LDS Temple Endowment & Masonry

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:03 Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is September 7, 2022 and we are recording another episode in the amazing series with Mike of LDS Discussions), whose content can be found at LDS discussions.com Today's episode is the connection between the Mormon or the LDS Church temple ceremony and Masonry or the Masonic Lodge.

John Dehlin 0:33 For those of you who are just joining us for the first time, we are about 24 or 25 episodes into an amazing series where we discuss essays written by my friend Mike at again the the website ldsdiscussions.com and the focus is all around examining Mormon Church truth claims based on the evidence with an attempt at observation or neutrality where we're trying to shed as much of our biases as we can and just analyze the evidence to make make sense of it without too much prejudice. And joining us today for the episode is of course, Mike. Hey Mike, thanks for joining us.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17 Hey everybody.

John Dehlin 1:19 And viewers and listeners will be happy to know that for today at least, Nemo the Mormon from the amazing channel, Nemo The Mormon on YouTube is joining us all the way from the UK. Hey, Nemo.

Nemo 1:32 Hey, how you doing?

John Dehlin 1:34 Glad to have you.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35 It's good to see you, Nemo.

Nemo 1:36 Yeah, glad to be back.

John Dehlin 1:38 You ready to talk Masonry in the Masonic Lodge?

Nemo 1:41 Oh yeah, yeah, I am ready.

John Dehlin 1:44 All right. For those who don't, don't know this or don't remember, we're making all of these episodes available standalone in a series either on Spotify. You can go to LDS discussions on Spotify and view these video wise or listen to them in the audio format. You can check out the playlist under the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. There's an LDS discussions playlist. And of course these are all available in a sequence wherever you get your podcasts. And I'll also say that sometimes we, we have intros that are a little bit longer, at least in YouTube format. If you go to YouTube and if you pay for the premium account especially, but even if you don't in the description, we have time codes where you can just jump ahead, skip the introduction and jump right ahead to the very first slide.

John Dehlin 2:34 And so without any further ado, let's go ahead and jump ahead to the very first slide. Mike? Yeah, this is just any introduction you want to give.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:42 This is, yeah, this is basically the introduction, which is to say this is obviously an episode that's going to cover some ground that is very sensitive to a lot of people. And so we are going to outline how Joseph Smith used the Masonic ceremony to create the Endowment. But we're not going to recite or play any of the current text or video of the Endowment ceremony. We're not going to show pictures inside the temple. You know, we do, I, I really do respect the fact that a lot of members find this to be sacred. And so we're not going to, to make this episode about making fun of any of it or, or showing the videos of it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:13 So what we are going to do though is include the elements and the text of the Masonic ceremonies, which might be very familiar to members who have gone through the temple, as well as highlighting parts of the endowment that have been removed or edited since Joseph Smith first created the ceremony. So this is not being done to reveal the ceremony, it's being done to illustrate where Joseph Smith was pulling materials from the Masonic ceremony from. And, and also kind of looking at how in the years since the Church has attempted to remove some of the Masonic elements out, some of the uncomfortable teachings out. But in doing this, we're not going to be showing the current temple stuff, so we're going to be trying to be as sensitive as we possibly can to the fact that so many members do hold this to be sacred.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:53 I just wanted to get that up front so that people who want to watch this, who are believing can feel comfortable that we're not going to be doing any of those things that you might see in other areas of the Internet.

John Dehlin 4:03 And non Mormons may not even totally understand this disclaimer, but I'll just reiterate what you just said. There probably is no more kind of secret sacred aspect of Mormonism than the Mormon Temple ceremony. We're sworn to secrecy. We're not even told about it before we go into it. And so that's why we're exhibiting so much caution and such a big disclaimer.

Nemo 4:29 Yeah, sure.

Timeline of Joseph Smith and Masonry

John Dehlin 4:31 All right, so let's jump to the timeline.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 4:34 Yeah, so we like to do timelines on the series just because I think it's helpful to understanding sometimes how these ideas evolve. And this one's a really simple one. So on March 15, 1842, Joseph Smith is initiated as a Master Mason. May 3rd of 1842, Joseph Smith introduces the endowment ceremony. So exactly seven weeks after Joseph Smith becomes a Master Mason and being introduced to the Masonic ceremony, he is going to introduce the endowment that will feature almost identical text, symbols, clothing, handshakes and more. So it's a seven week span between becoming a Mason and introducing the Endowment.

John Dehlin 5:10 I'm guessing there's a lot of listeners of viewers that really don't know much about the Masonic lodge Unless they've watched the Simpsons. And there was the Simpsons episode which kind of did a parody of the masons.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:19 The stonecutters episode is one of the all time greats. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I. I don't know much about the Masonic ceremony, to be honest, Outside of going through Mormonism and the stone cutters. Those are my two sources of knowledge there.

John Dehlin 5:30 Yeah, yeah. But it's basically just a. Go ahead, Nemo.

Nemo 5:34 I was gonna say, in Britain we know a little bit more about the masons just in that there's a lot of Masonic lodges around. You'll see their kind of symbols all up and around on buildings and things. A lot of former lodges are now other kinds of buildings. So it's very common.

John Dehlin 5:47 It's basically just this brotherhood. It's normally men and it's this brotherhood. It goes back hundreds of years. Thomas Jefferson was a mason. You know, lots of the founders in the United States, the founders of our country were considered George Washington, etc, Masons. And just think of it as a secret brotherhood where there's a temple involved and then this really super secret ceremony where they're sworn to secrecy. I'll just say.

Nemo 6:13 But I will say masons are like Mormons in that they will tell you they're a mason. Like. Like it's not a secret that they are a freemason necessarily because, you know, I've met masons who during co have been wearing face coverings with masonry symbols embroidered on it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:28 Oh, wow.

Nemo 6:29 Right. From their lodge or whatever. So it's not a secret that you are a mason. Some of the things they do are more secretive. But yeah, it's not like they're masons among you and you may not know.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:39 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think we'll touch on it a little bit throughout the episode. But I think masonry first started because as they were starting to build things, I believe it was more of a fraternity of people who were like in a way certified to do the work. And so they had handshakes so that you knew you were dealing with someone who knew what they were doing. And then I think it evolved from that into more of a brotherhood. And we'll touch on that because the church will kind of talk about that as well as to how, you know, the Masonic kind of ceremony and traditions evolve. And Joseph Smith kind of takes the later part of that.

John Dehlin 7:16 And if you've ever seen someone with a ring that has a G on it and then like a compass and a square Around G. That's, that's also a symbol that you'll see outside of these temples that Nemo. All right, so the church looks like the church has done a video on this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 7:31 Yeah, so we did. When we did the Word of Wisdom episode, we used a lot of the churches now, you know, video. And we're going to do the same for this because the church doesn't have like a full out gospel topics essay. But this gives a good indication as to what the church would teach today with regards to the parallels between the Masonic ceremony and the endowment ceremony. So we'll let them kind of show it in their own words and then we can react to it. So this is just part one.

John Dehlin 7:53 All right, here's part one of the LDS Church's now, you know, video.

Guest 7:59 Masonry wasn't new to the thousands of Latter Day Saint converts already living in and around Nauvoo at the time. Although new to the faith, some members of the church, even those within the ranks of church leadership, were already masons. Eventually, over 1500 members of the church were listed as Freemasons in Nauvoo alone, more than in all the rest of Illinois. In towns across early America, many elected officials were Masons. President George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and many signers of the Declaration of Independence were also Masons

John Dehlin 8:34 and Nemo. One of the roles I'm trying to play with Mike is kind of student. Mike's the educator, I'm the student. And I'm just going to say what we just saw is more education on the Masonic Lodge than I received in 45 years of membership. In other words, we were never told about it. We were told about the Temple ceremony, but we were never told anything about the Masonic Lodge in all my years in the church. And of course, we were never told that there was a connection. And I'm just going to say we. One of the most profound moments of my life is when an old friend of mine while I'm in the mtc, the missionary training center for the Mormon Church, you know, training to become a missionary, one of my friends from high school writes me and says, hey, John, I just want to let you know that I found out that the temple ceremony you just went through was plagiarized from the Masonic Lodge ceremony.

John Dehlin 9:29 And I was so sure she was lying with anti Mormon literature that I did the equivalent of a 1988 unfriending. And I just said, never write me again. You're a liar. Get out of my world. And that's my experience with the Masonic Lodge in Mormonism.

Nemo 9:47 So my experience just real quick was that I was a missionary at the temple, and I discovered this while serving as a missionary at the temple. I discovered that masonry in the temple had connections. So I went to my temple president and asked him the question, and then I came back to him with a solution, which was the whole Solomon's Temple argument. And he just went, yeah, sure, okay, fine. Didn't really. He was happy that I'd found my own way around it and just let me, let me run off with it.

John Dehlin 10:13 Yeah. Yep. All right, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:16 Yeah. And you know, this. We don't have to go through this too much, but this first part of this video here is just, it's. We see this with the church when we did the Word of Wisdom. We also saw this. If you go to LDS discussions. I did a write up about the church's now, you know, video on use of using Seer stones. They try very hard to normalize things to make it feel more common. And it's just one of those things that's kind of funny because when we did the Book of Mormon surrounding overviews episode, we talked a lot about how there was this anti Masonic, you know, fervor across the, you know, Joseph Smith's area in the Northeast, which made its way into the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:49 So it's kind of funny to have that kind of juxtaposition of the Book of Mormon having these anti Masonic feelings and now the church basically saying, yeah, it was totally normal and, you know, all these really big time influential people are doing it. And so this is one of those areas we talk about often where the church will point to others who believed in similar things to try to imply that there's no big deal here. And we talked about this a lot when we did our episodes with race and the scriptures of Mormonism where they'll say, you know what? The church was founded in a time where there was a lot of racism.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:17 So of course you'd expect some of the prophets of God to be racist too. And I know some people might feel like that's mischaracterizing, but if you read the church's essay, they have sections where they literally will say, you know, that, you know, the people in the church are a product of their time, and therefore when they come up through that, it's. It's normal to expect that they have some of that. And then like I said earlier, the seer Stone video. And so this, this is trying to set up two members of the church watching this video, that it's basically a normal respected thing that was happening in Joseph Smith's time to be a Mason, which again, goes against the Book of Mormon. But that's what the setup here is.

John Dehlin 11:56 Yeah. And if it's no big deal, why weren't we told this? You know.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:00 Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin 12:01 It's misrepresenting. This new spin is a misrepresentation. Because if it wasn't a big deal, first of all, it was a big deal. This was something that when it was brought up in, let's just say in the 1970s and 80s and 60s and 50s, many people said, well, that's. Well, if Joseph got that from the Masons, then, then he can't really claim it's from God. It seems a lot more like plagiarism than it does inspiration. And that's why it controversial. That's why it was hidden from us. And so that's why to now say it's no big deal is not maybe fully honest.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:35 Yeah, Yeah, I think that's good.

John Dehlin 12:39 Okay,

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:41 we're going to part. Yeah, now we're going to the next part of the video.

Did the Temple Endowment Borrow from Masonic Ritual?

John Dehlin 12:44 Okay.

Guest 12:47 In the years prior to becoming a Mason, Joseph Smith had received instruction from God Revelations about eternal promises which God desired to make with church members. These promises are often called covenants. Some of these covenants, along with instruction about the purpose of life, are presented to members of the church in a ceremony called the endowment held in holy temples. So does the temple endowment ceremony borrow from Masonic ritual? At the time, Latter Day Saints in Nauvoo, who experienced both Masonic rites and the Temple endowment, did notice some common characteristics between the two ceremonies, specifically the common methods of presentation and clothing of the participants. They acknowledge parallels between Masonry and the Temple ceremony as given to Joseph. Based on their experience with both, they concluded the temple ceremony was of divine origin.

John Dehlin 13:42 Already, I'm just going to say, number one, we saw that little G there. Also, I think the answer is just yes. Like, just like when we talked about the Word of Wisdom episode, like, where did Joseph get it? It was clearly from the temperance movement that was going on in Kirtland at the time. Like, the answer to the question was the temple ceremony borrowed from the Masonic Lodge? Isn't anything other than absolutely, Nemo. You were smiling.

Nemo 14:07 I. I just want to get on my soapbox for a moment. Right. Because throughout this video I did. I did my own reaction to this video on my channel. But throughout this video, essentially the question was, I'm gonna. Because I made notes on this. Does the temple endowment ceremony borrow from Masonic ritual? That's the explicit Question. The answer is, well, the members thought it was of divine origin. It's not an answer to the question at all. And in the same way they don't answer the question, they also provide no evidence throughout this entire video of what years and what revelations Joseph received which supposedly predate Freemasonry.

Nemo 14:42 There's. Because the claim was that, you know, the endowment and the covenants God wanted to make were revealed before Joseph Smith became a Mason. That's the implied claim in this video. But the only other endowment ceremony that was received with the Kirtland Endowment, and that has nothing to do with the parts that Joseph took from Masonry, because that's all washings and anointings, which is found in the Bible.

John Dehlin 15:05 Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Nemo 15:07 Sorry, that's just. That's my soapbox on this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:09 No, it's a good point, because we see that a lot in these essays and in these videos where you kind of go, like, they. They'll ask a question or they'll.

