I think I know what Mike is doing. And before I say this I am fully aware that I could be wrong.

If any of you watched the movie a long time ago called “300” about the war between the Spartans and the Persians, you will remember the last battle where the hero only wounds the Persian king enough to make him bleed. If I remember correctly he hit him on the face and he had a very small wound, yet he bled. And it was in him bleeding that it broke the spell over all of his followers that believed he was an in mortal God. Once they awoke the King lost power.

I think Mike is desecrating the temple to prove that there is no priesthood, there are no angels protecting the temple, and there is no God. He is making the temple bleed to break the trance over the followers.

When I was growing up in the 80s going to seminary, we were told countless times, more times than I can even remember about how angels stand as sentinels around the temple and that no unclean thing can go in and that Satan is absolutely barred from anything inside the temple. That was the entire selling point of the temple, that there was one place on earth you could go and have perfect peace without Satan influencing your thoughts for your immediate surroundings. That implied that Jesus Christ was real and had real power and he was really tangibly protecting his house and by extension you in it. This is why people for almost 2 centuries have been paying the Mormon church for temple recommends. It is to be able to go to God’s house and be safe from “Satan”. Remember that during the temple ceremony, Elohim cast Satan out and therefore he is not supposed to be able to get into the temple and desecrate it.

So if we do the math, if Satan IS able to enter the temple after all and desecrate it, then there is no Jesus Christ, he has no power at all, the priesthood is powerless, there are no angels protecting you or your family and nobody has any sort of “seer” capabilities and therefore the Persian king (Joseph Smith and current leaders) is bleeding and now the followers who have spent their lives and their time, and their talents, and their children, can awake and see that it truly is a fraud... . because the King is but a man after all.

I'm not sure NNN thought it through that far. But while wounding the Mormon Xerxes may not have been his intent, it is certainly one of his achievements.

I know for me that when I was a teenager I was buying everything they were selling me. I literally thought that there were invisible angels guarding the temple and that people like Mike Norton could never ever enter and certainly never fIlm porn. I genuinely thought Jesus Christ was a real man who had real power and had given the power to men here and the temple was a safe place. So for me personally, if somebody could get in there and film adult entertainment, my testimony would have exploded. Literally. I would have been forced to see that everything I had ever been taught was a lie and I could not deny it because what had just happened was so horrific to me. And not only would it have woken me up to the church, it certainly would have woken me up to my family dynamic and I would’ve left my home long before I did.

My experience was similar. I did not think unholy people couldn't enter the temple, but I was sure they would be damned and I was terrified of my own (paltry) sins when doing baptisms for the dead.

The discrediting of the church's claims to authority are critically important over the longer term. Kimball's involvement with Hinckley exercised a corrosive effect over a lot of people's testimonies, and this is the same. There's not much left to justify the old men's powers and leadership.

Norton (and a lot of others) are effectively little children pointing and giggling at the naked emperor.

What was the corrosive affect between Kimball and Hinckley?

Fascinating!

Oops.

I meant Kimball and Mark Hoffman: Kimball's (and Hinckley's) implicit acceptance of Hoffman and his forgeries as genuine. That showed both that the leaders thought JS might well have claimed to have interacted with a holy newt and that the current prophet had no powers of discernment.

Oh, I see, you mean Mark Hofmann, the "Mormon Bomber" who went to school with my sister. Mark's sister also sat behind me in senior study hall.

Here are three good volumes on the horror story:

Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders; Linda Sillitoe and Allen D. Roberts

https://www.amazon.com/Salamander-Sillitoe-forensic-analysis-Throckmorton/dp/B000WAR448

The Mormon Murders by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

https://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Murders-Story-Forgery-Deceit/dp/1555840647/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=NA35HW0NQ19F01D4BXAP

A Gathering of the Saints by Robert Lindsey

https://www.amazon.com/Gathering-Saints-Story-Murder-Deceit/dp/0671651129/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=NA35HW0NQ19F01D4BXAP

Cabdriver Confession: I also have a copy of the Turley "church sanctioned" work, "Victims" which paints the church as "innocent dupes" even though Hinckley was buying up as many Hofmann "creations" as he could (until Markie's house of cards collapsed and a bomb he intended to use on someone else exploded prematurely in his own car and landed him in the hospital). Honest, I picked it up cheap...

Yep.

I've read the three "gentile" accounts, don't feel impelled to read Turley.

Cabbie!

You forgot to mention Jerald and Sandra Tanner's "Tracking the White Salamander".

They had been shown the Salamander Letter early on and knew it was fake.

https://www.amazon.com/Tracking-White-Salamander-Hofmann-Documents/dp/B0006EQTB4



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2019 09:22PM by auntsukey.

I honestly hadn't heard of it. Sandra Tanner is a friend of mine, and we've talked about a lot of subjects, but never Mark Hofmann.

Thank you.

I am aware that Jerald suspected he was a fraud from the beginning.

http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/trackingcontents.htm

The book is online but can also be purchased for $10.00. Such a deal!

