Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is March 19, 2021 and we are in the middle of kind of a little bit of a Mark Hoffman week or two. We have been wanting to explore a bit the story of Mark Hoffman, primarily in celebration of or on the tales of the amazing Netflix documentary Murder among the Mormons by, by Mormons Jared Hess and Tyler Meesum.

John Dehlin [00:00:32] And we've had Sandra Tanner on Sandra Tanner on to talk extensively about her experiences knowing Mark Hoffman, her and her husband Gerald and all of their experiences. It was one of my favorite episodes of all time on Mormon Stories podcast.

John Dehlin [00:00:47] And in a couple days we're going to be having Jared and Tyler on Jared Hess and Tyler Meesum, the filmmakers, to talk about the film itself. But I could think of no one better or few people as good as the John Hamer to bring him back onto Mormon stories and to kind of do an analysis. And the analysis that John and I thought would be really interesting to do would be to focus on kind of two things in the Mark Hoffman story, basically. Number one, the, the documents, the key forgeries that he made, to talk about their background, maybe why they're interesting and kind of a little bit about their stories and their background.

John Dehlin [00:01:31] And then also to kind of focus on the question of whether or not the LDS church, the Mormon church leaders were involved in any attempts at cover up or deception or shenanigans in this whole process. Because one of the things that came out of the Hoffman documentary or one of the big questions that comes out of it was, you know, was there intentional deception or an intentional effort on, on the part of Mormon Church leaders to purchase documents, to hide documents, to keep troubling information from the membership. And I don't think the documentary kind of left us with a clear sense of whether that happened or not.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] And so John Hamer is definitely one of our favorite, if not our most favorite guests to have on Mormon stories. So, John Hamer, we're so glad to have you back. Thanks for joining us.

John Hamer [00:02:25] Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it was a really riveting documentary and it really brought back, I don't know, that whole story which was so impacted everybody in the Mormon historians community. I mean, for me at the time, I didn't know anything about this. I was a kid in the 80s, early 80s, but subsequently becoming a part of the Mormon historians community. I know like a lot of almost all the people in the documentary, certainly good friends with Brent Metcalfe, and also, you know, no Sandra Tanner and other people that are in, you know, that are interviewed. And so it kind of brought back, anyway, also all of the. The kind of crazy number of forgeries that Hoffman did actually, you know, introduce into the history community. And that really, you know, affected things at the time. So.

John Dehlin [00:03:20] Yeah, yeah. And I know that one of the things that was interesting about you, you were a bit precocious, and I know that you were turned on to Mormon history a lot earlier and even to the Church of Truth Claims a lot earlier than a lot of us were who were your age. Right.

John Hamer [00:03:37] Yeah. So this would have been. So the foraging starts in the late 70s, and so that I would only been eight at that point. So I wasn't that precocious. But. And in fact, actually it wasn't. I wasn't. I didn't grow up in Utah, so I grew up, for the most part in Minnesota, you know, so Mission field Mormon. And so I really had no access at all to, you know, what was going on in Mormondom other than what, you know, you get out of the church news or out of your manuals and things like that. And so, yeah, by the time.

John Hamer [00:04:09] By the time I was 16, which is a little bit, you know, like right after Hoffman had been caught and everything like that, that would be when I was sort of doing my own kind of study and deciding, well, there's no way that the Book of Abraham facsimiles are what they say they are, because, in other words, I didn't have access to any anti Mormon or independent documents. I was just kind of doing scripture study and deciding that the historicity there couldn't be a true claim, which I

John Dehlin [00:04:35] think does qualify as precocious, but we won't hammer that point too much. So, John, for those who. If it's okay, for those who. Let's just assume there's some people joining us for the first time that don't know anything about Hoffman, that haven't seen the documentary. Let's just say let's do Mark Hoffman backstory in two minutes. Is that all right?

Mark Hofmann's Story in Brief

John Hamer [00:04:52] Sure. Yeah. So.

John Dehlin [00:04:53] Or however long you want to take.

John Hamer [00:04:55] Yeah, we don't have to go too long. I mean, so Mark Hoffman grows up as a, you know, in a strict Mormon household. He's. He's precocious in different ways than my precociousness. I'm not gonna. He. But he definitely has, for example, skills in terms of being able to fabricate stuff. So he, for example, finds out he's like a collector and he has like coins that he's able to by making, by changing them a certain way, he's able to, you know, essentially forge it as if it were a much more rare coin and get that kind of thing authenticated. He, he's a, himself a doubter and he probably has deconstructed Mormonism for himself by the time he goes on a Mormon mission.

John Hamer [00:05:42] And, and what clearly kind of emerges is he has a, a kind of a. He gets a lot of satisfaction out of fooling people and duping people. And so he goes into, ultimately goes into a business of making what started out as like petty forgeries where he, where you're adding little signatures or something to make something that maybe is an existing document more valuable to other kinds of more simple forgeries. And then it escalates into ones that are very, very valuable outside of what we're going to talk about today. He's actually doing historical documents in American history generally, not just Mormon history. And so he attempted to forge, or he was in the process of forging a document called Oath of the Freedmen who, which he'd forged it, he was trying to get it sold which would have been the first printed document in American history.

John Hamer [00:06:37] And it was at the time going to be sold for a million and a half or something like that. So it was just a giant forgery. So he, he graduated from the little ones all the way up to the big ones. Although he was continuously doing little scams throughout his career.

John Dehlin [00:06:50] So yeah, okay, so, so we know that he goes on his mission to the uk. He at that time he's already starting to buy up rare, rare books and documents. We know that he's lost his faith by his mission in the UK which is somewhere in the mid-70s. Right?

John Hamer [00:07:08] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:07:09] And then he comes home from his mission and so here we've got this intelligent, precocious, already fraudulent, you know, non believing but fully active and looking the part Mormon.

John Hamer [00:07:24] Right.

John Dehlin [00:07:26] Letting loose, figuring out what to do with his life in the mid-70s. And we've already had Gerald and we've had Sandra Tanner on. We had her tell the story of how she and Gerald started in the 60s, starting to talk about the problems with the church's LDS Church's truth claims. Like the first vision, Joseph Smith's first vision story that changes over time that the church tried to hide the very first version cause it didn't sync with the later version that became kind of canonized. The Tanner start studying the book of Abraham that you mentioned and realizing that it wasn't a translation and this Wesley Walters character, are you familiar with that name?

John Hamer [00:08:09] I'm not.

John Dehlin [00:08:10] He was the event. He was the Christian minister that was doing a lot of this historical research in the late 60s that Sandra and Gerald collaborated with. So I guess Sandra Tanner kind of set the tone that there was enough hubbub in the newspapers and in dialogue and in other sources that Mark Hoffman.

John Hamer [00:08:29] Well, for one thing, for one thing, there was dialogue now, right?

John Dehlin [00:08:32] Yeah.

John Hamer [00:08:33] So one of the things that had happened in the 1960s and the 1970s is in fact the emergence of a Mormon historian's community. Before this, there had been a couple historians, you know, Fawn Brody, Juanita Brooks, you know, there'd just been a handful of precursors to what became known as a movement, known as the New Mormon History. But what really happened was after World War II, people in the United States in great numbers went to, to college, the GI Bill and all that kind of thing. And so for the very first time, large numbers of Mormons were college educated, including becoming trained historians. And so suddenly the church's backstory, which had just been vernacularly known and told as kind of a faith claim style stories of the past, now they were actually being subjected to the actual academic discipline of history and so actual kind of scholarly scrutiny.

John Hamer [00:09:30] And so that had already been the backdrop, you know, so things like Dialogue got founded as a result of that. You know, in other words, a forum, an open forum, independent forum of thought where Mormons could talk about these identity issues and scholarship and this kind of thing. The Mormon History association was founded, the Mormon History association journal. Same thing is happening in the RLDS sphere where the John Whitmer Historical association is founded, and early journals like Courage. And so in other words, this is all kind of new and there's now a backdrop of this community.

John Hamer [00:10:02] Both, like you say, documents are emerging, people are finding out about all of these problems. And this is the backdrop that's been going on for 20 years or so when Hoffman kind of comes on the scene.

John Dehlin [00:10:13] And just to kind of put a fine point on it, Hoffman knew about all this stuff and knew that the church from his point of view, was, was not being honest about its history, was trying to cover up the history, was trying to excommunicate scholars that talked openly about the history. And basically he knew that kind of the version that he had been taught about Joseph Smith and the church's founding was not true. And I get the sense, at least from the people I've talked to, that he was probably annoyed that there was fraud being perpetrated on behalf of the Church and on behalf of Joseph Smith. Do you think that's fair to say?

John Hamer [00:10:48] Sure. So I would say that what happened is that all of this academic response, all of this information became available. And so the church leaders and the LDS Church and the RLDS Church had to come to terms with that. What were they going to do? What was going to be their response to scholarship? And in the RLDS Church, ultimately, their response was, well, that's what the scholars are telling us. We believe in truth wherever it is. We have to reevaluate what our story is now that we understand, now that we actually have had an academic approach to it. And so now we have to come to terms with that.

John Hamer [00:11:22] But the response on the LDS side has always been to try to double down on the original, now discredited stories and claims, because now that we have the academic information that disproves those sort of things and impossible, maybe limit access to holdings, archives, and maybe not share even more embarrassing documents that the Church already had. So, as you say, Hoffman is very aware of that as a general policy and attitude from LDS Church leaders. And his, his goal ultimately is that he wants, that he exploits that because he produces documents that are very damaging. And so then the church leaders want to acquire them so that they don't damage the church. And that obviously creates a market value that he exploits.

John Dehlin [00:12:12] Beautiful. Okay, so where. So why don't you go ahead and introduce us to your presentation. The first, the timeline, and then we're going to talk about the forgeries themselves and then the Church's engagement with the forgeries. Right?

John Hamer [00:12:27] Sure. Yeah, yeah, we'll go through a couple of them one by one. All right, so if you want to bring that up.

John Dehlin [00:12:33] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Okay.

John Hamer [00:12:35] Okay, here we go. So, yeah, I put together a little bit. This is quite, quite a selected timeline because actually Hoffman has lots and lots and lots of forgeries, and then he also has lots of forgeries that are not Mormon history related documents. So I'm only picking up here important or the most relevant, I think, in my opinion anyway, of his documents that he forged that are within the Mormon history community. And so I kind of have created a timeline here from when he gets started. The first document that he's known to have forged in the Mormon history community, the second Anointing Blessing, which we'll talk about. And then taking that all the way up from the late 70s to the mid-80s when he starts blowing people up and that ends his career as a forger with that Right.

John Dehlin [00:13:20] Okay.

John Hamer [00:13:21] Put this timeline together and what we'll do is as we look at each one of these documents that I've listed off here in turn, then we'll go back to the timeline and just see where we're at.

John Dehlin [00:13:30] Perfect.

The First Forgery: Second Anointing Blessing

John Hamer [00:13:31] Okay, so we want to start then. Let me see if I can fancies. Yeah, we want to start then with that first document he's known to have forged. It's a transcript of a second anointing blessing or purportedly or supposedly. And so tell us a bit of

John Dehlin [00:13:51] the background in that.

John Hamer [00:13:52] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so you've had Sandra Tanner on, and so she will have mentioned to you that. Or she did mention, because I watched it. So anyway, she mentioned to you that. That Hoffman had come in and she didn't know it was Hoffman or anything or who Hoffman even was, but that he had shown a copy of this forgery to them and he circulated it to all kinds of people in the Mormon historians community and he was hoping that they would publicize it. She said, you know, very clearly that they didn't publicize it because, you know, as interesting as it might be, she didn't know who he was.

John Hamer [00:14:24] There was no provenance. So therefore she, you know, they just put it in their files and they didn't do anything with it. Nevertheless, he was circulating it and so on. So what was this thing? So supposedly this is. He said it was from 1912 or 1920, depending on who he was telling people. And it's a description of the secret second anointing ritual. And that's a ritual that's performed for elite Mormons who are having their calling and eligible and made sure we'll talk more about it. Anyway, this document, as he produced it, it had a stamp from the Salt Lake Temple and that stamped on it.

John Hamer [00:14:56] And then with a note also on this thing, destroy this copy. So it's obviously a secret document that you're not supposed to have kept but somehow got kept. Right. So what's the basis for it? So the forgery here describes the second anointing ritual as it was actually known from the Nauvoo era descriptions. So this is something that occurred in Joseph Smith's day and at the time anyway, especially there was no modern description of the ritual was available.

John Hamer [00:15:23] And so, and in fact, actually because it's so secret, people, LDS leaders don't even want you to know that they're doing this anymore still. And you've talked about to Hans Mattson and people about this. And so this has become a lot more known More recently. But at the time it was, you know, anyway, kept very closely secret. And so there was a lot of

John Dehlin [00:15:45] potential just for listeners who haven't checked that out. It's basically this ordinance where you're kind of an elite, you're designated as an elite Mormon. It's usually people from kind of the dynastic blue blood Mormon families, super wealthy or super prestigious or powerful Mormons, they're kind of called in and said, meet at the temple at a secret time. Don't tell anybody. You show up, there's an apostle there which is kind of like meeting a Supreme Court justice or, you know, a president of the United States, you know, really prestigious top leaders of the church. And, and they basically anoint you wash your feet the same with your spouse and they basically bless you and tell you that you are guaranteed exaltation, which means you're guaranteed to, you're going to be a God.

John Dehlin [00:16:34] You're going to be a God someday. And your spouse. And as I understand it, there's even a suggestion that your children unto the third generation, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren, are all going to sort of be able to ascend with you into exaltation. It's a way to sort of take away any fear, anxiety that your kids aren't going to make it with you. And I, that's, that's what I've heard. But I can't.

John Hamer [00:16:58] Well, if only my great grandfather had been more elite, I'd be made, have it made. But yeah, so, but yeah, so that's like you say, it's. And it's not something that they didn't want to tell. And like you say, it's only, I think according to whatever the records that I've read, only a few thousand people have ever had this happen from 1844 to the present. So it's kept, you know, anyway, very, very tight.

John Dehlin [00:17:19] But if you go to the Mormon Stories podcast website, type in Tom Phillips. He tells his whole story of receiving the second anointing himself. And also Hansa Brigitte Matson on Mormon Stories tell their story. So we've had at least two people on Mormon Stories podcast tell the full story of their second anointing. And it makes people mad because they feel like it's this elite ritual and that you can kind of buy your way into salvation. But, you know, so anyway, okay, let's jump to the document. Sorry.

John Hamer [00:17:46] That's okay. Yeah. So what I can just say about this particular document is that it wasn't, you know, particularly important because it's not bringing up Very much in the way of a new information. It's based, again, on the Nauvoo descriptions, but it kind of just illustrates that Hoffman kind of begins with these kind of small forgeries. And so ultimately, what happened to it? He sold the document to a Mormon historian named A.J. simmons for $60 in October of 1979.

John Dehlin [00:18:14] Okay. And again, if there's a pattern that we might see developing, he's picking controversial topics that fill in holes that the church is going to be worried about, potentially. Anything else you want to say? As we start to kind of establish

John Hamer [00:18:29] some patterns, I guess that that's definitely where, you know, it's. It. That's what he's drawn to. And also because collectors also want stuff that's more scandalous or that kind of a thing, if it's just a regular thing. But, you know, he also. He's also dealing with less scandalous stuff. So he's forging money and. And notes and all these other kinds of just signatures. And so. And so he's doing other things. I'm also selecting the ones that are more scandalous because they're more important in terms of the story.

John Dehlin [00:18:55] Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great.

The Lawrence Sisters Letter and William Law

John Hamer [00:18:59] All right, so we're back to the timeline. So that was the first one, the second anointing blessing. The next letter that I want to look at is in 1979, the Lawrence sisters letter. And so this is a letter that was supposedly by Joseph Smith to the Lawrence Sisters. And so after selling the second anointing document to A.J. simmons, Hoffman tried to sell the same guy, Simmons, a earlier version of this letter for $125. But Simmons dismissed it as a forgery, so he didn't think it was real. And so then later, probably anyway, he create. We don't know anything. What happened to that original one that Simmons didn't like.

John Hamer [00:19:39] Later, he produced a different version of it. And again, like I say, it's purportedly written, according to the document that we have now, by Joseph Smith, on June 23, 1844. And it's supposedly a letter to two of his young wives, Maria and Sarah Lawrence. And he's essentially telling them to flee to Cincinnati. So this is at the end of Joseph Smith's life in Nauvoo, and he's hoping to have them escape and so he can meet them.

John Dehlin [00:20:07] And the background, any historical background that makes. What would tell us why. Oh, you're about to talk about.

John Hamer [00:20:12] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:13] Okay.

John Hamer [00:20:13] So here. So here's. What's the historical basis for it? Yeah, I've tried to do that for each one of these. So Joseph Smith had become the legal guardian of the Lawrence sisters estate. And so they become orphans. They get their estate and, you know, anyway, is the guardian of the state. Is Joseph is made guardian of the state. Their estate is worth a lot of money. And I presume it didn't. They didn't end up keeping it or getting it because he was so bad with money. And all of the money that was, you know, was all interspersed between all of his other debts as well.

John Hamer [00:20:42] Personal debts, the church's debts, everything. So anyway, they then moved into the Smith home. Whenever that happens, you know, young girls move into the Smith home. You can tell what's going to happen. So Joseph marries them in secret ceremonies in. In 1843, Maria was 19 and Sarah was 17 at the time. So they become two of his teenage wives. Having caught Joseph.

John Dehlin [00:21:07] Oh, sorry, I just googled this. $7,000 in 1843 is worth $248,000.

John Hamer [00:21:14] Oh, yes. Today, huge fortune.

John Dehlin [00:21:16] So it's like $250,000. Yeah, that's a lot of money.

John Hamer [00:21:20] I should have mentioned that. Yeah, you're right. I mean, so the amount of money, when you talk about thousands of dollars in the 1840s, that's a lot of money.

John Dehlin [00:21:26] Yeah, that's a lot of money. Okay.

John Hamer [00:21:28] Okay. Yeah, yeah. They had it in gold coin or something like that. Okay. And so. So it's not just property, which people always were inflating what their property was worth in terms of land. So William Law, who was already upset with Joseph Smith about all this polygamy stuff, he caught, apparently, Joseph and Maria Lawrence in a compromising situation, as it's called. So I don't know how compromised they were. But in any event, that's one of the things that makes William Law really mad. And so he initiated two different lawsuits actually against Joseph Smith for adultery.

John Dehlin [00:22:03] So this is a big deal because we know that William Law bolting from the first presidency of the Mormon Church, starting the Nauvoo Expositor, is what. What sort of publicized Joseph's secret practice of polygamy that he had been denying that led to Joseph destroying the printing press. That then led to Joseph being put in the Carthage jail, which led to Joseph being killed. So Mark Hoffman's picking the most explosive time in Mormon history and sort of writing the letter that. That deals with the spark that lit the fuse that led to the explosion is that.

John Hamer [00:22:38] Well, I'd say one of the sparks. And. And you know, because obviously there was also the potential. I mean, so William Law Disaffection is not only because he's catching Joseph Smith with, with young girls, but it's also because there was a potentially he was offered to do wife swapping, potentially. In other words, the he had been brought in as a member of the first presidency to Joseph's secret practice of polygamy and he was absolutely against it. And so this is one of the places and like you say, it's highlighting that moment. So this is an embarrassing moment in church history.