John Dehlin 15:15 They'll.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:15 They'll bring up, like, kind of a point of controversy, and then they never actually answer it. And so all of a sudden, at the end, if you're a member, you're like, oh, yeah, they answered it. But then if you actually read it, like, no, they. They didn't. They just kind of go a different way. And like you said, it's amazing how there's no. There's no citation. I know you can't do a citation in a video, but, like, on their online stuff, they'll constantly say, oh, they had early revelations. It's like, but where are they? You know, why aren't they written down?

Nemo 15:36 And we have 132 sections or maybe more. How many sections? Doctrine Covenants. 136. Is it?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:42 There's more.

Nemo 15:42 Something like that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:43 Yeah.

Nemo 15:43 136 sections of doctrine and Covenants. And they can't point to a specific one.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:49 Yeah.

Nemo 15:49 Because surely if this is. This is a significant revelation. No, yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:53 That's just it. And it's. It's not in, you know, they don't have it in Joseph's journals or anything. So there's no, like, there's no, you know, temple script before the endowment, before the Masonic ceremony. And so, you know, kind of what you were saying, this is the part of the video that everyone needs to pay attention to, because what they're doing is they're trying to concede the fact that early members who were Masons immediately noticed how similar they were. So this was not something where, like, people. There's no vagueness here. Immediately like, holy crap, this is the Masonic ceremony. And so what happens is Joseph Smith then is going to tell these members that the Masonic ceremony was of divine origin, but then was kind of apostatized or corrupted.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:31 And so we have Heber c. Kimball in 1858. He says, we have the true Masonry. The Masonry of today is received from the apostasy which took place in the days of Solomon and David. They have now and then a thing that is correct, but we have the real thing. And then we have another one from Heber C. Kimball where he says there is a similarity of priesthood and Masonry. Brother Joseph says Masonry was taken from priesthood but has become degenerated. But many things are perfect. And so Joseph Smith, when people realize that he's taking the Masonic ceremony, is like, well, of course, yeah, because this was the original temple ceremony, and I'm now restoring it back to where it was.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:09 So when they kind of make it sound like, oh, early members thought it was, you know, of divine origin, it's like, well, yeah, because Joseph is telling them that. And so they don't tell you that Joseph is telling people that the Masonic ceremony was of divine origin. Because of course, as we'll get into that's not true. But they're very carefully skirting around this in a way that is intentionally misleading. But also they could say, well, we're not really not saying it, or we're not outright lying, we're just not saying it. And Joseph is telling them this. This is not something the members are coming up with on their own.

Nemo 17:37 And just another quick point, just looking back at my notes, there is 126 sections of doctrine and Covenants that were written before March of 1842, when Joseph Smith encountered Masonry.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:50 Yeah.

Nemo 17:51 There's 120. Sorry, 126 sections. Yeah. So if you look through all of them for the word endowment, the only ones you'll find are about the Kirtland Endowment. Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:00 So, yeah, endowment is a word. When I was doing the Saints book, the chapter by chapter, I remember them building up to endowment. And there was a lot of. I mean, I haven't read it. Read it since then. So this, I don't really go too much because I'll probably kind of misspeak a little bit, but it felt like they were conflating the Kirtland Endowment with what the Nauvoo one would be later. You know, it was almost like they were, like, building up to the endowment. And then like, okay, now it's on pause because obviously they had to leave. And in reality, the Kirtland temple was completely different. And so that's why you run into these problems where all of a sudden, now they're redoing the temple ceremony in a way that's pulling from surrounding ideas. It's hard to get away from it.

Restorationist Context and Early Temple Rites

John Dehlin 18:35 And Mike and Nemo tell me if I've got this right, like, this is all happening in this context, this kind of restorationist context. And I think, Mike, if I'm remembering right, this comes at least in part from Sidney Rigdon and Alexander Campbell, from. But it's this idea that Jesus set up the one true thing, and then it all got corrupted, and now it all needs to be restored to its proper order.

John Dehlin 18:58 So, you know, one way to interpret this if you're a believer, is that God is giving the true temple ceremony to Joseph. But if you're not buying that, then what makes a lot more sense is just like with Joseph's rewriting of the King James version of the Bible and of the New Testament and. And other sorts of things, he sees things that are in his milieu, he brings them in and then tweaks them and then calls it a restoration of all things. Is that a pattern that makes.

Nemo 19:30 Yeah, conveniently, his translation of the Bible existed in his milieu in the form of Adam Clark's commentary on the Bible. But, you know. Well, yeah, it's totally a point. I. That's what I did to myself. I said, oh, well, then, you know, it's just been restored from a corrupted version of the ceremony from Solomon's temple. That's how I got through it.

Guest 19:49 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:50 And it's just, you know, it's one of those things where I think I have it on this slide, just a few of them. But maybe at some point we'll do an episode. Because on. On the website, when I first started doing it, I had, like, this section. It was called. I call it Joseph Smith's Mixtape Theory, where it's like, you know, he's like, creating this mixtape.

Nemo 20:04 Just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:04 I like this. Okay, repurpose it for this. And, you know, I know David Bachvoy in your episode said, you know, that's how profits do it. You actualize information in the way you need it to work for you. The problem, though, is that Joseph Smith is going to, again, cement this as an ancient endowment, and we're going to show that there's no connection. And once you can show that there's no connection, that Joseph Smith's claims fall apart once it's, you know, I mean, and that's the whole thing. Like, it's the house of cards thing. Once the found, the bottom comes out, everything falls down.

John Dehlin 20:31 It's almost like permission to plagiarize. Because if you're just stealing stuff left and right and everybody's just saying, well, you're just a plagiarist. But. But if you're actually, you know, if you're actually like, quote, improving it and claiming that you're restoring it to its divine origins, well, then you're a prophet of God. You're not a plagiarist.

Nemo 20:50 Well, that's fanfic, right?

John Dehlin 20:51 Fanfic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:52 Yeah. That's kind of what. Yeah, that's what it comes down to. And we'll get in. We won't get into too much too. But like, one of the biggest purposes of the Masonic ceremony is the focus on secrecy. And Joseph Smith at this time needs secrecy. And so I think there's a big reason why Joseph finds a ton of value in this, because he needs. He needs people to keep their mouth shut. And we'll get into that more.

John Dehlin 21:12 It's all about polygamy, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 21:13 Yeah, well, yeah, certainly. I mean, I, you know. Yeah, we'll get into that. So here's some more quotes from early leaders about Masonry being the original endowment. So this is the journal of Joseph Fielding Smith where he says, many have joined the Masonic institution. This seems to have been a stepping stone or preparation for something else. The true origin of Masonry.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 21:35 We have President Franklin D. Richards in 1890 saying, Certain mystic rites which are practiced throughout Christendom claim antiquity with Solomon's Temple. And then we've got Elder Andrew Jensen in 1913 saying, if the Freemasonry of today is a remnant and corruption of the true signs and tokens of the priesthood revealed in the days of Solomon, when the Temple of Solomon was built, then it is easy for us to understand and believe that the mythology of the north is simply a corruption of the true Jehovah worship. And as Abraham knew and taught it to his children. So we have all these different quotes where they're making allusions to the fact that Joseph Smith is restoring it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:11 And so here's two last ones before we kind of move on a bit here. And so this is from Benjamin F. Johnson. He says he, Joseph Smith told me Freemasonry, as at present, was the apostate endowments. A sectarian religion was the apostate religion. And then we have President Franklin D. Richards again saying, Joseph the Prophet was aware that there were some things about Masonry which had come down from the beginning. And he desired to know what they were. Hence the Lodge. The Masons admitted some keys of knowledge appearing appertaining to Masonry or lost. Joseph inquired of the Lord concerning the matter, and he revealed to the prophet the true Masonry or to the prophet true Masonry, as we have in our temples.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:50 Owing to the matter or, sorry, owning. Owing to the superior knowledge Joseph had received. The Masons became jealous and cut off the Mormon Lodge. And so to Nemo's point, here's, you know, prophet Franklin D. Richards saying that Joseph saw it, inquired of the Lord, got a revelation, and yet there's no revelation. So that's putting a lot of words into Joseph's mouth right there.

Nemo 23:12 Definitely. And even. Even with the argument that, you know, this stuff wouldn't have been recorded in DNC because it's too sacred. You're not gonna. If we don't share the Temple ceremony outside the Temple, then why would any of it be written down in Doctrine and Covenants?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:23 Yep.

Nemo 23:24 But that. It's not beyond Joseph to write that the Lord revealed to me a temple ceremony which I cannot record here. But. Yeah. Right. There's. There's no reason for him not. And that's the sort of thing he almost would do if it happened. Because that alludes to his ability to get stuff from God and his ability to control that information.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:41 Yeah.

Nemo 23:42 Because if he controls the information, he keeps himself relevant.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:44 Yeah. And think about the Book of Abraham. The facsimiles has those symbols where it says something like to be revealed in the temple or whatever. I mean, to your point, he could have a revelation. That's like. Because, you know, he has these journals of what he's doing each day. And he could say, wrote down or received a revelation of the true ceremony for sealing ordinances or for the endowment. And then he could say, I cannot write down the ceremony for it is too sacred. Just some note that he did it, but there's just nothing.

Guest 24:10 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:12 And so this is where things get messy. For this claim that Joseph Smith was making because he's telling all the early members of the close connection between the Masonic ceremony and the endowment being divine because they had the apostate endowments in Masonry, which he is then going to restore as a prophet of God. And we now know that the Masonic ceremony did not originate until about 2,000 years after Solomon's Temple, and that it was. Solomon's Temple was about animal sacrifice. It had nothing to do with Masonry anyway. So there's no real connection in the first place. It's not like Masonry was trying to copy Solomon's Temple.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:45 And then, you know, we copied that. So none of these inconvenient facts are mentioned in the now, you know, video. And so to kind of drive this point home, you know, fair Mormon was doing a Q and A, and they were kind of forced to concede this fact. And so this is an area where Joseph Smith saw an idea he liked, molded it to fit what his desire was. And then when members kind of questioned because they realized it was the Masonic ceremony, he taught him that God was just restoring something that was lost in the great apostasy. But this is a question they ask at a fair Mormon conference.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:14 They say, wouldn't it be more correct to say that Masonry came out of the endowment? And the answer is, it would be if you believe that Freemasonry has a continuous historical line from King Solomon's Temple to the current. Unfortunately, there is no historical evidence to support a continuous functioning line from Solomon's Temple to present. We know what went on in Solomon's Temple. It's the ritualistic slaughter of animals. And so I don't know what to say. I would say that Joseph Smith made claims that are false.

John Dehlin 25:39 Go ahead, Nemo.

Nemo 25:40 I was gonna say it's it. As far as I understand it, it's not something that Joseph Smith would necessarily know was false. It was a common myth amongst Freemasonry at the time that this comes from Solomon's Temple. And it's only with modern understanding that we. That that kind of Freemasonry, essentially, we've realized it goes back to, you know, 15th century stone masons. But that was a com. A common part of kind of the origin myths of Masonry. So no wonder Joseph Smith picked up on it and others also picked up on it. And it's one of those things where it's like the mound builders, myths and other myths of Joseph's time. It's now, notwithstanding the scrutiny of modern

John Dehlin 26:14 research, it almost reminds me of the. Of the Curse of Cain doctrine. It's not like Joseph. Joseph Smith didn't come up with it, but he certainly canonized it, Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:22 Yeah. And that's just. Yeah, that's it. That mean we talk about patterns all the time. Right. And this is another pattern where Joseph Smith is going to take an idea he likes, he cements it as historical, and then we now know it's not. We've done so many episodes. Adam and Eve being literal, the global flood being literal, the long ending of Mark sermon, all these things he cements. And you look back on it and you're like, oh, and so if he's wrong on that and he's doing it in the voice of God, telling other people, it's revelation, that's what you've got. Massive problems.

John Dehlin 26:52 Two other quick points I'll add. Believe it or not, one of my very first episodes of Mormon Stories podcast was with Greg Kearney, who's the guy you just referenced at the fair conference. And he is a master mason. So the fact that he is saying, I am a master mason and this stuff does not originate with Solomon's temple, that should mean something to people that are looking for evidence.

Nemo 27:15 Yep.

John Dehlin 27:16 Because if you know, he should know. Right. He's an expert if there is one. The only other thing I'll say is that, you know, maybe I'm. Maybe I'm overstating it here, but you guys tell me if you think I'm wrong on this. Something I heard someone once say is that if the Jews are really good at anything, they're good at preserving their ritual. So if the Jews were doing the Masonic Lodge ceremony equivalent, you know, three or 4,000 years ago, they would still be doing something very much like it today. But they're not. And so why would we believe that they were doing their most sacred ritual, you know, three or 4,000 years ago, but that there's no remnant of it now? And the only remnant of it just happens to be something that Joseph stumbled on when he was in Kirtland and then imported it into Mormonism with a little bit of remix.

Nemo 28:06 I think it stems from this Mormon need to assimilate with the Jewish people. And that's a really complex conversation, and we could have a really long talk about that. But ultimately, Mormonism is all about trying to essentially get cred. It's like, oh, the more we can connect ourselves to Judaism and the old world and the real ancient religions, then we're golden. Then. Then we've got credibility, we've got strength. We're not just Christians. We go back to the Jews as well. That's something unique about Mormonism.

