The New York Times reported in July 2013:
"In the small but cohesive Mormon community where he grew up, Hans Mattsson was a solid believer and a pillar of the church. He followed his father and grandfather into church leadership and finally became an 'area authority' overseeing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout Europe.
"When fellow believers in Sweden first began coming to him with information from the Internet that contradicted the church’s history and teachings, he dismissed it as 'anti-Mormon propaganda,' the whisperings of Lucifer. He asked his superiors for help in responding to the members’ doubts, and when they seemed to only sidestep the questions, Mr. Mattsson began his own investigation.
"But when he discovered credible evidence that the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, was a polygamist and that the Book of Mormon and other scriptures were rife with historical anomalies, Mr. Mattsson said he felt that the foundation on which he had built his life began to crumble.
"Around the world and in the United States, where the faith was founded, the Mormon Church is grappling with a wave of doubt and disillusionment among members who encountered information on the Internet that sabotaged what they were taught about their faith, according to interviews with dozens of Mormons and those who study the church.
“'I felt like I had an earthquake under my feet,' said Mr. Mattsson, now an emeritus area authority. 'Everything I’d been taught, everything I’d been proud to preach about and witness about just crumbled under my feet. It was such a terrible psychological and nearly physical disturbance.'”
"Mr. Mattsson and others say the disillusionment is infecting the church’s best and brightest. A survey of more than 3,300 Mormon disbelievers, released last year, found that more than half of the men and four in 10 of the women had served in leadership positions in the church."
(Ref.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/us/some-mormons-search-the-web-and-find-doubt.html?_r=0 )
Reuters reported in Jan. 2012:
"A religious studies class late last year at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, was unusual for two reasons. The small group of students, faculty and faithful there to hear Mormon Elder Marlin Jensen were openly troubled about the future of their church, asking hard questions. And Jensen was uncharacteristically frank in acknowledging their concerns.
"Did the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints know that members are 'leaving in droves?' a woman asked.
"'We are aware,' said Jensen, according to a tape recording of his unscripted remarks. 'And I'm speaking of the 15 men that are above me in the hierarchy of the church.'"
"'My own daughter,' he then added, 'has come to me and said, "Dad, why didn't you ever tell me that Joseph Smith was a polygamist?"' For the younger generation, Jensen acknowledged, 'Everything's out there for them to consume if they want to Google it.' The manuals used to teach the young church doctrine, meanwhile, are 'severely outdated.'"
"'It's a different generation,' Elder Jensen told the group in Logan. 'There's no sense kidding ourselves, we just need to be very upfront with them and tell them what we know and give answers to what we have and call on their faith like we all do for things we don't understand.'"
(Ref.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/30/us-mormonchurch-idUSTRE80T1CM20120130 )
The Book of Mormon:
The HUGE problem that the LDS Church has created for itself since the 1830s has been its systematic dishonesty about Joseph Smith (JS) and the origins of Mormonism.
Here's a quote to show your wife from an article by Mormon apostle Russell Nelson that had been "Adapted from an address given 25 June 1992 at a seminar for new mission presidents, Missionary Training Center, Provo, Utah" and was published in the July 1993 Ensign:
"Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear." (Ref.
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1993/07/a-treasured-testament?lang=eng )
And from the LDS Church's "Friend" magazine for children:
"Joseph also used an egg-shaped, brown rock for translating called a seer stone. The translating was done at Peter Whitmer’s home, a friend of the Prophet’s where Oliver Cowdery, Emma Smith (Joseph’s wife), one of the Whitmers, or Martin Harris wrote down the words spoken by the Prophet as soon as they were made known to him.
"Martin Harris said that on the seer stone 'sentences would appear and were read by the Prophet and written by [the one writing them down] and when finished [that person] would say "written;" and if correctly written, the sentence would disappear and another take its place; but if not written correctly it remained until corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates.'”
(Ref.
https://www.lds.org/friend/1974/09/a-peaceful-heart?lang=eng )
You can ask your wife why the LDS Church hasn't taught millions of potential converts to Mormonism or Latter-day Saints around the globe about JS' seer-stone-and-face-in-hat 'translation' technique, or his "egg-shaped, brown rock [used] for translating."
Now, based on the LDS Church's published information, JS' small rock was (apparently) perfectly adequate in terms of magically generating Book of Mormon characters and sentences. So, why were the ancient golden plates that JS told people he'd received from the angel Nephi (later changed to Moroni) even needed? (See
http://mormonthink.com/nephiweb.htm for details about the name switch.)
Both the Ensign article by Elder Nelson and the Friend article described a meticulous BoM "translation" process. Strangely, however, the LDS Church says on its website:
"Over the years, a few hundred deletions [of BoM text] have also been made, primarily to improve the book grammatically. The most commonly eliminated have been the words that (188 times), the (48 times), it came to pass (46 times), a and and (40 times), and had (29 times).