John Hamer [00:23:11] It's an event that was already known. So that lawsuit is public record, it was filed. So we have laws, testimony and all this kind of thing. And so as a result of that, it isn't new information in a way, but what, what actually it is is simply highlighting this kind of embarrassing time. So why is it accepted? Although the handwriting was clearly not Joseph Smith's, it talked about these known relationships, Its contents actually are very similar to two other letters that Joseph Smith wrote. And why is it similar? Because Hoffman is modeling it on these letters. So Joseph had written a letter to Emma which is advising her to flee in this kind of ways right around this time.

John Hamer [00:23:48] And, and he had also previously written a letter to the Whitney family and that includes one of his 17 year old wives, Sarah Ann Whitney. And so sort of the language of the language to Sarah Ann is sort of modeled in the Lawrence or is sort of mimicked in the Lawrence letter and kind of the fleeing to Cincinnati kind of stuff is kind of from the Emma letter. And Hoffman flew fuses those together to make this Lawrence sisters letter. And so even though the handwriting is bad or doesn't match Joseph Smith's, what ends up happening is Dean Jesse, who is an LDS historian who kind of has emerged in this time period as the number one handwriting expert among the Mormon history community, Gene Jeste concluded that he thinks it was a copy of an actual authentic Joseph Jr. Letter.

John Dehlin [00:24:37] So do you have a sense that Hoffman just did a bad forgery job here, didn't really try to master Joseph's handwriting? Like we know that Joseph was famously bad writer and that's why he always used scribes. So do you have a sense for what Hoffman was thinking and why he created a document that people would deem to be a forgery?

John Hamer [00:24:58] I mean people, everybody whose analysis of it has looked at it said that if he was actually attempting to copy Joseph Smith's handwriting, he was doing a really bad job. And so it's hard to say, you know what I mean? I don't think he's explaining described it's Described why he did it this way. It could be that he just wasn't good at it yet, but it could be that he's attempting to. He was like showing that he was just saying that it's a letter that's either a copy or a scribe. So. So no, it isn't clear why he didn't. Maybe he hadn't been. Maybe he hadn't perfected his ability to forge Joseph Smith's handwriting yet.

John Dehlin [00:25:31] Okay, but then Dean Jesse says, well, it wasn't the original. It was a copy of an original in someone else's hand.

John Hamer [00:25:37] Right.

John Dehlin [00:25:37] Okay.

John Hamer [00:25:38] Yep. So, okay, so that's that, that letter.

John Dehlin [00:25:42] So does anything, does any. Oh, does anything happen with the letter?

John Hamer [00:25:46] Okay, so we'll see. So what happens is, okay, so there's potential here for embarrassment. So the letter isn't particularly embarrassing. But again, like we said, it calls attention to an episode in Joseph's life that frankly is a clear abuse of power. So the fact that he is marrying girls for whom he's the legal guardian and has control, financial control over their estate and he's know the leader of the church and so on and so forth, this is a abuse of power and it's an embarrassing episode therefore, in his life, I think. What happened to this particular document? So the letter was donated to the LDS church, but it, and it put it in the archives.

John Hamer [00:26:21] And, and so even though they kind of controlled access to it, it was not hidden away in the vault or anything like that because this was essentially talking about a known event. And so for example, Linda Newell, who's a historian at the time, she is researching the biography, this amazing biography of Emma Mormon enigma, Emma Smith. And so Linda Newell had heard about this through the Mormon historians grapevine, this letter. And so she went to the archives, asked for access to it, and they gave her access to it. So it's not that it was suppressed in that way, this particular letter or this early letter.

John Hamer [00:26:58] And one of the things that it did was it made Linda incorrectly assume, oh well, this means that Joseph Smith was continuing to practice polygamy all the way up to the end because this letter would be the only evidence of that as opposed to that he put aside the garments and stopped engaging in plain plural marriage in the last couple months of his life.

John Dehlin [00:27:25] And how would have Hoffman known that Joseph would have written a letter to the Lawrence sisters? Was there other. Was this based on other history that was out there?

John Hamer [00:27:34] Well, he didn't write a letter to them, no.

John Dehlin [00:27:36] But that it would have been plausible for him to have Done that. In other words, where was the smoke?

John Hamer [00:27:42] Well, you know, he could have just read about the marriage to them in. No man knows my history or anything, you know. So the list of the plural wives of Joseph Smith is pretty well known. That had all been wildly debated before there were actually historians involved. So because the RLDS Church was busily denying that Joseph Smith was ever a Polygamist in the 19th century, LDS members went and just got affidavit after affidavit to prove it. And so we actually have so much evidence for that because of that wrong claim that the RLDS Church made. And so as a result, it's all this stuff is pretty well known. And so he was able to go and, and, and know about the, this incident.

John Dehlin [00:28:23] Okay. And. And this. So you've already told us that with the second anointing document, the church passed on it. So there's definitely.

John Hamer [00:28:32] No, they weren't even. I mean, he sold it to somebody else.

John Dehlin [00:28:35] Yeah.

John Hamer [00:28:35] He didn't ask the church.

John Dehlin [00:28:36] He, he sells it to Simmons. He didn't even ask the church. Okay. I don't think now with this one, we introduce at least this concept of somebody donating a document to the church. Right. Where the church isn't directly buying a document right now. Is that a practice that has kind of been a long standing practice of the church? And do you want to just talk about that practice, maybe a bit about its history, if you know anything about it, and why the church started doing when and why the church may have started doing that.

John Hamer [00:29:06] So I think that, I mean, the church has done that for a whole long time. So I think that, I mean, I feel like going all the way back. In a lot of cases, it's actually freelance Mormons who are going and doing it on, in some cases on their own initiative. So there's a guy, Wilford Wood, who's going around buying up all of the. In the early 20th century, buying up all of the Mormon history sites and documents and things like that.

John Dehlin [00:29:33] The Jupiter Talisman.

John Hamer [00:29:34] Yeah. And so in some cases people put in their own collection. Some cases they donated to the church. And so. And so sometimes though, I guess so in a lot of cases, Mormons are doing that entirely on their own initiative. And I think Simmons here is doing that. And that I think true for some of the other collectors who end up donating things to the church, but sometimes the church, like taps people who they have these kind of relationships with. So wealthy Mormons who are likely to make such donations in part if they want to be able to have a plausible deniability later at the period PR room. Then when they say no, the church didn't buy that, or no, the church doesn't have possession of that because. Because it could be in the hands of the collector until the collector donates it. Right.

John Dehlin [00:30:16] Okay, so if the church doesn't buy it, then they can't be accused of trying to buy up documents, basically. Right, but if they, but if they suggest to a wealthy donor to buy it and then it just happens to be donated, then now is that. Some would say that's just fine. Some would say that's a little bit sneaky because you're basically trying to avoid culpability, but you are in fact acquiring it. Is that lawyerly or sneaky or is that just business standard, business as usual for churches or companies? What do we think about that practice, just generally?

John Hamer [00:30:51] Well, I think it can be a fine practice. So I think that that's for example, how the US Government often gets national forests. Right? So there's like the Nature Conservancy that goes around and buys forests up and donates it to the, to the government and this kind of thing. So I mean, I think that it's completely possible for people to be doing that in, in good conscience. I think that there definitely is.

John Hamer [00:31:12] The place where it gets shadier in terms of the Mormon Church going all the way back to Joseph Smith is a practice of, you know, this practice of kind of lying for the Lord where you don't want to.

John Hamer [00:31:25] You're able to say things that are not either either not factually true or they're like Clintonian lying where you're saying things that factually are true in order to get people to believe a false conclusion about what you're saying. So you're deliberately misleading them even though you're saying things that word for word literally might be true. And so the LDS Church continues to engage in that kind of PR apologetics in order to not, you know, because they believe, I think that it's more important, the bigger goal here is not damaging the Church's reputation. So there is a, you know, kind of a greater goal argument or the ends justifies the means argument that gets made.

John Hamer [00:32:06] But with the Hoffman case here, the church on the one hand just receives documents from freelance Mormons that buy them and donate them to the church. The church goes and engages people, wealthy Mormons, to go get the documents on on behalf of the church. And the church directly buys documents from Hoffman.

John Dehlin [00:32:26] So, okay, we will see lots of those different examples.

John Hamer [00:32:29] Yep, yep.

John Dehlin [00:32:31] All right, so. So that's the second letter and that's before the big. This is all before the big 1980 breaking on the scene, right?

John Hamer [00:32:38] That's right. So those are just pre kind of precursor documents, and they weren't even sold very much. So and I just bring them out because they're, they are kind of highlighting the trajectory of where Hoffman is going. He's also doing minor little things, like I say, like signatures and cash currency or what. These kind of things that he's forging to at the time.

John Dehlin [00:32:57] Got it.

The Anthon Transcript Forgery

John Hamer [00:32:58] So the next one, the big one here that bursts on the scene is in October of 1980 is the Anthon transcript. And so Hoffman went and got himself a 1668 Bible, so an authentic Bible. And inside it then he inserted an eight page handwritten manuscript from the Old Testament Book of Amos. And then he ends that with the name Samuel Smith. And so, you know, Joseph Smith had a brother Samuel. He also had a great grandfather Samuel. So maybe he's trying to say that this was his great grandfather Samuel's Bible is kind of what he's trying to say. But in any event, he's passing it off now as perhaps a Smith family Bible.

John Dehlin [00:33:40] Why? Why 8 page handwritten manuscript of the Old Testament? It's already been written. It's already in all the Bibles. Why would. Any idea why that would ever be written out?

John Hamer [00:33:50] Well, I mean, so back when. So for example, if. If copying, you know, getting a copy of anything is also very hard. So people might have written out things that are notes that they find very important. You know, why do you. Why was it necessary to quote Isaiah at length in the Book of Mormon? You know, we already have copies of it. You know, so it's because books were so much less prevalent, even the Bible. And so there may well have been that. I'm not even sure that he. I don't even actually know in terms of this Book of Amos insert, if Hoffman wrote that all out or if he just had something, a manuscript that he'd gotten and he just put the name of Samuel Smith on it.

John Hamer [00:34:27] I don't. That detail is, I'm sure, known. The point of it is though, didn't really matter because that insert is just a tease or whatever that allows Hoffman to put the actual document that he's trying to have discovered, glue it in a place where it could have conceivably been this entire time so that it could be discovered. So he takes the Anthon transcript, the document. That is the big deal that he's forging and he inserts it into the Bible and glues it in so that it's, you know, glued in behind this insert. And so as a result, he's.

John Dehlin [00:35:04] Does that, does that. Sorry, does the Book of Amos thing, does that tie the Bible to the Smith family? Is that part of the deal if you have Samuel Smith's name somewhere in there? Yeah, it shows, it makes it appear as though it's a hand me down from the Smith family.

John Hamer [00:35:19] Right, exactly. So the Amos part doesn't matter.

John Dehlin [00:35:22] Yeah.

John Hamer [00:35:23] The main matter is that he puts the Samuel Smith on there. And then. And then. And then he needs that insert there so that there's a plan place to hide the big treasure document here.

John Dehlin [00:35:32] Got it.

John Hamer [00:35:33] The treasure trove document. And so as a result of that, he. He just shows the Bible like, the Bible, isn't this neat? Maybe this is a Smith family Bible. And then he lets his wife, Dory kind of see that there's something more in it. And later, actually, he allows AJ Simmons to actually discover it. And so he brings it to Simmons, who then sees it. And so anyway, so they pull it out and they find this document, that Anton transcript. So I want to talk about what the Anton transcript is and get the historical basis for us. So the historical basis is obviously during the Book of Mormon dictation process, Martin Harris, who was both the financier of the project and also later becomes one of the Book of Mormon witnesses, he was frequently plagued by doubts.

John Hamer [00:36:15] So I'm sure his wife and all his friends and everybody says, you're being duped by this guy. And so in 1828, Joseph told Harris that he had copied certain characters directly from the gold plates onto a page. Harris then took that transcript that Joseph gave him to scholars, including a guy named Charles Anthon of Columbia University, so that he could get authenticated.

John Hamer [00:36:40] And so although we have a lot of recollections from both Anthon and Harris and they don't relate, in other words, they. They have different recollections about what, how that meeting went. What we can kind of say from it is Harris came away feeling that the transcript was at least partially vindicated. So my own reconstruction is that I think that Anthon may have indicated, as he's looking at this transcript, he might have said, well, this character here, that might be similar to some of the characters that are in Demotic Egyptian. So he might have said, oh, and that one looks like an alpha or whatever. This might look like this or whatever.

John Hamer [00:37:16] So he might have been kind of describing that to begin with before he heard from Harris where Harris had gotten it. And so as a result of being. Saying that maybe he even he, I think, probably introduced the idea that the characters had something to do with Egyptians to Harris, who told it to Smith. And then that is later, in my opinion, worked into the Book of Mormon text, where the text calls the characters reformed Egyptian. In other words, after the fact, after Anthon maybe made that connection for him.

John Hamer [00:37:47] So Joseph ultimately convinces Martin Harris that that encounter he had with Anton fulfills a prophecy that is written in Isaiah 29:11. And so. And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And he saith, I cannot, for it is sealed. So at some point or other, maybe at the end of their exchange, in Harris's recollection, Anthony essentially thinking that, you know, that Martin Harris is being defrauded and so he wants the golden plates to be brought. And Harris essentially says, well, they can't because the book is sealed. And then he says, well, I can't read a sealed book or something like that.

John Dehlin [00:38:34] Okay, so. So just to kind of summarize, Harris takes the book to Anthon. They have some exchange.

John Hamer [00:38:41] Not the book, just the transcript.

John Dehlin [00:38:43] Sorry, takes the transcript. Anthon says something that makes Harris feel like this is a legitimate. These are legitimately ancient characters, but they disagree on what happened in that meeting.

John Hamer [00:38:55] Right.

John Dehlin [00:38:57] But somehow Joseph gets this Old Testament verse into Harris's mind to believe that. That Harris's actual behavior was a fulfillment of prophecy. Right. And that the. That. That Anton's behavior was a. Was.

John Hamer [00:39:13] Was actually prophesied by Isaiah, you know, and so. So specifically Isaiah here, when he's talking about this verse, you know, chapter 2911, that. That was referring to Martin Harris. So Martin Harris and Charles Anthon have. Have actually fulfilled prophecy that Isaiah saw.

John Dehlin [00:39:28] And that's gotta be pretty powerful for a, you know, New England farmer to feel like he's fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. Right?

John Hamer [00:39:35] Yeah. And it's. It's not entirely unusual. People think that all the time. So I definitely have met people who feel like, you know, when they're reading the book of Revelation and it's saying that, you know, that they, you know, were given some. The person there was given a book or whatever, that they. They themselves are fulfilled, have fulfilled that, and they have the book or whatever. So I don't know. It's. It's a way that people can help, but it's like chronocentrism or Egocentrism, you think that everything applies to you when it obviously probably doesn't. So it does.

John Dehlin [00:40:09] Got it. Okay.

Martin Harris and the Anthon Story

John Hamer [00:40:12] Well, anyway, in terms of the prophecy, that prophecy, though, and that story again, this important Anthon transcript story, and the Martin Harris going to Anthon story that actually then is later written into the Book of Mormon itself. So we read in the LDS versification, second Nephi 27, but that book, by which we mean the gold plates, shall be delivered unto a man we can read as Joseph Smith Jr. And he shall deliver the words of the book. The words, you know, not the book, which are the words of those who have slumbered in the dust. In other words, the Nephites. He'll deliver the words. And he shall deliver these words, the Book of Mormon, unto another Martin Harris.

John Hamer [00:40:53] But the words that are sealed, he shall not deliver, neither shall he deliver the book, you know. So in other words, he won't give the golden plates, no matter how much Martin Harris wants to see it. He doesn't get to. So the Lord shall say unto him to whom he shall deliver the book, take these words which are not sealed, in other words, the Anthon transcript, and deliver them to another Martin Harris that he may show them unto the learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And the learned Charles Anthon shall say, bring hither the book, the gold plates, and I will read them. And the man, Martin Harris, shall say, I cannot bring the book, for it is sealed, then the learned shall say, I cannot read it.

John Hamer [00:41:29] So in other words, the entire episode then gets retroactively prophesied hundreds of years ago. And so Martin Harris and Anthon are written into the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:41:40] That's so fascinating. I mean, I don't know if you like this comparison, but it almost seems like the type of scheming that Hoffman's doing. If Joseph Smith is like, okay, I've got. I know about this Old Testament verse. I gotta make, you know, Martin Harris happy. I'm gonna send him. But then also find a way for Harris to feel like it's a fulfillment of prophecy. And then when I actually create the Book of Mormon retroactively, like you just said, I'm gonna go back and write all this into it so that all this stuff that I just manufactured now gets portrayed as a prophecy in an ancient scripture that I'm going to eventually manufacture myself as well, that's. That's kind of reminding me of the type of scheming Hoffman's doing. Is that a bad comparison or. I'm not trying to be cute.

John Hamer [00:42:25] I'M saying that's a completely, I think that's a, it's a completely defensible analogy. So I'm not saying that that's the only way you can look at it and you know, or that you know. But I'm saying that you, that's an analogy that could be made. Right.

John Dehlin [00:42:41] And I guess I'm just wondering, I have to imagine that Hoffman might have been smart enough to know that he's kind of engaging in the types of behaviors Joseph Smith did while trying to prove false the religion that sprung forth from the original kind of person that was perpetrating fraud. It's, it's kind of interesting, I don't

John Hamer [00:43:06] know that, that I've read that, that he had kind of a Joseph Smith complex or any comparison that he himself has made. So. Yeah, so that, so that would be speculative. So I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:43:16] Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Hamer [00:43:18] But actually what I do want to say though is I do want to kind of make this comparison just a little bit. So. So when we're talking about like question of historicity in a document like the Book of Mormon or in, in these documents that we were trying to be authenticated that Hoffman was producing and that many people thought were authentic when you were trying to do that kind of authentication, a single anachronism illustrates that the document does not date from the time it claims. So in other words, when later people were trying to pour over Hoffman's documents and ultimately the FBI is looking for it.

John Hamer [00:43:57] Historians and the FBI, as we kind of, even if you saw on the documentary, if you watch the Netflix documentary, that they're trying to look for an anachronism in order to disprove it. So all they need is the one anachronism to show that it's not an historic or a genuine document. It doesn't date from the time period it claims.

John Dehlin [00:44:15] So the fact, in other words, if there's a document that's got Abraham Lincoln with a cell phone, anything else may be accurate in the document. That one anachronism kills the validity of the document.

John Hamer [00:44:26] Right. And so the fact that Hoffman's documents hit so many historical facts correctly, that doesn't make them authentic because hitting a so called bullseye, as some kind of apologists try to say, is totally irrelevant to the question of whether it has historicity. Getting a couple things right or something really phenomenally right is irrelevant if there are anachronisms. So the single anachronism is the fact that Joseph smith wrote the 1828 episode with Harris and Anthon into his manuscript that all by itself shows that the Book of Mormon is composed after 1828 and is not ancient. It's also something that, you know, for all Spalding theorists and things like that also have to, you know, anyway, they have to at least show that Joseph is reworking the thing.

John Hamer [00:45:10] But in any event, there's no reason, I think, to believe that. In other words, we can see that the text is composed when. When it's being orally dictated. But anyway, however, the. The text itself is so replete. The Book of Mormon, I'm saying, is so replete with anachronisms, and it's also literally dependent, as we've said in our other previous podcasts on the King James version of the Bible. So that proves its modernity beyond question academically. And so because the anachronisms are all there. So when people are going around arguing about this nahum business in Book of Mormon geography or whatever, and this idea of it, they think that that's a bullseye, that somehow makes the book ancient. That just discredits the person who's even making that argument.

John Dehlin [00:45:51] And just for those who don't know who Nahom is, that if they find on the Arabian Peninsula some sequence of letters on a stone or on a document that map to the word Nahom in the Book of Mormon, when it talks about Lehi guiding his family out of Jerusalem, that somehow that proves the Book of Mormon is true.