John Dehlin 28:33 I think I heard someone say once that Mormons want to outdo the Jews. I don't know if you've ever heard that phrase, but we just love the Jewish people.

Nemo 28:41 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 28:42 And we have Jewish envy in some ways.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:45 Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that, yeah, that's like Joseph Smith absolutely loved, like, the Old Testament ideas and brought them in everywhere. And unfortunately, he did it in a way that's just not historically accurate. And so I mentioned earlier, the church does not have a Gospel topics Essay on Masonry, but they do have like a little topics entry. So it's a very short kind of explainer about Masonry. And so one in that they say there are no known Masonic documents before about 1400. The earliest records tell a story of Masonry originating during Old Testament times.

History and Origins of Freemasonry

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:15 The oldest surviving minutes of Masonic lodges date to about 1600 and indicate that the organization was primarily concerned with regulating the trade of stone Masonry. Later minutes show that the lodges were generally overtaken by men who are not stonemasons. These members transformed the organization from a trade guild into a fraternity. Masons told a story about how their ancient forebears had learned stonemasonry, used it to build Solomon's Temple, protected the temple site, and held knowledge about their craft as a closely guarded secret. By Joseph Smith's day, the boundaries between Masonry's early European history and its founding myths and traditions had long since been blurred. The rituals of Freemasonry appear to have originated in early modern Europe.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:56 Aspects of these ceremonies bear resemblance to religious rites in many cultures, ancient and modern. And so the Church here is saying that by Joseph Smith's time, basically the actual history of Masonry and the myths had been blurred. And as Nemo said earlier, Joseph Smith was coming in at a time when those myths were being blurred and just took them as history. And so I guess the Church in a way is kind of funny to me because the value of a prophet is to be able to tell the difference between, you know, truth and fiction and myth and in history. And yet this is the Church basically saying, yeah, Joseph Smith came when those lines were being blurred.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:30 And what they don't tell you is that Joseph Smith was, you know, literally telling everybody that he was restoring it. But this is a really good admission that Masonry is not what Joseph Smith claimed it was in the name of God, you know, telling people it was revealed to him. And right here, this tells you that the entire value of a prophet is just relegated to almost nothing. If you want to take the Church at their word with this essay, comparing to what Joseph Smith said was revelation, it's. This is really damning stuff if you know, at least in my opinion. I, I think this shows that Joseph didn't know what he was working with.

Nemo 31:02 But I think it also shows, I think something that we, we don't always talk about is sometimes the earnestness of Joseph's intentions. We can never truly know what his intentions were, but I think sometimes he was taking things that he legitimately believed to be ancient and trying to pull them into his religion. So he took Masonry, which he may have believed was truly ancient and thought, mormonism needs this. Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:24 Yeah, it could be. I mean, there's a lot of instances where it seems like Joseph Smith is really actively trying to learn and do into. To be able to, you know, bring those concepts in in a way that would. Would be to make the church grow. And, you know, to your point, I'm not saying that Joseph is, you know, sitting in a room laughing like, oh, my goodness, I can't believe these people are buying. Buying what I'm saying. But I think the fact is that whether, you know, I know Dan Vogel has the pious fraud theory where he really believes he was helping. But my, My point is like, to a certain extent, and it sounds kind of cold, but I don't really care if he believed, if he was helping, because if he, if he's wrong, he's wrong.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:58 Like, if he's getting basic stuff wrong, then it doesn't really matter to me if he, if he meant well, because there are a lot of people that mean well that cause a lot of harm or take a lot from people. But. Yeah, I, I think your point's a good one.

Nemo 32:11 It undermines his claim that he is speaking as a prophet of God and he is revealing things from an omnipotent deity. It undermines that regardless of whether he thought it was helping or not. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:21 Because.

John Dehlin 32:22 Oh, go ahead, go ahead, Mike, finish.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:24 I was just gonna say, if you're a member of the church today and someone says, I need you to go to the temple, wear church required underwear, give us 10% of your time. Give, you know, countless hours every week in these callings.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:36 Because Russell Nelson isn't actually a prophet of God, but he's a really nice guy. I think you'd be like, yeah, no, I mean, the whole value proposition of Mormonism is that you have a living prophet. And I think the. I think Joseph Smith was one of those people that will never be able to go in his head, obviously, but I think he really did treat people that were close to him well. And people who felt, you know, kind of broke away from him, he treated, like, horrible, obviously, as we know, but at the same time, like, that kind of drama isn't really something that is too interesting to me because once you realize that he's not speaking for God, then all of that is just like, you know, stuff you can get anywhere where you get people who are trying to do good and angering some people.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:15 Other people love you. It's like, it's just a controversial figure and it's there's no value to it with regards to religion if he's getting things wrong that he claims are from God.

John Dehlin 33:24 And if I could just draw another quick parallel in a summary, I mentioned already, you know, how the word of wisdom, DNC1 DNC Section 89, likely comes from the temperance movement that was running around the Kirtland Society back in the early 1830s.

John Dehlin 33:40 You know, another example of. Of this would be the mound builder myth that was running around, you know, let's just say up New England and upstate New York in the. In the 1820s. That influences view of the Hebrews and. And likely influences the Spalding manuscript and many other things. And of course, that becomes a foundational, you know, backbone or framing for much of the Book of Mormon narrative. And this is where you'll see modern Mormon apologists like Taro Givens use words like bricolage or, you know, fancy words like bricolage or inspired syncretist. It's this idea that people who actually value evidence in history will go, wait a minute.

John Dehlin 34:25 It looks a lot like Joseph was just basically taking anything that he learned or experienced and kind of, you know, even. Even the idea of a Melchizedek priesthood, we now have identified that it probably came from Sidney Rigdon and the Campbellites. And so whether it's Melchizedek priesthood or, you know, a health code out of the Temperance Society or, you know, the mound builder myth into the Book of Mormon or the Masonic Temple ceremony, he's just looking around him, finding cool things that he likes, importing them, tweaking them, putting a stamp of approval on it, calling it ancient, saying that he's restoring it, and. And that's his creative.

John Dehlin 35:05 And by the way, like you said, Mike, all of that can be sincere. He can literally believe that this temple ceremony, this Mason ceremony, is ancient. It doesn't mean that he's lying. He. He could be sincere in believing that all these things really do have an ancient origin. I just think it strains. Maybe it strains credulity a little bit. We can't get mad at him for that is the. The three degrees of glory. He clearly gets that from Swedenborg. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:32 Yeah.

Nemo 35:32 As a Brit, I can't get mad at him for that because we've run around the world taking cool stuff that we liked. So, yeah, it's true. Props to the guy.

John Dehlin 35:41 We in the United States have not had that problem. So.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:43 Yeah, never.

John Dehlin 35:46 All right, so we've got a video now. Let's. Should we continue the video? All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:52 Yeah.

John Dehlin 35:52 Okay. This is more from the church's now, you know, video about the temple and masonry.

Guest 35:58 And consider that the ideas within the culture that surrounded Joseph Smith frequently contributed to the process by which he obtained revelations from God regarding the temple endowment as well as other subjects. Not surprising, since God uses many means to inspire his prophets and help them receive revelation.

John Dehlin 36:17 Hey, Mike, what did you want us to grab from that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:19 Yeah, I mean, you can just go to the next slide. It's just basically this is an area where the church is going to kind of have to admit, or at least they can no longer deny, that Joseph Smith is using surrounding ideas to create his theology. And so, you know, we've talked about this in other episodes already. Like you said, the word of wisdom, the priesthood restoration, the Mount builder myth, all these ideas that, you know, we were told, oh, as members, we weren't really told about most of them, but, you know, I think you can look at it and see they're all in the 19th century.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:48 And so we're told that these ideas are ancient with their origins in the church. But then when you look at them, they all tend to point back to a 19th century. And so this is a quote we've read before, but this is Richard Bushman, who is a faithful Mormon historian. As a patriarch, he's, you know, very well regarded. He says about the Book of Mormon. And then there is the fact that there is phrasing everywhere, long phrases that if you Google them, you'll find them in 19th century writings. The theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century theology, and it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew Bible as an Old Testament.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:22 That is, it has Christ in the way the Protestants saw Christ everywhere in the Old Testament. That's why we now call it the Hebrew Bible, because the Jews never saw it quite that way. So these are all problems we have to deal with. And I know he's talking about the Book of Mormon, but this is just again, talking about the fact that Joseph Smith is constantly pulling 19th century ideas, 19th century beliefs, and repurposing them into ancient ideas. And now the church in this video is kind of saying, yeah, of course he would process it that way because that's all he knows. But I think this is a shift from the way, at least it was taught to me as a convert.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:53 It was always taught to me as being restored from ancient, not like restored through modern lenses. And I think that's a huge kind of, at least for me, a shift in the way they kind of approach it. But it's also a Big concession.

Nemo 38:05 Yeah.

John Dehlin 38:08 Yep.

Nemo 38:08 Nothing else to say on that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:10 Yeah. I mean, you know, and. And this is kind of like, you know, we talk about, you know, the video kind of saying, well, of course they kind of pull from ideas from. From their worldview or whatever. This is some of the things we've already covered in the series that are surrounding ideas that Joseph takes from his time and place. And we've covered some of these already. Today, the mound builder myth is in the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith's treasure digging is in the Book of Mormon, the first vision. We talk about how there's about three dozen accounts of similar experiences. The Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:38 We talk about the Melchizedek priesthood likely coming from the Campbellites, at least they were teaching at first, the Word of Wisdom and the temperance movement. Adam Clark's commentary being in the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible. The curse of Cain and the curse of Ham in the book of Moses and Abraham. Those are ideas that are more the way that they're produced in the Book of Moses and Abraham really reflect that 19th century, 18th century belief.

John Dehlin 39:03 I'm super honored that. That you've taught me so well that I. That, you know, we've. Between me and Nemo, we've been able to come up with kind of 95 of the bullets without. We've already.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:14 Exactly. We've already covered all. And that's why it's cool, because, like, we haven't gotten to the three tiers of heaven much.

John Dehlin 39:18 We've. You're a teacher, Mike. That's what I'm saying.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:20 I guess so, yeah. And, you know, it's just when those ideas and revelations are proven to be nothing more than really incorrect beliefs from the 19th century, then what are you left with? And in this case, Joseph Smith was teaching that the Masonic ceremony was the original endowment and that it was lost in apostasy. But we know the Masonic ceremony was not invented until, like, thousands of years later. So at that point, Joseph Smith's entire underpinnings of this. Of this teaching are just completely gone. And we see this in all of these things. The mound builder myth is not real. No one's ever found buried treasure using a rock and a hat.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:52 All of these things, you know, we don't need to rehash all of them. It just shows that the church is now kind of falling back to this kind of more loose translation of revelation where Joseph's allowed to incorporate his worldview. And once you start watering it down, it's because of the fact that he's being proven wrong and they need to find a fallback to it.

Nemo 40:08 But the problem with that, the real problem, the real pin issue, is that if that is allowed to happen, if God is inspiring Joseph by the things around him and he is taking incorrect ideas in and using them to inspire inspiration from God and revelation from God, why is God allowing that to happen? Why is God giving Joseph incorrect inspirations and allowing incorrect revelations to come forward? Yeah, it goes beyond the fallibility of prophets because, yeah, prophets can be fallible, but God doesn't allow them to lead his children astray by. In the. By canonizing revelations that are based on. Or can. Or revealing Scripture based on incorrect beliefs.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:52 Yeah, exactly. Because the church will always fall back on the. The prophets are not infallible. The prophets are imperfect men. But the problem is the prophets are telling us. They're telling us that they're only telling us what God told them. So it's not that the prophets are imperfect men. It's that they're giving us incorrect information from God so that, like you said, all of a sudden they're not doing their job.

Nemo 41:13 Yeah, if God is telling them something and they're telling us wrong things, they're not doing their job. And God has swallowed prophets in fish for less.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:20 Yeah, that's just it. And that's why when you really take a step back and look at this, you're like, the church tries very hard not to throw God under the bus, but they will throw God under the bus if they need to to protect their current leadership. We see that all the time. But it's just like this is the November 15th policy. You see all of these different areas where. But yeah, race in the priesthood is a big one. Because they'll say, well, we don't really understand why God did it, but we just had to go with it anyways. And the truth is we have a God that will send an angel down to tell Joseph to have, you know, polygamous relationships and yet apparently allows the prophets to just preach really incorrect revelation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:55 You can't have it both ways. The inconsistency is just overwhelming. And at some point it kind of takes over everything because you then have to go really bad apologetics to excuse it. And that just creates more problems.

John Dehlin 42:08 Another way to summarize this is every time science or evidence or, you know, our, our more accurate understanding of the world advances or increases our claims about prophetic power or the power of the scriptures or the mystical, you know, source of the scriptures or the revelation of the prophets, it Shrinks.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:30 Yeah.

John Dehlin 42:31 When science advances, when history advances, the exorbitant Mormon truth claims shrink. You know, perfect example would be dinosaurs. Right. Evolution, the age of the earth. Age of the earth. Like, you can make these bold predictions. Or Book of Abraham. You make these bold predictions when there isn't evidence to disprove it. Then when you disprove it, all of a sudden it's myth. All of a sudden it's metaphor. All of a sudden, prophets in scripture aren't perfect.