"Additions have been less numerous, probably less than one hundred."
(Ref.
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1983/12/understanding-textual-changes-in-the-book-of-mormon?lang=eng )
Huh? BoM text deletions and additions?? How could there be so many errors in the BoM when the July 1993 Ensign article by Nelson described JS' seer-stone-and-face-in-hat technique as a "miraculous method of translation"?
JS claimed that the BoM was an "important and interesting book" in which "the history of ancient America is unfolded, from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel at the confusion of languages to the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites and came directly from the Tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem about six hundred years before Christ. They were principally Israelites of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country." (Ref.
https://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/07/the-wentworth-letter?lang=eng )
But genetic research during the past generation has proven that the ancestors of "the Indians that now inhabit this country" were from northeastern Asia (Mongolians, etc.), not from "the city of Jerusalem." Details are online at:
1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas2. "New World Settlers Took 20,000-Year Pit Stop":
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080214-america-layover.html3. "Ancient skeleton yields clues to Native American origins (+video)":
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0516/Ancient-skeleton-yields-clues-to-Native-American-origins-video4."Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church":
http://signaturebooks.com/2010/02/losing-a-lost-tribe-native-americans-dna-and-the-mormon-church/5. "DNA vs. the Book of Mormon":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GF_SxbPLb0(Your wife should also watch "The Lost Book of Abraham":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcyzkd_m6KE )
The BoM mentions the following in relation to the ancient Americas during the book's purported timeline (~2200 BC to 421 AD):
1. Domesticated oxen, cattle, horses, asses (donkeys), swine, goats, and sheep;
2. Elephants;
3. Chariots, cimeters and ships;
4. Ancient Israelites who knew how to create and work with steel and construct swords made of the alloy;
5. Ancient Americans of Hebrew ancestry who worked expertly with iron, copper and brass;
6. Many cities and buildings constructed with cement;
7. Silk and fine linens;
8. Figs, wheat and barley;
9. A monetary system involving gold and silver coins;
10. People who practiced Judaism and worshiped in synagogues;
11. A seven-day week ending with a Jewish day of worship (a Sabbath);
12. Societies led by kings; and
13. "Reformed Egyptian."
Several generations of scientific research has proven that none of these things existed in the Western Hemisphere during the BoM's timeline. Moreover, none of the plants, animals, peoples (indigenous Americans) and their languages and customs that DID exist in the ancient New World are mentioned in the supposedly "true" BoM.
In Oct. 1986, LDS Church President Ezra Benson told Latter-day Saints: "[T]he Book of Mormon is the keystone of testimony. Just as the arch crumbles if the keystone is removed, so does all the Church stand or fall with the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon." (Ref.
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1986/10/the-book-of-mormon-keystone-of-our-religion?lang=eng )
The BoM has been exposed as a work of fiction, a very 'inconvenient' truth for Latter-day Saints that has crumbled the "arch" of the LDS religion and destroyed the "keystone" of members' 'faith'.
Mormon Polygamy:
Perhaps the best way to crack open a Latter-day Saint woman's 'faith' is to reveal to her that JS made teenage girls (some as young as 14), single women, and other men's wives his plural wives. Details are on:
1. The LDS Church's genealogy website:
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/995N-B25 and
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/SP82-WTV2. At
http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/ and in historian Todd Compton's comprehensive book, "In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith" (ref.
http://signaturebooks.com/2010/02/in-sacred-loneliness-the-plural-wives-of-joseph-smith/ )
The LDS Church says on its scriptures website that Section 132 of the Doctrine & Covenants was a "revelation" to JS "relating to the new and everlasting covenant, including the eternity of the marriage covenant and the principle of plural marriage" (ref.
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/132?lang=eng ). The church's summary for D&C 132 also says that JS knew "revealed" polygamy "principles" from 1831 onward (same link).
Notably, D&C 132:61-63 state:
"61 And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood — if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.
"62 And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.
"63 But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed; for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he may be glorified."
(Ref.
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/132.61-63?lang=eng )
Disobeying this important "revelation" from "the Lord", JS targeted 11 non-virgins (married women), each of whom was "vowed" to her husband, and made them his plural wives (the list is at
http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/ ).
According to D&C 132:61, marrying (illegally) the 11 wives of Mormon husbands made JS, the so-called "prophet of the Restoration", a serial adulterer.
In the case of Sylvia Lyon, wife of Windsor Lyon before JS illegally made Sylvia his spouse in March 1842, in Jan. 1844, "Sylvia was eight months pregnant with her fourth child, Josephine Rosetta Lyon. Josephine later wrote, 'Just prior to my mother's death in 1882 she called me to her bedside and told me that her days were numbered and before she passed away from mortality she desired to tell me something which she had kept as an entire secret from me and from all others but which she now desired to communicate to me. She then told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith.'" (Ref.
http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/08-SylviaSessionsLyon.htm )
The polygamy "revelation" stipulated (in verse 61) that "consent" from "the first" wife had to obtained before a Mrmon male priesthood holder-husband could "espouse [marry] another" "virgin." Again, JS disobeyed this "revealed" aspect of "the new and everlasting covenant, including the eternity of the marriage covenant and the principle of plural marriage."