John Hamer [00:46:11] You know, is ancient.

John Dehlin [00:46:12] Is ancient. Yeah, it's historical.

John Hamer [00:46:14] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:46:15] So anyway, you're saying it doesn't even. Even matter. Yeah, it doesn't matter.

John Hamer [00:46:19] You could have. You could have all kinds of amazing things that it could be correct and everything like that in the Book of Mormon. It's irrelevant because we already know it's a modern document based on the anachronism.

John Dehlin [00:46:27] Yeah, one. One anachronism kills the document, basically.

John Hamer [00:46:30] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:46:31] Yeah. Okay.

John Hamer [00:46:32] Okay, so. So why was his forged transcript accepted? So although the Anthon story is very, very well known and it involves a known document, so in other words, an actual Anthon transcript, that document is lost. And so there is a character's manuscript that survives. So this is the character's manuscript that's in the Community of Christ archives. It doesn't, however, match the description that Anthon gave the transcript when he saw it. So he talks a lot about. He has several recollections of this encounter with Harris, and he talks about what the characters looked like, what the transcript looked like, and so on. And in fact, actually, scholars have analyzed the handwriting of the character's manuscript, and it's copied by one of the Whitmers.

John Hamer [00:47:17] And so it's later. So they didn't. They're not encountered with the Whitmers yet. So this is clearly. The character's manuscript is probably. Probably copied from the. From the Anthe original Anthon transcript. But we knew. But scholars therefore knew that the Anthon transcript, the real one, was missing. And so it's one that people were looking for.

John Dehlin [00:47:36] Right.

John Hamer [00:47:37] So Anthon, for example, had described that he saw on the transcript a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied from the Aztec calendar. That's what the Healy said. And so you can see in the forgery then, you know, Hoffman then took details that he heard from Anthon in that description, and then he looked at the characters from the characters document, and so he put those together to produce his own. So this own Anton forgery transcript, forgery that has the little circle thing there that Anthon had described, he also misspells characters, just like the character's document does. But then he included a little correction in pencil. And that really struck historians as a detail that was authentic because they're essentially realizing that initially Joseph Smith doesn't know how to spell characters, later he does, and so they fix it.

John Dehlin [00:48:32] Right. So it's basically a remix of what he knew about the Anton characters and what he knew about what had been said about the original Anton script transcript, whatever happened to it?

John Hamer [00:48:45] Okay, all right, so what's the potential for embarrassment of this thing? Well, so, though in retrospect, I would say in some ways, the entire Anthon Harris episode and also the invented characters is a little embarrassing. But at the time in 1980, LDS leaders really didn't see this actually as an embarrassing thing at all. And indeed, I had one of these paperback Book of Mormons when I was a kid in. In the 70s, which is, like, done in gold, and it had the characters from the character's transcript on it, like as if the gold plates and things like that. So it was something that people were trying to suppress.

John Hamer [00:49:22] They were actually, I don't know, liked it and things like that. And so this was definitely not viewed in a negative light by LDS Church leaders. And so instead, they saw this as an additional authentication of the Book of Mormon. And it was coming at a nice time in history, 150th anniversary and things like that. And so they were using the organization of the church. And so they had got a whole PR thing that they did about finding the Anthon transcript.

John Hamer [00:49:51] So one of the potentials for damage is that some of these characters, apparently that Hoffman included especially into the circle, were taken from 19th century magic books. But that wasn't immediately apparent. And even though he was kind of wandering around telling historians that, or trying to get them to make that connection, it wasn't as much made at the time. But you could kind of see his motive going forward, given that he later has all kinds of details about that he's adding about Joseph's earlier magic background. And this may be again, kind of a window into that route that he's going.

John Dehlin [00:50:26] So if I'm hearing you right, like we all know now that Joseph Smith engaged in heavy folk magic treasure digging, used the seer stone in the hat, had the Jupiter talisman, had the superstitious worldview, both possibly as sincere beliefs, but also as a mechanism for deceiving people. And back in 1980, what was the church doing and saying about any attempt to associate Joseph Smith with folk magic?

John Hamer [00:50:53] And his family was totally denied. Right. And so that's just lies of anti Mormons and enemies and things like that. So those were. The church towed the line and was saying, no, that's totally discredited. And so the idea of kind of like highlighting that, like you say folk magic background is kind of something that Hoffman is kind of gonna go to, but he hadn't done yet. So he seems to seemingly doing this as kind of a kind of a foot in the door of where he's gonna go in terms of the Anthon transcript.

John Dehlin [00:51:22] So if there's some characters here that are associated with 19th century folk magic, then it's starting to implicate Joseph Smith in folk magic. And that's gonna make the church leaders nervous.

John Hamer [00:51:35] Yeah. If they later make that connection. So in other words, they don't initially see that when they look at the Hanthon transcript. But the disc, what he tried, what Hoffman tries to show people who, you know, later as he has, he, you know, he's hanging out in the Mormon historians community and trying to get people to make these, you know, connections on their own. And so he has a talisman that has kind of similar markings that are historic. And he's saying, hey, hey, isn't there something? Does this remind you of anything?

John Hamer [00:52:04] So is this reminding you of that, that circle that's on the Anthon transcript? Is there a connection between the magic characters here in my little magic talisman and, and the Joseph Smith thing? Anyway, so. So he didn't. That's the kind of the direction that he's going. So what became of this document? So the forgery was purchased directly from hoffman by the LDS Church for $20,000, but in trade items. So they give him a bunch of stuff out of the history collection, which is crazy that they were still doing that back then, but anyway, so that nowadays I think that that wouldn't happen happen. They just get money, but they.

John Hamer [00:52:36] Or get a donor to do it. But essentially, you know, they took some of the gold coins or whatever it is out of the, you know, notes and things like that out of the, out of the history collection and traded them some stuff.

John Dehlin [00:52:47] Okay, so they, so they, they did pay this to Hoffman, $20,000 worth of items. It was more of a barter exchange so that it wouldn't be direct money, I guess, because. Well, why trade?

John Hamer [00:53:02] He actually wanted trade because he, he wanted to get legitimate ST Stuff because he, he. The more, the more kind of old stuff that he had, the more forgeries he could make. So he would make. You know, you can make if you've got a 1830 Book of Mormon, which is worth huge amounts of money now, but it was worth, you know, a lot back then, but way less. And then you, and then you, you sign it, you know, Josiah. I don't know, somebody, you know, Josiah stole or whatever. You know, you, you sign it as if it was some.

John Hamer [00:53:32] Somebody's copy of the Book of Mormon who we don't know, who we don't already have their copy. Then that Book of Mormon becomes worth more because now you know that this one's the one, you know, this one's Oliver Cowdery's Book of Mormon or whatever. Then it's suddenly really worth a lot. Right. And so, and so he's doing that kind of thing. So he's taking legitimate items and making them better.

John Dehlin [00:53:50] Like he did with the coins. Yeah, like. Like he did with the coins.

John Hamer [00:53:53] Exactly. And so he likes trading stuff so that he can also. Because he's got a general business that he has anyway, so he's a document collector trader. And so there is presumably some legitimate business going on too, as he's buying and selling some of the things.

How Forgeries Gain Credibility and Value

John Dehlin [00:54:06] Okay, so money has a face value. You know, historical, valuable, historical artifacts can be enhanced to be worth way more than. Than their face value, their market value. Okay, got it.

John Hamer [00:54:17] And so like I said, the Church publicized it. They printed it in the ends. And this, this is a copy from the Ensign page. Okay, so what else?

John Dehlin [00:54:26] So it wasn't something the Church wanted to hide.

John Hamer [00:54:31] Not at all. And in fact, actually they published here, and I think this is the church news. Yeah, so they published a picture of Hoffman with all the church leaders, you know, so Kimball, Romney, Packer, Hinckley. And so they're all there. And Kimball's even got a magnifying glass there as he's looking, I think, at the disc with the magic symbols on it or whatever. So anyway, they're seeing that this document is helping to authenticate the story of the bringing forth of the Book of Mormon, you know, the Anthon story.

John Dehlin [00:55:07] And I guess a lot of people want to make this photo really significant. Do you have a sense for why this photo is significant for those who are doubting and questioning?

John Hamer [00:55:18] Well, so depending on what you. What is your vision of what a profit is? Right. So here's the profit with a forger looking at a totally forged document with a magnifying glass and, and paying the guy $20,000 for it, you know, so. So, you know, for something that's, you know, it ends up being a fraud. Right. So.

John Hamer [00:55:41] So there's some embarrassment. Not at the time, but there's embarrassment after the fact. Right. So in his confessions, it's really clear, I think, that Hoffman's motivations include that he's got a lot of satisfaction when he fools people. He certainly liked the fact that he could successfully dupe people in the historians community. And so one of the things that he would do is he would ask historian friends for obscure information about how you would authenticate documents that he would then later discover. So he would talk to Mike Marquardt, for example, and he'd say, boy, if I were to find the Anthon transcript, you know, I've got not.

John Hamer [00:56:15] If I were to find it, he'd say, I've got a lead on the Anthon transcript. Somebody back in New York is trying to sell me this document, but I can't tell if it's real or not. What would be some of the. What would be some way I could authenticate it? And so then Mike Marquardt would just, you know, without being, you know, he's, he's such a nice guy who will tell you anything, you know, at any time, he'll give you a bunch of these details and then Hoffman will go and put those in. And then when he shows it to a different historian, the other historian, I'll put like, oh my goodness, this really shows that it's the case.

John Hamer [00:56:45] And so he wasn't only Mike Marquardt that he was getting information out of, but he'd get information from different people, and then he'd include it. And so he enjoyed, obviously, duping historians and also the US Mint and, you know, anybody who he's able to fool. And that actually upped his own ego. But it's clear, you think, you know, so somebody who's raised in, you know, the Mormon Church, that the fact that he's able to dupe the leaders of that church. Right. And also of the RLDS Church, too, you know, that's a big coup for. For him.

John Dehlin [00:57:17] Yeah. And I don't know, and you're going to talk about this, but I don't know how Mormons are being raised right now in 2021, but when I was growing up, we were taught that all priesthood leaders, but especially the prophet and the quorum of the 12, that they could communicate with God, they could communicate with Jesus, and that they had what's called the gift of discernment, which is the ability to kind of almost have magical powers through the priesthood, to be able to know if someone's worthy, to know if someone's honest, to know if something bad is going to happen. And a lot of people would have expected that if this is God's one true prophet on the earth, that he would have said, oh, my spidey sense is tingling. This guy's evil. He's going to kill someone someday. Let's get him now. You know what I mean?

John Hamer [00:58:08] Yeah. And so I definitely was raised, you know, in a Mormon household, and we had that same impression. And. And therefore, that was the. That was the image. I mean, I don't know that we thought that that was true for all priesthood leaders. Like you say, there's maybe, like you say, a sense of discernment. But for a prophet, the idea of it is, is that a prophet is talking to God, just like you and I are talking right now. And that was certainly the impression that I was told or raised with as a kid in the 70s. And so that would have been the same as this time, anyway. Yeah, so. And so because of that, they. In the documentary, Richard Turley, who is the former assistant historian for the LDS Church. I think it's HBO there. It's actually Netflix.

John Dehlin [00:58:48] Right.

John Hamer [00:58:48] So, anyway, yeah. On Murder among the Mormons. Sorry, that's bad buzz marketing for the run. For the Run, guys. So Netflix is Murder among the Mormons. Anyway, when he's confronted with this thing, so he's asked, why would God allow President Kimball and President Hinckley to be duped by Hoffman? In fact. So it goes directly, I think, from Sandra Tanner, asking that kind of question. And then it goes to Turley, who says the theological response to that is that God gives people the agency to choose between right and wrong. And as an omniscient being who knows all of this, he doesn't step in and interfere. The idea being that the universal detection of crimes or sins would revoke the agency that God has given to each of his children to make their own decisions. So that's the Mormon Church's response to why were the.

John Dehlin [00:59:39] Why were they duped, that if God just was always intervening, we wouldn't learn and grow and make mistakes and have

John Hamer [00:59:45] the agency to violate free agency.

John Dehlin [00:59:48] Yeah. To determine our own destinies.

John Hamer [00:59:50] Yeah. And so what I say, though, to take. If we look at the implications of what they're saying there, in other words, you and I may have been raised to think that prophets are men on earth who talk to God the way I talk to you, but you would be wrong, because as Turley points out, if God were giving out. Sure. Knowledge like that to mortals, that would violate human agency. And it would actually mean that God is having the kind of capricious intervention, in other words, by telling so and so that, oh, Hoffman's a forger or something like that, he's actually intervening in that kind of a capricious way when he's clearly not intervening when other great evils happen.

John Hamer [01:00:31] So he didn't stop the Holocaust, but he could have if he'd wanted to. And so the. The answer to that, philosophically, theologically, is the problem of evil. And what that means is, is if God is doing the one thing by talking to Spencer W. Campbell, then he's responsible for the Holocaust because he could have stopped it.

John Dehlin [01:00:49] Yeah, because I was just going to say that would make the Mormon the restoration as recounted by the LDS Church, that would make that one huge violation of free agency because God's appearing to Joseph Smith and revealing things to him all day long and writing scripture and saying, don't drink this beverage, and, but that beverage is okay. And don't eat this animal, but that animal is okay. And resettle the saints here in Missouri. No, wait a minute, let's do Illinois. Like, God's giving all sorts of very specific directions all the time. Go, go sell the copyright of the Book of Mormon into Canada. So which is it?

John Hamer [01:01:25] Right? And Hinckley should have, you know, phoned up George W. Bush and, you know, and said, you should get these people out of the Twin Towers because, you know, this is about to happen on 9 11. You know, what I mean, or something like that anyway, so that obviously isn't how things like that works, but nevertheless, you know, when I was a little kid, you know, that was what I was taught. So we had very few actually records and tapes and things like that when I was a little kid. But one of them that we had was a one called Songs for a Mormon Child.

John Hamer [01:01:57] And the song included the lyrics. One of the songs had a lyric, included the lyrics. I know what a prophet does, and I can name some too. There are men on earth who talk to God the way I talk to you. They can't be just anyone. It takes a righteous man. But first they have to be ordained, for that's the sacred plan anyway. So all LDS prophets know from their own firsthand experience that God hasn't ever spoken to them the way you and I are speaking, the failure to correct that misimpression. So they don't constantly say over the pulpit that you, you guys might think that, or you might have had that in your Sunday school song, or this is actually a private company that made it.

John Hamer [01:02:35] But anyway, you may have been taught that, but that's wrong. And I want you to not have that impression. And in fact, actually the fact that they're tacitly promoting you to think that I think, in my opinion, constitutes fraud. So they're presenting a false understanding. And the implications here, even in the admitted theological response, are that. Know that they aren't actually receiving things in that way. So.

John Dehlin [01:03:02] Yeah, and it's almost as if they, they want to say God directly intervenes and talks to prophets when it bolsters the, the, the founding story of the church. But then whenever something bad happens and prophets mess up or prophecies don't come

John Hamer [01:03:16] true, that's free agency.

John Dehlin [01:03:17] That's. That's free agency and God. And they want to kind of have it both ways. And like you said, a true act of integrity would it be to just sort of have this general, General conference announcement. We understand you have this impression that we talk to God directly and that there's a direct line of communication, but there isn't one. And you guys all need to not believe that because we're just all doing the best we can trying to figure things out, like you. And we make mistakes as much as anybody we might have.

John Hamer [01:03:45] We might be responding to inspiration, but it's not as if God is talking like a human being to me or something like that.

John Dehlin [01:03:52] Yeah, I mean, I think of the wizard of Oz in this case. Like, if it's just this old dude With a long mustache and a. And a tweed jacket and a, you know, a bow tie, that's one form of majesty or credibility. But if it's this huge Oz character with. With steam and lights and it feels more powerful and it engenders more belief. And.

John Hamer [01:04:19] And this.

John Dehlin [01:04:20] I mean, this touches on the way that the brethren make the members feel the majesty when really it's. It's just kind of normal old. Old dudes behind the curtain pulling the levers, maybe.

John Hamer [01:04:33] Absolutely. And by the way, they are doing the exact thing, literally, in terms of the wizard of Oz thing, because of the media department. So you can go in to see all the movies, you know, and so you go into the museums, and there's the God or, I presume, in the temple, the movie too. Anyway, so God is being presented in that way, you know, in a very real sense, using movie special effects, you know. And then also you go to Temple Square, and every. Every piece of artwork is this literalistic metal statue that's, you know, like people experiencing physical visitations. And it's made in. In bronze, you know, so it's really made very literalistic. So the. It's. It's not a misimpression that I think that. That. That people are getting just, you know. Oh, how did they ever think of that? No, they're. They're deliberately inculcating that idea.

John Dehlin [01:05:28] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's important. That's an important foundation. And.

The Joseph III Blessing and Succession

John Hamer [01:05:35] Okay, so there we are. We had gone through our first three documents that we're highlighting.

John Dehlin [01:05:39] Yeah.

John Hamer [01:05:40] So now we're. To 1981.

John Dehlin [01:05:43] Let me just say quickly, there's. There's at least one other big thing that happens. As soon as Hoffman's got his photo in the Deseret News next to the Prophet and the First Presidency and a couple key members of the quorum of the 12. Now he's hit the big time. He is hobnobbing, rubbing shoulders with the elite leaders of the church. That's gonna give him all sorts of credibility in the business amongst believing Mormons and amongst the Mormon historical community. Cause who doesn't want that level of access? That's everyone's dream, right? Right.

John Hamer [01:06:16] Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, now he's hit the big time.

John Dehlin [01:06:18] Now he's big time. Yeah.

John Hamer [01:06:19] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:06:19] Okay. All right.

John Hamer [01:06:21] All right. And so as long as he's hit the big time, you might as well find more spectacular documents.

John Dehlin [01:06:26] Yeah, let's go bigger.

John Hamer [01:06:27] Which he does.

John Dehlin [01:06:28] Yeah.

John Hamer [01:06:28] So In March of 81, Hoffman produces a text of a blessing given by Joseph Smith Jr. To his son Joseph III, which included the promise, he shall be my successor to the presidency of the high priesthood, a seer, a revelator and a prophet unto the church, which appointment belongeth to him by blessing and also by right.

John Dehlin [01:06:52] Yeah. And we have, we have non Mormons that listen to the show. And so basically when Joseph Smith died, there was a question, right, about who would, who would succeed him because he didn't make it clear before he died because he didn't expect to die. Is that fair to say, John?

John Hamer [01:07:09] Well, I mean the clear successor at the time of his death would have been Hyrum, but Hyrum also gets killed. So Hyrum was the assistant professor, assistant president of the church. And so he would probably been the successor. But yeah, there's no other succession mechanism that was, you know, outlined. There was no constitution of the church. There's nothing at all that says that when the president of the church dies, the first presidency dissolves and the head of the Council of 12 becomes president. That absolutely doesn't exist anywhere.

John Dehlin [01:07:38] So when he dies, the members have to scramble and figure out who's our leader.

John Hamer [01:07:43] And so they definitely have to. Yeah, they have to figure that out because that was not, not something that they imagined was going to happen. So.

John Dehlin [01:07:48] And at the time Joseph Smith, I'm sure you're talking about this, but the time Joseph Smith iii, his son was super young, right?

John Hamer [01:07:54] Right, yeah, just like 12 or whatever he is at the time. So. So the historical basis of this thing, this, that, this document, that behind Hoffman's document. So several times in Joseph Smith the third's life, his grandfather Joseph Smith Sr. And his father Joseph Jr. Gave blessings to him that indicated that he would one day, you know, be a prophet in his father's footsteps.

