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This was my primary thought. Back then, WalMart was a century away. There were no cops. There was no insurance company. GoFundMe was farther away than WalMart. Folks in Africa were never going to hear about it - let alone tomorrow morning on X. Stories like this one remind me that there are about a billion and one things for which I should be so grateful that I never have time to get off my knees for all the thanks I'm giving.

Are you sure? I mean, I gave some, but I don't see any indication that you noticed. Much better - thanks. I'm glad to see that the pros also found it impossible to give a good rendering of the text. So, it appears to be a war council trying to figure out how to keep the Saints from going extinct at the hands of their enemies. "J. Higbee the Indians r continually unfriendly killing our cattle & stealing horses we have lost between 50, 60 head. they cannot sustain themselves there. we drive our cattle down in the morning & bring them up at night. The Indians fired their guns at our boys & they found one [illeg] with 4 arrows another with a tomahawk in it they say the Mormons are no [illeg] they want to fight & will live on our cattle they say they mean to keep our cattle & got & get the other Indians to kill us." Do you know what it means when Higbee says "they cannot sustain themselves there"? That means unless something changes, those saints will all die. Why do you find this disturbing? Do you not see an endless tsunami of similar examples pouring forth from the old and new testaments? Not to mention any semi-serious reading of human history convinces us all that most human history is an endless cycle of conflict and war and bloodshed. Please - put your assumptions into words - why do you find it disturbing that BY talked about, even ordered, killing threats to the saints' existence? It's understandable that someone who is moving from a life spent in historical ignorance and assumption making, gets disturbed when confronted with uncomfortable truths and realities. It's quite common. It happens to everyone, actually. The lucky ones have it happen in early adulthood when they venture out into the world and begin interacting with different ideas and perspectives, and read more books. It's happening to you in the 3rd quarter century of your life, so it's easy to understand why you're disturbed. For contrast: I began learning all of this stuff 30 years ago in my mid-20's, as I ventured online to the early discussion forums and newsgroups. I sought out places where critic met apologist, and that's how I learned the seedier parts of our history, along with the apologetic defenses. If you'd like a similar experience, you can still go through the old FARMS Review of Books: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/ It's been many years since I read all these, and I don't remember exactly if those books address what looks to be your main troubling topic, but these essays do address (in varying degrees of completeness, accuracy, and persuasiveness), all of the criticisms leveled against our church and it's members that were being made from the '80s through the 2010's. It's got a very handy search function. I see another unquestioned baseless assumption that you've probably made across your whole life. It looks something like this: "Everything there is to know about the church and it's history, I will learn from the church." Look deeply into yourself my friend. Have you been believing this lie? For, like, your whole life? You want apologetics? I prescribe introspection. You've been ignorant your whole life, and now you're being blindsided by harsh realities you've never encountered before. Troubles and doubts are normal and healthy. They won't go away with a quoted paragraph here or a friendly post on an anonymous message board there. I just gave you a great source to have your troubles and doubts resolved. Will you spend a decade at it like I did?