How? Teenager Lucy Walker, one of the adolescent girls that JS targeted and married, recorded that she was shocked when JS told her: "I have a message for you, I have been commanded of God to take another wife, and you are the woman." (Ref.
http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/23-LucyWalker.htm )
Worse, "Emma Smith was not present and she did not consent to the marriage; she did not know anything about it at all." (Same link.) Why not? "Emma was in St. Louis buying supplies for the Nauvoo hotel" (i.e., JS had not first obtained permission from Emma to marry young Lucy - same LucyWalker.htm link).
Notably, the BoM states in Jacob 2:24: "Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord." (Ref.
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/jacob/2.24?lang=eng )
However, D&C 132 ("recorded in 1843" by JS, according to the LDS Church in its summary for the section) says in verse 1: "Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph [Smith]...I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines."
Huh? God condemned David's and Solomon's practice of having "many wives and concubines" as "abominable" in the BoM, but flip-flopped and "justified" (authorized) the two Old Testament polygamist kings in 1843?
How can this be? After all, the "true" BoM repeatedly states that God is "the same yesterday, today, and forever" (ref.
https://www.lds.org/search?q=the+same+yesterday,+today&lang=eng&domains=scriptures ).
The answer is that when JS wrote the BoM in 1829, he had only one wife: Emma. But by mid-1843, when he wrote the supposed "revelation" about polygamy, he had at least 28 wives.
The First Vision:
The LDS Church’s Joseph Smith Papers website says that JS' journal in Nov. 1835 included the following First Vision (FV) description:
“I called upon the Lord for the first time, in the place above stated [a “silent grove”] or in other words I made a fruitless attempt to pray, my toung seemed to be swolen in my mouth, so that I could not utter, I heard a noise behind me like some person walking towards me, [I] strove again to pray, but could not, the noise of walking seemed to draw nearer, I sprung up on my feet, and looked around, but saw no person or thing that was calculated to produce the noise of walking, I kneeled again my mouth was opened and my toung liberated, and I called on the Lord in mighty prayer, a pillar of fire appeared above my head, it presently rested down upon my <me> head, and filled me with joy unspeakable, a personage appeard in the midst, of this pillar of flame which was spread all around, and yet nothing consumed.” (Ref.
http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/interview-9-november-1835?p=1 and p. 2 by clicking on the “>“ symbol)
Another "huh?" JS “made a fruitless attempt to pray” because his “toung seemed to be swolen” and he got spooked by “a noise behind” him, “like some person walking towards” him, and “a personage appeard in the midst, of this pillar of flame”? That’s not the FV account that the LDS Church has taught to millions of people worldwide for more than a century. The supposedly “true” FV story has been:
“After I [JS] had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.
“But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.
“It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—’This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!’”
(Ref.
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/js-h/1.15-17?lang=eng )
Info. about JS’ ‘morphing’ First Vision tales is at
http://mit.irr.org/joseph-smiths-changing-first-vision-accountsChapters 7 and 8 of Grant Palmer’s illuminating 2002 book, “An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins”, also discuss JS' changing FV stories and those about the so-called "priesthood restoration."
Note: Palmer is a retired “three-time director of LDS Institutes of Religion in California and Utah, a former instructor at the Church College of New Zealand, and an LDS seminary teacher at two Utah locations. He has been active in the Mormon History Association and on the board of directors of the Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association.” (Ref.
http://signaturebooks.com/2010/02/an-insiders-view-of-mormon-origins-2/)
In Oct. 2002, LDS Church President Gordon Hinckley told Latter-day Saints:
"We declare without equivocation that God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, appeared in person to the boy Joseph Smith.
"When I was interviewed by Mike Wallace on the 60 Minutes program, he asked me if I actually believed that. I replied, 'Yes, sir. That’s the miracle of it.'
"That is the way I feel about it. Our whole strength rests on the validity of that vision. It either occurred or it did not occur. If it did not, then this work is a fraud."
(Ref.
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2002/10/the-marvelous-foundation-of-our-faith?lang=eng )
Unfortunately for the LDS Church and believing Mormons, JS' conflicting FV accounts - and many other facts (see "The Changing World of Mormonism" at
http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/changecontents.htm for more info.) - prove that "this work is a fraud."
Here's a final quote: "Each of us [Latter-day Saints] has to face the matter — either the Church is true, or it is a fraud. There is no middle ground. It is the Church and kingdom of God, or it is nothing." Who said that? Pres. Hinckley in Gen. Conf. in April 2003 (ref.
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2003/04/loyalty?lang=eng&query=fraud ).
Good luck!