Due to instantaneous data sharing not censored by the church.

Recent news coverage of the Essays point out these main issues:
1. Forty wives some as young as 14. Emma didn’t know about many and was distressed about those she did know.
2. Church disavowed polygamy under pressure, not from God, but the US government.
3. Current members perceptions are rocked about their all but deified prophet.
4. Three times an Angel with a sword forced him to take an extra wife. (Why not forty times?)
5. Fanny Alger identified. (Hey TBM. You really don’t want to open that door!)
6. Celestial polygamy a church doctrine and expected practice in heaven disturbing to LDS women.
7. Helen Mar identified. (Again TBM. You really don’t want to open that door either!)

Thanks to the internet this will spread faster than wildfire. Even missionaries will hear the rumors of the Essays and will go get the info that they have been faithfully denying in public only to learn that anti-mormon lies were truths withheld to protect testimony.

Untold tens of thousands will be drawn to read the Essays on polygamy and will then read all the other essays. They will blog, tweet, text, email, Facebook, debate do research to show one another who has more info, who is right on the facts, more research, more questions, sharing and sharing and sharing outside the censorship influences of the LDS church. Then will come the inevitable conclusions for those that are honest with what they learn.

One click for a group text, one click to share link out to 30 friends, one click to post to a readership of a hundred, or a thousand. It is a tidal wave of info that now exonerates every supposed anti-mormon that ever lived and damns the men behind the Institution that are shown now as righteous deceivers at best, outright thieves and liars at worst.

There may not be mass disaffection in the immediate future but what there will be is ample justification for non-belief that can no longer be dismissed.

Imagine the reply’s that I and others like me will give to family and friends still members, similar to what I would give to my Stake President FIL.

“The difference between you and I father is that I refuse to believe that any god would send an Angel to kill me if I did not destroy the relationship with the wife of my youth, your daughter, from the instant I capitulated to life rather than dying on principle! My religion will have become the enforcer and I a liar, forever giving up the most precious thing I supposed fought for in the pre-existence. That being my hard fought agency to love one wife forever.”

And for that missionary out there that learns of the essays and goes to his MP and is honest about his now justified non-belief due to the essays, will the MP send him home? Will the SP guilt and berate the missionary and shame them for not praying, lack of faith, sinning? Will the parents then be shamed by such a missionary or proud if sent home early as a direct result of the Essays?

“I am a Mormon” just got its ass kicked. Now when a non-mormon thinks Mormonism they will think “An angel with a sword? A rock in a hat? Polygamy in heaven?” I think not! And no one can call it anti-mormon.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/11/11/mormon-leaders-admit-church-founder-joseph-smith-practiced-polygamy/?intcmp=latestnews
http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/11/living/mormon-founder-polygamy/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/it%E2%80%99s-official-mormon-founder-had-up-to-40-wives/ar-AA7wKYC

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/us/its-official-mormon-founder-had-up-to-40-wives.html?_r=0

Excellent post!

fantastic post, thank you!

Enjoyed the post.

Spot On!!!

I read the ny times article.

Bushman said, "The essays held nothing back, said Richard L. Bushman, emeritus professor of history at Columbia University and author of the book “Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.”
Dr. Bushman said of church leaders: “Somewhere along the line they decided they were just going to tell the whole story, not to be defensive, not to try to hide anything. And there’s no single fact that’s more unsettling than Joseph Smith’s marriage to other men’s wives.
“It’s a recognition of maturity,” said Dr. Bushman, who is a Mormon. “There are lots of church leaders who say: ‘We can take anything, just let us know how it really happened. We’re a church that is secure.’ ”


The essays held back nothing?
...they were just going to tell the whole story?
...Not try to hide anything?
...not to be defensive?
....It's a recognition of maturity?
....Just let us know how it really happened?


huh?

The essays held back a lot of truth in the form of details.

What is the purpose of the essays major omissions if not to continue to defend and hide their dark and deceptive history?

There is no maturity in the content and implementation of the deceptive essays.

The members have been doubly deceived with these essays.

If I were a member I would be even more upset when I discover that I was deceived about history previously and deceived again now in the form of these incredibly deceptive essays.

All the SLC leaders and apolgoists can do is lie.
That's obviously all their good for.
They revamped an original all-out lie by watering it down into a semi-lie.

How can they possibly think that will redeem them?

