revelations are of God some are of man and some are of the devil and this is an example of how the Joseph's are not coming from God because it clearly failed now as far as the more on the dinner I had with this Mormon historian one of the things that I asked him in in our long conversation was well I have to tell you this was when I was working on the newsletter that we just put out a sacred marriage or secret affair and I just been working on all of that and going through all the stories that Joseph Smith's wives and was fairly appalled by the whole thing and so I'm having dinner with this guy and I said how can you avoid the conclusion that Joseph Smith was a sexual predator and he said well you know that's a he was sincere but I said what no I don't think I don't think that's the way you get it because for instance in that in the newsletter I tell about the case of Lucy Walker now here's a young girl where she's in a family of 10 people or 10 children the family conversed mormonism they end up moving to Nauvoo but the mother gets malaria in novel and dies and then one of the children dies so now we're down to nine kids and Joseph Smith solution to this family's situation is to send the father on a two-year mission to the East Coast divide up the children into different homes and take the teenagers into his home so now he has this sixteen-year-old girl living in the home with her brother that's a year or so older than her he starts privately going to the sister to try to convince her to become his plural wife and she's praying about the whole thing she don't know what to make out of it well then it turns out that Joseph's wife Emma and a brother go on a shopping trip to st. Louis and while they're gone Joseph gets the girl to marry him and she's just that date the day before turns 17 when she marries him in polygamy behind him is back she later wrote in her own story of her life what a devastating thing and how hard this was for her to do she said here I was without mother or father to consult no one around to go to to talk to and yet being presented with this great issue and of course she prays and finally feels God spoke to her and told her to do this and she goes into this plural marriage but so I'm talking to this historian Isis this is a this shows a deliberate effort of isolating this girl from her family from everyone around her from any support system in a time of grief and loneliness to put that kind of pressure on her is a signs of a spiritual predator I don't see how we can excuse this kind of behavior and say well he was sincere you wouldn't give that kind of leeway to someone that approached your sixteen-year-old daughter if your pastor came to you to your sixteen-year-old daughter find your back and propose something like that to her and you found out about it you'd be so magic try to kill a guy so why does Joseph get a pass on these things I don't understand how they keep saying it's okay and if you read the story of the different wives they all are horrible going to young teenaged girls and saying God sent an angel with a drawn sword that was going to kill Joseph Smith if he didn't go into polygamy if she didn't marry him God was going to kill him and the struggle the weight of responsibility this would put on a teenage girl I cannot be responsible for the prophets death then he would also put the responsibility on these young girls that if you consent to this it will ensure your parents eternal salvation they will have exaltation how can a girl say no I'm not going to help my parents have eternal life and so she finally submits to this but to me it clearly is the pattern of a sexual predator but this fellow feels the more matures does more good than harm and we're here now and that's where as families that you know of course he's not living in Utah so it's much he's got a lot of non Mormons around him and so he doesn't feel the same pressure as you would if you were here locally but we see this more and more with the scholars of this moving away from any truth claims and everything becomes relative doesn't work for you if it's working for you stay there if not working then look for something else and so our heart is that they come to see truth is important what we do with our lives is important the lies of Joseph Smith do affect people they aren't just innocent things that don't touch other people because of Joseph Smith's polygamy we have all the polygamists today Mormons will say to me but look at the fruits of Mormonism I think yeah the fruits of Mormonism are 60 thousand people living in polygamy today that's the fruit of Joseph Smith those people wouldn't be in those situations had it not been for him privately going to teenage girls and coercing them into plural marriage tells that well if you look at the first printing of the Book of Mormon it says that Joseph Smith's the author and I think that's a Freudian slip I mean he obviously was claiming at the time that it came from God but I think it's one of those slips that comes along the whole thing of the Book of Mormon is done like a modern-day story the whole preface idea cover sheet to the story and all is a modern situation nobody in ancient history would have written any record like that okay but I have met my fair share of paranoid schizophrenics through the years and always was kind of amazed that my kids didn't go into psychiatry or something because we met so many now there have been some that I felt were potentially dangerous most mad Mormons don't come down to my shop if they're really mad they want anonymity and so they'll call on the phone and tell me off and hang up or they'll send me a nasty email through a hotmail account or something where no one knows who they are and in fact sometimes when someone sent me a challenge and I've tried to answer their arguments I find that they've blocked me from being able to respond back to them and I think what a cheap shot you know you're gonna write and say you lied on this this than this and there's that I bet you are brave enough to stand up and be counted and answer this and I answer them and then you know it bounces back to me so we have that kind of situation but then you have the ones that that are I feel kind of mentally ill and after a while you kind of get the profile of certain people that come in and you know okay we're going real soft today and not challenging much that this person says because you realize that they're a firecracker ready to explode and so I try to defuse a situation if I realize there's somebody that's really angry I have had people in the store that one man in particular that came in that was so angry and so volatile that my son was in happened to be in the other room and heard it all going on and he really he told me later he was really afraid the guy was going to punch my lights out that he was getting so angry I've had some of the polygamous leaders into the bookstore and some of them when I've tried to challenge them on their claims and discuss with them have gotten very mad and and you start realizing whoa this is getting a little too heated we better back off and just agree to disagree here before something bad happens you know but I've not had I feel that God has truly kept his hand on our property that in all the years that we have having this 50 years now of putting out material on Mormonism since I was three okay I'm 68 but ever since Gerald and I got married we have been printing and challenging the Mormon Church and I remember back in the 60s when we first published the temple ceremony we didn't know what that was going to bring how mad the Mormons would be whether they'd