John Hamer [01:08:21] So there was a. Joseph Sr. Had a patriarchal blessing that said as much, you know, kind of early on. But when Joseph Jr. Is incarcerated in Liberty Jail following the events of the 1838 Mormon Missouri War, one of the people that he's, he's there with is Lyman White, who was a very important early leader who had been, been the general of the, of the, what's it called, the Kirtland camp, You know, the, not the Kirtland camp anyway, anyway, of the militia, the Mormon militia, anyway. So Lyman White recalled that Emma had brought Joseph iii to Joseph Jr. Who blessed him, quote, you are my successor when I depart, according to Lyman White's recollection.

John Hamer [01:09:05] So as a result of that, after that 1844 period, what you're talking about, when people aren't sure of the succession, Lyman White took his followers off to Texas, where they created very successful colonies around kind of like the Austin area.

John Hamer [01:09:20] And he entirely, at the time, he did not approve of Brigham Young's claims to succession because he absolutely thought that Joseph 3rd should have been the successor or will eventually be the successor. So.

John Dehlin [01:09:32] And this was. This was basically known by the historical community.

John Hamer [01:09:37] Oh, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:38] These documents.

John Hamer [01:09:39] Yeah, definitely. That's a. A published testimony from Lyman White.

John Dehlin [01:09:44] So that Hoffman would have known about.

John Hamer [01:09:45] Yeah, that Hoffman would have known about.

John Dehlin [01:09:47] Okay.

John Hamer [01:09:48] Also in the winter of 1843, then. So another. At another occasion, Joseph Smith Jr. Summoned more than two dozen Inuit church leaders to the upper room of the red brick store in Nauvoo. And Newell K. Whitney is the presiding bishop, anointed Joseph III's head. And Joseph gives him a blessing that also pronounces that his son will be his successor in the church presidency. So that's another event that's witnessed by lots and lots of church leaders that was known. So winter of 1843. And then finally, in June 22, 1844, his last act before he gives himself up for arrest in Carthage, Joseph Smith again gives his son another confirming blessing that he would succeed him one day by right of lineage.

John Hamer [01:10:32] So there have been a bunch of these blessings. Those exist and those were known. We just don't. Anyway, but what we don't have is we don't have any copies of it. Right. Well, so this.

John Dehlin [01:10:40] This begs the question. If a bunch of people knew that Joseph Smith. If a bunch of leaders had known that Joseph Smith had designated his son to be this extra successor, then why was it when. Why wasn't it that when Joseph Smith Jr. Died, everybody's like, okay, well, we've got a baby. We've got a baby prophet, right? But we know he's the successor. Why didn't that happen? Do you. Do you have a sense for why?

John Hamer [01:11:02] Well, one, Emma doesn't want her kid to. Her husband just got killed, you know, and so wouldn't want her kid to take over. It's also very hard in a monarchy always, you know, when. When you have a child successor.

John Hamer [01:11:15] And so nobody felt that he was of age that he could succeed right away. What ended up happening is people were waiting for the time when he was going to be old enough to do so. Right. And so lots of different people proposed that we can't have a successor. And so, for example, Sidney Rigdon was saying, I'm not going to be the next prophet, but I'll be guardian over the church, obviously, until such time in the future. And even the 12, when they take over, Brigham Young kind of says, you no longer have a prophet, but you have apostles to lead you in his stead.

John Hamer [01:11:48] And he points to Joseph III and kind of thing and says, we know that that boy will have his rights in his day or whatever, but if we were to make him prophet right now, he'd get killed as surely as his father got killed. And so then other church leaders, faction leaders, like I say, Lyman White definitely considered Joseph III to be the successor, even though he had to wait until he grew up. James Strang did the same, he said, and that's for one of the reasons why almost all the Cutlerites, all the Whiteites, all the Strangites, they all eventually joined the reorganization when Joseph III did emerge as a rival leader.

John Dehlin [01:12:28] Got it. Okay.

John Hamer [01:12:32] So anyway, although we have lots and lots of witnesses that these multiple blessings happened, there isn't a transcript that survived. So there isn't any. We do have the Joseph Sr. Patriarchal blessing because patriarchal blessings are written down, but we don't have any of the blessings by Joseph Jr. For Joseph III. And so now Hoffman's produced one. So that was made a very big deal. So anyway, this document, as you can imagine, based on what we've just been talking about, has a bunch of potential. Potential for embarrassment, specifically for the LDS leaders. Right. So by creating the text of a Joseph III blessing, Hoffman is seemingly confirming Joseph Junior's prophecy that his son would succeed him. And that potentially undermines LDS leaders and their claims to authority through Brigham Young. So essentially, he's essentially saying, no, the prophet really did say, you know, our LDS guys are right. Right.

John Dehlin [01:13:22] And what is the actual for forged blessings? Say, it's hard to. It's hard to read that.

John Hamer [01:13:29] Well, we go back. I had it here. Right. So it's, you know, he shall be my successor to the presidency of the high priesthood, a seer, revelator, a prophet unto the church, which appointment belongeth to him by blessing and also by. Right.

John Dehlin [01:13:41] Yeah, that would be. That would be disturbing to the members.

John Hamer [01:13:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:45] Yeah. Why? Why Brigham Young? Why did you take over, basically?

John Hamer [01:13:49] Right, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:50] Yeah.

John Hamer [01:13:51] So Hoffman knew that. Knew that he did that on purpose, obviously, in order to try to get it to be worth a lot of money. And he double deals. So he attempts to play the RLDS Church and LDS churches off against each other. He seemingly only is interested, frankly, in shoring up RLDS interest in order to raise his asking price to the LDS Church. He doesn't seem to have been very serious about, I mean, I don't know, he might have sold it to the RLDS Church if the RLDS Church should moved faster. So Hoffman promised to trade the document to the RLDS Church for a Book of Commandments.

John Hamer [01:14:26] So this is the precursor to the, the Doctrine and Covenants, and it's essentially the rarest printed Mormon book because if you remember the story they were printing it in in independence in the very earliest days of the church when the, when the mob came and destroyed the press. And so almost all of them got destroyed. And so they're, they're worth crazy amounts of money nowadays. But anyway, they were still worth a lot of money back then. And so the Rldist Church was going to trade one of them to Hoffman for it. But the church historian, Richard Howard, who's now historian emeritus, but back then, he was essentially the RLDS equivalent of Leonard Arrington, the first church historian, who was an actual trained historian, he agreed, he was dealing with Hoffman.

John Hamer [01:15:09] He agreed to the trade. But he said, well, look, we got to authenticate this thing. So we're not going to do it until, you know, until we get confirmed, you know, its provenance. And also it's, you know, with the handwriting and everything is, is correct and we can identify it as a genuine, a genuine document.

John Dehlin [01:15:26] Okay, so, so far, so good.

John Hamer [01:15:29] The very same day that Hoffman promised the document to Dick Howard, he then sold it that day. You know, he said, you know, while he's like getting, have it authenticated, he says, sure, you get two weeks to authenticate it or whatever it is. And then he sold it to the LDS Church that day for $20,000 in trade.

John Hamer [01:15:46] And so then, so the next Richard, Dick Howard heard about it is that he just heard the, the news that it had been, you know, that this was, been, had been acquired by the LDS Church and that, you know, he's pissed off, as you can imagine, because he's here. He's been, you know, in these negotiations. And he doesn't actually even, he doesn't necessarily even suspect Hoffman here as being the double dealer. He maybe thinks that the churches are not entirely on good terms. Right? And so if you imagine that the LDS Church has kind of swooped in and grabbed kind of your crown jewel document, it made him really angry.

John Hamer [01:16:20] So he called up people in the history department in the LDS Church and really complained at them. They actually were innocent because they had actually, in their dealings with Hoffman, they said, well, look, if you're dealing with the RLDS Church. Wait until that's done. And if they don't buy it, then we'll buy it. And he essentially didn't do that. Right. So he was prepared to get it to the LDS Church. So unaware of the double dealing then, the LDS Church agreed then to trade. They'd already bought it. They'd given $20,000 in goods in historic documents to Hoffman. They owned it. They're talking to Dick Howard now, the Community of Christ, the RLDS historian.

John Hamer [01:16:56] He says, look, I don't even want to deal with Hoffman anymore. He. He lied to me, he cheated me, all those kind of things. I'd rather deal with you guys. And so then the two churches make a deal. And so we took that same Book of Commandments and traded it to the LDS Church. The LDS Church then gave the forged Joseph III blessing to the RLDS Church.

John Dehlin [01:17:16] So that strikes me as a bummer for the RLDS Church because they get a fake document and they give up something very valuable to the.

John Hamer [01:17:23] Well, at the time, it was a bargain, right? Because at the time it was a. An important thing to get. But, yeah, it would be a bummer ultimately. Except, again, this is quite a nice thing to have done in the end. So the LDS Church, I think, ended up giving. I don't think I knew. No. After the whole thing, after the whole Hoffman bombing and he goes to jail and everything like that, the LDS Church gave the Good Book of Commandments back.

John Dehlin [01:17:46] Nice.

John Hamer [01:17:46] So that's nice of them.

John Dehlin [01:17:48] Okay, good. That's good to know.

John Hamer [01:17:49] I think we get to. And I think my understanding is we also got to keep the blessing.

John Dehlin [01:17:53] So there is value. There is value to a Hoffman forgery.

John Hamer [01:17:57] Hoffman forgery. It's not worth as much of a Book of Commandments, but it's, it's, you know, it's still valuable. So. All right, so what happened to it? Okay, so although. Although a lot of historians pointed out that this date that Hoffman gave for this blessing, January 14, 1844, that didn't match the known events. So it's neither the date of the last blessing, and it's not the one earlier. Either. And. And so it wasn't. Right. It was January instead of spring, and it wasn't, anyway, an earlier one. So nevertheless, at that point, RLDS historians didn't do a lot of additional authentication because they believed that LDS experts had already kind of authenticated it.

John Hamer [01:18:35] And also Hoffman had given De Coward and everybody to believe. I think that the LDS Church actually had their own copy of it in their own Vault. And so that authenticated it. So in other words, he kind of pretended that that was a secret. There was a secret document that authenticated this one or so, and so whatever. So the RLDS Church then therefore believed the document was authentic. And it made the document public. It even took it. And the World Conference of the Church voted to add it into the historical documents appendix of the RLDS Book of Doctrine and Covenants. And so then that became printed in.

John Hamer [01:19:13] Even in the back of the book book there. Later, when it was proved a fraud, then the whole historical documents appendix was removed in what we call the historical appendectomy.

John Dehlin [01:19:25] I love it.

The Church Acquires Sensitive Documents

John Hamer [01:19:28] So in the same way, we'll ask, okay, about this duping business. So why didn't God tell President Wallace B. Smith that the Joseph Third Blessing is a forgery? And again, I'm just going to say the answer from the RLDS perspective is God doesn't talk to humans the way you or I speak to each other in Community of Christ, understanding any way of revelation. Revelation is a human response to divine inspiration. So even when Isaiah or So when whoever is saying, thus saith the Lord and then speaks the Lord's words, those are in fact the prophet's words because the prophet is speaking. You can say they're inspired or however you want to understand it. That's how we understand it. But it is not that those are not God's words, because God isn't a human being that talks like humans.

John Dehlin [01:20:10] If you were gonna. And, and of course, you know, so many of us are fans of the, of the approach of the integrity of community of Christ, and we'll give you a chance at the end as well to talk about what you do for them and, and your. Your role with Community of Christ. Now, because we're all huge fans, let me just ask you, so was this document expl. Explosive? Was it like, causing Mormons in Utah to question whether Brigham Young was the rightful accessor to Joseph Smith? Did it cause a big stir? And what about the question of the Church trying to hide or, you know, manipulate or deceive the Mormon Church?

John Hamer [01:20:51] In this case, yeah. So in this case, because Hoffman had already leaked the thing, our LDS Church was aware of it by the time the LDS Church, I think, was also aware of it. And so because it had already been shown around, there was no potential to suppress it.

John Hamer [01:21:09] And like I say, I actually think that the LDS Church's dealings, especially with this document, the Joseph III Blessing, were really above board and very good. And they found themselves the positive Recipients of it because of the way Hoffman was playing the two churches off and manipulating Dick Howard and things like that. And they took the real high road of making the trade on their own. And then, like I said, even when it all. In the end, I think they also gave back the Book of Commandments. So I think that I don't have anything to criticize in terms of what the LDS Church and leaders did in this particular case.

John Hamer [01:21:50] The. In terms of it being explosive, I don't think, I don't know that. How many people in, I don't know, in the pews in Utah said, oh, well, I guess I'm going to be RLDS now. I don't think that really happened too much, but it certainly was exciting for the RLDS church. And so they printed a special facsimile editions of it. I've got two of them here in my library because people had them. And so we, we have those special editions of it and things like that.

John Dehlin [01:22:22] And, and this is probably its own episode, obviously. But, like, why wouldn't this be explosive? Why wouldn't this cause a bunch of people to say, wait a minute, Brigham Young shouldn't have been the successor? Why not? Was there. Was there apologetics that the church would have produced to help.

John Hamer [01:22:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:39] Provide explanations?

John Hamer [01:22:40] Yeah, absolutely. You know, and so, I mean, so Mormons have apologetic arguments for why Brigham Young should have been the successor. And so there's a argument that, that there he was transfigured. Right. And so there's. That's a traditional story. It doesn't actually date from the time period. But in other words, people saw a vision, according to the story of Brigham Young turning into Joseph Smith or whatever, you know, so that's a miraculous reason. Even if it's not an accurate story, it didn't happen.

John Hamer [01:23:11] Another one would have been that Joseph Smith had given the 12 all these special keys and only they had the keys, even though. And the problem with that is that that's not the case. He'd given it to the council. 50 different kinds of keys, and specifically any one key or different keys. It says in the LDSDNC132 that only one man can hold the keys at any given time, so you can't distribute them to the 12. So anyway, so I would say the apologetic arguments exist. I don't buy them myself, but I think they were satisfying to LDS members.

John Dehlin [01:23:44] Yeah. Most would have probably never heard about any of this because we tend to be primed as Mormons to only pay attention to correlated approved sources. Would The LDS Church.

John Hamer [01:23:54] I certainly never heard about it. I was a member at this time. Right. So the.

John Dehlin [01:23:58] Would they have published this in the Ensign? Would they have published this in the Church News? Would they have talked about it?

John Hamer [01:24:03] And I don't know what they did in terms of this, but I wasn't aware of it. I certainly never heard of this until. Until, you know, I was an adult. So.

John Dehlin [01:24:10] Okay.

John Hamer [01:24:11] Yeah.

The Bullock Letter and Josiah Stowell Letter

John Dehlin [01:24:12] All right.

John Hamer [01:24:13] All right. So we've gotten through four of these documents that we're highlighting. So now we're to the middle of 1981. The Joseph III blessing has gone to the RLDS church. The blessing, according to Hoffman anyway, as he forged it, was written in the handwriting of this guy Bullock. And Bullock is one of clerks, one of Brigham Young's clerks. And so there's an additional part of this Bullock collection, according to Hoffman.

John Hamer [01:24:41] In other words, there's more documents that go along with the blessing. And so I want to look a little bit at one more of these. It's the Bullock letter to Brigham Young. And so, you know, Joseph III blessing was supposedly written in the hands of Thomas Bullock, who is clerk of Brigham Young. And it's from this Bullock collection, according to hoffman. So on September 4, 1981, after the whole thing has gone down, the RLDS church isn't going to be ending up with the Blessing. Hoffman then meets privately with Gordon B. Hinckley to share another document from the Bullock collection. And so this is supposedly a letter from Bullock to Brigham Young relating to the Joseph III blessing.

John Hamer [01:25:23] So why is he doing this? So Hinckley had been called into the LDS First Presidency. And if you remember, kind of at this time, he was like younger than a lot of the other leaders that had been there. So President Kimball was getting exceedingly frail. And so this is kind of the beginning of when Gordon Hinckley is sort of the active leader of the First Presidency in his long reign after he later becomes church president.

John Hamer [01:25:46] The Bullock letter implied very strongly that Brigham Young had actually ordered Bullock to destroy the Joseph the Third blessing. So one of the lines in it says, I don't believe Bullock writing to Brigham Young. I don't believe that this gives you license to destroy every remnant of the blessing which he received he Joseph III received from his father, Joseph Jr. So essentially, Bullock is decrying Brigham Young's destruction of documents in this letter.

John Dehlin [01:26:18] Okay. And that's interesting because, you know, this whole. A lot of the people that end up losing their faith in these days are mad because of suppression or destruction of documents, fraud, you Know, the church leaders intentionally knowingly misleading its members. And here's Hoffman creating fictitious documents that make allegations of very early church leaders perpetrating fraud, destroying documents. So it's interesting that Hoffman is. And bringing that to Hinckley and saying, hey, looks like you guys have a problem. Looks like there's evidence you guys were doing this really early on.

John Hamer [01:26:57] And he even says it to Hinckley. He says. Even I think he says, according to the. Anyway, the line, I wouldn't blackmail the church with this.

John Dehlin [01:27:07] But who says that to who?

John Hamer [01:27:09] So Hoffman says that to Hinckley in this meeting, apparently. Anyway, so the. So there's potential for embarrassment, like you say, with this document, right?

John Dehlin [01:27:17] Yeah.

John Hamer [01:27:17] So on the one hand, you know, just the idea of the suppressing of harmful documents, Brigham Young ordering it or whatever, and it in general just calls further attention to this idea that Brigham Young is a usurper and things like that, who's trying to stamp out, you know, the blessing and that kind of thing. So what happened to this one? So Hoffman actually in this. In this. In this exchange, private exchange he has in the meeting with Hinckley in the church office building, he donates it free of charge to the LDS church, presumably as a show of loyalty and also probably to build up the kind of connection that he's having with Hinckley and the relationship with Hinckley.

John Hamer [01:27:49] So the more he's attached there, the better his in for later stuff. And so essentially, this document isn't particularly valuable. It's just a clerk kind of talking about the suppression of documents and things like that. You know, it's potentially a little damaging. But the fact that he gives it free of charge, you know, kind of puts. Puts him on the inside with Hinckley.

John Dehlin [01:28:08] Do we know if it was leaked? Was it shared around? Did other people see copies of it?

John Hamer [01:28:13] So in this case, he didn't seem to do that. So actually what happens then is he gives it to Hinckley and then Hinckley goes straight to the vault with it, first residency vault, and doesn't show it to any LDS historians or anything like that. So he immediately does that thing of suppressing it.

John Dehlin [01:28:27] So this is. So if we're looking for kind of some people are looking for some smoking guns, this is an instance where a top church leader acquires a document and then puts it in the vault, acquires a certainly embarrassing, potentially damaging document and suppresses it.

John Hamer [01:28:46] Yep, Just puts it right.

John Dehlin [01:28:47] Which is ironic.

John Hamer [01:28:47] It doesn't even tell their own historians about it. In other words, it's not like with the Lawrence sisters letter, which goes into the archives and has like, let's say, limited access, but some historians can go see it. It's one that just goes straight in the vault and nobody's going to see it until after all this stuff comes out.

John Dehlin [01:29:03] So ironically, Hinckley is suppressing a document about document suppression, Is that right?

John Hamer [01:29:10] Yeah, that's the irony. Yeah. Or the pattern. I don't know. Either way.

John Dehlin [01:29:16] Okay, well, that's. I think that is significant.

John Hamer [01:29:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:20] Yeah. Okay.