Nemo 42:57 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:58 And that's the problem.

Guest 42:59 Yeah.

Nemo 42:59 Oh, I've got some things to say about this next video. I'm looking forward to this.

Masonic Rituals Compared to Temple Ceremonies

John Dehlin 43:03 All right, so here is the. The next portion of the church's now, you know, video on the Temple and Masonry.

Guest 43:13 The Temple ceremony was not an imitation or copy of Masonry. It was revelation from God. Yes, the presentation methods may have parallels to Masonic ritual, but the content of the instruction, the covenants and truths introduced by Joseph Smith as part of the endowment revealed to him prior to his encounter with Masonry. So what are some key differences between Masonic rituals and the Temple endowment ceremony practiced by Latter Day Saints? Masonic rituals based on legend promote self improvement, brotherhood, charity and fidelity to truth for the purpose of making better men, who in turn make a better society. In the Endowment ceremony, one of many important ceremonies held in sacred temples, men and women promise God to obey his laws for the purpose of gaining exaltation, eternal life with God through Jesus Christ and his atonement. And this temple ceremony draws upon the revelations from God for its content.

John Dehlin 44:14 Man, I'm just shaking my head, but I want to hear what you have to say. Nemo.

Nemo 44:18 Oh, dear. I mean, they're not addressing the things that are in common as specifically, obviously the Masonic symbols, signs and tokens, repetitive nature of instruction, knowledge testing, the clothing of the participants. They haven't grouped all that together in a convenient list. And. And I find it really interesting when they say many other ceremonies because it's an association fallacy. They're trying to bolster up the endowment ceremony by including it with all the other stuff that gets done in the Temple which isn't copied from Masonry. So they're trying to kind of cast your mind to all that sort of stuff. But then the Mason, the Masonic rituals and the endowment are all about fidelity. Both of them. They say that that's the difference, but it's not. It's just.

John Dehlin 44:58 How are they not self improvement? Like.

Nemo 45:00 Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin 45:01 Self improvement or a brotherhood or a sisterhood.

Nemo 45:04 Like, yeah, it's. It's mad. And then they're trying to. Is it in this video where they say they use for different purposes?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:12 Because I think so essentially.

Nemo 45:14 Just because Joseph is using the Masonic ceremony for a different purpose doesn't mean they can't have come from the same place. That's. Those things aren't mutually exclusive. You can't say, oh well, Joseph's using this for something else. It's about God, not about, not about a fraternity. So therefore it's not copied. So I can copy the Book of Mormon entirely and then use it to create an entire different religion if I wanted. Yeah. Wouldn't mean I didn't copy it.

John Dehlin 45:40 Yeah, that's, that's literally what fan fiction is. You, you have your own ideas. So, you know, they're basically making the argument that, well, Joseph had a few ideas before he ever, you know, merged them with the Temple, with the Masonic Lodge ceremony to create the Temple ceremony. But just because he had some pre existing ideas and ended up synthesizing them with the Masonic ceremony doesn't mean he didn't plagiarize the Temple ceremony. The Masonic ceremony.

Nemo 46:07 Yeah, yeah. And the only other thing I just really want to press on is a super quick. Is that they say there again that these things were revealed to Joseph before he became a Freemason. They still provide no evidence of when that happened. The church is silent on when this actually came to him before March of 1842.

John Dehlin 46:27 Yeah, we probably just said, what's on Mike's nest slide.

Nemo 46:29 No, no, it's fine.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:31 So, Nemo, have you ever seen a show in England called Chopped? It's a cooking show. Okay, so it's this cooking show. It's on Food Network. I think they have them internationally, but they give three contestants a basket of food, they get the same food, and then they have to make the best dish with the food. So you might get like a steak, potato and then some weird sweet thing and you got to create like the best dish. So they create them and all three of them are going to have very different final products.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:00 Under the idea of this video, you'd be like, well, because they have different products, they weren't pulling from the same basket. They're all pulling from the same, you know, so if you pull from the same ingredients and you come up with a different product, and each person that creates a basket are cooking to their strength. So one might be really good with Mexican food, one might be really good with Asian food. And so this idea that Joseph Smith is going to pull from the Masonic ceremony and yet have some differences, of course he's going to have differences, because that's the whole point. Otherwise it would be copying something that isn't relevant to the Church.

Nemo 47:29 It's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:29 Your point's a really good one in just the fact that just because they're different in the ultimate purpose doesn't have no bearing on the origins. And so anyways, with that out of the way, yeah, we cover most of this. So this is just one of those having it both way issues where, you know, this video is going to tell us that while the ceremony is from God, the presentation has nothing to do with it. But then we have Joseph Smith saying that the presentation was the original endowment. And so I don't understand why the Church is trying to make that argument except for the fact that they don't tell you in the video that Joseph Smith was teaching them that this was the original endowment ceremony.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:04 And so this is again one of those. Yeah, this is one of those issues that the Church would never have to make a video on if the historical connection between Masonry and Solomon's temple was there. But because Joseph Smith taught it wrong, the Church is now saying, well, it really, you know, it really wasn't meant to be exactly the same, but it goes against what the person who created is telling us. And so I think to reframe what Joseph was saying in these videos without giving the listeners context is very misleading. And so, you know, the Church says this is kind of copying what Nemo said.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:34 The presentation methods may have parallels to Masonic ritual, but the content of instruction, the covenants and truths introduced by Joseph Smith as part of the endowment were revealed to him prior to his encounter with Masonry. And again, as Nemo said, why not provide the revelations that show it was given to him before he could became a Mason to at least make this point have some credibility? Because as of right now, they're just inferring that. And this is kind of the whole we did this in the priesthood episode where they'll say, well, Joseph Smith made this mention about angelic visits. So that could mean the first vision.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:02 That could mean that you, you just make it whatever you want. And this is another area where they'll say, oh well, you mentioned endowments in Kirtland. That was clearly the same thing, except we can kind of show it's not. And yeah, and this is another area where they're just trying to keep you from getting underneath the surface because it's, it just doesn't help.

Nemo 49:17 The particular area I think that people will try and go to is DNC3832, which promises an Endowment that will come forth with. But that's the Curtain endowment. That's specifically what they're talking about. The Curtain endowment is essentially the washings and anointings.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:36 Yeah.

Nemo 49:36 As found in the Old Testament. The idea of washing and anointing people with a blessing.

John Dehlin 49:40 Oh, that's why there's those different stages. One comes from the New Testament and then the other comes from the Masonic Lodge. I never thought that before. That's an important connection.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:50 And that's why when you read the saints book and you get to the stuff about Kirtland, they do a really good job of kind of like almost I. I don't know if conflating is the right word, but they make you think it's basically the foreshadowing of the Navu one. And it just really is a. Is not the same thing. And as you said, the Kirtland one had no concept of these ceilings of the endowment, because if they did, they would have done it. But they didn't. So, I mean, it wasn't.

Nemo 50:13 And the thing is, just really quick is that if as a temple worker, when you're doing the washings and anointings, you have the words on a laminated piece of paper. Right. And they have it in various languages. So I've done it in. In English, German, French. I've done it in a few. But on all of them, they have it for the washings, anointings in brackets. They have scripture references, Leviticus, Exodus, places where you can find scriptural backing for the washings and anointings. You tell me where we're given. Any idea where any of this comes from in Scripture when we're talking specifically about the endowment.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:47 Yeah.

Nemo 50:47 Where in reality, it's because it's all from Masonry.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:50 Yeah. And that's the problem.

Nemo 50:52 The only bits that are from scripture are the bits that are obviously from scripture, like the Garden of Eden and that sort of thing. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:58 And so we talk about this at the start of the episode. We're not showing the handshakes in the temple, but we are showing the Masonic handshakes. And you know, this is one of those things, you know, from my personal experience when I went to the temple, we were told not to talk about the signs and tokens. We're not talking about the words and the text of the veil that we would need to know as when we die to get in the celestial kingdom. And so while we make covenants with God during the endowment, we make a lot of those same promises and other ceremonies in the church, such as baptism and Sacrament.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:27 And so one of the things I always get kind of bothered by with the way the church frames is if the presentation of the endowment is not part of the divine revelation from God, why are we not allowed to talk about the handshakes? Why are we not allowed to talk about the text of the veil? Because it's so similar to Masonry. And so to me, as we've kind of harped on a little bit here, if Joseph had these revelations before becoming a Mason, as a video says, why are the crucial parts of the ceremony that we're not allowed to talk about the parts that are taken directly from the Masons?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:54 I think that's a huge red flag to me that there is no secondary revelation. Because if there was something sacred that we were. That Joseph had before, and the Masonic ceremony is merely the vehicle, we should be able to talk about everything that's taken from the Masonic ceremony in public. And yet, if you look at the one on the right, we cannot talk about the Masonic handshakes. And those just happen to possibly match the ones you do in the temple. And I think that's a huge tell that that is what we are told is revelation, and it's not.

Nemo 52:24 And those are also the bits that are secret in Masonry. Yeah. So he's, he's. Not only is he keeping them sacred so that the connection isn't necessarily seen, but it's also just because that's in the thing he took it from. Those are the bits you keep sacred. So, yep, that's the sacred part of the ceremony. So let's keep it the sacred part of the ceremony when we're using it, too.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:41 Exactly. It's like when you get a secret from a friend in high school and you go to another friend, you're like, I want to tell you this, but you cannot tell anyone else. And this is Joseph Smith pulling something that was supposed to be secret and going, I can use this to keep secrecy in my church. And which he does. And like I said earlier, this is a time when Joseph Smith needs secrecy. But like you said, if this is not part of the revelation, because this is just the vehicle, why are we not allowed. We should be able to do this in public, otherwise you can't have it both ways.

John Dehlin 53:11 And another part that's just absurd, that we're probably not going to cover today is just the idea that for those who don't know about the temple ceremony, what we're taught is that these handshakes are required. It's required to learn them. Because when you go to heaven and you're standing at the veil in heaven, God's going to make you actually perform the handshakes with an angel as a prerequisite for entering in the kingdom. And the fact that God requires handshakes to go to heaven, it's just, it's a little bit weird and arbitrary. And does that mean, like, if you forget them, God's not going to let you in, but if he is going to let you in after you forget them, then why did you need, you know, to learn them in the first place? Right.

Nemo 53:53 And it's Brigham Young that taught, uh, is that famous quote from Brigham Young being enabled to pass the angels that stand at sentinels, give them the, the science tokens and keywords, that sort of thing. Right. And that's, that's set outside the temple. But these are so important just to press that point home, John. These are so important that they are got right, that when you go through, someone like me or another temple worker will stand next to you and make sure that this exchange with, you know, with deity as presented in temple is, is done correctly. Yep, that's.

John Dehlin 54:24 Yeah. And I think this next slide reinforces that exchange. And just like the handshakes are going to sound very familiar, these next words are going to sound very familiar.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:34 Yeah, yeah. And so as I said, this, this is text from the Masonic ceremony. This is not text from, from the temple ceremony. So it says, you know, beyond the grips, here is the text. So when they're given the sign, the handshakes, basically, and the tokens for each grip, the worshipful master says, pass. What is that? And then the senior deacon says, the past script of a fellow craft. And then the master says, has it a name? It has. Will you give it to me? I did not so receive it, neither will I so impart it. And so we're not going to post, you know, talk about the script of the church's endowment, but if you've been through the temple, that will seem very familiar.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:06 And that again, is the type of thing you need to know in Mormon, you know, beliefs to get into the celestial kingdom. You need to kind of do this kind of back and forth discussion, knowing the different, you know, signs and tokens. And so again, if this is not part of, if this is merely the vehicle and not the sacred revelation, why are we not allowed to talk about this in public? These are the parts I was told you specifically cannot talk about outside of the temple.

Nemo 55:31 And I will say this, this part is so important that when I have been involved in it as a Temple worker, I have withdrawn my hand. I've taken myself away because someone's got it wrong. And we started again.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:45 Yeah. And, you know, as a small side note, we talked in our treasure digging episode way back at the beginning about how in folk magic, the belief was if you didn't do the incantation exactly right, all of the magic was lost. And we talked about how in Mormonism, we still practice folk magic today in a lot of ways. And one of the ways I mentioned was the sacrament can't be passed unless the wording is done exactly right. And this is an area where, with the temple, and this is kind of borrowed from masonry as well. If this stuff isn't done exactly right, then all of a sudden the magic is lost.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 56:15 Whereas, you know, we're told that God knows every fiber of our being. So you would think when you die and you get to the, you know, the veil or whatever, that God would know if you deserve to be in there or not. But instead we're taught you have to know the, these handshakes and you need to know this kind of back and forth or else you won't get in it. It's very.

Nemo 56:32 Speaks. Sorry. It speaks to the broader, the broader pattern within Mormonism of this constant battle we have between grace and works. This idea that God's grace would just allow you to enter heaven because he knows your heart and he knows what, what you are, your. You know, your desires and whether you deserve to be there. But you have to do the works because Mormonism is all about these covenants and getting all these things exactly right. You've got to do the works to get in.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 56:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 56:56 Nemo, just for fun, let's role play this script. You play worship master, I'll play senior deacon.

Nemo 57:02 Okay. Pass. What is that?

