Does he always tell the
truth? | This is one of a series of web pages I created between 2001and 2006. I was angry and frustrated at the LDS Church. Since then I have moved on and calmed down. So please remember, if you read these pages, that they reflect my past and not my present feelings. Thanks for your understanding! - Chris Tolworthy |
Does he always tell the
truth? Why do I say these mean things? | 1-10 | 11 - 20 | 21-30 | 31- 40
Please note: the top ten are better. That is
why they're the top ten.
But these are items that interested me, and it's my web site, so
I'm keeping them.
11. Hiding documents
12. Does the church publish its budgets?
13. General Authorities too busy
14. Empty lives?
15. Growth and teachings are unique?.
16. Standing For Something?
17. Mormon fundamentalists.
18. A global flood.
19. Breaking in pieces the nations.
20. "We are not weird"
Hinckley hid a key document then pretended not to have it When Gordon B. Hinckley was in charge of the Mark Hoffman documents (documents that made church history look very bad) he told Brent Ashworth to ...
"tell the people we've got nothing to hide."
It is very strange that he said this while he was hiding the potentially embarrassing Joseph Smith to Josiah Stowell letter in the First presidency vault. See page 293 of the book 'Salamander' for details. Or chapter three of "The Mormon Murders." Here is a summary:
In 1983, Gordon B. Hinckley, a member of the First Presidency of the Mormon Church, secretly acquired a letter - later found to have been forged by Mark Hofmann - which purported to be in Joseph Smith's own hand and linked the prophet to money-digging and magic. President Hinckley believed the letter was authentic. He paid Mr. Hofmann $15,000 for the letter and then hid it in the First Presidency's vault.When researchers learned what happened and said that it was being suppressed, the church decided to "stonewall." A spokesman for the church said: " 'The church doesn't have the letter... It's not in the church archives or the First Presidency's vault.' " (Salt Lake Tribune, April 29, 1985) Finally, when it became clear that some Mormon scholars had photocopies of the letter and were going to turn them over to the news media, the church backed down, and the same spokesman admitted his earlier statement was "in error": "The purported letter was indeed acquired by the church. For the present it is stored in the First Presidency's archives..." (Salt Lake Tribune, May 7, 1985)
When Hoffman came to trial a key piece of evidence was the "McLellin collection," a collection of documents that Hoffman claimed to have that was embarrassing to the church. Hoffman claimed to own it (he was planning to forge it) but in fact the church already owned it. This piece of information would be extremely useful to the trial, and there would normally be a legal obligation to tell such an important fact. At the time, Hinckley knew that the church had it, but kept quite for several years until the trial was over. Then the church announced that it had discovered the documents as if it had only just noticed them. The church's side of the story is in "Victims,"a book by Richard E. Turley, Jr., managing director of the LDS Church Historical Department. He of course does not make the connection, but the dates are there.
As a footnote, it was later discovered that these documents were all forgeries. Hinckley had the most contact with them, and had the gift of discernment, yet believed they were genuine. Yet the most famous critic of the church, Jerald Tanner, could see there was something wrong. The antis knew more than the prophet.
Hinckley says yes.Every other major church makes its accounts public. Every one. They consider it a question of honesty and openness. Yet the Mormon church keeps its accounts secret. Before the Salt Lake Olympics, a German reporter asked Hinckley about this and other things. A transcript of the full interview is here.
Reporter: "In my country, the…we say the people's churches, the Protestants, the Catholics, they publish all their budgets, to all the public.
Hinckley: [agrees]
Reporter: "Why is it impossible for your church?
Hinckley: "Well, we simply think that the…that information belongs to those who made the contribution, and not to the world. That's the only thing. Yes."This is a very strange thing to say, because no church member ever gets to see the church budgets or accounts. Ever. Most people would say his answer was highly misleading to the German reporter.
Hinckley says yes.The previous examples are from when Hinckley was not in control of the conversation, and he was asked awkward questions. The next couple of examples are from General Conference, where Hinckley was completely in control. Yet still he said some very strange things. These examples are from the last General Conference, October 2005. They are just the tip of the iceberg.