I have some thoughts, but they are nothing more than my own thoughts and therefore not worth much. So at least for now, I have some questions: Do you know why this is disturbing you? It has to be more than the brutality of past centuries, as there are far more brutal things described in the Bible and in history, but you didn't start a thread about those. It has to be more than learning some negative thing you never knew before, because as I'm sure you know, there's a whole lot more from the foundation of the world until this morning, that impacted far more people, that no one has informed you about (yet). I'm just thinking that you know full well, none of us were there. None of us can see or feel or experience the events the people described saw or felt or experienced. We can neither justify nor excuse their words and actions. I would hope you know that once a physical battle begins, no man is responsible for any other man's actions - some will go wild and some will maintain restraint to do only what they must. Etc. (Please read the following with the understanding that I am experiencing a genuine desire and curiosity to understand your "why" and your needs from this discussion. These questions are not intended to be derogatory, though they're often used that way. I just don't know how else to ask them.) Do you expect us to be able to answer the above questions? I'm assuming not. I'm assuming they're rhetorical. Do you want us to speak ill of Brigham Young? Do you want us to say you're right? Do you want us to be upset or to do something? What is it, exactly, that you're looking for? (Again, I'm sincerely trying to understand your deeper motivation, wishes, needs from the discussion, because until we can understand what's underneath the OP, we can't begin to have a conversation with you that might be satisfying to either party.) It appears from your reply that you believe someone should have known all this sooner and told you all about it at some prior point in your life. Do you know why you believe this? Have you considered who should have known? And whose responsibility it was to tell you, specifically? (By positions if not names.) I'm not trying to question your assumptions - I'm trying to get you to question your own assumptions - is it reasonable that there should always be someone who is entirely aware of all the meeting notes from the Church's history - I'm guessing there are thousands of them? Is it reasonable that they should be publicly proclaiming all the details in such a way as to ensure you, specifically, learn about them as early in your life as possible? Is this realistically possible? Is it actually important or urgent that this happen? I'm sorry if any of that came across as dismissive or derogatory. I don't mean it that way. From my perspective, the events described in your second link are in the past, and therefore, they are not something I can impact. It isn't useful for me to be upset over them, and judging them is not my job - it's God's. I understand that not everyone sees such things the way I do, hence the above questions hoping to draw out some replies that will help me understand. I may still not have any reply that can satisfy you, but the answers may still be useful...

At the very least, knowing which section to work on would help. I don't have time to decipher that whole page (and I'm pretty good at cursive, even old cursive - but dude wrote so small and "slurred" his writing). The version people talk about, maybe. When I went and read some of the documents I had (just common Church history volumes in a digital library), it seemed to me he was just using an expanded definition of "god", not claiming Adam and God the Father were one and the same person (which is what a lot of people say this theory claims, but I wasn't finding that - not that I care either way). Anywho, I don't believe we're capable of understanding the context - knowing some things about it, sure - understanding it? Not without revelation from God putting you into the mind of someone who lived it. Let God worry about brother Brigham. For me, there's only two ways to look at it: 1. God chose Brigham Young. In this case, any problems are God's to solve. 2. God didn't choose Brigham Young. In this case, we're in the wrong church. I know we're in the right Church, so I'm gonna let God figure out the past while I try to figure out how to live my covenants.

Interesting story, apart from the odd tiktok video where you see somebody filming themselves oppose the first presidency as a "protest". I've yet to see anybody oppose an individual.

How about the time BY snuck up on a passed out drunkard and chopped his head off. Oh wait, that was a different prophet. Or how about BY trying to slit his own son's throat because he thought God told him to. Oh wait, that was a different prophet as well. Perhaps that they were all prophets is the only context that matters. That of course won't fly with those outside the Church but with some things that's all there is because sometimes what God does (or wants done) flies in the face of all mortal reasoning. I can already hear the retort: "But God actually told them to do those things!" Well how can we know what God did and didn't tell BY to do? I don't think any of us is in a position to pass judgement on him. If you were simply looking for a way to explain such things to those not of our faith, I wish you well. But for those of our faith it really shouldn't require apologetics.

Was Brigham Young Unstable? I would not assume so but why would it matter? Where in the scripture does it say God calls prophets from the cream of the crop? It does not. In fact it often says he calls the weak and unlearned and the foolish. If you get your apologetic answers then great... But if you don't.... if you only find more and more negative things about Brigham Young what are you going to do? Will you get to a point that you decide that you know better then God whom he should call? Because that is Pride which is a very deadly sin. Perhaps instead of looking through the history books and making judgements on how wicked and evil people where and question how God could possibly work with them... maybe instead we should all look in a mirror and say "Thank you God for being willing to work with such and evil and wicked person as I am." Of course those are just my thoughts on the subject and I am some random guy on the internet. Take what works for you (if anything) and discard the rest