John Hamer [01:29:21] Okay. So now we've gotten through first five of the ones we're looking at in the end of 81. And now we're going to go to a letter by. Supposedly it's a forgery, obviously by Joseph Smith's mother, Lucy Mack Smith. That is in 92. I'm sorry, 82. So in July of 82, Hoffman produces a letter, supposedly from Joseph Smith's mother, Lucy Mack smith. It's dated January 23, 1829. And so it would have been for a very, very early Mormon history document. And in it she is describing the coming forth of the Book of Mormon.

John Hamer [01:29:56] So part of the quotes in the. Part of the letter anyway, says the Lord has made his path known to Joseph in dreams, and it pleased God to show him where he could dig to obtain an ancient record engraven upon plates made of pure gold. And this he is able to translate. So she's essentially announcing that kind of coming forth at the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:30:16] Okay, okay. And what's the.

John Hamer [01:30:19] Yeah, let's go through and look at it. So as the letter is supposedly contemporary with the translation process, it would be among the earliest documents that we even have relating to Mormonism. And one of the things that it does is it sets up and it describes what might have been found in the earliest composition part of the Book of Mormon. So the lost 116 pages. So the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon that was lost by Martin Harris, Lucy is describing that here. And so presumably one of the things that's happening in this letter is Hoffman is kind of in the back of his mind laying out what.

John Hamer [01:31:02] The kind of details that he would then later include in 116 pages if he ultimately produces what is essentially the most fabulous potential forgery in Mormon history. So in other words, if you could come up with. Ultimately come up with the last 116 pages. And so here is a letter that gives details on it, because it's the very earliest description we would ever have of it.

John Dehlin [01:31:25] Okay.

John Hamer [01:31:26] So it's kind of him setting up himself for Later. So what happened to this document? So Hopfman sold this.

John Dehlin [01:31:31] So is there, is there anything embarrassing about it?

John Hamer [01:31:34] Yeah. So this one's not as. This is not really embarrassing. I think so, yeah. This one isn't. That's not what we're dealing with here. It's more him setting it up. Not every one of these documents is embarrassing. Actually there's a lot of them I'm not including that aren't embarrassing at all.

John Dehlin [01:31:46] Yeah.

John Hamer [01:31:46] That he's, he's selling different things like statements from the three witnesses and things like that that aren't particularly embarrassing, but just making money and also maybe setting himself up for future authentication stuff.

John Dehlin [01:32:01] Yeah. And what I. One of the things that was new to me that I didn't realize is that that within Mormonism, it appears as though Hoffman was setting up his ultimate coup de grace, which was to produce the 116 pages himself after maybe after the McClellan papers. And that would be kind of his. His crowning glory, so to speak. Do you have a sense that this might have been a precursor to that?

John Hamer [01:32:28] Yeah, yeah. So this was, I think, a precursor to that. So he's already kind of floating that around and certainly he's already simultaneously I mentioned like another document that was kind of happening around this time or, you know, anyway, in the course of his, his career is he produces like a Martin Harris testimony. Martin Harris gave lots of testimonies, but we don't have them written in his hand. So one of the things that we lack a lot of with Martin Harris is his own handwriting. We have signatures, but not really his handwriting. And so by producing Martin Harris documents, Martin Harris is ultimately the scribe for the 116 pages of the principal scribe.

John Hamer [01:33:08] And so if there's already in the record, Martin Harris documents with Hoffman's handwriting, Hoffman's Martin Harris handwriting. Then later when we get to the 116 pages, people will say, oh, well, this one really matches these other Martin Harris letters that we have. So that would authenticate it.

John Dehlin [01:33:26] Got it.

John Hamer [01:33:28] So what became of this document? So Hoffman sold the letter to Mormon collector Brent ashworth for about $33,000 worth of artifacts and trade. So again, lots of just different Mormon history artifacts that Hoffman wanted and could use. Ashworth's goal was to share it with the LDS Church and have the church history department release its contents. But this again is one of those cases where Hoffman just is leaking copies like crazy of it throughout the Mormon historians community. And so it was already very well known by the time Ashworth was to be ready to make those kind of announcements.

John Dehlin [01:34:01] So now this is this. So this kind of in at least our discussion brings Mark Ashworth on the scene because Mark Ashworth later is the one who's involved in the McClellan papers and he's the one that ends up putting the heat on Hoffman. So do we know if, what do we know about Ashworth? What do we know about his relationship with the church? Is he acting as a dealer for the church? Is he acting on behalf of the church?

John Hamer [01:34:27] No.

John Dehlin [01:34:28] Is he just doing all this independently?

John Hamer [01:34:29] This at this. But this one it sounds like, I think he's. My understanding is anyway at this point for this one, he's acting totally independently. As somebody who's interested in Mormon history documents, he's a collector himself. He had to, in order to get up to that amount to trade with Hoffman. He had to give a lot of his great stuff, you know, in order to get it. But he is just excited because essentially this letter is the first letter about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. It's the earliest Mormon history document the have been people would have had. And it's not particularly damning or damaging or anything like that. And so it's just something that would be very special to have. And so I think that's what he's doing here.

John Dehlin [01:35:06] Okay. Okay, got it.

John Hamer [01:35:09] All right, so that takes us through 82, and now we're going to get to 83 with the Josiah Stole letter.

John Dehlin [01:35:17] Okay.

John Hamer [01:35:18] In January 83. Yeah. Hoffman produces a letter dated June 18, 1825 from Joseph Smith Jr. To Josiah Stowell. And that because of that amazingly early dating. So this is a letter from Joseph Smith Jr. And signed by Joseph Smith Jr. Dating to 1825, supposedly. That definitely then replaces the Anthon transcript which previously had been the earliest Joseph Smith handwriting document. Right. So now we have an earlier one with this letter to Josiah Stowell. And so the forged letter highlights Joseph Smith's early career as a treasure seer and a money digger. And so it's definitely talking, it's definitely now set back into this time period which Mormon church leaders would like to imagine didn't happen.

John Hamer [01:36:11] You know, so this earlier career Joseph Smith. So the letter explains, you know, that the treasure as he's talking to, he's talking to Josiah Stowell about a treasure that he wants to uncover that Josiah stole, wants to, you know, that the treasure must be guarded by some clever spirit. And if such is discovered, so. So also is the treasure. So do this take a hazel stick one yard long, being new cut and Cleave it just in the middle and lay it asunder on the mine. In other words, this place where you want to dig up to find the treasure, so that both inner parts of the stick may look one right against the other, one inch distant.

John Hamer [01:36:52] And if there is treasure, after a while you shall see them draw and join together again of themselves. So it's essentially a folk magic practice being described here. Treasure seer trying to identify the location of a mine, or in other words, a place where treasure has been buried and is being guarded by a clever guardian spirit.

John Dehlin [01:37:16] Okay, yeah. And again, this is at a time when the church is trying to say Joseph Smith wasn't involved in any of that treasure digging stuff.

John Hamer [01:37:25] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:37:26] And this is obviously talking about Josiah Stowell, who ends up being the one that hires Joseph.

John Hamer [01:37:32] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:37:33] To come to Susquehanna area to search in the silver mine, which is where Joseph meets Emma. And this is all the stuff that leads to the 1826 trial, which at the time the church was still denying that Joseph Smith was even involved in it, in any trial of illegal nature.

John Hamer [01:37:50] Right, so exactly. So you're remembering the exact historical basis. Right. So in the history here, Smith did go work for Josiah Stowell as a treasure seer, stole, fervently believed in Joseph Smith's gift. So there it's, you know, Joseph is actually. His family members didn't. His family members thought that Joseph Smith was ripping their dad off, that their dad is a little nutty about all this. And so they had local authorities arrest Joseph Smith, you know, under the vagrant law or whatever, and he gets tried in this, like you say, this famous 1826 glass looker trial. In the trial, Josiah Stone, you know, more or less testifies, you know, on Joseph's behalf, that he is a glass looker.

John Hamer [01:38:33] And it works, in other words, which is not good for the trial though, because then you're guilty. Right. So in other words, even the people who are on Joseph Smith's side you know, believe that he. Believe that he is a guy who scries in crystal balls, but he. But it just. That it works. So. Yeah, right.

John Dehlin [01:38:50] Yeah.

John Hamer [01:38:51] So anyway, so this is potentially very embarrassing, obviously, because like you say, you know, even though this is pretty well established now, that trial we have that authenticated, we have a lot of documents for it and backing that kind of up. And we also, I think, have now very well established Joseph's background as a treasure seer, as somebody who was a practitioner of folk magic. The LDS Church was aggressively denying that as of the early 80s.

John Dehlin [01:39:18] Yeah. So it not just made Joseph look bad, it made the church's denials look bad as well. Yeah.

John Hamer [01:39:24] Because now suddenly we have the very earliest document of Joseph Smith and it's all about folk magic. And so.

John Dehlin [01:39:30] And the irony is this ends up being all true, right?

John Hamer [01:39:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the irony is, in a way. No, it's not irony. It's the reason why people, why all historians would authenticate Hoffman's documents is because they're based on the actual history. Right? Yeah, it's just made more clear. So he, he's highlighting it, it suddenly being in Joseph Smith's own words. It's not just a trial where we have the records of it or this kind of thing or not just the testimonies of his neighbors that can be discounted or anything like that. It's Joseph Smith in his own handwriting signing it. Right. And so that's the difference.

John Dehlin [01:40:04] Yeah.

John Hamer [01:40:05] Okay, so I'm just going to say even today the Mormon Church's new strategy is not so much the find and suppress bad documents or deny them or those kind of things, but rather it has kind of a strategy of inoculation where it talks about them in kind of hidden places like essays or in like a book like Rush Stone Rolling, you know, so that it's nevertheless, this money digger business is still considered to be, I think, embarrassing by the Church. And so for example, in Rush Stone Rolling, Richard Bushman very carefully segregates all of the money digging stuff, stuff into kind of a money digging chapter.

John Hamer [01:40:43] And that's separated from his kind of role as religious leader when in point of fact, actually there's total chronological overlap between the kind of treasure seer stuff and also the coming forth of the Book of Mormon stuff. And indeed also even the method of translation or the oral composition that he's doing is done using the same glass looking technique. So he's using the same steer stones and he's, you know, looking into them and channeling the text the same way he was channeling where the treasure was buried, you know, and, and, and where the guardian spirits were, were, were hiding it.

John Dehlin [01:41:19] Okay.

John Hamer [01:41:20] Yep. So anyway, this is a, a doozy.

John Dehlin [01:41:27] Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a big one. It's a big one. It makes Joseph look kind of kooky, like he, he may have been a charlatan and that his, his career of being a charlatan, you know, the Book of Mormon and then the church become sort of an extension beyond his early career as a charlatan. Basically, yeah.

John Hamer [01:41:46] And so Hoffman took the thing, he had it authenticated against known Joseph Smith writing by Charles Hamilton Galleries of New York. He then took it directly to Hinckley in 1-11-83. They sat down, Hinckley read the letter and he writes Hoffman a check for $11,000 to purchase it. And so that makes it the first major cash transaction that Hoffman has with the LDS Church. So before they've been doing trades.

John Dehlin [01:42:11] Right? Yeah. And so, so a couple things going back to that slide right before. So he had established trust with Hink. He had established trust with Hinckley on, on the Bullock letter and, and on the Anthon transcript. Right, right. And so that, that was an important kind of setup.

John Hamer [01:42:35] Oh yeah, you go back to the.

John Dehlin [01:42:37] No, no, no. I, I.

John Hamer [01:42:38] Anyway, so in other words, like you say, so we'd already had. He, they'd met together with the Anthem transcript, which that had been thought of very highly by the church. Right. And then the, and the Bullock letter, like you say, he donated that free and he did that directly with Hinckley. And he's got to sit down. He's able to have an in with Hinckley and he has a sit down with him for now this Josiah Stoll letter which he's able to present. You know, Hinckley immediately knows this thing is a problem. You know, you could imagine, I think Gordon Hinckley reading a letter like that and immediately wanting that in the vault, you know, does not want this letter to get out. Right.

John Dehlin [01:43:16] Yeah. I, I'm just going to do, do something. So we have a comment from a listener. Sister Ray writes, this is a bit disingenuous. My daughter just learned about glass licking in a BYU class three weeks ago. So boom. John Hamer, she's saying we're disingenuous because her daughter now is being taught about Joseph Smith's treasure digging.

John Hamer [01:43:44] Good. No, I'm glad that that's happening now. So that would not have been taught at BYU in whatever. 83.

John Dehlin [01:43:52] Yeah. What Sister Ray doesn't know is that the Church published books and articles all denying any association between Joseph Smith and treasure digging and folk magic. And you could read Hugh Nibley stuff and the equivalent of Ensign articles and books published by Deseret book or bookcraft or whatever, all sponsored by the Church saying there's no association. This is all anti Mormon literature. And what Sister Ray is confusing is the modern day outcome of efforts of credible historians to convey the truth in spite of the Church's over centuries worth of denying and apologetics to try and cloud the picture. So, Sister Ray.

John Hamer [01:44:37] So there's a different policy now. So I mentioned a little bit about this idea of the inoculation. We didn't go into it in the any depth because I think your listeners have probably heard a lot of podcasts about that in the past. But essentially the difference is, as opposed to what was going on in the 70s and 80s where there was a sense, I think, in LDS Church headquarters that you could take a damaging document and put it in the vault and people wouldn't see it and you can hopefully not have that idea get out and you'd never have to even debate about it.

John Hamer [01:45:11] That has totally opposite now. And so now the church historians department is producing things like the Joseph Smith Papers project, where all of that is all being published. And in some ways it's so much information that you're not even seeing it. All right.

John Hamer [01:45:28] And so that's one of the opposite in that sense, the opposite strategy. And so we've also talked about how, you know, considering that the history flies in the face of faith claims and it contradicts a lot of the faith claims. So a lot of people who are believers in the Mormon Church believe that the Book of Mormon is ancient. That's not the case anyways. So how do you still maintain this? And so one of the ways you maintain it is we talked about here this inoculation policy, which is.

John Hamer [01:46:02] Or not policy, inoculation strategy, which is that you expose people to parts of this information and show that it's not harmful, say, oh, well, this is just a folk practice and this kind of a thing or however you want to explain it, and you teach that in a BYU course and then you know about it. And so later you don't feel like your, your whole walls crash down when you hear about it later because you've been inoculated with that information. That's at least with the idea of that. That phrase for that policy or strategy is.

John Dehlin [01:46:30] Yeah, but to say that now the church is admitting it doesn't mean that in the 80s they weren't lying about it and denying it.

John Hamer [01:46:37] Well, and. And it may well be they didn't believe it either back then. Yeah, you know, but they were definitely the church leaders aren't historians, you know, and so they, and so they're reacting in ways that are not. Not how the historians would have reacted. So, so the church historians who were exposed to all of these. So Leonard Arrington is exposed to some of these documents. He's not as surprised by them at all because he is Very aware of the actual folk magic history. But that is not something that was being printed in the Ensign in 1983. And I don't know that's being printed in the ensign right now. I mean maybe it is about the glass looking trial. I don't know if that's, it's definitely being taught at byu. But is that, I don't know, it's not what you're necessarily leading with for all the methods, numbers. So.

John Dehlin [01:47:19] Right. Okay. So this, this begs the question of what is Hinckley doing buying. Buying documents and, and as I understand it, personally buying documents. So using his own money apparently to purchase it. Is that right?

Gordon Hinckley's Role in Purchasing Documents

John Hamer [01:47:37] I don't know that this is if this is his own money or if this is. I don't know the details that he's giving him. He's there, he's the one authorizing it. Whether, and he's actually writing the check, whether it's out of his own account or whether it's the church's check in a way it doesn't, I don't know. I think it necessarily matters. It's the same since he's the leader of the church. Right.

John Dehlin [01:47:56] But we've got an explosive document that the, the in effect leader of the church is secretly or personally purchasing or secretly.

John Hamer [01:48:03] It's in the church office building. He buys it.

John Dehlin [01:48:05] So. Yeah.

John Hamer [01:48:06] And so he has what for this one? A failed cover up. So you know, you asked before, well, did, did Hoffman leak about that bullet glitter? I don't think that he did. So I think that that would, was effectively suppressed. But in this case again, Hinckley took the letter directly to the First Presidency's vault so that people can't see it. I'm saying here to suppress it. That's what I think is the goal. Hoffman then promised Hinckley that there were no copies, but he was lying because he's a liar. Hoffman then deliberately circulated copies in order to expose the LDS Church's policy of suppressing Joseph Smith Jr. S history when it appeared to be unfavorable to how they would like the narrative to. To be remembered or told.

John Dehlin [01:48:50] Okay, so Hinckley tries to suppress it, but Hoffman wants to make sure people know about it.

John Hamer [01:48:56] Right. And so everybody knows about it. And so this time period is when Dean Jesse is producing like the first edition of the personal writings of Joseph Smith. And so even though this would have been the earliest writing of Joseph Smith and all the historians community have gotten a, a Xerox of it and so they know or they've read A transcript. They know it exists or whatever, and they understand anywhere they're given to believe anyway that the church has it and has hold of it and are actively suppressing. Doesn't even get mentioned or put into that because, again, it's not allowed to be published because the church is not letting it be.

John Dehlin [01:49:33] Okay, okay. So it's not included in Dean Jesse's work.

John Hamer [01:49:38] The original one. Yeah. Which is put in later ones either. Because it's a forgery.

John Dehlin [01:49:41] Right. But the church avoided. I guess, fortunately, the church avoided publishing a forgery, which would have been embarrassing in different ways later.

John Hamer [01:49:50] Well, anyway. But the forgeries did get published.

John Dehlin [01:49:53] No, no, no. I mean, in their own. In their own book. Right.

John Hamer [01:49:56] Well, I'm saying that some of the Hoffman documents do make it in. Right. And so. And so.

John Dehlin [01:50:00] Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. So.

John Hamer [01:50:02] So everybody. Everybody is publishing stuff. All of the stuff from the early 80s is messed up because people are publishing as if the Hoffman letters were authentic. Right. And so you gotta go back and undo that. All the damage that happens. And so it was a mess for the historians community for all kinds of different reasons. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:20] Okay.

John Hamer [01:50:20] So anyway, despite the fact that the copies are circulating among the history community, the LDS Church doesn't admit that they own it for over two years. Like 28 months or something. And so then after the letter's contents and existence are widely known, Hinckley finally confirmed that it was in the First Presidency's vault to the Director of Public Affairs. So that was 85, anyway, that it was confirmed that the Church had it.

John Dehlin [01:50:43] Okay. So it takes him a while to be grudgingly admit it. That shows, you know, after people constantly

John Hamer [01:50:48] were, you know, the newspapers were constantly, you know, asking, asking, asking this kind of thing. So.

John Dehlin [01:50:54] Okay, so that's, that's. That's. I think that's. To me, that's one of the most significant parts of this entire story as it relates to the Church's hiding and suppression of information.

John Hamer [01:51:06] And it's not just the Hoffman ones. They had actual documents that they were suppressing.

John Dehlin [01:51:12] And still do. Yeah, and still do.

John Hamer [01:51:13] Yeah. I mean. I mean, they're being good about it. So, like, again, one of the ones that was very famously in the First Presidency vault is the. The council of 50 minutes. Right. And so that was in there forever. And everybody wanted to get the council of 50 minutes out, but they've published it now. So I do think that that's to the listener's point, that's something that they've changed. Right. And so they're not doing the same thing that was going on in the 80s generally.

The Salamander Letter

John Hamer [01:51:37] Okay, so that gets us through that. And now we're going to move on to the most famous letter, Salamander Letter. So Hoppin introduces his most famous forgery in January of 84 sales. So it's supposedly written again by Mormon financier and witness. Book of Mormon financier and witness Martin Harris.