"The Church has grown so large that it is no longer possible for members of the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve, and other General Authorities to visit individual stakes"
This is a strange thing to say, even if we ignore the slowing of church growth and 80% inactivity rate. The D&C says there can be 70 quorums of 70, making 4900 potential General Authorities. If the church really has an unpaid ministry, there is nothing to stop Hinckley from calling more and more General Authorities to cope with the allegedly rising numbers. Even with the current numbers, there is no problem, since GAs supposedly work full time for the church. The only figures I have seen for current numbers are 2665 stakes and 98 General Authorities, or 27 stakes per General Authority. Some stakes will be nearby, especially in the American Midwest, so it would sometimes be possible for a GA to attend two Stake Conferences in the same weekend. So all the stake conferences, plus two General Conferences, could be covered in 26 weeks, or six months. Even if they only work weekends, GAs can still have six months of the year off.
Why does this matter? Who cares whether GAs attend stake conferences? Well there's an interesting story behind this. Sometimes exMormons share their personal experiences about General Authorities (e.g. on exmormon.org and elsewhere). When they do, Boyd K. Packer always comes off worst - he is known for not wanting to get involved with ordinary people, and for having a bad temper (don't believe me? Just Google "you can't stage manage a grizzly bear"). In contrast, L. Tom Perry always comes off looking good: nobody has any bad experiences with him, and people always comment that he is a sincere, humble, really nice guy. Well around the start of 1994, Perry was in a stake conference in Idaho. He realized that to most church members the apostles are faceless suits, so Perry decided to tell us something of their personalities. It was a great talk and people were soon discussing it on the Internet. He talked about each apostle in turn, and regarding Boyd K. Packer, he said:
"President Packer is the most inspirational spiritual man I've ever had the opportunity to work with. He also can get very irate and it is my job to kick him in the shins if he gets too irate. Next time you see him, ask him to lift his pant legs so you can see my kick marks on his shins!" (source)
The church did not like this. Note that Packer is president of the Quorum of the Twelve and next in line to be prophet. So the church issued what the Salt Lake Tribune reported as "one of its rare public statements" and said,
..Any notes made when General Authorities, Area Authority Seventies, or other general Church officers speak at regional and stake conferences or other meetings should not be distributed without the consent of the speaker. Personal notes are for individual use only... (source - the original Tribune article is no longer at the link they gave)
So it is interesting to note that the next year, 1995, the church decides that General Authorities will no longer visit stake conferences. Of course there may be another reason that we don't know. But one thing is certain, the official reason, that a full time General Authority cannot visit 27 stakes a year, is not true.
Hinckley says yes."What a wonderful work it is. How empty our lives would be without it." (Another quote from October 2005 conference.)
Of every hundred people who take a missionary discussion, less than one in ten continue up to baptism. And of those who join, eight out of ten soon decide to stop attending. And of those few who remain active, an unknown number stay for family reasons even though they didn't enjoy it. I was like that and I was not alone. The bottom line is that, for the vast majority of people, life outside the church is better than life inside. Only a very tiny minority of people prefer what the church offers
Some evidence suggests that even the active Mormons find their lives are empty. Utah uses more anti-depressants than anywhere else on earth. In most cases the church is not a positive influence, yet Hinckley says that it is.
Hinckley says yes."In this same period he established an organization which for 175 years has withstood every adversity and challenge and is as effective today in governing a worldwide membership of some 12 million as it was in governing a membership of 300 in 1830. There are those doubters who have strained to explain this remarkable organization as the product of the times in which he lived. That organization, I submit, was as peculiar, as unique, and as remarkable then as it is today. It was not a product of the times. It came as a revelation from God." (Gordon B. Hinckley, “Joseph Smith Jr.—Prophet of God, Mighty Servant,” Ensign, Dec. 2005, 2)
This is a strange statement, since Hinckley is (or should be ) very well informed. He should know that other churches started in the mid 1800s, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists, have equally unique teachings, and have grown faster than the Mormon church.
Hinckley says that doubters have "strained" to explain the church as a product of its times? No, people often first become doubters because the evidence is so obvious. For example, the parallels between the early temple ceremony and Freemasonry are obvious, while believers must strain to find any evidence for such things in ancient times because the evidence does not exist.
