My nephew mentioned Mormons at Christmas dinner, not a usual topic of conversation for us. I missed his point but found myself bringing up the church's $100B stash that has hit the news recently. I explained the Mormon practice of imposing mandatory tithing on its members + the F&T offerings + paying for missions (even mentioning EB's current onerous duty of shelling out for three missions all at one time - I know - one child is now an RM, so it's "only" 2 out at once now), + all the other financial obligations and expectations Mormons are called upon by their church to fulfil.

Then I mentioned the gold teeth some poor folks in South America donated as their tithes.

My nephew's first response was "How do poor people have gold teeth?". I responded that the more salient question is what kind of a church would take a member's teeth to satisfy tithing obligations? (And who thinks tithing should be mandatory in the first place?) I described tithing settlement, that occurs at year end (i.e. Christmas time) and how you can end up "owing" the church money, over and above and first and foremost ahead of any of your other financial obligations.

We can get so accustomed to the religious practices with which we are familiar that we forget how truly BIZARRE some of the goings on are, and are easily seen to be by outsiders.

I went on to tell the recent story of the $100B the church is sitting on. It struck me anew, for all the reasons we have expressed, how despicable their practices are in this regard. I just kept repeating, over and over, a-hundred-billion-dollars, a-hundred-billion-dollars...

I looked up references to be sure I had the story right about the gold teeth (that it's fact) and I ran into newspaper and other accounts about how modest are the salaries of church leaders and that it proves how spiritual and self-effacing they are.

I don't think we can ever get out in front of the spin. It seems it can compete with the earth's gravitational force and come out on top.

I agree with you, Nightingale. I learned years ago, that it does no good to try to reason with Mormons, and they aren't interested in facts, in the first place. So, I've tried to keep quiet for the last 15 years, living my life with my own private boundaries, and not having to answer to anyone, or explain to anyone.

Well, this is impossible to do! I'm still surrounded by TBM extended family, and one TBM temple-married daughter and her giant brood of pushy Mormon in-laws. These Mormons push my poor grandchildren into baptism, and visits to the outside of the temple, to have their Christmas pictures taken in front of it, to pay 10% of their little tooth-fairy money, their birthday money, their chore money,

Now, with this 100 billion dollar discovery, at lunch the other day, the Mormons were casting blame on The Salt Lake Tribune, for publishing the story! They will blame everyone but their dictators. Even when we want to be polite, and just ignore all this criminal cult--they keep shoving it in our face.

(I was just wondering how much of that 100 billion was spent on political campaigns. OOPs, we aren't supposed to discuss politics on RFM, so I will stop.) I will bet that a lot of money has been spent on recruiting children as new members, and trying to brainwash people with all that fake advertising, and owning and running their own TV and radio stations and Deseret News, and hiring expensive Madison Avenue advertising professionals, etc.

I will also bet that none of that money went to "God", for any of His life-saving causes or charitable works.

The gold teeth came from dentists doing volunteer work in third world countries. At one time they used gold for fillings. Often the Catholic churh provided this help. Sometimes Protestants. Never Mormons.

What's especially horrifying is that it's becoming clearer that cojcolds used the same fund that tithing goes into to pay for the city Creek center. There is some rather serious breech of irs tax violation, that is going to be investigated by the professionals. But knowing the IRS it is likely going to be years before they decide where the law was broke and how much the penalty should be. Never the less we are finding out that Hinkley lied when he said no sacred funds were used in building that mall.

RadioWest Dec 20, 2019

If the apostles are sitting on multiple boards of directors of businesses owned by the church, then they could be getting multiple salaries that are not reported as their official "income" for being apostles. Their expensive houses show their true income is anything but modest compared to the poor members.

You can see the evidence of this in Utah itself, where you have the expensive looking Temple Square and other church owned centers and apartment buildings for the leaders, while much of the rest of Utah looks rather poor and shabby in comparison.

That 10% has to come from somewhere. It comes from the poor members and it goes to the rich elites of the church with high-paying jobs.

GAs have not been appointed, as a matter of policy, to boards of directors for forty years or so. Their houses, while not slum material by any means, are not multi-million dollar mansions.

For those that live in Eagle Gate Apartments, across from Brigham's former residence, it's a nice convenient location, but it is a well maintained 80 year old apartment building. Nothing to write home about.

GAs do ok. They are well into upper middle class range. They are not in the "multi-million dollar mansion" range, unless they made it before becoming a GA. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

If you don't lie and declare yourself a partial-tithe payer, it will duly be noted. Depending on the bishop, he may request you to make a reimbursement for unpaid tithing the following year. This was conveyed to me when I paid very little when trying to make ends meet. I was shamed to believe that I had cheated the Lord for not having faith to pay LDS Corp instead of my bills.