John Hamer [01:51:57] The text explicitly connects Joseph Smith's exploits as a treasure seer with the story of the gold plates by claiming that the guardian spirit of the plates appeared to Joseph Smith as a white salamander. So in other words, not the more familiar way it's told now with the angel Moroni.

John Hamer [01:52:17] So the letter reads in part, this is supposedly Martin Harris writing to somebody. Joseph Sr. Says that Joseph Jr. Can see anything that he wishes by looking at a stone. Joseph often sees spirits here with great kettles of coin money. In the fall of the year 1827, I hear Joseph found a gold Bible. I take Joseph aside and he says, it is true. I found it four years ago with my stock stone. But I only just got it because of the enchantment. The old spirit come to me three times in the same dream and says, dig up the gold. But when I take it up the next morning, the spirit transfigured himself from a white salamander in the bottom of a hole and struck me three times and held the treasure and would not let me have it.

John Dehlin [01:53:03] Okay, what's wrong with that?

John Hamer [01:53:09] Well, so I mean, anyway, you can imagine as a.

John Dehlin [01:53:12] What were Mormon's impressions before about the, you know, about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon before reading that document?

John Hamer [01:53:19] Yeah, well, so I mean, obviously that's not the way the Moroni story is portrayed, I think in movies at the LDS Visitor Center. So one of the things that's really happening here is this is really all written in the context of, not in the context of Joseph Smith as religious leader.

John Hamer [01:53:40] So we're talking here about again, finding things with stones. So he's using the crystal magic to do that. He's talking about Moroni not as an angel, the last of his race or something like that, who is trying to bring forth a religious record. Rather, we're talking about a treasure guardian, a spirit that's guarding a treasure, like the guardian spirits that Joseph Smith had been scrying and fighting, finding, you know, dealing with when they were being doing the money digging. And so it's directly connecting, you know, the digging up a gold golden plates, treasure guarded by guardian spirits with digging up the, the you know, the fake treasure or whatever, the other treasure of the, of the money digging.

John Hamer [01:54:22] And it's making the whole thing very clearly about enchantment, magic. And indeed since the spirit takes the form of a white salamander. In other words, a salamander. Salamander is a, on the one hand it's just an animal, but it also has very magic connections in kind of European history in terms of the understanding of like witchcraft and things like that.

John Dehlin [01:54:45] Okay, so doesn't cast doubt as to the credibility of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon.

John Hamer [01:54:53] Yeah. And especially because it's in the words of Martin Harris. Right, yeah. So because it's from the, one of the Book of Mormon witnesses. Even if it's, let's say the least reliable and most kooky Book of Mormon witness, you know, it nevertheless is one of the people whose names is printed in the front page, you know, on the title page or whatever, as one of the three witnesses.

John Dehlin [01:55:12] Right.

John Hamer [01:55:13] So, so what's the historical basis of this thing? So Joseph Jr. Actually was a treasure seer who was employed, who employed magic rituals to appease guardian spirits that prevented money diggers from uncovering buried treasure. But, but that like you say, is not what regular members were told at the time. It may well be taught, as we saw at BYU right now, but at the time that was not the case. The gold plate story in the Salamander letter is actually modeled really, really closely on an affidavit that was given by Willard Chase who is one of Joseph Smith's fellow money digging neighbors. And indeed it's Willard Chase's the treasure seer from whom Joseph actually took one of his main seer stone, his chocolate seer stone, and he wouldn't give it back. Chase wanted it back. So Chase's.

John Dehlin [01:56:00] Oh yeah, go ahead. Good. No, good.

John Hamer [01:56:01] I was going to read. So here's Chase's testimony, which is what Hoffman based the Salamander letter on. So he testified and this is in the, in the Hurlbut Philacus Hurlbut affidavits that are printed in Howes Mormonism Unveiled. So the Kirtland time period in the month of June 1827. Joseph Smith Senior. So just the same way that it's Joseph Smith Sr. Who's talking to Martin Harris in the Salamander letter, it's Joseph Smith senior coming and telling this to Willard Chase. Joseph Sr. Related to me the following story, that some years ago a spirit had appeared to Joseph, his son in a vision and informed him that in a certain place There was a record on plates of gold that he was the person that must obtain those.

John Hamer [01:56:44] Obtain them. And he must do this in the following manner. On 22nd September, he must repair to the place where it was deposited where was deposited this manuscript dressed in black clothes and riding a black horse with a switch tail, in other words magic stuff and demand the book in a certain name. So a certain day, which is to say this, the fall equinox, he's got to be dressed in a certain way, he's got to do all this kind of, of magic stuff. According to.

John Hamer [01:57:10] They accordingly fitted Joseph out with a suit of black clothes and a borrowed black horse. He repaired to the place of the deposit and demanded the book which was in a stone box unsealed and so near the top of the ground that he could see one end of it. And raising it up he took out the book of gold. But fearing someone might discover where he got it, he laid it down to place back the top stone as he found it. And turning around to his surprise he saw there was no book in sight. Again he opened the box and in it he saw the book and attempted to take it out but was hindered.

John Hamer [01:57:40] He saw in the box something like a toad, another, another magical amphibian which soon assumed the appearance of a man and struck him on the side of the head. So in other words, the same detail of the guardian spirit taking the form in this case not in the original of a toad as opposed to a salamander in the Hoffman forgery.

John Dehlin [01:58:01] I've got to say that number one. Well, that account is weirder than the Salamander letter. I mean it's got Joseph Smith using all these magical artifacts and things are disappearing and reappearing and then there's a magical toad which isn't a lot different than a white salamander and he's still getting knocked down like this actually seems more damaging than the Salamander letter.

John Hamer [01:58:25] Well yeah, but the difference is, you know that the Willard Chase testimony is, you know, again, it's coming from. Who's Willard Chase? Who cares? He's some kook. He's a guy who's a, who's a treasure seer or a wizard, you know, this kind of a thing who nobody has any credibility for. The difference for the Salamander letter is this is Martin Harris who's saying it.

John Dehlin [01:58:45] Okay, wait, but is Willard Chase a kook? In other words? You know, there's a lot of people that want to say that the hurlbut affidavits or Edie Howe's book or whatever, that they're just not credible. For a long, long time that stuff has just been dismissed as worthless and anti Mormon. What is your view on Mormonism unveiled? And all of that early reporting of the people that actually were around, that were neighbors, that were friends, that were, that were, that were hearing the close, you know, the most, the accounts that were closest to when they actually happened.

John Hamer [01:59:26] Yeah, yeah. No, no, so I'm just saying, I'm saying that, that Mormons routinely can and did and do dismiss Willard Chase as a superstitious kook, but that doesn't mean he is one necessarily. I mean he was probably a superstitious kook, but in other words, it was also with. But so was Joseph Smith Senior, you know, so in other words, so, and so, you know, in some sense all these practices of practitioners of folk magic are superstitious people. Right. And so what is my, my feeling is that I think actually Willard Chase's account here is probably much closer to the original, original coming forth of the plate story than how it's maybe told now.

John Hamer [02:00:09] So now I mean we definitely know, know, even in, I don't know the kind of like the details of the accounts that you had, Joseph went multiple times and he had to go on the, on the fall equinox. So in other words, this special magic knight, you know, and he went multiple years because he was supposed to bring different people or do certain things, you know, so it's, it's very similar to what Willard Chase's account even was and it's very much in keeping with his money digging activities which are taking place simultaneously. So unlike the inoculation where we are taking all of his money digging stuff and putting that into a chapter that comes before he becomes a prophet, all of that, all money digging happens after the first vision and all of it is happening simultaneously.

John Hamer [02:00:56] So the presence of a treasure spirit, that old spirit or whatever that ultimately is understood to have been Nephi or now ultimately Moroni or whoever it is, understand it and understand to be an angel. There's very little difference between an angel or spirit in, in the Mormon conception, anyway. And so, and so anyway, so I think that Willard Chase's account is probably fairly close to what the account that Joseph Smith Sr. Would have been telling Willard Chase. I don't think it's, there's no, I don't think there's a lot of reason to think that he's making a lot up there.

John Dehlin [02:01:33] And this becomes another example of how you pick any major belief or any major event in Mormonism and how it's told, how it's recounted, whether it's the first vision, whether it's the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, there's probably a succession. Whatever it is, there seems to be this pattern of stories evolving over time, becoming, you know, less weird, less based on folk magic, and more and more kind of reputable within a traditional religious sensibility. Is that.

John Hamer [02:02:10] Yeah, sure, of course, yeah. Because I mean, the reality is, is that one of the things that people are uncomfortable with is that Joseph Smith was a, you know, a relatively uneducated person who is also from a poor, impoverished background. So he isn't this really sophisticated person. And so as a result of that, the origins are quite humble and they're intermixed with folk superstition very, very directly because they, they weren't respectable people in that way. It's only later when the church becomes, you know, rich and fancy and has lots of educated people that, you know, you know, Bushman is, when he's trying to go back and look at Mormon origins, he, he identifies with the visiting professors who come and meet Joseph Smith and Nauvoo much more than he can possibly do with actual Joseph Smith, who has a very different social class background, you know.

John Dehlin [02:03:08] Yeah, yeah. So it's just this continual honing, whitewashing of the history to make it more presentable for educated middle class folk.

John Hamer [02:03:21] And it's not even, it doesn't even have to be deliberate. People do that naturally because you respect the thing, you put yourself into it, you remember it the way you want to. So there is deliberate policies of what was, you know, we have here the picture of the Seer stone. We hadn't seen that until recently. You know, now people, now we have it, we have a photograph of it, even though it had been in the vault and nobody got to see it before. So anyway, so, so there are, even if things have changed, you know, in some cases there was policies of deliberate suppression and those kind of things. But there's a lot of cases where people, especially in storytelling and memory, just naturally clean stuff up.

John Dehlin [02:03:58] So, and just to ask the question directly, your opinion of the hurlbut affidavits and Edie Howe's Mormonism unveiled is what.

John Hamer [02:04:06] So the, the, there are two sets of hurlbut affidavits. So the ones where he goes and goes around and talks to all the Smith neighbors, for example, in Palmyra and Harmony and things like that, they're all, I think, quite good.

John Dehlin [02:04:18] I mean, so they, they're Trustworthy, generally speaking.

John Hamer [02:04:22] Generally speaking, trustworthy. So you have to, with any document, you have to read in the biases of the people. And so one of the nice things that we have is by having all of those documents, we can see people who are negatively disposed to the Smith family alongside, you know, the actual followers. So we can put the counts together and read into the, the biases and get a pretty detailed account. But by and large, those are quite good. The ones that, the ones that are also in the book but that don't, don't end up panning out are the Khanate affidavits where about the Spald, about Solomon Spaulding.

John Hamer [02:04:58] And the reason for that, I mean, that's been. We don't have to go into the Spalding theory. But anyway, Fawn Brody described that and explained how that process worked, I think very well. You know, way more than half a century ago, essentially the people there kind of created a false narrative that they believed amongst themselves. And so he went and interviewed them and they genuinely believed what they wrote in those affidavits, but they were incorrect.

John Dehlin [02:05:22] And then one point that I don't think we've connected just one quick dot. Lauren writes, Joseph Smith was trying to amaze the treasure digging community by using Willard Chase's stone because Chase was the respected treasure digger. When we talk about Willard Chase having heard an account from Joseph Smith Sr. This is the, Is this the same Chase family with Sally Chase where basically Joseph and his family learn about Sally Chase who's doing, you know, treasure digging with a stone. And that's, that's the Smith part of the Smith family's entry into the business of treasure digging with the Seer Stone. And that's why Chase is both hearing about an account from Joseph Smith Sr. And you know, in the mix of the whole treasure digging, stone, folk magic business, is that all right?

John Hamer [02:06:14] So, yeah, they're all. Yeah, exactly. So they're part of the treasure digging neighbors and compadres and everything like that and sometimes rivals. And certainly again, like we said, the stone, one of the stones, he's got more than one Seer Stone, but it might be this one actually because it's described as the chocolate one that he actually was actually gotten on Chase's property. And initially Chase's account anyway, that Joseph borrowed it from him, but later he went to try to get it back from Hyrum and Hyrum said, you're never getting it. That's an important stone. And so you're not going to, you know, and so he wouldn't give it back. So whether, at least as far as Chase is concerned, Joseph Smith stole the, the particular Seer Stone from him. So. Okay, but yeah, the same guys.

John Dehlin [02:06:59] All right.

John Hamer [02:07:00] Okay, so what happened to this, the Salamander Letter? Well, Hoffman shared copies of the letter with Mormon historians who really understood the magnitude of this supposed discovery. And so documents collector Stephen Christensen purchased the letter for $40,000 in January 6, 1984. Christensen's idea was he wanted to authenticate it and then. And then donate it to the LDS Church. He wanted to also get historical background for it so that it could be presented in context so that people would understand what, you know, why this is, you know, anyway, this, this actual legitimate folk magic background and not be freaked out by it.

John Dehlin [02:07:39] And for those who don't know, Steve Christensen is the son of Mack Christensen, who's the Mr. Mac, that all the clothing stores throughout Utah are where a Mormon missionary would go to buy their suits before they go on a mission. Mack Christensen was also the president of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for a long, long time. And so this is his son Steve. And, you know, Steve ultimately ends up dying as one of Mark Hoffman's bombing victims. And so a question I have is, does. And maybe you're going to touch on this, but do we know if at this point Steve Christensen's working with the church on behalf of the CH Church? Is this where the church is using a frontman?

John Hamer [02:08:23] So I think at this point he's working on his own and he's. Because he's actually even hiring historians on his own to do the kind of. The background research. So I don't think he's acting here as like an agent. I think that this is something that he's interested in doing. He's comfortable enough to. He can pay this kind of money to get this kind of thing going, at least at the. This point. And, and so I think that he's actually wanting to write himself into the story by himself having this very special or very early important document and trying to anyway, massage its contents by getting enough kind of a historical background for it and then make a big show of donating it to the church so that he can anyway be part of the story.

John Dehlin [02:09:13] And is, is, is Brent Metcalf working for Steve Christensen by this, around this time?

John Hamer [02:09:18] I'm trying to think of who he. Who, who it was. I'm not sure when. What. You'll have to. You should bring it, Brent.

John Dehlin [02:09:25] I'm pretty sure that Brent introduces Steve Christensen to Mark Hoffman at some point. Yeah. So so it's because Brent ends up feeling guilty that he made that introduction because Steven ends up dying.

John Hamer [02:09:38] So and so I mean, I mean he. Obviously somebody you should have on because he'll. He remembers.

John Dehlin [02:09:43] No, I've had him on.

John Hamer [02:09:43] I've had him on this thing.

John Dehlin [02:09:45] Okay.

John Hamer [02:09:45] Yeah. So anyway, I'll have to go back and watch that one. So.

John Dehlin [02:09:50] Yeah, it's. It's audio only. It's audio.

John Hamer [02:09:53] Okay. Hoffman leaked the contents of this letter way too broadly to suppress it. And so, you know, so Christensen, even though he's had it and he's trying to get this background for it, the contents are already everywhere. And so we've already. You just had the Tanner Sandra on. Anyway, so although the letter was largely accepted by the historians community as authentic because it jives with again the, the Willard Chase statement and other. What else was known about Joseph Smith's folk magic background. Gerald Tanner, you know, correctly identified that it's a forgery because it's just too close, you know. So in other words, he's, you know,

John Hamer [02:10:32] Hoffman is modeling it too closely on that and also using some details of a recent academic article that Gerald felt like somebody in order to have written, you know, in order to produce the Salamander letter, somebody would have had to read both those things. And so therefore it's a modern document, a recent document frankly, which is a

John Dehlin [02:10:51] pretty amazing accomplishment of detection a full year before the bombings.

John Hamer [02:10:55] That's right.

John Dehlin [02:10:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a huge act of integrity that the Tanners would have had every reason to want to validate any document that would make the church look bad potentially. Right. And that he was not only willing to like even had interest in making sure the document was valid versus and

John Hamer [02:11:16] even writing an expose against it.

John Dehlin [02:11:18] Right, right.

John Hamer [02:11:19] So there's, there's confirmation bias.

John Dehlin [02:11:21] Confirmation bias would say just accept the document and run with it and try and embarrass the church. And he didn't just stop with the confirmation bias.

John Hamer [02:11:30] Right, right, exactly. So yeah, so definitely stuck his neck out and was one of the few people doing it. Way ahead actually questioning at that point then all of Hoffman's documents based on, I mean in a way we've only highlighted some of these here. When I put even doing that timeline there are so many more documents that in a way it's sort of crazy that nobody else was know had kind of connected the dots because Hoffman was in finding so many things. It's, it's in some cases things that he's making on demand for people. So somebody wants, you know, this or that thing. Oh, I've happened to find that, you know, and so, and so in a way it does seem remarkable, but people are in the middle of it.

John Hamer [02:12:08] It's brand new. There had been all kinds of revelations coming out about Mormon history, you know, for the past two decades that made it kind of gave the context for this kind of thing. And so that's why I think people didn't immediately see it. But in retrospect, I mean, hindsight or whatever, you think, oh my goodness, how could he have done so many documents? And everybody thinks, oh, another one. Why is Hoffman the only one finding documents?

John Dehlin [02:12:30] He's finding all the documents that everybody wants, basically just mysteriously. But back to Gerald. It was a real act of integrity, of sleuthsmanship and courage to go against the prevailing community and take a stand. And so we've got Sandra Tanner at the 18 at the 1984 or 1984 Sunstone Symposium handing out this newsletter telling everyone that Gerald thinks it might not be valid. And for me, the point of the Mormon LDS Church leaders claiming to be prophets, seers and revelators, and they're not. But we have Gerald Tanner, who's the world's most hated anti Mormon, and I'm saying that in air quotes, actually acting as a prophet, seer and revelator, seeing, you know, prophesying and seeing ahead of time what the world won't come to understand until a full year later, which is that this document was a fraud.

John Dehlin [02:13:29] It's sort of like a secular version of a real true prophet, seer and revelator, with courage and with integrity. In other words, all of the virtues that we would want to see in the Mormon Church leadership. We actually see in the person who is discredited and smeared as the church's biggest enemy and as the world's number one anti Mormon. I mean, that's kind of beautifully ironic to me.

John Hamer [02:13:58] And so one of the one an irony that I would include, you know, from, you know, I wasn't in it at the time, but anyway, from the Mormon historians community perspective is we also had all of these people who were trained historians who accepted the document as genuine. And here is a person who is not a trained historian who didn't have that educational background, but just simply had studied a lot and had kind of brute forced their way through all of this stuff and became aware of it. And so therefore had come to understand that. And we was able to make that a correct evaluation when the trained historians were not right. Yep.

John Dehlin [02:14:42] All right, so go anyways, more or

John Hamer [02:14:44] less accepted by therefore as valid. And so the LDS Church published the contents by 85 in the, in the church news and Farms started writing apologetic context for it so that people could understand it if they, if they, you know, were really troubled by it. Which because it was troubling. And so it would be like things like why would a guy in upstate New York want to talk to a salamander? Kind of essays that Farms was writing so that to try to help people understand it. So, so, so that brings us through the end of the, the actually documents that he actually forged that I wanted to talk about today, but I want to talk then now about the next two things that that Hoffman was talking about but didn't actually end up ever completing.