Before I respond, it would be helpful if there was a readable text to those minutes you linked to in the Church History Catalog. Even when we enlarge it to maximum magnification, the script is difficult to read. ******************************************************************* Yes, he probably was. But no more than any of us. And I'll show below how he probably had more stability, patience, and forgiveness than most of those around him. How many times have you seen a single news story or heard a single account from a friend or relative and got all up in arms about what should be done? It's a very human thing to do. We certainly do that with many of the stories of what appear to be murder, execution, and genocide in the Bible. But we need to remember that we don't have all the circumstances that led up to those events. You've shown that you're willing to call a Prophet "unstable" because you read a single account with very few details. So, let me fill in some details. There was quite a period of lead up to that military exchange. And Brigham did a LOT to calm the Saints' anger. And the Timpanogos Chief did much to calm the people of his tribe. But after a long train of abuses (on both sides) there was little peaceable sentiment between the two parties. And eventually, several LDS leaders made efforts to convince Brigham to essentially wage war. Brigham had tolerated many deadly exchanges trying to calm the Saints and prevent war. But only after many of his "senior staff" entreated him (as governor of the territory, not necessarily as prophet) he acceded to their demands. Let me say this again. He prevented war until all of his closest advisors were all but demanding it. Does that seem unstable to you? Yes, the horrible things (which tend to happen in a war) happened during this attack. But don't take things like this out of context. And don't defame a respected historical figure without understanding all the circumstances leading up to an event.

I'm a big fan of taking critics and saying "oh, you seem to have it all figured out - let's put you in charge of doing it right." I still remain a fan of being a critic of stake people with an overinflated notion of their stewardships and importance in the lives of people living at the ward level. At this point I'm sort of hoping someone approaches me with a Stake calling - I'll speak energetically and passionately about my thoughts that the stake needs to stay in it's own lane and stop trying to do bishop things. We'll see if they still want me. My heart goes out to all of us random saints just trying to be good disciples and have enough energy for our callings. I am challenged to love the stake representative that just comes up with some activity he wants everyone in all the wards to do and begins pushing it out expecting everyone to jump, without so much as checking with bishops or aux presidents in any wards.

I'm glad to see the basic human right of free speech is getting a lot of notice in the UK. How many people are arrested every week in the UK for stuff they post online? The solution to bad speech is more speech. It's not trying to force people not to say things disagreeable.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/trump-starmer-lucy-connolly-free-speech-b2757856.html I'm normally the last person to say "US good UK bad" (there's plenty of bad in both) but in this matter I'm right behind Trump. Starmer won the election last year on a protest vote, and he's turning our to be twice as bad as the people voters were protesting against. If Trump wants to give Starmer a "kick up the arse" that's fine by me! I'll probably be arrested now for "incitement to kick the Prime Minister up the arse" - even though I've crossed it out already!

People are protesting, but the politicians who are behind everything aren't listening. It's easier for them to, say, declare that everyone who wants an investigation into the rape gangs hiding out in the Pakistani enclaves is a "racist" than it is to actually conduct those investigations... and no, I'm not kidding, a politician actually accused a fellow politician of racism for demanding those investigations. What we're seeing now is part of an effort to ensure that people can't legally protest or call for those reforms in the first place.

I keep hearing events in the UK that to an American (one who actually believes in really free speech1) are terrifying: getting arrested just for saying something online; trials for said folk happening faster than trials for violent criminals; criminals being let out of jails to make room for said folk; making it a crime to pray in your own home if it's too close to an abortion clinic; and other insanity. I do not know why the British people aren't protesting this vocally and demanding free speech protections be codified in such a way as to make them impossible to remove. You all are letting those who hate the very foundations of your country take it over - it's terrifying. At least, that's how it looks from over here. 1I'm generally in favor of letting people say whatever offensive, ugly, violent, hateful thing they want, because restricting it is far worse than not. My only exceptions are the whole "fire in a crowded theater" thing (i.e. it will cause immediate, physical harm before anyone has a chance to counter it); and pornography, which ought to be destroyed - it is, in essence a very slow-burning fire in the theater of mankind, guaranteed to destroy without doing anyone an ounce of good.

I was also thinking of this from 1st Samuel: 1 Samuel also said unto Saul, The Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the Lord. 2 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. 3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. It kind of always amazes me when people call any sort of violence "un-Christian".