Hinckley says the church is remarkable, yet it is largely ignored by the outside world. Church members see the church as the center of their world, but to the rest of the world it is just another church or cult, no more remarkable than a hundred or a thousand others. Hinckley says that it is remarkable and a revelation, yet he seems unable to point to anything the church does that is not duplicated by other organizations. With the possible exception of the interest in genealogy, but every church has two or three unique features - that is perfectly normal.
Gordon B. Hinckley published a book called "Standing For Something." Is he standing for something? You decide.
Chapter 1 is "Love: The Lodestar of Life." this is good advice, but Hinckley's actions are often characterized by petty criticisms and blind prejudice. For example, this prophet's only new revelation was that having one ear ring is good but two is bad. And he spends millions of dollars to attack people who's only crime is to love each other.
Chapter 2 is "Where There Is Honesty, Other Virtues Will Follow." This is true. But it raises the question of hypocrisy for the other statements on this page.
Chapter 3. is "Making a Case for Morality." The church defined morality as referring to sex. But to everyone else, morality means ethics, and sexual conduct is only a small part of ethics. It may not be dishonest to change the meaning of words, but it is certainly misleading.
Chapter 4 is "Our Fading Civility." Being civil comes from the Latin for "having the refinement of city-bred people" (see Chambers' Etymological dictionary.) In other words, it means basing our behavior on what the city or state considers appropriate. Yet the Mormon church is openly opposed to the world's values. This leads to great rudeness. For example, thousands of missionaries knock on people's doors, disturbing and inconveniencing them for the sole purpose of telling them to repent (i.e. that they are wrong and need to change). Ordinary Mormons are told to make friends with the secret purpose of converting those friends. Mormons must be rude in social situations, where offering tea or coffee or wine is the social custom. Mormons must turn down social events that take place on Sundays or during scheduled church meetings. Mormons must make others feel uncomfortable for using language that most of society finds acceptable. When I was a missionary (1987-88) we were told to use a questionnaire as a way to get talking about the church (the church did not really care about the results to the questions, it was just a way to talk about the church). These things are at best bad manners, at worst they are deceptive tricks. The harder we try to be good Mormon, the more our civility fades. Thankfully, most Mormons do not do most of what their church teaches. Most of them are very "bad" missionaries and are willing to tolerate "bad" language or working on a Sunday. But the fact remains that the church teaches them to be uncivil.
Chapter 5 is "Learning: 'With All Thy Getting Get Understanding." If we love learning, we will so learn that the church is not true. So church publications are notoriously selective and one sided. Hinckley is being dishonest in claiming to support learning. What he really means is "With all thy getting get only the things I want you to know."
Chapter 6 is "The Twin Virtues of Forgiveness and Mercy." This is good advice, but Hinckley could learn from it. Perhaps the major event of his presidency was the dedication of the Nauvoo temple. And he spent most of his dedicatory speech attacking governor Boggs and men who left or opposed the church a hundred and fifty years earlier.
Chapter 7 is "Thrift and Industry: Getting Our Houses in Order." Church members like to remember anecdotes about tithing miracles, but this is dishonest in that it ignores tithing-induced disasters. Church teachings often imply that tithing brings physical, financial blessings, but this is not true, as experience and common sense shows.
Chapter 8 is "Gratitude: A Sign of Maturity." This reveals dishonesty where church teachings are concerned. The church owes most of its doctrines to other churches that it now condemns as apostate. Yet it claims that its own teachings are both the original and superior. That is not true, as scholars from other churches can easily point out.
Chapter 9 is "Optimism in the Face of Cynicism." The church teaches the most cynical and pessimistic view - that the world is getting worse, those who oppose the church are being fooled or led by Satan, and nothing can stop the decline until Jesus comes again. It has been saying this for over 170 years, ignoring the great advances in health, food, freedom, choice, etc. To continue saying this in the face of such evidence is either foolish or dishonest.
Chapter 10 is "Faith: Our Only Hope." Faith in what? A system that fails, or one that works? As noted above, the world and other churches have provided much that is good, while the Mormon church has often promoted what is bad. So to claim that faith in the church is "our only hope" is not true.