try to burn the house down and Gerald always had active fire extinguishers around the house because he was always worried someone was going to set the place on fire but I think and we've lived for the last 45 years we've lived in the same house in inner city Salt Lake City and not the best neighborhood we have not had vandalism or acts of vandalism against our property or anything the most we've had in that way as neighbor boys stole my kids bike and stuff like that which had nothing to do with Mormonism and so I really feel God protected us from a lot of that because because there's certainly been people mad enough at us to do all sorts of damage now we have been sued a couple of times BYU students sued us over printing parts of the Clayton diary extracts and we were able to win that one finally after an appeal to the federal appeal court in Denver then and I think it was 2000 the Mormon Church sued us because we put up a chapter of their church handbook on the internet and our intent was just to give people information on how to take the name off the roll we weren't trying to be in your face or make waves I just thought the easiest way to help people know what the process was the ramifications and what all happened would just be to put up what the church says about it well they claim copyright infringement and that's a whole nother story anyways that one came to a draw I could see the potential of a lawsuit that would stretch on for years and at that time we were going into the period of Gerald's decline with Alzheimer's and I just didn't know if I could handle that many irons the fire so anyways make a long story short a court negotiator was brought in and before we set up a hearing date to see if the two parties could be reconciled without having a trial because courts were all backed up and this is a federal case so anyways I told my lawyer Isis yeah look I mean I'll I could sign an agreement with them but I'm not admitting to any wrongdoing and I'm not giving them any money so I mean as long as those two things don't enter in you know what what do they want to offer and so anyways they he negotiated that I had to sign an agreement I wouldn't publish more than 50 words for the handbook and any one article I would write so theoretically I could print the whole handbook I would just have to do it 50 words at a time and so there were certain restrictions that way on on publishing that I thought well this is you know I don't need to be able to print stuff out of the handbook matter and so I said yeah I can sign off on that so we did an episode that became a draw now a few years ago some enterprising Mormon apologists decided to set up web pages using domain names of our names in the ministry name not never occurred to me that it naively I guess that I would need to register all every kind of possible domain name to keep people from putting up sites that look like ours to divert people away from us but they bought the domain names for Sandra Tanner calm org Geraldton org Utah lighthouse ministry com org because we had just registered you tlme org and so they registered under all these different variants of our names and then they posted a website that looked like ours I mean they they put it together so it wasn't they didn't just lift ours but it looked like ours but if you pressed on any of the little links to go to what you would think take you to the articles on our website they all took you to websites of fare and farms to give you all the answers to stuff so you think you're looking at Book of Abraham on the Tanner site and you're going to be shifted over to Farah farms and so anyways we took out a lawsuit against them on the taking of the domain names and of mirroring our site and misdirecting people and they claimed that it was parody and so I didn't think it was clear but being parody it just looked sneaky but anyways the judge gave it to him on a parody charge but the way the whole thing worked out neither side gave either side any money they gave us back the web names and the whole thing just got resolved in that way we had our names back but they weren't going to pay us any money we didn't have to pay for them we each paid for our own lawyers and so the things over down and we have our names back I'll accept one I think there's still one name out there that we didn't get back but so I've been those kind of things one back before my daughter got married one of the fair crowd before he got married tried dating my daughter under the guise of get all he does he had seen her picture and seeing her and around and then so he was interested in dating her and then it turns out he was using it as a means of trying to get information on Jarrell did I and when April figured that out she was just slightly mad but and the fellow a sense buried state a Mormon after all these years and he still writes for fair so we've had our share of issues that way okay and young we absolutely know that Mormons have Joseph Smith's ear stone and the first Presidency's fault people have seen it and in Grant Palmer's book I believe what's the name of his book insider's view of mormon origins I think in his book he tells of going up to the church office building and being shown they have several different stones of Smith's and he saw them so they have it and I think there are some books that mentioned I'm having this stone and I believe it was supposed to be on the altar of the Manti temple when they dedicated it yeah raises this whole interesting question you know when you get to be prophet do you sneak off in the vault someday and get it out to see if it works yeah so I don't know but I don't know how they approach that I assume they tell themselves well that's the way God operated in those days and wait let you read the Hinkley's statements about revelation and he talks about the Moving's of the spirit impressions on the mind he doesn't speak in terms of revelations of thus saith the Lord my servant Joseph kind of revelations so the Mormons have finessed what it means to get revelation at this point because they all know they don't get thus saith the Lord they're just getting feelings and I keep putting to the Mormons I knew when they tell me you know we do have to have a living prophet I said what was he do once he prophesied was a revelation from him everything they've issued the last hundred years seems to be backpedaling on stuff they said before so I don't see where the revelation is moving it forward and then they'll say well he gets revelation every day how to guide the church and then I say well so how's that any different from my pastor praying to know how to do things at our church and feeling impressed by the spirit that this year we're going to have VBS or not have it or whatever how is that any different than what you're saying your prophets having it seems like it's just impressions of the spirit if God were truly leading the Mormon Church like they claim I don't understand why they have surveys and they did before they changed the temple ceremony in 1990 the year before they sent out a I don't know like 30 page survey to random Mormons to ask him about their temple experience have they been regular when did they go back the last time what were the things that bothered Emma blah blah you know in this whole big serving and dah dah dah a year later they bring out a new improved model of the temple ceremony take out some of the worst parts that were the closest to masonry so again it doesn't look like the spirit of revelation to me it's man's effort to try to figure out how to run things like getting one else would do it okay so we do it okay thank you