Hear hear. Quite a lot of sentiment gets thrown round to suggest that if somebody isn't perfectly serving in their calling then they are useless. Always makes me uncomfortable, and it's an unrighteous, toxic attitude. We've a new Young Womans president being called and before she has even been set apart I've heard comments suggesting that this is "the end" of our youth.

Psychoanalyzing historical figures through historical records gets tricky fast. It's easy to be an armchair shrink, but it's even easier to judge unrighteously by filling in any missing context with our modern cultural contexts and understandings. Brigham and all historical figures faced many influences from their culture and society, and looking only at their diaries usually ignores the bigger picture of their experiences and decisions. Another way to put it: To us fat lazy 21st century 1st world elites, 1800's frontier Americans all look like crazy savages. We have lost all clues of how much effort those people had to put into just surviving the winter, much less the threats of extinction from other human sources. Here's a fun little slice of how things were back then: My wife is a descendant of the Native American slave trade. When the Mormons hit the valley, the various Ute tribes saw increased opportunities for trade. And raiding other villages for captive women and children became a new booming industry, because the good hearted LDS folks would buy slaves from them, especially if the slave traders mistreated their captives in front of the Mormons or threatened to kill them if they weren't sold. I wonder how accurate we can be with our attempts to psychoanalyze the chiefs of the various Sanpete and Timpanogos and other Ute tribes for thinking such things were a perfectly normal way to conduct a trading relationship with the newcomers. Yep. Even when I download the large filesize copy and drill down to max magnification, it's still nigh impossible to read. @jdf135, unless I miss my guess, you're going off of someone's text here. Care to post it? If it's an anti source, don't post the link to the source, but we can't really respond to your claims until we see upon what they are based.

I'm glad to hear it. When this news is covered on tiktok and x, the anonymous comments from folks identifying as the progressive left are about 90/10 in support of dude and his action. It's a universal phenomenon that people talk crap anonymously, and half of the responses are probably bots, but it's still rather chilling to see firsthand. That 10% is nice to see though. Lots of "I'm all in on Gaza and f*** israel but what dude did was wrong".

Assuming the worst about him (which is an unstable foundation for anyone to use), the keys of the kingdom were still intact and exercised by the First Presidency and Twelve. The covenants were still in place and active in the saints' lives. It's not a matter of being the best the Lord has to work with at the time, it is a matter of whom the Lord chooses to work through at the time for His own purposes. Should your line of thinking extend to Church leaders and officers (typically local units) committing crimes, the same thing holds true. The Lord atoned for all our sins and if He did not, we would not have the agency to commit them.

Absolutely agree. I've seen nothing but condemnation for this unconscionable act from like-minded folks.

Is anyone else noticing that the search function no longer works? Every search I've done for a few weeks gives me nothing. I thought it was just at work due to some internet filters. I thought it was strange that I could access the site, but not the search engine. Now I just tried it at home. And I get nothing.

Something often overlooked is that with such comments not only are they not sustaining the person being called but as well as all those who were involved in the call being given. As a side note. I was attending a stake conference when a person was called to the stake high council. When the sustaining vote was asked, a person in the midst of the congregation stood up holding their hand up as high as possible in opposition. The stake president left the stand, got that person and quietly left the meeting. After a short time, the stake president returned (I did not see the person opposing) and the person previously called was not called and was never set apart. As far as I know – they never received any call to any position. I assumed that there was some issue that was never addressed prior to the call and when the stake president was made aware – it changed everything concerning the call. I would suggest that if something is known to you that prevents your sustaining – you should rase your hand accordingly and make your witness known to the proper authority. There is a reason for this formality. The Traveler

Grannyopterix is always worth listening to... The Glorious Revolution again, with Trumpety-Trump as William of Orange? (At least he's the right colour for it!)