My Mom was told to that she needed to get her finances in order if she wanted to go to the House of Handshakes to see her son, Messy, get endowed. She DARED to second guess the bishop and went to see the little dictator, the stake president. He backed up the bishop. So my Mom spent 3-4 years trying to pay back "owed tithing". A new bishop questioned why my Mom was paying back more tithing than what he thought she should be. He told her to stop over-paying and start saving more money to support a future missionary. So it depends all on church leaders. They will say that when in doubt, pay up!!!

Some bishops request the previous tithing settlements from the ward clerk (about 5 year's worth) and spread them out on the desk to study the trend. Any major deviations cause them to question whether a member is cheating on his/her tithing.

Some bishops were known to request members to haul in their tax returns. Again, it all depends on church leaders.

A word of caution. I think that "gold teeth" story was told by a GA, in GC if I recall correctly. It may not be true. It wouldn't be the first faith-promoting rumor that was either phony or greatly exaggerated.

It was a dozen or so years before any version of the First Vision was written down, and another fifty years before it became the founding myth of Mormonism.

I think it was three years before anyone described the seagulls and crickets story as a miracle. Like many stories, it apparently got better with time.

Skepticism can be a good thing, unless it's not because a person using it turns out to wrong on a major count when they could have been right.

James Faust told the story about the donated extracted gold fillings, as Faust held the fillings that he had purchased after their extraction with the intent of using them as a prop ......which Faust did, holding them in his hand as a prop for the FP story that he was telling.


The fillings came from a south American member, he had them pulled to donate them, and they were donated to the funding for the construction of Sao Paulo temple.

The story was finally pulled from LDS Inc PR sites as LDS Inc realized how embarrassing that it really was, with a little help from people who retooled some videos to make the point.

The new revelation that LDS Inc was sitting on a multi Billion dollar fund just makes the story that much better as in that much WORSE !!!

A link to church news 5-9-1998, real story not an ex-mo myth.


https://www.thechurchnews.com/archives/1998-05-09/be-loyal-worthy-to-enter-temple-members-urged-127595

I didnt say the story wasn't real. I question whether the event is real, or greatly exaggerated. All it would take for this story to be "true" is for one or two people to have donated fillings.

And maybe it happened. Fillings come loose. Teeth fall out. Maybe morticians retrieve substantial gold fillings from the deceased at family request.

But taking perfectly good fillings out of functioning teeth of a living person, which is the mental image this story evokes - I strongly suspect that did not happen.

I'm just suggesting some skepticism to go along with the outrage over getting poor people to remove their fillings.

Yes, that's what I was concerned about when I told my family that story. I can't be sure it's fact. It sounds completely off the wall, even for a tithe-hungry religious organization.

When I look it up online I get some reddit posts. I'm looking for impartial evidence before I can accept the story as accurate. That's why I hesitated to tell my nephew but then went ahead and did anyway. I was startled by his question about how poor people have gold teeth when I was expecting the focus to be on a church that would accept such in lieu of cash for tithes, which in other churches are more on a voluntary basis and do not include human body parts.

It sounds too gruesome to be true and too extreme. I agree that, as told, it sounds like a mass outpouring of gold from ripped out teeth. Surely the church wouldn't actually expect that of people. Or encourage it.

Would they?

I do remember the bishop in the ward I attended telling me that tithing comes first, ahead of household expenses and everything else. I said I must first of all meet my obligations to my household and he said no. Fortunately for me, I didn't listen to him. I did not, ever, actually drink all the Kool-Aid.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I didnt say the story wasn't real. I question
> whether the event is real, or greatly exaggerated.
> All it would take for this story to be "true" is
> for one or two people to have donated fillings.


Yah !!! who can believe shit like that !!!

next thing some one will be claiming that the MORmON profit wanted to "marry" some members wife !!! because MORmON Jesus said so!! ......and the member and his wife went along with it !!!!

I never implied that the church demanded or pulled members into the dentist's chair to remove their teeth. Rather the leaders go to poverty stricken areas (do they not travel to South America?) and tell members that they need to sacrifice for the lord and his church. If I read the story correctly, a group of members rounded up their gold fillings and mailed them to the church. Faust held up a jar of a dozen fillings. It's very obvious that he was proud to be in possession of said gold dental work.

Obviously, the word got out that South American members had mailed their teeth directly to church HQ. [Messy suggests that this was such a big joke that word of it quickly spread throughout the church office building. So I think they made it into faith promoting story].

Sadly, had stake president shown up at my parent's property with Hinkley in the 1990s, then they would have given him anything he wanted. The Hinkster was a rock star to my parents and they would have given the church everything it wanted in the name of sacrifice. A lot of people believed the church was poor and needed all the help it could get. The church has milked the scam for decades.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/2020 12:19AM by messygoop.

A BYU-I graduate mentioned on Reddit recently that upon recent of the standard, "Hey, faithful alumnus, please donate...", he wrote back that he had proof, via the WaPo story, that they didn't need the money, so would they please take him off the mailing list...