John Dehlin 57:05 The pass grip of a fellow craft.

Nemo 57:07 Has it a name?

John Dehlin 57:09 It has.

Nemo 57:10 Will you give it to me?

John Dehlin 57:12 I did not receive it. Neither will I. So impart it. And obviously Mormons who have been to the temple are going to very much recognize both the words and kind of the exchange and the cadence as something.

Nemo 57:25 Think of these mellow dulcet tones you would have had and your temple ceremony.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:30 Yeah.

Shared Symbols, Garments, and Ritual Parallels

John Dehlin 57:31 And speaking of things, people are going to recognize the, the signs and symbols on this slide. People are definitely going to recognize.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:37 Yeah, so this is one I, you know, I, the, the image on the right, I put together in about three minutes. And so these are Masonic symbols. The square, the compass and the ruler are all Masonic symbols. And, you know, they talk about the compass and the square and it says from the Masonic ceremony, the candidate then enters the senior deacon at the same time pressing his left breast with the point of the compass. As he enters, the angle of the square is pressed against his right breast. And so that kind of matches the, the position on this image on the right. And these same symbols are on the church's temple garments, which are the underwear that you're required to wear once you go through the temple.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:11 And I had no idea as a member that when I was wearing garments I was wearing Masonic symbols. I was told those symbols were revealed to Joseph Smith because they symbolize covenants we're making. And instead these are Masonic symbols. And to me, and this might be too loaded a word for some, but it was really creepy to understand that I was wearing Masonic underwear under my, my clothes. And I just, I have a lot of issues with garments as a convert because I wasn't, I was never told about them until like literally the days before I went into the temple. No one bothered to tell me.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:45 So knowing now that they're Masonic symbols, it really bothers me a lot. And you know, again, as I was saying, if the endowment was a revelation from God long before Joseph was initiated in Masonry, why do we have every aspect of Masonry in the endowment, not just in the ceremony, but in the clothes that we're supposed to wear to remember the ceremony by? I just, I can't get past the fact that every aspect of this that we are not allowed to show other people or talk about is directly from Masonry.

Nemo 59:14 To the point, I don't know I can say this, but to the point where essentially the, the top two, they share the same name. They're not even called something different.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 59:23 Yeah, right.

John Dehlin 59:24 And again, just for those who aren't or have never been Mormon and don't understand, when you wear, you, you get a garment, a two piece underwear in, you know, 2022, a T shirt and kind of like these biker shorts or boxer shorts. And in the T shirt there are three marks that are put in, in the T shirt and one over the right breast, one over the left breast, and then one kind of over the belly, let's just say. And it's literally these three symbols, the, the compass, where and the ruler are sewn into the garments. And I know I'm, I'm repeating a little bit, I'm just trying to make it really explicit to the people that are like what?

Nemo 1:00:04 And they're, they're so sacred that when you dispose of your garments, you're instructed that you should remove these cut up the garment in such a way that you can't tell where they came from. And then destroy the symbols.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:16 Yeah, I was told to burn them, and it just. Yeah, I just. Like I said, I don't want to get too much into my personal stuff here, but the temple was the moment for me because I was a convert and I wasn't prepared for it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:29 And we. We won't get into a lot of the. Some of the changes, but I. You know, back then I went before 2005, and you were completely naked under a shield. And during the washings, the initiatives, whatever. The old man. There's an old man. He touches your body with oil. He touched me in my naked inner thigh with oil. And I remember just sitting there, like, I don't know what to do. And then you get these garments, which are underwear that you're required to wear day and night. And I know they've kind of loosened the wording on the temple recommend, but you're still expected to wear them 24 7.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:05 And I remember hating wearing those for all sorts of reasons. But then you find out later that it's Masonic symbols. And you're told, like Nemo said, that you have to cut the symbols out and burn them because they're too sacred. But if somebody saw them and Googled them, you'd be like, oh, these are Masonic symbols. You wouldn't be. You know what I mean?

Nemo 1:01:22 I just, I know people that wouldn't hang them out to dry on their washing line.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:25 Oh, yeah, I know there's a lot of. I mean, we could get into all the different. I've heard so many stories about. I was told that they should never touch the ground. I was told you shouldn't wash them with other. With regular clothes. But yeah, just the fact is that what is. You know, And I know this is an area where that might be offensive to believers, but why do we have Masonic symbols on underwear that's supposed to remind us of God? Unless you're then saying that Masonry is the ancient Endowment, but we know that's not the case. And so that's why all of these things we're talking about kind of reflect on each other. Because if it's not. If Masonry is not ancient, then what in the world do we have Masonic ceremony on our underwear for? I don't get it.

Nemo 1:02:05 I mean, I think there is a slight answer to it in that I do believe, without saying what. What is said, I do believe that the explanation for what these symbols mean, certainly within the Endowment Ceremony, are to remind us of God and things like that, particularly the bottom two marks. So. So there. There is some of it in there. But I totally take your point that ultimately, at the most sacred and most, the inner sanctum of Mormonism, there is Masonry. And you have to ask the question of what is it doing there? Why is it there? Yep.

John Dehlin 1:02:45 All right, so more parallels.

Nemo 1:02:47 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:47 And so this. We're going to kind of hammer some of these parallels home because the church kind of makes it sound like it's just a few. And so both the Masonic ceremony and the church endowment ceremony begins with the washing and anointing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:58 This is another area that also was really shocking to me because when we went to the temple, again as a convert, I wasn't aware of a lot of it. I know even born in the church, members aren't aware of a lot of it, but so I'm told I'm going to be giving a new name that I was known by in heaven. And they implied heavily that it was revelation. And so you get there and they give you your new name. And they don't do it like the reading off of a card.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:24 They talk to you as if they're getting it directly from God. And they're temple workers and they're ordained to do this. And this one floored me when I found out four years ago that every single person that goes to the temple on a given day is given the exact same name. And this is another one that's just crazy me. But this is also something that is done in some of the Masonic ceremonies. So this is also the whole idea of getting a new name is also something that's done in Masonry. So that's interesting, too.

Nemo 1:03:51 Permission to share a quick story? So I was the name issue coordinator. It's part of what I did as the temple. So it's my job to go to the recorder's office in the temple, get the new name for the day. I would. I knew it. If people have forgotten it, they would come and ask me this sort of stuff. But at the beginning of the day, temple workers all go into a meeting. We go into one of the endowment rooms and we have a prep meeting. And the.

Nemo 1:04:16 The woman's name is shown at the front of the room on a card. And the men and women both learn the woman's name for the day and the alternate name. Because if someone comes to the temple with the name of the day, they're given a alternate, right? And that alternate never changes.

Nemo 1:04:32 So that's shown. Then the women leave the room, and then the men are Shown the men's name and the alternate. Because women in Mormonism cannot know men's new names to do with. To do with all sorts of reasons about, you know, when you get married, you learn your wife's name, but your wife doesn't learn yours. And there's. There's all these, you know, kind of patriarchal power dynamics at play. But that's something that struck me, is that, you know, I couldn't say the men's new name out loud if someone needed reminding. If there was a woman around, I'd have to see if there was a woman around and pull a brother out the way and then tell him, because women weren't allowed to know. There's secrecy even within the temple around these names.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:13 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:05:13 And when I received my new name, you know, to me, the impression was given that it was like God was giving me a new name.

Nemo 1:05:22 Yeah. So that's how we're meant to deliver it.

John Dehlin 1:05:25 It would be a lot less special if Mormons were told, oh, it's Tuesday, you know, it's like, yeah, cheeseburger day. Oh, this is, you know, it is

Nemo 1:05:33 the 12th of the month.

John Dehlin 1:05:35 You, my friend, you're Isaiah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:37 You know what I mean?

John Dehlin 1:05:38 And there's no informed consent there. No special. The only other thing I'll say, and, And I don't say this to be offensive. It's just a fact that if you. If you go through the list of telltale signs of a cult, it's pretty much standard operating procedure for most cults to assign members new names. And that's. That's not to call the Mormon Church a cult. It's only to. To notice an unfortunate characteristic or trait of cults that in this case, the church, you know, imported apparently into its

Nemo 1:06:13 most sacred practice and fun fact that I saw online, which we could fact check. But I. I don't doubt it. Apparently you have a 32% of getting. As a woman, you have a 32% chance of getting one of the names of one of Joseph Smith's plural wives as your new name in the temple.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:30 Oh.

John Dehlin 1:06:30 Because those were some of the names they used. I mean, the truth is, the Bible and the Book of Mormon don't have as many female names as. As the Book of Mormon. Yeah. As male names. And so the church had to stretch and go outside the Bible in the Book of Mormon because you got to find 31 names for the names. Yeah. And so they had to go to Joseph's plural wives. That's funny. Okay, so here's a. Here's a Visual that means a lot to me, but it's not going to mean as much to people who went through the Mormon Temple for the first time after 1990.

Nemo 1:07:03 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:03 So this one.

Nemo 1:07:04 Because you're old, John.

John Dehlin 1:07:05 Yeah, old as dirt.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:08 This is one of those rare times I can feel young. But, yeah, this is. So this is what is known as the Five Points of Fellowship. And this was removed from the temple. So I'm not feeling uncomfortable talking about it because of the fact that. That the church removed it. And they have said that the stuff that is from God has never been altered in the temple. So if they've removed it, then I'm assuming this is not from God. And I hope people who are watching this as believers can at least understand where I'm coming from and that we're not talking about active stuff. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:35 So this is something that was pulled from. From masonry. And this is basically where you place your bodies in a way that aligns foot to foot, knee to knee, breast to breast, hand to back, cheek to cheek, or mouth to ear. And that's from the Masonic text. And this is a very close and intimate alignment that would never be allowed at a church dance, but was used in the temple ceremony until being removed in 1990, likely because it is extremely uncomfortable for women to place their breasts against, you know, a male temple worker at the veil. And this is another area that Joseph Smith took directly from the Masonic ceremony.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:11 And like I said, I have serious issues with the fact that I was touched on my naked inner thigh in the temple. I could only imagine if you had to do this as well, because this is just a really uncomfortable position. And then to learn later, it's just strictly a Masonic element.

John Dehlin 1:08:26 It's just imagine because I did it dozens and dozens and dozens of times.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:30 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:08:31 It was super weird to embrace a stranger in this way. To lock your inner knee and your inner thigh. And the other thing I'll say is they left nothing to the imagination. They literally called it the Five Points of Fellowship in the temple ceremony with an exact, exact replica of what that photo shows. So that's. You couldn't have a more blatant example of plagiarism than that.

Nemo 1:08:58 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:59 Yeah.

Temple Penalties and Pre-1990 Ceremony Changes

John Dehlin 1:09:00 All right. And then there's the penalties, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:02 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:09:03 Probably the most well known and disturbing part.

Nemo 1:09:05 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:05 So this one was one that when I found this, I was absolutely just floored. And so this was something that was kind of. They watered these down throughout the years. I think they finally kind of removed them in 1990. But there's still elements of the penalties that remain today and the Masonic ceremony introduced, I rather say included penalties to the initiates that if they revealed the signs and tokens they were given, harm would come to them. And this was a way to ensure secrecy, which is exactly what Joseph Smith needed as the Endowment ceremony was introduced, just as Joseph Smith was, was ramping up polygamy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:41 And as I said just in the last slide, because these have been removed, I don't feel uncomfortable talking about the text that was used. As you know, we mentioned they were moved. So they clearly are not part of the unchanging sacred text. And so I think every member should understand what people were saying in the temple before 1990. And so we're going to go through the three of them. Do you guys want to just do the three and then we'll talk about them after reading all three? So we'll read the next three slides. And this is from the pre1930 temple script.

Nemo 1:10:11 And so do you want me to read these? Give your voice a break?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:13 Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. Sure.

Nemo 1:10:15 Okay. Masonic penalty. Having my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by its roots, and my body buried in the rough sands of the sea at low water mark where the tide ebbs and flows twice in 24 hours. Should I ever knowingly violate this, my entered apprentice obligation, then the endowment penalty. We and each of us covenant and promise that we will not reveal any of the secrets of this. Should we do so, we agree that our throats be cut from ear to ear and our tongues torn out by their roots. The Masonic position of movement. The explanation of the entered apprentice sign is draw the right hand rapidly across the neck as represented and drop the arm to the side. This action shows the penalty of having the throat cut and the tongue ripped out.

John Dehlin 1:10:58 I'll just quickly say number one, that's super violent. And the God would be requiring this or endorsing it is weird. And then the other thing I'm going to say is I did that for, for many, many years. I would make the hand motion of slitting my own throat using my thumb. I did that. I was a part of it. So it's disturbing that God would, would endure something so violent. I did it. And, and this is identical to the Masonic.

Nemo 1:11:25 I think we should say, we should say that the, the end position or, or essentially you will end up still by implication taking upon these penalties which we'll, we'll get to.

John Dehlin 1:11:39 They removed it. Like how weird is it that it was originally revelation part of God's holy scripture and Then it was taken out, but we'll get to that too. Okay.

Nemo 1:11:47 Okay. Yeah. So having your heart plucked out, this

John Dehlin 1:11:50 is penalty number two, right?