What people forget is that Trump came up in the world of business at a time when bombast, aggression, and persistence were considered to be features rather than bugs. As part of it, there was a bit of a ritual you could sometimes observe in which people would come to the bargaining table, deliberately throw out ostentatious demands, and then "allow" themselves to be negotiated down to what they had actually wanted to achieve in the first place. This allowed both sides to claim victory by getting what they wanted *and* praise themselves for how awesome they were that they talked the other guy down the way they did. Something, perhaps the assassination attempts, led to Trump reverting back to this mindset. View what he's saying and doing through the lens of this business environment, apply a bit of game theory, and what he's doing makes a *lot* more sense, even in a rather screwball fashion.

What's funny is people will say it but then not have the minerals to oppose the sustaining.

To me, reading the history of this conflict it seems this tribe of Indians was attacking the saints and stealing their property. If you steal all of someone's food out on the frontier they would starve. Fighting back against hostiles stealing your food and attacking you is no sin in my mind.

Like I'd ever resort to violence!

I’m an ethnic Englishman as well, but thank God my grandmother took that plane across the pond and landed in the good ole US of A.

I agree pornography ought to be destroyed, but I don't agree that the government, courts and police should be the ones to do it. It's the people "using" it (and I've been as guilty as anyone in this respect!) who need to wake up, see what damage it's doing to them, and do the destroying themselves. A tyrant who tyrranizes other people "for their own good" is still a tyrant. Whatever Mr Starmer and people like him might say, that doesn't apply to Lucy. She made that comment directly after the murders and long before the riots had even started. The judges stuck their fingers in their ears and went "lalalalala" when that was pointed out. They didn't care about facts. All they cared about was having Lucy Connolly's head on a stick. I am by no means ashamed to be British, but right now Britain has a goggly-eyed stupid-haired silly-faced problem living in No. 10 Downing Street.

The suggestion of BY as a “psychopath” led me down an interesting and (perhaps) timely route learning about Cluster B personality disorders generally. It’s really remarkable how often Cluster B symptomology comes up in discussions about LDS culture/ teaching/ history.

Because I have chosen a profession in the category of engineering and science, I have delt a lot with atheists and agnostics. Strange as it may seem – I have often found it easier to deal with advances in the sciences with atheists and agnostics than those of the religious stripe. Perhaps the most outstanding examples of such principles are in the creation or origins of our universe and the principles of evolution of intelligent life. However, there is another principle that I believe is central to religious thought that is even more of a profound conundrum. I believe this principle is tied directly to a profound piece of advice given by our current living prophet – to think Celestial. Here is the conundrum as I see it. As a religious person draws closer to G-d through faith, belief and worship – it seems that in most religious cases – the less they are expected to contribute towards divine society and behaving like G-d. Keeping in mind that the best example of G-d that we have is Jesus Christ. There is a notion that if we believe in Christ – it does not matter that much what we say or do. We are saved – not by any effort of ourselves but only if we believe in Christ. It seems to me that such thinking is counter productive to the principle that the closer to G-d a person becomes through faith, belief and worship – the more like G-d that their thinking and behaviors ought to become. In the vernacular of LDS theology – this means thinking, believing in and behaving Celestial. Many have the notion that because they belong to the correct “religion” G-d will forgive them more that an non believer or someone of a different religious sect that makes greater effort to be kind and loving (G-d like) towards others. (This is very much at the core of the concept of being saved by grace or works.) In short – to whom much (of light and truth) is given much is expected. That those that are associated with the correct doctrines of religion – should not more be expected – especially at that great and final judgement day? The more light and truth we have the better we better (Celestial) we ought to be thinking. The Traveler

I think we can thank Satan for this. He quite effectively corrupted man's understanding of who they are and who God is. I don't blame people for not believing that we can actually become like some totally foreign and incomprehensible being. How does one even relate to that let alone be inspired to become like that? It just magnifies the importance of the first vision of Joseph Smith. I think we as members of the Church overlook that sometimes, just how much was revealed in that single moment of the appearance of God the Father and His Son. I used to wonder why relating that event as a missionary was almost always the most powerful and Spirit-filled part of teaching people. It was just how much truth was being restored. We generally focus on the "don't join any churches" aspect but there was so much more than that.

@jdf135, just realized I forgot to say welcome! Welcome to ThirdHour!