Channel: Aaron Shafovaloff

Views: 213,501

Rating: 4.2563839 out of 5

Keywords: manti, pageant, evangelism

Id: mGWvhhPpetg

Length: 78min 5sec (4685 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 20 2009

Reddit Comments

[u/ubring]

At this point its clear which side has been doing all of the lying.

[u/[deleted]]

I was told in my youth that the Tanners were Stan incarnate. Not until listening to her interview on Mormon Stories did I realize that I was gaslighted. She is one of the nicest, sincerest and loveliest persons I've listened to.

[u/beachfan83]

I like listening to Sandra Tanner and also another one i like is Lynn Wilder.

[u/[deleted]]

I met Sandra and Gerold in 77. Sandra helped me out:) lovely lady!

[u/Kolob_Bob]

I went to her bookstore in slc and was kinda star-struck when I first saw her. We had a good conversation while I was looking through books. She gave me a lot of free pamphlets and even some full books. She was really nice for being so heavily influenced by Mormonism's Satan.

[u/pleadthe5th2017]

I think with mormonism the narrative changes almost weekly. What was completely apostate talk 5 years ago is now mainstream. The church is being forced to deal with their history and so as we go on i think the narrative will continue to change. It's like a big lie.....once you tell one, you have to keep lying to cover up the first one, but eventually it all comes out.

[u/MagnetoRobotics]

It is crazy the shift that occurs when you realize facts matter and do have an impact on your happiness.

And I wanna give this lady a hug!

[u/benendeto]

Or, how many TBMs would call her a liar now?

[u/japanesepiano]

... and the church has still only slightly admitted to having 1-2 of these stones. In the official essay is says that Joseph "probably" had more than one stone. Based on the reasearch that I've done, they have the brown stone, the white stone, the green stone, and possibly at least one of the Whittmer stones. Grant Palmer also talks about the muddy softball stone, though we don't have additional sources on that one. Bottom line: They've got quite a rock collection.