Hinckley says no.Mormon fundamentalists are people who accept what the LDS church taught about polygamy until 1890, and practiced l until 1905. They are connected in that they have the same roots. It could be argued that they are the true Mormons since they accept more of the original doctrines. But in the same Larry King interview, Hinckley says they have no connection and are not Mormons:
Larry King: "But when the word is mentioned, when you hear the word, you think Mormon, right?"
Gordon B. Hinckley: "You do it mistakenly. They have no connection with us whatever. They don't belong to the church. There are actually no Mormon fundamentalists."
Larry King: "Are you surprised that there's, apparently, a lot of polygamy in Utah?"
Gordon B. Hinckley: "I have seen the thing grow somewhat. I don't know how much it is. I don't know how pervasive it is."They are connected by history and doctrine, but Hinckley says they are not connected. They call themselves Mormons, trace their origins to Joseph Smith, and follow Joseph Smith and Brigham Young more closely than Hinckley does. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, isn't it a duck? Yet Hinckley says they are not Mormons.
It is true that the modern church has stopped practicing polygamy. But it still counts Doctrine and Covenants 132 (the polygamy section) as scripture, and it has never apologized or said polygamy is wrong. Until that happens, the connection will be there.
Hinckley says yes."There was the great Flood, when waters covered the earth and when, as Peter says, only "eight souls were saved" (1 Peter 3:20)." (A quote from October 2005 conference.)
This is a strange thing to say because, discover after discovery has proven that this cannot have happened as the Bible describes. Many people take the Bible as symbolic or metaphorical, but the Mormon church does not. When Hinckley says only eight were saved from the earth, that is apparently exactly what he means.
Hinckley
seems to say so.Since the days of Joseph Smith, church leaders have identified the church with the "stone cut without hands" from Daniel 2. Hinckley is no exception.
"The little stone which was cut out of the mountain without hands is rolling forth to fill the earth (see Dan. 2:31–45; D&C 65:2)." (Gordon B. Hinckley, “The State of the Church,” Ensign, Nov. 2003, 4)
This comes from Daniel 2:21-45 which says, in part:.
"Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold [the nations of the world], broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. ... And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever." (Daniel 2: 34,35, 44)
Hinckley knows enough about church history to know that the church is not fulfilling this prophecy. First, it does not break in pieces other nations. Whenever the nations of the world have confronted the church (most famously in the troubles in Nauvoo or the Utah war or the polygamy issue) the church has either run away or lost. Today the church tries very hard to be friends with all governments - it shows no interest in breaking them in pieces. Second, church growth is slowing. While it grew at a reasonable pace up until the mid 1980s, for the past twenty years growth has been slowing. Even before the 1980s it was not like a stone rolling down and gathering speed. After 150 years it was still largely insignificant to non-Mormons. The context of Hinckley's talk shows he means "filling the earth" in the sense of having a peaceful presence in every country. So it is highly misleading for him to use Daniel 2, which speaks of the church growing to a huge size and breaking the other nations into pieces.
"we are not weird""We have a different way of life. There is a difference. It is a way of life and it doesn't fit the mold that a lot of people have. So we are different and they use the word weird. . . . We live in the world, we are part of the world, but we don't need to take on all the ways of the world. That makes us appear different and I suppose weird. But we are not weird." (Interview with Bob Anderson of 60 Minutes, December 6, 1995.)
Not weird? They deliberately go against the standards of the world. Isn't that the definition of weird? Their scriptures say they are "a peculiar people" - doesn't peculiar mean weird? They wear protective underwear that they know will be mocked if people saw it, so they keep it well hidden. And the things they do in the temple - especially before they changed it in 1990 - are similarly easy to mock. Doesn't that prove that they know it looks weird?
They call Joseph Smith a prophet. Joseph, the guy who slept with other men's wives. And Brigham Young, the polygamous ruler of a mountain empire. Isn't that just a little bit weird? They believe the Book of Mormon, which says (in the book of Ether) that the first Americans arrived in submarines. The first ancient Americans arrived in submarines?? Doesn't that sound weird to you?
And don't get me started on Kolob!
Not weird? You decide.
Well that's the top 20. Does Gordon B. Hinckley tell lies? Or is he just ill-informed? Does he accidentally forget things? Are these all innocent mistakes? You decide.
Why do I say these mean things? | 1-10 | 11 - 20 | 21-30 | 31- 40