They are liars to their core through and through.
How can I expect anything different from liars.

joan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> “It’s a recognition of maturity,” said Dr.
> Bushman, who is a Mormon. “There are lots of
> church leaders who say: ‘We can take anything,
> just let us know how it really happened. We’re a
> church that is secure.’ ”

For an organization which has been run by mostly by octogenarians who have suppressed this information for much more than a century the phrase “It’s a recognition of maturity” makes me think that most of these old leaders were suffering from a return to infancy.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1297637

I guess Monson is a leader who could show maturity while all of his predecessors couldn't

That's interesting.


In this way Bushman doesn't seem to realize that this 'maturity' is still void of real Truth.

If it's considered mature to come forward and tell half-truths, semi-deceptions and omit complete chunks of actual truths then they're still in the same mess they were over a hundred years ago.

These guys are so completely ensconsed in lies and deception that they think it's mature to finally come forward and disclose information that isn't full truth.

Sadly for Bushman the word maturity still doesn't have anything to do with truth.

Notice Bushman couldn't use the word Wise, or Truth, but had to opt for a weird word that still doesn't fit. Bushman has confused the word 'maturity' for 'desperation'.
What Bushman should have said is “It’s a recognition of desperation.”
That's the only word that fits accurately.

yep, if I were a mormon reading the essays I'd be double upset being deceived twice; past and present.

joan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Notice Bushman couldn't use the word Wise, or
> Truth, but had to opt for a weird word that still
> doesn't fit. Bushman has confused the word
> 'maturity' for 'desperation'.
> What Bushman should have said is “It’s a
> recognition of desperation.”
> That's the only word that fits accurately.

Ah yes. The euphemistic Mormon doublespeak.

There is a "foundation" named more good.

http://blog.moregoodfoundation.org/

Double plus good.

> yep, if I were a mormon reading the essays I'd be
> double upset being deceived twice; past and
> present.

I'd be furious and I would not have gone on a mission.

The More Good Foundation didn't come up with the name itself; they took it directly from JS. "More good" was JS' interpretation of the name "Mormon."

Joan: exactly! The essays are more notable for what they don't mention than what they do. Bushman is merely repeating the party line: here you go, it's all in the open, so now we move on. Of course as a historian he knows that's far from true; so he's made his decision.

It's criminal to send these kiddies out on missions these days without informing them of the essays and suggesting they read them all, let alone REQUIRING them to. But do you think they'll study them in the MTC? Yeah, right.

They are on the church web site so they are fair game. Any responsible parent would print them out and put them in a "difficult issues" folder for their kids. So not fair to let them go out there with their heads in the sand and get hit with it by any number of likes of people who know the truth--exmos, NOMs, or nevermos.

Of course, the best thing would be if you could somehow sneak in the critiques of the essays on MormonThink. Tell the kids that this is an example of what people might throw at them, so they should know how to answer them. You're just preparing them, right?

I think the church has pulled the rug from under anointedone, as far as any further court action is concerned.
Everything that would have come up in any court case is already public knowledge.
The church has outmanoeuvred, or so it seems.

The essays do nothing to address the issue that Mormonism is simply a corporation masquerading as a church. The UK may or may not get their charity service to go after them, but the vulnerability will always be there, because that's all they are: a corporation that plows all profits into itself.

kingcyrus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think the church has pulled the rug from under
> anointedone, as far as any further court action is
> concerned.
> Everything that would have come up in any court
> case is already public knowledge.
> The church has outmanoeuvred, or so it seems.

But the real question is what will be the cost of this maneuvering?

I think the price might be very, very high.

BRILLIANT!!!

AmIDarkNow? said:
“The difference between you and I father is that I refuse to believe that any god would send an Angel to kill me if I did not destroy the relationship with the wife of my youth, your daughter, from the instant I capitulated to life rather than dying on principle! My religion will have become the enforcer and I a liar, forever giving up the most precious thing I supposed fought for in the pre-existence. That being my hard fought agency to love one wife forever.”

"And no one can call it anti-Mormon."

Exactly. So the conversation about the essays with your favorite TBM can now include "makes you wonder what else the anti-Mormons were right about all along, doesn't it?"

Well folks I thank the gods of what be and what are that I awoke before the crap took hold.

Here's to all my slumbering kinfolk, be they Shumways, Richardsons or all us crazy kinfolk of Horny Joe...

I love you all and I mean it.

And not an unconditional love, mind you.