Nemo 1:11:51 Yep. Penalty number two. Masonic penalty. Having my left breast torn open, my heart plucked out, and given to the wild beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. Then the endowment penalty. We in each of us do covenant of promise that we will not reveal the secrets of this. Should we do so, we agree to have our breasts cut open and our hearts and vitals torn from our bodies and given to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. And then the position and movement. The explanation of the fellow craft sign is the action of cupping one hand over the left breast and it drawing quickly across the body signifies the heart being ripped out if the candidate should violate his fellow craft obligation.

John Dehlin 1:12:31 Yeah. And again, super violent. Again, I did this. And again it's in the exact same sequence. So you. The first one is you slit your throat, and then the second one is you do the hand motions of cutting out your own heart. I did it. And it was in this exact sequence. Yeah.

Nemo 1:12:47 Number three, having your bowels burned to ashes. The Masonic penalty to have my body cut in two, my bowels removed and burned to ashes, which are then to be scattered to the four winds of heaven. The endowment penalty. We and each of us do covenant of promise that we will not reveal any of the secrets of this. Should we do so, we agree that our bodies be cut asunder in the midst of. And all our bowels gush out the Masonic position of movement. Here's the explanation. The sign is made by drawing the thumb quickly across the waist to the right hip, then dropping the hand to the side. This action shows the stomach being ripped open. These penalties were mostly removed in 1990 after a 1988 temple survey about the experience of members was conducted.

John Dehlin 1:13:33 And it's just so ironic because I went to serve my mission in 1988, so I would have done this before going, you know, in, in the, in the Jordan River Temple in Salt Lake City. This is how my template ceremony would have first been experienced. And yes, you do make the motion of slitting your stomach open and having your bowels gushed out. In all fairness, I'll say there was nothing about them being burned to ashes. That's something that wasn't imported or that was left out. But, but, but again, the third penalty, identical in the same sequence. And, and it was called gu, you know, slicing open your bow so that they gush out. So in that sense, again, it's a check. It's check, check, check.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:18 Yeah, this, this text is from the temple ceremony up until 1930 and then they started to water it down before pulling it all out. And this is just, you know, this sounds weird, but in a way I kind of wish it was still in there because I think for me this might have been something where, if I had seen this, considering how I wanted to run as it was, that might have been where I'm like, okay, I'm out. I mean, maybe not. Because the problem is when you're in there, it's, it's really, you have a lot of pressure to stay in there inside the endowment windowless room.

Nemo 1:14:46 Like let's beat around the bush.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:47 Yeah, let's. And, and for, you know. Well, yeah, it's just it, this stuff is just, it's one of those things I read it and I'm just like, you know, it's like, you know, like gasping like there's no way. And, and, and, and then I think about the fact that all these people did it and John did it and, and once you start doing it, I think you just, you just do it, you know, and, and millions do it.

John Dehlin 1:15:06 And usually when you go, yeah, when you go through the temple for the first time, you're with your loved ones, you're with your parents or your siblings or heaven forbid, your spouse or your, the person you're engaged to. And, and obviously if millions did it before, we would say now that if I had done that, then I would have ran out of the room. But the truth is social pressure is so significant that you probably would have just done. Done.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:35 I would have, I would have, absolutely. Yeah. So this is a pretty infamous clip about apostle Jeffrey Holland. And he's kind of caught misstating about whether or not there are penalties in the temple until the reporter forces him

Nemo 1:15:49 to admit that and all hail British journalism.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:53 Yeah. This is from Britain. And this is a reason why church leaders are just simply too afraid to do any interviews with unscript that are, that go unscripted with non friendly sources. And why you almost always see the interviews be through like Deseret News or like Church News because they will not put their prophet seers and revelators in a position where they're talking to people who will question, you know, where they're at.

John Dehlin 1:16:13 I'm. I was told by an insider that the head of PR for the church was fired for letting Jeffrey R. Holland do this interview with a Brit of all people. Like what, what was he.

Nemo 1:16:24 The church sent people to the BBC and kicked off with the BBC saying, this was a hit job. This is unacceptable, all this other stuff.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:31 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:16:32 All right, so here's. And this is, by the way, this was one of the clips that led to Bill real, you know, releasing the episode. I think it was Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire basically does something that's pretty offensive to a Mormon is to claim that an apostle, prophet, seer, and revelator would actually lie. Yeah, let's just. Let's just see it for ourselves. Beautiful.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:01 Yeah. I mean, you know, it just shows that the leaders are aware at least, of some of the problematic issues and will still, you know, I'm sure in his head he's probably doing like, the Bill Clinton, like, I don't know what the definition of is is kind of a thing, but he's being dishonest.

Nemo 1:17:15 Just such good journalism. It's much props to John Sweeney, the journalist there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:22 Yeah.

Nemo 1:17:22 Because he didn't allow him to change the time period because he was trying to say, oh, yeah, we used to. And he's like, okay, right, so you used to. So the answer to my question is. But first he said no, Right.

John Dehlin 1:17:35 And then he said, we don't do that now. Right? Yeah, yeah, we lied. But then he caught him in it, and then he said, we don't do that now. So Holland was being slimy there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:45 He was. He lied. I mean, by the very definition of lying, he lied. And I know we've talked. It's a. It's a very loaded word. The fact is, he said no and he knew what was being asked, and then he had to backtrack when. When the journalist knew exactly. He knew what he was talking about. And. And that's why you will never see a leader of the church even talk to someone like me, who is just like some amateur idiot. They would never talk to me because these are people that are supposed to be the prophets, ears and revelators who can get answers, and yet

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:18:14 they cannot talk because their history is bad and problematic, and they cannot be out there because there are no answers for this stuff outside of just trying to give the apologetics we're covering today in the video. This is a really great capsule of why they do not talk to people in public.

Nemo 1:18:32 I can assure you, when you ask them why they lie, they don't answer. Yeah, yeah, they. They just. They have no answers for people.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:18:40 There are no answers. And that's why they have other people do their work for them with regards to apologetics. And so we'll continue on. And this one, this picture on the right is from the Royal Arch Masons, and it's from Illinois, I think from like 1910, 1913 or something. Maybe 1930, somewhere in there. And you know, again, we're not showing Masonic or the endowment clothing, but if you look at this picture of the Royal Arch Masons, this is showing them wearing kind of like caps and aprons and, you know, robes and stuff. And so it'll look familiar to anyone who's gone through the endowment. And I will note that Joseph was never.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:17 At least we don't have any records of Joseph being initiated to the Royal Archmasons. But they would also, during their ceremony, wear separate robes and then go through a veil to the Holy of Holies during their ceremony, which also will sound very familiar to somebody who's gone through the temple.

John Dehlin 1:19:32 Yep, absolutely.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:34 Yeah. And so, you know, kind of again, the Church keeps saying in this video, that's just similarities, it's just parallels. And so beyond what we've already talked about with the clothing, the handshakes, the penalties, the washings, the signs, the tokens and the structure of the ceremony, there are a bunch of other symbols that are used in Masonry that ended up in the LDS temples. And so both the Masonic lodges and the Mormon temples use the same symbols, such as the. The beehive, the all seeing eye square and the compass, the five points of fellowship, which we covered. The phrase holiness of the Lord, the sun, moon and stars. And there's other stuff too. I'm just like. Just to show there are so many. It's not just text, it's not just clothing, it's symbols. It's the manner of presentation. All of this is coming from the Masonic ceremony.

John Dehlin 1:20:18 Yep. And if anybody has actually visited the Salt Lake City Temple and looked at the stones and looked at the symbolism and the arches and, and the doors, you'll see all seeing eyes. The behind is the obviously on the seal of the flag of the State of Utah, the square and the compass is on all these Mormon temples.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:20:39 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:20:40 The temple says holiness of the Lord on the temple. Sun, moon and stars. That's all. I'm just validating that. That's all. It's what you'll find on the Salt Lake City Temple. Just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:20:51 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:20:51 Fact. Yeah. I'll also say that Nemo. Nemo on your channel, Nemo the Mormon. You actually share the full interview between Sweeney and Elder Holland.

Nemo 1:21:03 I do.

John Dehlin 1:21:03 So I'm going to share a link with that in the show notes for those who want to watch.

Nemo 1:21:08 Yeah, I break that down and point it all out yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:12 Which is an important thing to do. I think members should see kind of how the leaders respond when they're actually pushed on this stuff, because it's important to know what answers they have and what answers they don't have.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:23 You know, we've been kind of going through this for a few slides now, but when the Church keeps calling this parallels, I just don't know what else to say to make it clear that Joseph Smith used the endowment ceremony as the foundation, or, I'm sorry, use the Masonic ceremony for the foundation of the endowment ceremony. And that is further backed up by the fact that when people apparently realized pretty quickly it was a Masonic ceremony, he told them that he was just restoring what was the original endowment in Solomon's Temple. And so Joseph Smith is creating the endowment, Right. As polygamy is being introduced to other members, which requires extreme secrecy and extreme penalties for talking about it outside where other polygamous members would be.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:59 And members have to wear garments featuring the symbols of the temple, which we talked about, are from the Masonic, you know, ceremony and symbolism. And so every day when you put your garments on, you are wearing Masonic symbols. And I know Nemo's point is fair, that the Church will say, well, it's just symbols to remind you of your covenants. But again, they're still coming from the Masonic ceremony. It's like Nemo said earlier, they might have different parallels, but the fact is they're all coming from the same origin. And, you know, as we've already kind of talked about, the purposes are different in the sense that Masons weren't believed to be becoming endowed with power before being sealed in, you know, at the time, secret marriages.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:22:35 But if you look at Joseph Smith taking the Masonic rituals and then teaching members they had the original endowment that fell into apostasy, it actually makes a lot more sense than just trying to claim they are merely parallels with no connection in origin, purpose, or divinity. And so this is another pattern we talk about in these episodes to compare this with, where Joseph Smith is pulling from all the ideas around him and it becomes a really clear pattern that these are ideas and doctrines that are coming from Joseph Smith and not God. And just to say, how many parallels do you need before you stop saying the word parallel and you just look at the bigger picture to realize these are not coming from God?

Nemo 1:23:11 Absolutely.

John Dehlin 1:23:12 Yeah. Fair point. All right, so let's take Occam's razor and look at the endowment ceremony in Masonry.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:19 Yeah. So just kind of. To go back to that, to kind of put a bow on it, I guess. But, you know, look at these similarities the same you would look at any other religious leader or church or organization. The fingerprints are all there. We have multiple early members who say explicitly that Joseph taught Masonry as the original endowment. Even now that we know historically Masonry did not begin until thousands of years later and has nothing to do with Solomon's Temple. And really, the moment we stop privileging Joseph Smith is the moment that we can kind of see that this is all of Joseph's creation using his surrounding milieu to put something together in the voice of God to give it authority.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:53 And, you know, as we've talked about in previous episodes, just as with the Book of Mormon, with his revelations, the moment that you can show that the foundational material that he's pulling from is not historically correct is the moment that any authority, that anything that comes from that foundation just is gone. Like, and in this case, once you realize that the Masonic ceremony did not come from ancient times, everything Joseph Smith taught about it falls apart, because that is the foundation he was working from. And once you see that, everything falls apart. And if this was any other church and you knew these things, I.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:25 I don't think anybody would be like, oh, yeah, it's. It's still from God. I think they'd be like, oh, yeah, this guy's making it up. I. I don't know how else. You know, this is one of those things where it's really obvious to anyone except for somebody inside of it makes sense.

Nemo 1:24:38 And that's not to belittle those inside of it, because there are countless reasons why you wouldn't see it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:42 Yeah, and that's the thing. I didn't see it until my. Until I finally gave myself permission to look. And that was years after I went through the temple. And when I went through the temple, and that was the first moment I felt like I'm in an unhealthy place like that. The moment I got touched in my thigh, it was the moment where I'm like, I can't do this. And I still stayed years longer, and I still didn't look for years after that. So, I mean, I'm not in any way trying to judge people who go through the temple and who stay in the church. I'm just saying that if you were to start with a clean slate, and before you went to the temple, before you joined the church, you were told this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:12 I would bet, I'd bet everything I have that 95 plus percent would say, yeah, that person's making it up. I would bet so much money on that.

Nemo 1:25:20 Take away the cognitive preloading, Take away the confirmation bias. Yep. And just show it to someone as raw data.

John Dehlin 1:25:27 It would be like if somebody produced a religious text and it mentioned hobbits and Frodo and a guy named Gandalf and a Ring of Doom, you know, and someone named Saruman. You wouldn't go, wow, there must have been an original ancient, you know, Lord of the Rings trilogy that has been corrupted by JRR Tolkien and then a magic prophet, a special prophet in the modern days, has restored it. You would just never. That's not the conclusion you would draw.

Nemo 1:25:57 Careful, John. You know, believing Mormons don't like comparisons to Lord of the Rings.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:01 Yeah, yeah, they do.

John Dehlin 1:26:03 I think they actually do.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:04 I've actually seen a lot of people who do, which is kind of funny because I've seen people get really mad about it, and I've seen people have written articles or posts about the comparisons, which. I mean, I don't know what to do with that. Like I said, I know people get really upset when you try to compare Mormonism to something we know is false, like the Book of Mormon or. I'm sorry, like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or something. It's just. The problem is there when we have this many red flags that show and all of these different claims of antiquity that Joseph Smith's making that they're all wrong, it then becomes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:33 I would argue, Yeah, I would argue it's insulting to. To say that you should give special pleading to Mormonism at that point, because at that point, if you were to do the same thing with something we know is fictional, people would say you're crazy. And so it's a really delicate walk because people get upset. But there's this is. There's too many of these to deny, so.