I'll spring for a copy the next time I'm in Sandra's bookstore. There was another real jewel for me in that link, one to a piece by the late Harold Schindler, an old family friend. Hal, along with my grandfather and some others, co-founded the Utah Westerners, a history group that now includes Will Bagley.

Harold was a faithful Mormon until the end of his life, but he detested anything that wasn't authentic history. I have some other anecdotes as well I'm saving for my book, although that may be a while.

I completely bought it as well. Seminary in the 70s and 80s, and I heard and believed all of it.


As an aside:
Are you just exaggerating, or did Mike actually shoot porn in the temple?

Yeah. I'd like to know this too. I haven't heard anything about that.

“We will go down, Michael.”

No one really knows at present. He's insinuating that he sold temple recommends to a porn film company and gave them hints for how to access the temple, temple diagrams, etc.

R/exmo is currently in an uproar over it. Given that a video or any other real evidence is lacking, I'm going to give it a big shrug for now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2019 01:07AM by summer.

I don't always agree nor approve of his antics, but I am glad that he has presented accurate info about temple rituals. The the lies created by the God Makers kept some members active before realizing the church was not true.

When you're taught from a very young age that satan is working against you, angels are watching over you, and the holy ghost will guide you, it's no wonder church members loose their ability to think rationally when it comes to their religion.

Why does Mike do it?

I think Sir Edmund Hillary had the answer.

That is the only good I could think of that would come out of this hi-jink. Maybe/hopefully it could dispel the aura of invincibility and power of discernment of the temple. But alas, I think it will do more harm than good.

Unfortunately, I think this will do more harm than good, fueling the persecution complex TBM's have. That, and making the exmormon community evil to Mormons.

Well, the exmormon community is already, and always will be, evil to Mormons.

Regarding the persecution complex, surely that is a generational matter. The older Mormons will, as you suggest, take NNN's attacks as vindication of the old story about persecution. The younger generations, though, are already on the verge of leaving; they don't have a deep fear of, and respect for, Mormon traditions. I think exposing the temple ceremony will probably tip the balance a little farther towards defection for a lot of them.

The "snowflakes," and I use that term with respect, are where the church will fall apart. I like the fact that they can see a bit of what happens in the temple.

I agree. It's a stupid stunt. He sure seems driven to do things that go too far. I guess he won't stop until he's really forced to.

I have no use for the Mormons, but can't desecrating ANY kind of religious site be considered a "hate crime?"

Getting into dangerous territory, there.

It will make ex mos seem as hateful as apologists say we are. I think this is way out of line.

Okay, I'm late to this party. Who is Mike and what is he doing?

olderelder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Okay, I'm late to this party. Who is Mike and what
> is he doing?

In order to obstruct replies which might very well go against the rules and practices of RfM:

Mike is NewNameNoah. (This is a Googleable name.)

He produces videos of the Mormon church, and on Mormon-related subjects, they wish had not been produced.

End of the RfM-approved story (as I understand the rules of this board).



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2019 09:42PM by Tevai.

Xerxes was hot.

So was brunette Eve. Or was blonde Eve hotter? I'll go with brunette Eve being the hottest, but it's been a long time since I've seen either...and do the latest temple movie remakes have multiple versions like they had in the 90's?

Very interesting take on this. There is a lot of chatter on another forum about whether this is a good or bad thing...I haven't made up my mind, but this is a compelling argument that it ultimately makes the point that the temple is not guarded by angels.

Whether TBMs allow this to enter in their minds or not, I can't say. Experience is that by and large they won't even acknowledge the possibility that it isn't protected and defer to the evils that men do. But I like the idea.

Mike is acting out his issues from his childhood.. his parents divorced when he was 10 and his life was turned upside down.. dad went to jail. He leaves the church right when he was himself experiencing difficulties in his personal / professional life.. to which he has now turned his animus toward the faith of his father that left.

I took it as a sign that not being slayed by angels with a flaming sword on entering the temple the first time for my endowments meant that my sins had been washed away. What it really meant apparently was that my brain had been washed sufficiently.

Does the end justify the means? Seems to be what this all boils down to. The most complicated of age old questions.

I don't have the answer for anyone else, but I am so glad that the ridiculous, stolen-from-the-Masons ceremony is out there for all to see. Sacred but not secret? Ha. Being secret was the only thing it had going for it.

Mormonism can't stand the light of day. Mike opened the windows. Let the chips fall where they may.

Just my personal opinion, but Mike Norton has always seemed more impulsive than strategic to me.

I don't see any basis to hypothesize about some great master plan or goal.

That's my view as well. His impulsive actions may be objectively helpful, but I doubt he had any idea where things would go when he started.

At the 2008 ex-Mormon conference in SLC he was talking about wanting to film gay porn in one of sealing rooms. It seemed to be a new thought at that point, but he was animated about it, so I am not surprised it stayed on his mind.