The Lost 116 Pages and the McClellan Collection

John Hamer [02:15:27] So the last 116 pages and then the McClellan collection. Now as we've gotten to 1985, okay, so the last 116 pages in the McClellan collection. So Hoffman was floating around the idea that he discovered the lost 116 pages. So talking to different people in the Mormon historians community. And so this is the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon. The most likely what actually happened to these are that when Martin Harris took those manuscript pages to show his wife, she probably burned them and so she probably destroyed them in 1828. But since they are probably destroyed, people have always wondered well what if they weren't destroyed and they exist somewhere and could be discovered.

John Hamer [02:16:12] And so the Salamander Letter and other Hoffman forgeries. Because the Salamander Letter was again written in Martin Harris's own hand or you know, it establishes or maybe it was anyway because there's Martin Harris handwriting there. Anyway, I don't think it's in his own hand. But anyway, because there are Martin Harris writings that take place, that's establishing more Martin Harris handwriting. And so that's setting up Hoffman being able to be to produce 116 pages which would mostly be in Martin Harris's handwriting.

John Hamer [02:16:44] Okay, so although hoffman never produced 116 pages forgery, you know, we might speculate what he probably seems to be planning to. And given all of his other works that we've kind of gone through, he likely would have rewritten what was effectively the first draft of the Book of Mormon to include many more references to magic, for example than were included in the, in the version that we have now, the published version. And so in Hoffman's reimagination of what the first draft of the Book of Mormon was have looked like it probably would have been a lot less religious. It probably would have been a Lot more folk magic Y.

John Hamer [02:17:20] Anyway, so although Hoffman had been really successful forger up until this point in 1985, he wasn't successful at living life. He, you know, crazily spent, you know, money like a crazy person and he was had constant need for cash.

John Hamer [02:17:36] All of the different scamming he was doing, he was living stuff still way, way beyond his means. And so he was definitely getting to a place where that was all catching up with him. And on the other hand, he kept on promising documents like this that he really couldn't deliver. So 116 pages. If he was going to have produced that, you have to go and get, I mean it's one thing to get one letter where you go and you get a piece of historic paper that's the right age out of a library and you cut an end piece out of a book or something like that in order to get a of piece of paper, but in order to get 116 of those, you know. You know, it's a mess and it's a lot of work. Right?

John Dehlin [02:18:12] So yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Okay. So he starts talking about, you know, oh, and by the way, by the way, I should just say that as I understand it, in, in the process of Jared Hess and Tyler Meesum doing all their research for their documentary, they came upon an outline, a written outline, purportedly in the hands written by the hand of Mark Hoffman where he's starting to sketch out an outline of what was going to be in the 116 pages. And if I'm not mistaken, Radio Free Mormon with Bill Real just this week released an episode that may have talked about that or they're going to. But there's certainly. I, I just think it's important to note that, that now there has been released a document that, that that has Hoffman's handwritten outline or sketch or some

John Hamer [02:19:10] early interesting for people to review. So yeah, so I mean it. He almost certainly there's all of these indications, you know, that he was building towards this. Right. So we've seen it in a lot of the documents that we've just outlined. And he's also definitely telling people, so Brent Metcalf and everybody else that he's got a lead on the 116 pages. And so it's clear that he's going that way. And like you say there's an outline now that they've encountered. So that definitely seems like a place he was going. But again it's a big. If they were gonna, if he was actually gonna produce the whole thing, that's a big deal.

John Hamer [02:19:42] It might be that he only produced, you know, maybe he was only planning to produce a part of it or something like that anyway. But in either case, it's a lot of work compared to some of these little scraps of things that he's doing.

John Dehlin [02:19:52] But it would have commanded a whole lot of money, right?

John Hamer [02:19:55] Oh yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:19:56] Yeah.

John Hamer [02:19:57] It would have been huge if you could do that. But yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:59] Yeah.

John Hamer [02:20:00] Okay. So meanwhile he has another big thing that he's kind of playing around with. So he's. He met with Steve Christensen again on June 28 in 85 and told him that he'd located three whole boxes full of documents that are held by a descendant of Mormon apostle, actually ex apostle William McClellan. So somebody who, who had been an apostle but parted ways with the Mormon Church around the time of the Mormon Missouri war. Whose contents. The contents of the McClellan collection included for example, the original papyrus of which the facsimile number two is created, that's published in the Book of Abraham. So in other words, it's an important documents collection. And so Hoffman told Christensen that he needed $195,000 to secure the collection.

John Dehlin [02:20:47] Okay. And it's in Texas, right? Supposedly in Texas.

John Hamer [02:20:51] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:20:51] Yeah.

John Hamer [02:20:52] And Christensen and Hoffman then met with Dallin Oaks and Hugh Pinnock. The church having been burned kind of by the Salamander letter, decides that they want to get out in front of this. And so they're eager to acquire this potentially damning McClellan collection. And so Oaks and Pinnock approve an unsecured $185,000 loan from Zion's bank to Hoffman so that Hoffman can go buy this collection.

John Dehlin [02:21:15] Yeah. And is that. So is that shady at all? You know, just this idea of Oaks and Pinnock and do we know anything about Pinnock? And you know, the. I wonder why the church wanted a loan from Zion's Bank. The church could have just fronted the money himself, fronted the money themselves.

John Hamer [02:21:36] I don't know. I guess my understanding of it is that they felt like they. They weren't able to draw the cash. I don't know why they weren't able to draw the cash, but they were able even though. So even though Zion's bank had already been spun off, the Church had a very close relationship still and was able to just call up the right person who on the say so of the general authority gave the loan. And so I guess maybe the fact that it's a loan, there's an enforcement mechanism there. So Hoffman is on the. On isn't it's not just a contract or something like that. He's actually on, you know, he's got to pay this back because what he's doing is he's using this money to acquire the collection from this person in Texas, according to his story. Right. And so at some point or other, he's going to have to get it back.

John Dehlin [02:22:23] And how significant is it that the church had the power to secure a $185,000 unsecured loan from a bank and that they would be using this approach to try and buy up a document in your mind?

John Hamer [02:22:39] Yeah. Well, I guess it's a window into, you know, the kind of ways it was able to do business, you know, clearly and probably still is. But like you say now, I mean, the Mormon Church is so. It's come out. The Mormon Church is so rich, you know, just has so many billions of dollars that in some ways the fact that it had this much money and was able to make these kinds of, know, quick deals and things like that on an emergency basis to prevent damning, damning information from coming out. I mean, you can. It's. It's not particularly surprising, but it's just one of the rare examples when you get to look behind the curtain and actually see it because it gets entered into testimonies.

John Dehlin [02:23:14] Okay, well, here's a. Here comes a funny twist in the story, right?

John Hamer [02:23:19] Yeah, it's not funny. It's starting to get. Well, this is. This part's funny about to get. Become a very tragic story. But yeah, this part's funny. So. Yeah, the funny thing is in terms of this McClellan collection is that the LDS leaders here were so eager to buy and suppress the documents, you know, that painted Mormon history in an unfavorable light. They actually failed to realize that they already had the real McClellan collection that

John Dehlin [02:23:42] they had been suppressing. Is that fair to say or not?

John Hamer [02:23:45] Yeah, so. Because they. Because again, so much stuff was. Was not, you know, not published, they weren't sure what they had in their vaults. And it was only later that was. They realized, well, wait a second, we actually have this McClellan collection. But they didn't know it at the time. So it's not like that. They thought, well, wait a second, is this a different McClellan collection or something like that? This was just. Had been forgotten that this had been acquired and stuck in a vault or something like that. And so it was really only revealed later, Although they figured it out at some point or other.

John Hamer [02:24:11] It was only revealed in 92, I think when Richard Turley published his own account of the Hoffman murders. So victims that book that this surprise came out that the McClellan, the real McClellan collection was actually already in the, in the church's archives.

John Hamer [02:24:27] And so then it was a, it was deemed to be extremely sensitive. And so as a result of that they contracted, the church contracted with Jan Shipps to be a very well known outsider historian to be able to curate this potentially, you know, but they thought still because of the Hoffman stuff, potentially damaging collection. And she though was paired with John Welch of Farms and in order to, in order to have you know, kind of the church having an insight on it and control on it. And so the book is kind of interestingly published jointly by the University of Illinois Press. So so the, the main outside independent academic institution that does Mormon studies at the time and then also BYU studies. So it's kind of an interesting addendum to this whole McClellan business.

John Dehlin [02:25:22] So the church tries to, tries to purchase and suppress a document that it was already suppressing and it just didn't know it. That's right. And we only learned that a lot later.

John Hamer [02:25:36] We only learned a lot later. I think it was, I think it was, was it in the documentary or was it Sandra Tanner?

John Dehlin [02:25:43] Santa talked about that. My interview with you.

John Hamer [02:25:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So interesting. Okay, so yeah, anyway, the McClellan collection then leads to the murders, right? So debt is looming from all quarters. Creditors are chasing him. It's not only. He didn't only get, as we saw in the documentary too, he didn't own Hoffman didn't only get money from the church, he to secure this collection. He was using that as an excuse to get money from everybody and they all owed everybody everything. So he's unable to produce this entire collection of documents. And frankly he owes too many people too many things anyway, even if he did get it and so he can't also produce it because it's like three boxes.

The Bombings and Murders

John Hamer [02:26:20] So how is he going to do that Instead though, he then begins building bombs and murdering people. So beginning on October 15th with Steve Christensen. So Christiansen at this point was, was essentially the LDS Church had tapped him as their primary contact. So they've given him this loan and Steve Christensen somebody that they trust. So he's the one that's supposed to watch Hoffman who's the shady guy essentially, you know, more, more shady, more and more shady. He doesn't answer, answer the phone, he's bouncing checks, all these other kinds of things. So Steve, Steve is supposed to kind of be the go between and so he gets blown up in the first of the bombs.

John Dehlin [02:26:59] Yeah. So basically. So, basically, it's Christensen that's put. It's Christensen, Steve Christensen, that's putting the heat on Hoffman to produce the papers. And as I understand it, there's like, a meeting that, you know, a supposed meeting that week where Christensen is going to try and force kind of march Hoffman to the lockbox or the. You know, wherever these documents are. And Hoffman's like, oh, my gosh, I got to kill this guy right before he exposes me as a fraud. And there's also this account I read later that we won't talk about much today. The Dallin Oaks addresses rumors that Pinnock and Oaks and others had been threatening Mark Hoffman with excommunication if he didn't produce these documents that Oakes denies and says, we never.

John Dehlin [02:27:49] So, I mean, the Church is getting super worried. Christiansen's getting impatient. The bank wants their money back, and then the Church wants to see these documents. It's sort of like this Ponzi scheme of lies and money that starts to unravel, like all Ponzi schemes do. And you could even think about Joseph Smith, not necessarily his life story being a Ponzi scheme, but some would say a lot of fraud or a lot of lies, a lot of deceptions, a lot of financial shenanigans.

John Dehlin [02:28:20] It just. Eventually, these lies start to compound the weight and the complexity of all the lies starts to become overwhelming, and it all begins to collapse. And Hoffman's response to it all being about to collapse and him being, you know, un. Un. Unveiled as a fraud is to kill Christensen with a bomb.

John Hamer [02:28:44] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, on the one hand, people make the point, you know, that, you know, that Hoffman is just this amazingly clever forger. And so he certainly had, like, a lot of, you know, the documentary shows that he's got a lot of clever techniques and how he's aging documents and tricking things, you know, in terms of beating different kinds of tests and this kind of thing.

John Hamer [02:29:08] And so. And so a lot of times people think, okay, well, he's got to be a genius and things like that. Well, he's. Maybe he's very clever on that kind of thing, but there's all kinds of other things that he is not clever about, even in terms of the history stuff. In a lot of cases, he's amateurish, and he's getting details from the real historians that he's talking to in a lot of cases and building those into the documents.

John Hamer [02:29:32] But ultimately, in terms of, like, how he's living life, he is Living life not like a genius at all, like a crazy, again, a crazy person or a dummy who is more or less check to check, scam to scam, living these things as opposed to, you know, he's at this time, you know, forged.

John Hamer [02:29:53] We didn't include this because it's not a Mormon history document, but he's this oath of A Freeman, this $1.5 million document they talk about in the, in the documentary. But even though this is this crazy once in a lifetime kind of thing for a forger to do, the very first printed document in all of American history, he, he's. He's crazily given his, his New York agent, like 50% of it instead of as a finders fee or whatever or as a, as a selling fee as opposed to 10 or 15 or whatever. And so, and so he's not behaving in any kind of crazy, you know, normal way with money.

John Hamer [02:30:26] So he's spending money like a crazy person. And, and so now he's just swimming in debt. He has nothing that he can, no way to get out of it, like you say. So he starts killing people.

John Dehlin [02:30:36] Right. Which is tragic and awful.

John Hamer [02:30:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he second bombed the same, very same day at the home of Gary Sheets. So this is a guy who is Christensen's former employer. And he wants to therefore, you know, seemingly make it seem that it's not about the, it's not about Mormon history documents that Christensen gets killed for, but rather it's something to do with their, their company, Sheets company. And so he, you know, leaves a bomb at the, at the Sheets house. And he doesn't care at all who, if it's a kid or nobody or if it just gets found and nobody gets killed. But anyway, it kills Kathy Sheets and that's the second one.

John Hamer [02:31:15] And then the next day he has a third bomb, likely intended. I think he's likely attempting to use this as a, as a way to just, you know, supposedly destroy the supposed McClellan collection. So he has a bunch of stuff that he puts into his car that will hopefully, if it gets blown up, look like it had been the McClellan collection. And so he drives it to the downtown where Brent Ashworth is a regular meeting. And he goes and presumably tries to get Brent to come or go look in his car or something like that, or Brent's assistant, Metcalfe, whoever's going to go, go to look in the car and blow themselves up.

John Hamer [02:32:01] But because Brent Ashworth, you know, wasn't at their regular meeting because Mormon historians are getting blown up and so he doesn't. Doesn't go to it as a result.

John Dehlin [02:32:09] His wife, I think the documentary says his wife told him not to go, so he didn't go. Right.

John Hamer [02:32:13] So, yeah, so he stayed home and played it safe, which was very smart on his part and his wife's part. And so then. And so then Hoffman had left, essentially set a live bomb in his car. And so now. And he didn't have anybody to make it go off. And so he goes back and tries to disarm it or something himself and it ends up going off and he ends up being destroyed the car, but not enough of the collection to make it actually apparent that the McClellan collection had been destroyed. So anyway, I know this wasn't meant for me to be a story about the, about the murders and the trial or the police or how they uncover it, but rather I just wanted to take the time with you today to kind of review essentially the Mormon history documents, what Hoffman was doing apparently in making them, the kinds of documents he was making, why they got authenticated, how they actually fit into Mormon history, why historians thought that they were real, why Mormon church leaders thought they were real, the response that church leaders had when suppressing them when they could, trying to deal with them as they could when it was.

Church Deception, Cover-up, and Fallout

John Hamer [02:33:22] When Hoffman was preventing it from being suppressed. And then ultimately the fallout is ultimately when it turns out that these are all forgeries, how that all has to. How all of the academic articles have to all be rewritten given the fact that people anyway had assumed some of these documents that were relatively important actually are frauds.

John Dehlin [02:33:50] We have an interesting question from a listener. Simon writes, was Hoffman the first person to sell fake documents to the LDS Church or the only one we knew about? And then there was a.

John Hamer [02:34:03] So there's like a faked. There's some. There's. I'm trying to think of there's like a big forgery that occurred like it's Oliver Cowdery forgery that occurred in the early 20th century. And I don't know now, I'm not sure if it got sold to the church or not, but that wasn't, that was later exposed as a. As not from Oliver Cowdery.

John Hamer [02:34:23] You know, people fake documents. That's. That happens a lot. And, and I think it's, you know, it's still happening in, in the Mormon history because the issue is that there are so many Mormon collectors and the Mormon Church also has a huge amount of money. And so as a result, Mormon collectibles and artifacts and things like that are just, you know, radically crazily inflated in their value, the amount of money that a first edition Book of Mormon, which isn't technically qualified as a rare book because there's so many of them, nevertheless, each one of them was worth so much money.

John Dehlin [02:34:59] Yeah. So if somebody wants to ask the question, is the Mark Hoffman sort of like story with documents and with the church's involvement with the documents, is it sort of a smoking gun to sort of highlight the LDS Church's practices of, we'll use strong words, deception, you know, hiding things. Is overall, your assessment is, you know, is, is the Hoffman case an example of the church being caught red handed, kind of deceiving its own members and the world or not? What's your kind of overall assessment of the extent to which this is a smoking gun speaking to the credibility and the honest dealings of Mormon church leaders?

John Hamer [02:35:51] I think that every time you look at it very closely, the Mormon church leaders can be shown to have a policy of lying for the Lord. And so there is an idea that protecting the church from embarrassment is a higher calling than truth at this moment or in this way. So if you, you can lie for the Lord, I mean, we've seen, I mean, Hinckley would do that. You know, where he goes on national television and says he doesn't know if they teach about eternal progression and things like that, you know, more or less lying about that to a national interviewer and then going back to General Conference and winking at all the members. I think we know quite a lot about that or whatever he said.

John Dehlin [02:36:42] Right.

John Hamer [02:36:42] And so I just think that that's the policy. It's been true back going back to Joseph Smith, that was definitely Joseph Smith's policy on polygamy, where he would. He was secretly practicing polygamy, but because he called it probably first spiritual wifery and then later celestial marriage, he would say, I absolutely condemn polygamy. Because he's saying in brackets without saying it out loud, because polygamy is Satan's counterfeit of true principle of eternal and celestial marriage. But he didn't tell them that. He didn't say that part out loud. He condemned polygamy out loud. And so he's attempting to use legalistic words or phrasing with the intent of deceiving. And so I think that that continues to this day in the culture of LDS Church leadership.

John Dehlin [02:37:34] And even as I understand it, when Joseph Smith speaks later about his treasure digging, he tries to downplay his involvement and say that he wasn't really involved or he tried to convince, talk about did Joseph Smith.

John Hamer [02:37:50] So that'll be the case too. So, for example, Joseph Smith knew very well that there's no such thing as a visitation. In other words, beings do not appear. Eternal beings or heavenly beings or whatever do not appear physically in the physical universe and actually can touch you and all those kind of things. The visionary experiences are visionary. So the first vision, you know, is something that is occurring in the. In the realm of the

John Dehlin [02:38:18] imagination,

John Hamer [02:38:21] spiritual realm. So there's no physical thing. So people sometimes say, I would like to get a time machine and go back to the second sacred grove and see what Joseph is seeing at the time. You would see a kid.

John Hamer [02:38:30] You don't see anything else. So the experience is happening internally, you know, and as being seen, as they would describe it back then, with the spiritual eyes. And so we know very well from the accounts, for example, that we have from Martin Harris and others about the. The vision of the three witnesses, that the spirit, the seeing of the plates and everything like that was an entirely visionary experience.

John Hamer [02:38:56] But later in Kirtland, for example, when people are asking the witnesses about that or asking Joseph Smith about that, they're telling the story ambiguously so that you might think that the vision is actually a visitation. And so then some of the people in Kirtland, some of the members, some of the believers, press Martin Harris on it. And Martin Harris says, did you see it, Martin, with your physical eyes or with your spiritual eyes? And so. So at a certain point he admits, you know, no, this is all with spiritual lies. Right. And that. And then Joseph Smith rebukes him for saying, you know, you're to affirm the testimony the way it's written in the book and nothing more, you know, so.

John Hamer [02:39:32] So. So there's definitely a. I would say a policy of. Of ambiguity, which. Which allows people to believe what they want to believe, you know, in terms of that kind of a thing, but deliberately, in some cases, deliberately misleading them. And that, again, goes all the way back to Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [02:39:53] One of my.

John Hamer [02:39:53] The statement of the eight witnesses is definitely designed to mislead, you know.