John Dehlin 1:26:53 All right, well, let's go to the next section with the show, the final section of the now you know video.

Guest 1:27:01 Though elements of the instructional methods and the clothing worn by participants in each ceremony share some characteristics, the purposes and origins stand distinct from one another. So is it okay for Latter Day Saints to be Masons today? The policy is simple. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are not prohibited from becoming Masons, nor are Masons prohibited from becoming members of the church. Latter Day Saints believe that good can be found in many places. God loves all his children and wants them to learn of him and return to Him. Through the endowment ceremony in his temples, God reveals profound truths about his plan for the happiness of his children. Joseph Smith and Freemasonry. Now you know.

Nemo 1:27:49 Except you don't.

John Dehlin 1:27:51 There you go. Now we know. All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:54 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:27:54 So what else? What else? Did you have a reflection on that, Mike, or Nemo or should we just go to the next slide?

Nemo 1:28:01 I have. I have a really quick reflection.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:03 Yeah, please.

Nemo 1:28:04 That's all right. It's just I. When I looked at this myself last time, I basically said, what were the original questions? When they did all this summing up, what were the original questions? The questions were, were Joseph, was Joseph Smith a Freemason? And if so, what connection does it have to temple worship, worship practiced by members of the church, Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints? Those were the questions. They confirmed that Joseph Smith was a Mason, and they failed to provide any evidence that Joseph Smith did not plagiarize the freemasonry ceremony from March 1842. They have no evidence that he did anything to do with the endowment before March 1842, when he was contacted with Masonry, and then May 1842, when he shared it for the first time.

Nemo 1:28:42 So they didn't. That those are the answers to the original questions is that, yes, he was a Mason and there's no evidence to say he didn't copy it.

Guest 1:28:49 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:28:51 All right, well, let's go ahead for the sake of time and jump to the next slide, Mike.

Removed Temple Elements and Conclusions

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:58 Yeah, so now we're just going to do a couple of slides to just talk about some of the things that have been removed from the temple. So this doesn't really reflect to the video so much because they obviously aren't going to mention these, but following the death of Joseph Smith, the temple ceremony had an oath of vengeance that was added to have members commit to avenging the death of the prophet. And this is from the ceremony. It says you, and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation, and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children's children unto the third and fourth generation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29:29 And this was removed in the 1930s. Today, it's not spoken of. It's not referred to by the church. It just goes to show, like, the temple was used for a lot of things, and this is obviously something that would be used kind of in the name of God, I would argue, to not better ourselves, to not, you know, do the things that the temple video said, but instead to, you know, pretty violent reaction. And I get it that as a member, you would have felt just beyond furious at what happened to Joseph Smith and I totally understand that. But at the same time, this is something that's in the house of the Lord to basically avenge blood on people. It's a little weird.

John Dehlin 1:30:08 If Jesus is the Prince of Peace and he's teaching us to love our enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that you that spitefully use you. It just seems inconsistent with Christianity to have an oath of vengeance in God's most sacred revealed ordinance, and then to have it taken out later even adds. Adds confusion to the whole thing for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:30:35 And so kind of this almost piggyback. It kind of does piggyback off it. So this is one that I was one of those ones. Another one of those shocking moments when I was going through all this stuff. And this was in the Mormon Temple. They were cursing names of people that they wanted basically the Lord to bring down on, you know, Helon, I guess. And this included all of the leaders of the US at the time. And so this is from dialogue and it says, in an effort that bears striking resemblance to the oath of vengeance, a list was compiled of over 400 names of persons to be held in remembrance before the Lord for their evil deeds and who have raised their hands against the Lord's anointed.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:11 The list included four U.S. presidents. Martin Van Buren, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes and James Buchanan. To secure God's judgments against those on the list, Woodruff was instructed to gather the 12 and and wash their feet as a testimony against their enemies. The apostles were then to clothe themselves in temple robes and form a prayer circle. And let's go to the next slide real quick. We'll finish this part up or whatever.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:34 And then Wilford Woodruff describes the eventual performance of this ordinance in solemn terms. Orson Pratt was very feeble. Yet we all performed the ordinance of washing our feet against our enemies and the enemies of the kingdom of God, according to the commandment of God unto us. We Wilford Woodruff opened by prayer. And John Taylor was a mouth in the washing of feet, or was mouth in the washing of feet at the prayer circle. Lorenzo Snow was mouth at the opening and John Taylor was mouth at the altar and presented the prayer written by Wilford Woodrup by request of President Taylor. And the names were presented before the Lord according to the commandment.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:09 It was a truly solemn scene, and I presume to say it was the first thing of the kind since the creation of the world. We were three hours in the meeting and ordinances and actually go one more. We'll just read the curse and then we'll. We can kind of go through that. So this is the. The curse that was read in the temple. Now, O Lord our God, we bear our testimony against these men before Thee and the heavenly hosts. And we bear testimony unto Thee, our Heavenly Father, that we, according to Thy commandments unto us, we have gone alone by ourselves and cleansed our feet in pure water and born testimony unto Thee and thy son Jesus Christ, and to the heavenly host against these wicked men by name, as far as the Spirit has manifested them unto us, we have borne our testimony against those who have shed the blood of the.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:49 Of thy prophets and apostles and anointed ones, or have given consent to their death, and against those who have driven thy saints and imprisoned them, and those who are still ready to deprive us of life, liberty, and the privilege of keeping the commandments of God. And now, O Lord our God, Thou hast commanded us that when we have done this, we should gather ourselves together in our holy places and. And clothed in the robes of the holy priesthood, should unite ourselves together in prayer and supplication, and that we should bear our testimony against these men by name as far as wisdom should dictate. O Lord, hear us from heaven, thy holy dwelling place, and answer our petitions.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:25 Sustain thine anointed ones and deliver us from the hands of our enemy. Overthrow the evil designs of the wicked and ungodly against thy saints and break every weapon formed against us.

John Dehlin 1:33:37 So, yeah, it's just so weird to see. It's so weird to see such a personal curse somehow incorporated into, again, a really sacred ceremony that's supposed to be all about Jesus, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:51 Yeah, it's like an inverted prayer rule. You know, you got the prayer roll where you put someone's name on there. We're praying from. This is where you're putting people on. On the prayer world basically to, you know, have harm come to them. And it's a little weird. And the dialogue article kind of recaps it by saying this episode is notable for a shift in the provocation to curse. In the past, curses had been performed primarily against those who rejected a proselytizer's message. Here the curse was called down upon the church's political enemies. And, you know, kind of what you're saying. I get that the church was under intense pressure from the government.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:23 Fears are running rampant. But I also have a hard time believing that God commanded that they put a curse on 400 US leaders, you know, because they say it was done by the Spirit, you know, and obviously that was not the case. And so, you know, one of the things we talk about in some of these episodes is that the curse was not effective. All of the leaders lived on, and the church ultimately put polygamy on hold just a few years later. And it just shows, again, how these leaders talk about having these great powers. And yet whenever they need it to happen, God never seems to.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:51 To come through to protect them or to give them their land back and stuff. And in this case, you know, cursing them in the temple did absolutely nothing to change anything.

John Dehlin 1:35:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So why are we adding curses and then why are we taking them out? Both of those are condemning.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:09 Yeah.

Nemo 1:35:10 Strange. Just seemed expedient at the time, clearly.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:13 Yeah, yeah. It's just, you know.

Nemo 1:35:15 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:35:16 All right, so now Brigham Young's Adam God doctrine, which we haven't even talked about yet on Warm stories.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:22 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:35:25 But let's go.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:25 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:35:26 And include it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:27 Yes. We won't go into Adam God too much, but just to say that we talked about Adam God a little bit in the Adam and Eve episode, but just to note that it was actually taught in the temple as divine truth. And the last paragraph of the lecture at the Veil illustrates the point that these ideas were ones that originated with Joseph Smith's teachings and revelations. And just noting, again, these are removed from the temple, so that's why we're reading them. This was put into the temple ceremony, and it says, father Adam's oldest son, Jesus, the Savior, who is the heir of the family, is Father Adam's first begotten in the spirit world, and the only begotten according to the flesh as it is written, Adam and his divinity having gone back to the Spirit, into the spirit world, and come into the Spirit to Mary and she conceived.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:36:07 For when Adam and Eve got through with their work in this earth, they did not lay their bodies down in the dust, but returned to the spirit world from whence they came. And, you know, just noting that this is God allowing what is now considered disavowed doctrine into the temple ceremony, that seems like a big problem.

Nemo 1:36:26 And I want. I want to make a really clear point that it is explicitly disavowed. I have here a quote from Spencer W. Kimball, 12th president of the Church. So a man in the same position as Brigham Young, President of the Church, he said, we warn you against the dissemination of doctrines which are not according to the Scriptures and which are alleged to have been taught by some of the general authorities of past generations. Such, for instance, is the Adam God theory. We denounce that theory and hope that Everyone will be cautioned against this and other kinds of false doctrine. So it was declared false doctrine by a president of the church, but yet put in the endowment ceremony by an earlier president of the church?

John Dehlin 1:37:07 Yeah. So even though Spencer B. Kimball said that, you know, God still allowed the Adam God theory into the temple ceremony,

Nemo 1:37:14 it's so bad that it takes a president of the church to disavow it as false doctrine.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:19 Yeah. That's amazing.

John Dehlin 1:37:20 And I think it's disturbing for Mormons that, again, are taught to view the temple ceremony as revelation from God and is the most sacred ordinance that should be unchangeable to find out that Brigham Young's inserting weird doctrines that aren't really scriptural, and then they're being yanked back out again. Mike, did you want to. Did you want to talk to this slide that illustrates.

Nemo 1:37:40 Yeah, just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:40 Just to show, you know, it just becomes difficult to say that Brigham was speaking only as a man with Adam God, when he put it into the temple ceremony. And we're taught that prophets can't lead the church astray. I just. I feel like, you know, we're told that what happens in the temple is so sacred and so directly from God, and yet we had, for a period of time, this belief that Adam was our God put into the temple and God allowed it. And I just feel like that is another indicator that these are people. Whether or not they're doing the best they can or whether or not they're intentionally deceiving, I think to me, that's more irrelevant.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:09 But the fact is that God is allowing them to put what is now a disavowed doctrine into what is supposed to be the holiest place in the world. And I think that the fact that this was removed so quickly after Brigham Young died also gives us really good insight into the fact that every prophet of the church is incorporating their worldview into the doctrines and policies of the church. And not because of direct revelation from God, just because of the fact that we could show that every single prophet seems to get revelation from God that confirms what they already wanted to do, including Russell Nelson today.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:39 And so once you start to see that, and then you start to see the temple as basically being dictated by people who are incorporating what they personally think is best and not necessarily a consistent God from prophet to prophet, it kind of shows you that the temple ceremony, starting with Joseph Smith all the way up until today, is being modified and changed and created by people using the ideas in their worldview and not from revelation. That's coming straight from God, Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin 1:39:08 Yeah.

Nemo 1:39:08 Evidence do we need?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:10 Yeah, that's just it.

John Dehlin 1:39:11 You just don't expect that type of shenanigans going on with the temple, you know.

Nemo 1:39:16 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:17 And, you know, so just, we're starting to recap here and just, you know, say I, I know these episodes, especially right now with, with the race and the priesthood episodes, and this one and the polygamy are really emotional ones. And I know this one particular because of how sacred the temple is to people who go through it. But, you know, the problem is Joseph Smith and the church have given us very testable truth claims, and in this case they gave us a very testable one, that the Masonic ceremony was ancient and goes back to Solomon's temple. And that is something that has been disproven to the point where even fair Mormon has to concede that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:49 And I think when you start to have a pattern of those and not just a, you know, one thing, those patterns kind of give us an indication as to the overall credibility of the people making it. And so just to say, as we've been saying throughout these episodes, not to focus on one problem at a time, but to step back and look at the bigger picture, because this episode that we're doing right now ties into the word of wisdom. It ties into the first vision, the priesthood restoration. And once you start to see that pattern, it really shows you that these men especially, you know, for these episodes right now, Joseph Smith is creating using the material around him, but that the material he's creating is basically, you know, founded in material that is not what Joseph Smith claimed it was.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:29 And that is the easiest way to know that they are not speaking for God, but just using the material. They have to make sense of it, whether it's in a. In a good intentioned way or not. It's not coming from God, it's coming from the material they have around them.

Nemo 1:40:43 It's a beautifully ironic situation to be in where you are dealing with apologists whose favorite insult of those who make these sorts of criticisms or these sorts of observations is to call them myopic and to say that they take things out of context. And yet it is the key tenet of apologetics to isolate and to keep separate the issues so that they don't form a pattern. Yeah, A pattern of behavior that is testable.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:12 Yeah. And that's just it. I mean, you know, they make testable claims and that's just it. Like if you make a claim that is untestable, then we could sit here and argue all day and it doesn't matter. But they're making claims throughout the early history of the church that are very testable. Whether or not it's because Joseph Smith didn't think anyone would ever be able to figure it out, whether. Because he thought the world was going to end in a few years, it doesn't matter. Because the fact is we can test them now and we know they're not true. And then once you have that, you can't then go back to the foundational events of the church and say, well, I still believe in it because I have faith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:43 Because now, all of a sudden, they've given us something to put that faith on. And if that is not correct, you're no longer practicing faith by believing in it, because now you're actually actively going against the evidence we have. And I think that's. It's a bad place.