I've heard this same story but told a bit differently. He shirt catches on a branch stuck out of the side of the cliff. He yells back up at God, "I got it, thanks anyway."

And just to keep harping on the left for the horrible moral cancer thriving in their midst, have twenty-two thousand likes for the notion that the random target of a random shooting was a terrorist because he lived in Israel: Oh wait - it's up to twenty-five thousand likes now. Careful reading the comments in that link though. It's an interesting mix of reasonable takes, hateful takes, and some of the worst antisemitic horribleness you can find on planet earth. Like, stuff you saw in 1930's nazi propaganda sort of horribleness.

My stake piloted this and I have had a digital recommend for a couple of years. Personally I find it much easier to have everything stored in one place - despite being the "wrong" side of 50. However, having worked on the recommend desk, the paper recommends are generally much easier to scan - don't run out of battery and don't require a signal (and you do need a signal as the recommend has to be live and not a picture). Some countries cant have digital recommends as it is illegal to have that information stored digitally(e.g. Russia). So its a bit "6 of one and half a dozen of the other" - but I figure if everyone gets a preference then it works for me.

Our tech person thought that doing a complete reindexing of the site would fix the problem. It didn't. He's still working on trying to figure out what is going on as well as continuing to do some updates.

For the record, I once had an English teacher who would routinely yell at us any time he saw a paper that contained too many instances of the words "this" or "it". Both were anathema in his book. Although I guess I can see his point. Who wants to spend an hour reading 20 versions of this: The War of 1812 is still talked about today. This is for obvious reasons. It's because it had such a big impact on the world, and this cannot be forgotten. Back in the day, I could take that line of text and turn it into a 3 page essay. My grades usually reflected it.

Don't you mean you'll see if it is a thing? (I'm pretty sure you'll find it is almost always a thing.) PS: Enjoy your trip!

Hi folks, I first saw the search issue about a month ago. @pam is working with our technical folks, but it's taking a lot of time. They'll implement a fix, then Pam tries to recreate the search index, which takes like 2 days. When that doesn't fix things, it's back to the technical team. Hang in there peeps.

Yes, I mentioned that in another thread. Not only is it broken, but it's so broken that even a site-specific google search can't find posts. I had to resort to going to the content of my old account, viewing "activity", filtering by posts, and then finding the page with the time-frame in question (I remembered the post in detail and wanted to link to it). A few times, there were messages at the top of the page about indexing, but they're not there now.

Really? I lived in Colorado at the time, about an hour away from where you are now. Most of us in rural CO had a pretty good idea. Well, they were wrong. It wasn't the right wanting to overthrow the government. It was Obama's rhetoric that he was going to tax (I use the term loosely) all our guns into oblivion. So, we had to stock up before they get too expensive. He said it. We believed him. Thankfully, he didn't really do much on that front. But do you blame us for believing him when he said it? We were told that his 2A agenda wouldn't affect any law-abiding citizen from owning a gun. Our response:"So, you're saying that if we like our guns, we can keep our guns? Why do I not believe you?" I was a gulcher. And I think you got it wrong. We were constantly talking about Obama. I don't really recall many of us talking about Bill and Hillary. Why? They were ancient history. No chance Hillary would get elected. (That was the sentiment). Indeed...Tesla, anyone?

As a comedian, her biggest “crime” was that it wasn’t funny. A good comedian can get political points across while being funny.

W was despised as much as Trump is, but our short memories struggle with that. Bush was too nice a guy to push back (metaphorically) while Trump is so thin skinned that he’ll punch back to everything. I think that’s a big reason why MAGA likes him. Trump fulfills their dark fantasies by being as a nasty as possible to those who disagree with him. It’s a little troubling, actually.

It is not uncommon for a person to wield a great deal of power while posing as a bumbling idiot. We see this in literature with various heroes like Zorro, Batman and the all-powerful Superman. A prime element of an evil character is often someone utilizing various methods of plausible deniability of their involvement. This is not uncommon at all currently as leaders of nations race into war blaming their actions on their enemy justifying those they intend to kill or allow openly to be killed. The Traveler

Got it, private citizens posting things is okay.