John Dehlin [02:39:57] Yeah, I was going to ask you that because when you read the statement of the three witnesses and the eight witnesses, it looks. It looks very material, right? They're touching plates, they're seeing angels. They're all there. So you're saying that those original three and eight witness statements were crafted with the intent to deceive.

John Hamer [02:40:18] Absolutely eight witnesses.

John Dehlin [02:40:24] And while you're looking that up, I'm just going to share a comment from one of my Favorite participants in the the Mormon truth claims realm LDS discussions who has a wonderful website@ LDSDiscussions.com he writes, Historically speaking, I don't even think you'd see a kid in the sacred grove. The timing doesn't line up and the story was crafted just like others that were published contemporaneously. In other words, he's trying to say that the first vision story was made up later to kind of provide some divinity to Joseph Smith's origins as a treasure digger and as being someone who had special powers to treasure. Digitized by Google. It was a way to write back into history some sort of divine origin to Joseph's power that could then take him to the status of prophet. Right.

John Hamer [02:41:17] Yeah. Well, to his point about the date not lining up, that's correct. It's complicated. So if you were setting a time machine to a particular date, you wouldn't necessarily know when to go because that part doesn't match, you know, for his contention that that means there was no experience or whatever.

John Hamer [02:41:39] So that. That's arguable. So you can make that, you can take that position or you can take the position that, that it's a. There was an actual experience which like you say, is very similar to the kinds of experiences that are, you know, that lots and lots of people in the 19th century had born again experience where you are convicted of your sins after hearing a revival preacher. You go and pray for all of this time for your sins to be forgiven you. You see feel Christ or see a vision of Christ who forgives you your sins. You're overwhelmed by grace. That's something that was a very common practice.

John Hamer [02:42:16] So on the one hand, like you say, it could have been something that Joseph invented based on those other models later, or it's an actual thing that he, he did as a kid that he later emphasized because he was trying to emphasize that he was a religious kid and, and trying to de. Emphasize all of his treasure digging background, you know?

John Dehlin [02:42:34] Right.

John Hamer [02:42:35] I personally think it happened. In other words. In other words, I think he had that vision. But anyway, but he did. But I'm not saying that I can prove that or anything like that. It's a, that's like what it is with history. It's a. You can argue it either way. The evidence supports both positions.

John Dehlin [02:42:47] You can say, got it. Okay, so you were going to read us from the, the testimony of the eight witnesses.

John Hamer [02:42:52] Yeah, I mean, so this is just the same kind of thing. So you know, it's saying Joseph Smith, the translator of this work, has Shown unto us the plates with. Of which hath been spoken. And so he's shown us the plates because they're in the. They're in a box here, in other words. And so. And so he's shown the plates of which they have been spoken in the box. They don't say in the box, but anyway, so they're not explaining how they've been shown it. It's that. Because they don't mention the box, but anyway, it's there. So it's trying to deceive, which have the appearance of gold.

John Hamer [02:43:27] Well, I mean, they don't get to see it, but that's what they've been spoken of, which. That they have the appearance of gold. And as many leaves as the said Smith is translated, we did handle with our hands. So maybe under the. Under the carpet, I mean, under the thing they've handled the leaves, or whether they did or not, or maybe they simply handled the box again, but maybe they held something underneath the cloth. We also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of ancient work of curious workmanship. In other words, they've been shown the anthem transcript, the real one. So in other words, they're not seeing with their own physical eyes the engravings they're on, but they're not that.

John Hamer [02:44:06] They're not saying that they're not seeing it. They're seeing the Anthon transcript. So I'm just saying that the statement here makes it seem like they're having a physical thing with the actual plates and they're seeing it with their naked eyes. But all through elsewhere, Joseph is told anyway that no one can see the plates with their physical eyes because they're too spiritual, document an artifact.

John Hamer [02:44:30] So I'm just saying that's just another example. That's not one that's proved, but that's just how we can understand this, what you know, based on what the witnesses actually did. Based on. As opposed to what they signed, you know, so.

John Dehlin [02:44:42] Yeah. Okay, so what you're saying is that Joseph Smith kind of set the example that. I mean, a way that I would kind of wonder that you might kind of conclude is that Joseph Smith certainly believed that he had some sort of interaction with the divine. He certainly believed in Jesus, he certainly believed in the Bible, and he certainly wanted to bring people to Christ.

John Dehlin [02:45:05] And so he. He did a bunch of behaviors throughout his life to help people believe in God and believe in Christ and get to heaven someday. But if he had to lie along the way, hide things, deceive things, cover things up, he set the example of. Basically, I always like to use the term by any means necessary. I got that from Malcolm X. If you had to lie to make a story more credible or less embarrassing, Joseph certainly set an example of doing that all throughout his life, and then that carried to Brigham Young and onward.

John Dehlin [02:45:41] And when the brethren do that today, they certainly have been doing it over the past several decades. They do that because Joseph Smith set the example. And if Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and he lied to cover things up, then certainly they have license to do the same. Is that.

John Hamer [02:45:57] Well, so it's. It's better, apparently, you know, that one man perish than a whole nation dwindle, you know, you know, in unbelief or whatever, however you quote it. Right. So, yeah, it's written. Joseph Smith's philosophy is written right into the Book of Mormon with that.

John Dehlin [02:46:13] In that case, it's okay to kill someone. It's okay to kill someone if it's to further the cause of the Lord.

John Hamer [02:46:19] That's a much less lie. I mean, lying is. So if you're going to save the church by a couple little lies, then obviously that's that and justifies the means. And I just want to say, despite the fact that that's in scripture or whatever, I fully reject this philosophy. So, I mean, I condemn Joseph Smith's philosophy here. And so I don't think it is justified to do that.

John Dehlin [02:46:40] Right.

John Hamer [02:46:41] So there's sometimes, yes, white lying is necessary, but this kind of insane, you know, anyways, very substantial deceit, deceiving for a good end. You even made the comment, you know, about how essentially it's ultimately counterproductive.

John Dehlin [02:47:00] Yeah, Akim writes something. He writes, I also think Joseph had a vision experience, but later expanded on it and embellished it to reflect his changed and more specific theology. And so that would explain why he's got an 1832 version of his first vision account, which is just the Lord visiting him, talking about his worthiness. And then as he tells the story over and over again, it gets more embellished as his theology advances. You've got God and Jesus now. You've got him being told to form a church. It's embellished to suit his evolving worldview.

John Hamer [02:47:38] And I would say on that, the earliest version of the first vision is rarely even credited, but it's in the. The Book of Mormon itself. I can't remember what it is anyway, but, you know, in the little books, Mormon ether, Jarom Omni, where there's all these guys that are doing it, one of the prophets, who has a very short little book, goes and prays all day because he's convinced of his sins. And he prays, and he has, and he receives this assurance that his sins were forgiven him. And so then that is an account that, like so much in the Book of Mormon, is taken from Joseph Smith's life.

John Hamer [02:48:14] And so here he's describing his own kind of experience of it. But when he does that in the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon character immediately then questions, you know, he perfectly accepted Christ's forgiveness, and he felt that. He felt grace, and he felt that he'd been saved. And then the character in the Book of Mormon immediately questions, how is that even possible? So he wants to actually think about it now that he's reflecting on it as an adult, as a kid, he was just. He was just accepted it. Right. So anyway, so I think that that's an early recollection for Joseph Smith of this experience, and as he's personally composing that, and in terms of the Book of Mormon, dictation, himself is also reflecting on even the sense of it and what it even means himself.

John Dehlin [02:49:00] Totally. Totally. All right, I thank you so much for this. I. The one thing that I really wanted to try and find out with Sandra Tanner was whether Hoffman, like, was angry at the church, felt disillusioned, whether he was trying to get back at the church, whether he's trying to take the church down, you know, whether he was trying to get people out of the church. I was trying to get to his motivations, you know, and whether. Whether that was part of what he was doing, because I'm obviously dealing with people in faith crisis and people that have been hurt by the church. And so that's a narrative that I want to read into all this. And my understanding is that you don't want to give Hoffman too much credit, too much altruistic credit. Is that right?

Hofmann's Motivations and Legacy

John Hamer [02:49:43] Yeah, I don't know that he was doing. My reading of his motivation is that his ego was fueled by fooling people. And so when you make something that you know is a forgery because you made it yourself and you bring it to people, whether it be someone who's respected academic, whether it be the US Mint, whether it be the prophet of the church that you grew up in, and you fool them, that was something that I think Hoffman just fed on. And so I think from what I understanding of his motivation is that that's probably the biggest thing. And then in terms of whether discrediting where it was a document that discredited the Church. I think that that made it worth more. So I don't know. So I don't know if it's altruistic. I mean, you do that because you get more money, right?

John Dehlin [02:50:30] Yeah. Yeah. All right. I, I love this comment from Gayla. I always learned so much from John Hamer. What a scholar. I appreciate him. Thank you, Gala, for saying that.

John Hamer [02:50:40] Thank Gayla.

John Dehlin [02:50:41] Any final things you want to say about Hoffman before I, I have you talk about all the amazing work you do with Community of Christ in Toronto and around the world?

John Hamer [02:50:51] Well, anyway, I just thought, you know, was a great documentary and I was reflecting on it and, and I just kind of felt like wanting to. And also when I listened to Sandra's interview, which I recommend everybody go back and listen to that if they haven't that I just wanted to kind of recollect how it all kind of fit together because there's so much, so many details of it. And so that's why I thought, well, if we sit down and we make a kind of a little bit of a timeline, highlight some of the most important documents and kind of put it together in a timeline that we could, you know, kind of get a grapple with it.

John Hamer [02:51:25] So I, so I think it was a worthwhile exercise. And so I appreciate you encouraging me to come on and kind of share that. But yeah, I don't, I don't. In terms of Hoffman, I mean, himself, I'm not a pretty, I'm not interested in crime stories and, you know, people who are crazy murderers and all that. Thing is, obviously it's a horrible tragedy for the people who were killed and, and, and people who lost, you know, they've lost so much too. So.

John Dehlin [02:51:51] Yeah, it's hard to get excited about that.

John Hamer [02:51:54] Yeah.

John Hamer on Community of Christ Work

John Dehlin [02:51:55] Well, John Haber, really quickly, you're doing such amazing work. So many people are doing the work of deconstruction. You're doing the work of community building and community building after orthodox Mormonism, so to speak. And so I want to give you every chance you can get to just tell people about Community of Christ and about what you do in Toronto and, and about Community of Christ as a potential, you know, home for people who still want community and spirituality, but, but for whom maybe the LDS Church isn't going to maybe work anymore.

John Hamer [02:52:32] Well, so there's a, there's a big difference in terms of, you know, I think we tried to even bring out here because I think that when you were raised in the LDS Church, you really are kind of geared in, towards trying to believe in kind of A physical magic, or what is essentially what I kind of think of as the.

John Hamer [02:52:56] You're taught the Santa Claus story, but when you get older as a kid, you. You realize that, you know, Santa Claus, you're told or whatever, understand that Santa Claus isn't real, and. But then you are made to believe a kind of a similar literalistic story about physical magic, you know, about Jesus and things like that, and then you're told, no, but this one we're supposed to believe, even though it has the same problematic components to it.

John Hamer [02:53:18] But our understanding community of Christ is very different than this thing about physical magic. It's rather about, like I was saying here, the spiritual, the inward journey, learning and learning about and, you know, coming up with how to live life meaningfully, focusing on this life, and how are we making our world and communities a better place through actively trying to achieve, you know, the kingdom of God on earth. And so anyway, we are trying to do that here in Toronto. And a lot of times people say, after they've listened to a couple of my lectures or me talking and things like that, they always say, oh, I wish if John Hamer is pastor of a congregation here, I go to that church.

John Hamer [02:54:03] One of the things that's happened differently now because of the pandemic is that all church and everything is online. And so my congregation broadcasts at noon Eastern standard time, at 10am Mountain time every Sunday. You can go and find us on Facebook, on YouTube. Our channel is Toronto Centre Place, Centreplace Centre, spelled C E N T R E the Canadian Way, ca, if you want to see it on the website.

John Hamer [02:54:32] And so you can go to John Hamer's congregation now because we broadcast it. And so as many of us as a thousand people have joined us simultaneously in real time. So it's. It's usually it's less than that, being like on Easter and on big days. But in any event, it's probably at this point the largest, I would say. I mean, I don't know, Mormon congregations don't get that big. Right. And so probably the largest current anyway congregation in the restoration that's meeting real time altogether. So not counting a world conference or a general conference or something like that. So come and see what everybody's doing and you can see what I'm talking about and how, if any of this makes any sense.

John Dehlin [02:55:15] So

John Hamer [02:55:19] did I lose you, John?

John Dehlin [02:55:24] I was muted for a second. I'm sorry. So how do people find you? Where do people go?

John Hamer [02:55:30] So centerplace.ca is their website and so that'll get you there you can also just find John Hamer on Google, on, on Facebook, on, you know, anywhere on YouTube. So community of Christ, John, our congregation.

John Dehlin [02:55:46] Yeah. All right, well, John Hamer, we always love you and appreciate you and all, all our listeners are sending positive comments your way to thank you for your work today. LDS Discussions writes big thanks to John Hamer for all of his different presentations on Mormon Stories. They've all been so helpful in trying to make sense of everything and for the work he's doing now to help others. And I also want to direct people to ldsdiscussions.com It's a great website addressing all truth claim stuff along with CES letter and letter to my wife and Mormon think. Just a lot of great resources these days. And of course, you know, Radio Free Mormon and Bill Real. They're so this is kind of a golden age of information, Mormon information. And you're a part of it, John Hamer. So thank you.

Closing Reflections and Thanks

John Hamer [02:56:33] Yeah. Like I say, when I was growing up as a Mormon kid, literally, it's like the only even mention outside of church materials that I even had for like Mormonism was in looking up in the World Book Encyclopedia and reading the article on Mormon church, which is probably written by a Mormon, you know, so, so, you know, so the information didn't exist, but now it's just amazing. So, I mean, information's everywhere and so much great work is being done, like you say in the podcast and all the other other sources you mentioned.

John Dehlin [02:56:59] So, and I think it's LDS Discussions also is reminding us that people should go back into the Mormon Stories archive. Just Google John Hamer because John's got. John, you've got some great presentations in the Mormon Stories library. I should have started. Will you just mention some of those really quickly for those who want to know?

John Hamer [02:57:17] I think we. Well, like for example, our one that we did on the succession crisis. I remember that fondly. We did. That was a good discussion and we've done well. We did, we did ones on Community of Christ history. We've done lots and lots of great topics.

John Dehlin [02:57:32] One's on Book of Mormon historicity.

John Hamer [02:57:33] Yeah, right. Those are the most recent ones that have been really good.

John Dehlin [02:57:37] I think you even participated in a first vision discussion as well. So.

John Hamer [02:57:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:57:42] All right, John Hamer, you're the best. Stay, stay in touch. Love to your family and we hope to bring you on again as often as you'll come. So thanks so much.

John Hamer [02:57:51] Thank you so much for having me. Enjoy it.

John Dehlin [02:57:52] Keep up the great work. And all of you, thanks so much for joining us. Today on Mormon Stories. We've enjoyed your comments. We love all of this. Again, check out Murder among the Mormons on Netflix. It's a great documentary. We'll have Jared Hess and Tyler Meesum on next week.

John Dehlin [02:58:11] Hopefully. We, we think that's going to happen. I'm pretty sure it is. And in addition, check out the Sandra Tanner interview I just did. It's, it's, it's a blockbuster. It's fantastic. And want to thank everyone who supports Mormon Stories podcast. We certainly couldn't do this without our donors and so thanks to everyone who donates. Unfortunately, we've lost a lot of donors over this Covid time. We had a great year last year, but now, you know, we've lost donors. And so if you want to see Mormon Stories podcasts continue, if you want to see more programming like this continue, we really do need your support to keep it all going.

John Dehlin [02:58:51] And we've got great things lined up. I just can't tell you all the great things that are lined up. So if you want to see Mormon Stories continue, we need you to become a monthly donor. Go to mormonstories.org, click on the donate button at the top of the page. You can sign up 10 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford and just become a monthly donor. And that way we can hire the resources we need to do the editing, to do the cinematography, to buy the equipment, to pay the expenses. Nonprofits themselves have expenses to pay the accountants to pay attorneys when we need to.

John Dehlin [02:59:23] All our finances are transparent. We've, we've been transparent since day one here on in the Open Stories foundation since 2010. But, but you can know that every dollar you donate is both tax deductible in the US and it goes to fund this program. And we're pretty bare bones. It's just me, Brooklyn Alden helps with the video and audio editing, huge shout out to her. And then Gerardo helps with the thumbnails and with the lighting and the cinematography. And we've got a board of directors that guides us, that makes sure that there's no financial shenanigans or funny business. We've got a great accountant. We hired the best accountant in Utah for nonprofits to handle our accounting.

John Dehlin [03:00:03] So we're, we've always been buttoned up financially. We've never had financial misappropriation or any type of scandal ever, not once. And we just take seriously bringing the truth to you and to other Mormons and ex Mormons and non Mormons in the rest of the world sort of ensuring that there's informed consent within the Mormon church so that people are giving their lives and their money to something that they have full information about. And then of course, we support people in faith crisis to try and help people not be depressed, not become suicidal, not wreck their lives as they're trying to cope with, with learning the truth about the church.

John Dehlin [03:00:41] We try to prevent divorces or unnecessary divorces or unhealthy divorces. We try and prevent LDLGBTQ suicides and just all the ways that people get harmed by the church and or in their faith crisis. And then one of the biggest things we do through the Thrive Initiative and other things is to help people rebuild their lives, whether it's finding a spiritual home or a faith home like John Hamer, Community of Christ, other more worthy churches out there, or find spirituality in other means. Secular spirituality, secular Buddhism. We just had a great episode on Mormon stories about finding spirituality after Mormonism with Anthony Miller, with Margi, with Samantha Tanner and others.

John Dehlin [03:01:25] We like to showcase great content creators, whether it's RFM or Bill Real or Zelf on the Shelf or Shannon Caldwell Montez or great Mormon scholarships. So we have Matt Harris talking about his great books and we've had Michael Quinn and Richard Bushman and Tara Fiona Givens and others on. We just want to help showcase and spotlight all the good things that are happening in Mormon scholarship and in the world of Mormonism and cool interviews of people navigating their faith crises. All of that relies on your support. So thank you for your support. Please become a donor. Please spread the word.

John Dehlin [03:02:04] Positive reviews on on on the Apple podcast app. Positive, positive reviews on our Mormon Stories podcast Facebook page. Help give us, you know, five star ratings so that lots of people will like us. And then just spreading the word, you know, telling all your friends and family, posting this on social media, whatever you do to spread the word is always useful. And then finally, feedback. You know, I did an episode recently with Pat on Patrick Mason and I got some good feedback that I was too angry. A lot of people loved it, but a lot of people felt like it was too angry that it didn't really support the mission.

John Dehlin [03:02:38] It didn't reflect well in the mission of the More of the Open Stories Foundation. So I rerecorded it and I did that because of feedback from you guys and from other people. So we love your feedback. So please send it and if you've got great stories, your story, or other stories that you think will really move the needle in terms of waking people up and preventing sadness and promoting healing and growth. We always love.

John Dehlin [03:03:05] We love to learn about opportunities for new stories. So please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com with feedback or with stories and just keep being good to each other and doing good out there. We really appreciate it. So without any further ado, thanks so much to everyone. We love you guys. Please stay tuned and in the coming weeks and months and years ahead, you'll see more great stuff from us on Mormon Stories podcast. Take care everybody and we'll see you all again really soon.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.