Nemo 1:41:56 It becomes, rather than faith because of lack of evidence, it becomes faith in spite of evidence. And that's a very different place to be in. Yeah, so.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:05 And that's a place that can lead people to do some dangerous things. I mean, I'm not saying, you know, dangerous like going out and killing people. I'm just saying it can lead you to beliefs that would lead you to do things that you maybe know are wrong. And we'll obviously be getting into that with polygamy, but it's just.

Nemo 1:42:19 It.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:20 It's a bad. It's a bad space to be in. And it's one that I think with the amount of information we have, we should not allow ourselves to get into. And yet we all do it. I mean, everyone does uncertain things. So it's, you know, it's tricky, for sure.

John Dehlin 1:42:35 Yeah. Yeah. And so people can draw their own conclusions. But, you know, this evidence is. Is something that. That people deserve to know about. And. Yeah, it's something that I don't think any of us were told, even after we attended the temple. It's something we were just never told.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:49 Yeah, I certainly was not. And, you know, we have been kind of going through that video and talking about the apologetics, where they'll say it's similar, but the purpose is different. So you can't claim that Joseph lifted from the ceremony. I just want to point out when we talk about Joseph Smith having things happen around him and then turning it into Scripture, even though it's incorrect on incorrect beliefs, this is a pattern. And so we talked about this in the Adam and Eve episode. But Joseph Smith claims through revelation from God that the spot that the church happened to settle at Missouri was where Adam and Eve lived in America, which we now know is incorrect.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:24 Historically, the first people are not in America. That's just a really bad thing. Where Joseph Smith was trying to give more purpose to where they. They settled the church. It's just. It's wrong. And then Joseph Smith happened to claim that the Book of Mormon gold plates just happened to be located in the hill Cumorah, which just was. Happened to be where he lived, where hundreds of thousands of people would die. Yet there's obviously no archeological evidence for that event. I know the apologetics is that there are two hill Cumorahs now. It's not the way it was taught by early leaders.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:52 Joseph claimed via revelation that Egyptian scrolls that just happened to be the last ones that Michael Chandler had available were not only written by Abraham, but contained his literal signature on the papyrus. We know that's demonstrably false. Even the church's essay admits the papyri fragments are way after the. They would have happened and have nothing to do with Abraham. And now Joseph Smith here is claiming that the Masonic ceremony he would learn just seven weeks prior to just happened to be the apostasized original endowment ceremony. And it's just one of those things where I was like, how many of these things do you need before you could see the pattern and go, yeah, this guy is a really good storyteller, but he's making it up.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:30 I just look at all of these times where Joseph Smith claims revelation on kind of like a coincidental thing. And almost every. I mean, pretty much every one of them. I think every one of them that is testable has been proven false.

John Dehlin 1:44:42 Yeah.

Nemo 1:44:44 But brilliantly put.

John Dehlin 1:44:47 Yeah.

Nemo 1:44:48 I don't know where to go from that, really. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:50 It's just.

John Dehlin 1:44:51 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:52 There's a. You know, we talked about the Simpsons earlier with the stone cutters, but there's the Simpsons episode, and principal Skinner's burning burgers in his kitchen. And superintendent is in the kitchen. And I wish I could remember the quote. And he said about how he's, you know, he's like, what in good. Whatever is in the kitchen. He's like, aurora borealis. And then superintendent's like, aurora borealis at this time of the year in this place at this time of the day or whatever like that. And then Prince Will Skinner's like, yes. And then. Super. He goes, can I see it? And then he's like, no. And this reminds me of that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:23 It's like, so Adam and Eve lived in Missouri even though it didn't happen. The Book of Abraham is Supposed to be on papyri that Abraham signed himself, but we know it didn't happen. The Book of Mormon happened to me in gold plates where hundreds of thousands of people died, but there's no bones. And then he learned the Masonic ceremony seven weeks prior to creating the endowment. And then also the church, like. Yeah. And you're like. And this doesn't ring, you know, ring a bell? No, and it's just I. I'm not trying to make light of. I'm just saying all of these coincidences that are testably, demonstrably false happening, that's a pattern. That's not, you know, that's not just some isolated problem. So.

Nemo 1:45:56 And they're all. They're all by the one man who.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:58 Yes.

Nemo 1:45:59 Out of all of them, like, you can believe that Brigham Young was a fallen prophet. You can believe that then John Taylor was a fallen prophet. You can believe any of the subsequent prophets have fallen. But if you're part of the LDS movement, no matter what branch you're part of, it all starts and ends with Joseph Smith. And whether the claims he made about his divine inspiration from God are true or not, claiming things that are provably false, to be from God, you have to ask. You have to start asking the question.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:46:27 Yeah. And that's the thing too, because sometimes the church will say, you're putting too much into Joseph's mind. You're putting too much into his words. You're expecting too much of him. Joseph Smith made the claims, these are from God. I didn't do it. You didn't do it. So when you make the claim they're from God, then that leaves you with the whole thing. Where did God trick Joseph Smith? That doesn't make sense. Or did Joseph Smith get it wrong and God allowed that? That doesn't make sense. Or did Joseph Smith make it up? And that actually makes sense because of the fact that this is all 19th century stuff that happens to be thrown into ancient.

Nemo 1:46:55 We have to. And I know, but wrapping up, we have to just couch the fact that the whole purpose of Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith's whole purpose and mission was to restore God's one true church. Yeah. So in the process of restoring something long lost, something corrupted, to bring in anything that isn't true, why would the God be. Why would God be the author of such confusion?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:18 Yeah, that's just it.

Nemo 1:47:19 The man himself.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:20 Yep. And that's really where it ends. It's like if either God's a God of confusion or the person who claims to speak for him is making it up because there are just too many problems that we can show. And I know sometimes people say, oh, science always changes and all that, fine. But, like, even in the article I mentioned earlier from Masonry, the church itself admits that Joseph Smith lived when those myths were getting blurred into history. But Joseph was pulling from those myths as history, and that is where he's doing it, in the voice of God. And once you realize the foundation is rotten, anything that grows from it is not going to be from God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:52 It just. That goes against everything we know. And when you have a pattern of it, like I said, if you start with a blank slate with Mormonism, if I had a room of 20 people and I presented the history of the church, and I did it in the most neutral way possible, I said, do you think this is a man from God? I would bet anything that all 20 would say no. But of course, you might have, like, one person, like, yeah, you know, maybe, but there's just no way.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:15 So, you know, I don't know else to say sometimes, because John said it, you know, earlier, I think in this one or maybe one of our other episodes recently, where it's just like, sometimes I feel like I don't even know why we're talking about this, because it's so far out there, and yet here we're talking about it for almost two hours. Because it is so fundamental to the church and to people we know and love.

Nemo 1:48:31 And we've got to do it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:32 Yeah, you got to do it, so.

Nemo 1:48:34 Because if we just took one, it can be ignored, but we've got to. We've got to lay them all out so. So that the weight of them collectively can sink.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:40 And that's what it is, because it's, you know, one of the things about. And I know we're wrapping up the CES letter is they'll take fair, will take it subject, subject by subject, and they'll try to divide it out, conquer it, and they'll jump to another one. And they might use completely contradictory apologetics, but it doesn't matter because they've already taken care of one. So these episodes are really designed to say, like, you cannot have it that way, because if you're going to take it in this one area, we got to apply it to the next one. And now you've created a new problem. And a lot of times, like you said, if you just do one, it leaves openings for people to kind of distort what the history says in this way.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:49:12 We're trying to say, like this. This episode ties to so Many other episodes we've already talked about, and those patterns are undeniable. And that's the reason that, you know, Jeffrey R. Holland got caught in an interview. And my. The church doesn't do interviews because they don't want to be in a position where they're answering for things they know they have no answers for.

Nemo 1:49:30 So there we go.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:49:32 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:49:33 All right, so what are the conclusions and takeaways from this episode, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:49:37 Yeah, you know, we've already said it probably a dozen times already, but, you know, every aspect of the. Of the Endowment Ceremony is taken from the Masonic ceremony as outlined earlier. And while you can say the purposes are different, as Nemo pointed out, the purposes can be different, while the origins can be the same. And we have nothing before the Endowment Ceremony to show that Joseph Smith had received revelations that could point us to an area where Joseph Smith had differing material than the Endowment Ceremony. And we talked about this a little bit. But if you strip out the elements of the Endowment Ceremony that are not taken from the Masonic ceremony, we're basically left with a story of creation along with a few elements that are really not much different than what you're taught in any day Sunday school lesson or church video.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:50:23 I mean, once you strip out all of the. The signs, the tokens, the penalties, the symbols, the clothing, the new names, you're really not left with much. And so if you want to say that the Masonic ceremony was merely a vehicle to provide this new information, one of the things when I went through the Temple, I noticed is that there's really not a whole lot there that I learned outside of the fact that you're just trying to memorize these different kind of rituals. And I think that's one of the things I would love to ask a church leader when they say that purposes are different and therefore it's not lifted.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:50:54 I would say if you take everything that's Masonic out that we're not allowed to talk about, what are you left with? Because at that point, the Temple ceremony, I think, would not look much different than, you know, a gospel doctrine class or a church video you'd see in a visitor center. And so, you know, I would just end with, how many times, as we've said, does Joseph Smith have to repurpose ideas with incorrect historical context before it becomes undeniable that these ideas are not from God, but from Joseph Smith trying to find ways to. To continue building on his theology?

John Dehlin 1:51:27 Yeah, that's fair. That's a great summary. What an important episode. Thank you, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:33 Thank you. And thank you Nemo, for coming on, do you have any great words?

Nemo 1:51:37 I'm grateful that you put in print. Nemo made a great point.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:40 Yeah. Yeah. I had to make sure I did that because, well, you, I think, was one of those things where I watched your video and I was like, yeah, that's a good point. Because, you know, you always hear that parallel versus origin, you know, and your point was just like, yeah, that really doesn't solve your problem. It just, you know, kind of deflects it. So it was a great point, and I'm really glad you were on. If you have any final words, feel free.

Nemo 1:52:04 Yeah, I mean, my final words are just come along, have a look at the channel. You know, we mentioned that I've done a video on this, so feel free to come along and have a look at that. Bill Real get excommunicated for calling the profits liars. I've compiled a list of.

Nemo 1:52:17 Oh, I think we're coming up close to seven now. Of the current prophet seers and revelators have told public lies in their official capacity as a representative of the church. So there's a playlist on my channel. Go check that out. Spoiler alert. There are more to come.

Nemo 1:52:32 It seems like a systemic problem, and much like with this that we've been talking about, you could say, oh, well, one of them's rogue. But when a group of them are doing it, we have a problem. So feel free to come along and look at that. Judge for yourself.

Nemo 1:52:45 But thank you very much, Mike and John, for having me on. It's a privilege and an honor to be involved in such a kind of seminal piece of content. So thank you.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:54 Thank you.

John Dehlin 1:52:55 Thanks, Nemo. Thanks, Mike. And for those who are more active in the church or believing, if it feels abrasive or offensive for you to hear the word lie in association with Mormon church apostles, prophets, and revelators, I guess I would just say I understand that. I feel that, too. And the best you can do is. Is just review the evidence and then just decide for yourself if. If there. There's an honesty problem. We're not trying to, you know. Yeah, we're not trying to, like, have you draw that conclusion, but we do as. As a part of this entire series. We just want to provide evidence and that people make informed decisions. So we'll.

Nemo 1:53:35 Come tell me. Come tell me I'm wrong. I. I want to hear it. If I'm wrong, come tell me.

John Dehlin 1:53:41 All right. Thanks, Nemo. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Again, this is, you know, part of the LDS Discussions) Examining Mormon Truth Claim series. You can find all these essays@ LDS discussions.com there is an essay on the Temple endowment and Masonry.

John Dehlin 1:54:05 You you can access all of these episodes either on Spotify and audio and video format or you can access it on our YouTube playlist or you can find you know these in consolidated form on any anywhere where you consume your podcasts. We're grateful to Mike. We we're grateful to you who support us, all our viewers and listeners. And we'll just say thanks for your support. Please stay in touch. Please share this with anyone who you think might benefit benefit from it. Please give us your feedback. We hope to incorporate it. We're grateful for those who make Mormon Stories in the Open Stories foundation possible. Please do support Nemo the Mormon and his channel.

John Dehlin 1:54:46 He does great work and he deserves to be supported. Be good to each other, be kind to each other. And most importantly, we'll see you all again very soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast and on LDS Discussions) where we've got a a bunch of stuff to come. I'm I don't remember where this is going to fall, but we're talking about polygamy. We're talking about Book of Abraham, Kinderhook plates, Joseph Smith translations, the the Witnesses. So much more to come. So please check us out and stay tuned and we'll see you all again very soon. Take care everybody.

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