Is this Jacob Hansen's version, or some other? Maybe it doesn't matter, because I see the same kinds of questions no matter whose version of "aggregate across multiple prophets" model I encounter. In theory, I think it is a good idea. Questions that I think tend to muddy the waters: 1) How do we determine who is and is not a prophet? Within a given tradition, there is usually consensus, but that also usually leaves some claims to prophethood (canonized scripture) out. We LDS accept Biblical and Book of Mormon figures as prophets, but reject Muhammad's. We accept Brigham Young through Russel M. Nelson, while rejecting Joseph Smith III through Staci Cramm (presumptive). I think it is worth acknowledging that your choice of prophets to include and exclude will impact the conclusions you end up drawing. 2) Once you've decided who to include in your list of prophets, then you need to determine what they said. This gets particularly difficult the further back in history you go. Did Moses really say all those things that are attributed to him? What about the letters of Paul? Even as recently as Joseph Smith, we end up going round in circles trying to determine what Joseph Smith said versus what his contemporaries claim he said. A lot of the time when I see someone like Hansen promoting this model, there seems to be an underlying assumption that we can accurately recall across years and generations and millenia what prophets taught. 3) Then there is the ever present question of interpretation, which, like the previous point, becomes increasingly difficult across time and culture and language. I think a "collective prophetic witness" type of model can be useful in getting at truth, but only if we are also willing to recognize where it will struggle.

How do you see that working with continuing revelation? Joseph Smith brought forth baptisms for the dead and promised “things which never have been revealed from the foundation of the world”. And in a moment of desperation he was also promised knowledge “that has not been revealed since the world was until now”. Joseph Smith also changed the universal understanding of the heaven/hell dichotomy to degrees of glory. A number of saints report they were ready to jump ship over that for the reasons you describe above. You could argue nuance, but that won’t address what Wilford Woodruff did. Previous prophets established that you wanted to be sealed to apostles so you have an unbroken chain to an exalted family. Wilford said your own parents are good enough for such an honor. You could argue that it was merely a practice or policy, but what about what Joseph F. Smith did? Peter taught that Jesus taught the disobedient in the days of Noah. Joseph F. says that’s incorrect, Jesus sent ministers instead.

Remember it’s all volunteer. It’s not a job. People work 65 hours a week-we in the church should be grateful we can find people willing to work their callings at all. Before I was certified I used to volunteer to referee TKD sparring matches. I did so for free. I was absolutely willing to accept criticism, but if anyone tried to give me a “royal butt whipping” I’d take my tie off, leave and go find a beach.

Raising your hand and sustaining fallible humans can be challenging sometimes. It helps if you understand that sustaining people in their calling occasionally means not putting up with their bullcrap if that's what they're shoveling. I learned this lesson once as an executive secretary in a bishopric meeting. The stake representative was chewing out the bishop for not having all his ducks in a row regarding some priesthood advancements. The bishop said something to his clerk, who left the room. Bishop then took out his copy of the handbook and began reading verbatim the section on ward and stake duties and procedures when it came to such things. After he had read the section, the clerk had returned with several records, and the bishop proceeded to assign dates to every single thing the ward was supposed to do. Then he turned to the stake responsibilities and read them off, one at a time, saying things like "the stake has had bro Smith's teacher ordination paperwork since [date]. Have you done step 3 and completed the paperwork?" "the stake was informed about their need to interview bro Jones for advancement to elder on [date]. Has the stake contacted bro Jones to set up that meeting?" The questions went on and on. The stake was found lacking on every single item. After the bishop was done, he asked "ok. So, is there anything the stake is waiting for on our end? If not, I think we can move to the next topic." I've never seen such a royal butt-whipping as I saw the bishop give our stake rep that day. There was love in the air, and there was also absolutely no mistake about who had dropped the ball. I mean, you're not bishop, but if you're filling your calling, you can speak with the same authority. You can say what you will and will not be doing. You can point out how other people are not doing their jobs. And even though it's a skill that's hard to master, you can do such things in love.