here is some hearsay that I am hoping Steve might answer

these are two videos that I am wondering if you have any insight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvSYj2pE7NI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mv1qvmYH-w

particularly wondering about the Gadianton comment on the second video about him getting beaten and cutoff from family. in your story you mentioned him being cutoff from family,


do you think there is an inner cabal in the church of not-old-farts pulling the strings?

any truth to these to videos?

love to hear your take on this.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2013 09:18AM by sparkyguru.

I'm no Steve Benson, but I'd imagine their definition of a gadianton robber is any old fart among them that isnt a hard core republican theocrat.

Some theorize the apostles are like royalty.

The real power is in the hands of professionals with portfolios but no rank in the theocracy. That way there is no expectation of "inspiration" and no shock that decisions are made in a manner consistent with any responsible corporation.

Away from prying eyes. And unhooked from the dementia diaper train.


Anagrammy

this comment in particular on the video.


"The "story" I have heard is that Ezra Taft Benson was taken to the "pink room" in the Salt Lake City temple by the gadiatons. There he was asked to participate in a gadiaton ritual. He refused and they threw over him a sheet or large pillow case. Each participant was instructed to beat Ezra severly for not being involved in sacrifice. Ezra was never the same and never spoke again. His relatives complained the church kept him isolated and had no contact with him."


Is there any evidence to this pink room?

This sounds like myth. First, why would you name your secret organization the Gadiation Robbers, then try to have secret rituals? This sounds more like something that was made up by one of the splinter groups about the big Utah church, and is as much delusional as anything the Mormons believe in.

Sparky,

Steve has replied to these rumors a couple of times if you search back through his posts. It sounds like another version of ETB getting beat up in the "Pink Room" for not toeing the line expected of him by whatever faction (underlings pulling strings, fellow apostles, Illuminati, etc.) the originator has has an axe to grind with. Steve says it is all baseless rumors.

He has also addressed the rumors of the "Pink Room" before.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2013 10:49AM by sanitationengineer.

tx for letting me know, I did peruse a bit, but Steve has posted a ton of stuff!

--Apostates, Don't Say You Haven't Been Warned: Faithful Latter-day Saints Share Inspiring, Essential and Saving Secrets Involving Ezra Taft Benson--

--Introduction: Tantalizing, Mysterious Tales from the Secret "Reality Shows" of President Ezra Taft Benson

Over the years, I've various rock-ribbed Mormons contact me, directly or by correspondence, claiming to have been privy to special inside information regarding certain alleged occurences in the life, times and prophesies of my grandfather, Ezra Taft Benson.

These stories have been said by their perpetrators to either be true on their face or to at least be deserving of serious consideration.

Below are some of the tall tales in this vein that have been relayed to me in the dedicated Mormon spirit of awe and conviction.

They are offered here for the purpose of building up Zion in the last days by deepening faith in the wild and wondrous world of Mormon make-believe, as practiced by its desparately-seeking Saints.
_____


--President Benson Was Brutally Bludgeoned by Members of the Quorum of the Twelve When He Wouldn't Go Along with Their Plans, Resulting in Permanent Brain Damage

One Mormon breathlessly phoned me from the Northwest, asking me if the following story was true.

It seems, according to this account, that a so-called "Pink Room" had been clandestinely constructed in the upper reaches of the Salt Lake City Temple during the administration of Mormon Church President Wilford Woodruff.

There, in absolute secrecy, members of the Quorum of the Twelve would gather to perform dark and solemn rituals, dressed for the occasion in hooded cloaks.

President Ezra Taft Benson was supposedly brought into this "Pink Room," where it was demanded of him that he go along with certain evil designs of the the Twelve.

President Benson refused, whereupon he was stuffed into a gunny sack by his hooded tormentors and mercilessly pummeled, resulting in permanent brain damage that kept him from leading the Church.

I told the inquiring Saint that Ezra Taft Benson had indeed suffered severe cerebral strokes, but that there was no evidence they were caused by him having been mugged by members of the Quorum of the Twelve.
_____


--President Benson Was Spotted in a Las Vegas Casino, Where He Held an Off-The-Record Meeting with a Young Mormon Boy, the Contents of Which Were Too Sacred to Reveal

According to this tale passed on to me by an incredulous Mormon, an LDS father and his son happened to be on the main floor of a Las Vegas casino, when they spied Mormon Church President Benson, accompanied by his security detail, walking through the casino.

The LDS father pointed out President Benson to his young son, whereupon the boy said he wanted to meet him. His father took his son and they followed the President Benson entourage up the elevator to a hotel room.

After President Benson and company entered the room and shut the door, the father knocked on the door and asked if his son could meet the LDS Church President. The father was told to wait outside, while the young boy was allowed to enter President Benson's hotel room.

The door closed and the young boy was in President Benson's hotel room for two hours, as the father remained outside in the hallway.

When the boy finally emerged from the hotel room, his father asked him what had transpired. His son told him that President Benson had spent the whole time talking to him and that President Benson had told the child that it was good to be able to talk, since he was not allowed to do so.

However, the boy would not tell his father any more about his behind-closed-doors encounter with the Lord's anointed prophet.

The purveyor of this story asked me if it was true. I replied that I had never heard of any episode involving Ezra Taft Benson being spotted visiting, or staying in, a Las Vegas casino.
_____


--President Benson Issued an Inside-the-Temple Warning That It Is Too Late to Start Storing a Year's Supply of Food

According to this faith-promoting fable, President Benson was encountered in an elevator in the South Jordan, Utah, temple.

There, a member of the Church told him that he was accumulating his food storage. President Benson reportedly replied that it was too late to begin that task, given that the end of the world was at hand and that time had run out.
_____


--President Benson Received Special After-Hours Revelatory Visits from Heaven in His Church-Owned Apartment

Although in the last stages of his life President Benson was so mentally and physically incapacitated to the point that he could not meaningfully administer the affairs of the Mormon Church (I personally saw him in this state, wheelchair-bound, dressed in a jump suit, a feeding tube in his nose and unable to communicate after suffering incapacitating cerebral hematomas--a condition which Apostles Dallin H. Oaks and Neal A. Maxwell privately admitted to me kept him from running the Church), devout Mormons nonetheless fervently insisted to me that once visitors to his Church-run Eaglegate apartment had left for the day, heavenly visitors--including Jesus Christ himself--would drop by at night to secretly impart divine messages to him while no one else was lookingso that he could run the Church,

By this method, it was claimed, President Benson became miraculously rejuvenated and empowered--physically, mentally and spiritually--to receive direction from God and then somehow pass it on, before slipping back into his debilitated state by morning.
_____


--President Benson was Seen Gazing Heavenward at his Dead Loved Ones Beyond the Veil

When his wife Flora died, it was reported to me that he would lay in his bed, silently gazing up at the ceiling of his apartment, viewing what others could not see: his deceased wife in the spirit world.
_____


--President Benson Ordered Christmas Gifts from Deseret Book, Proving He Really Wasn't Mentally and Physically Incapacitated at the Time

The faithful Mormon relaying this story told me that they knew a fellow Latter-day Saint who worked in one of Salt Lake City's Deseret Bookstores. The employee was said to have answered the phone at work one day, only to hear the voice of President Benson, who identified himself, and then who proceeded to order books as Christmas presents for family and friends.

My response to this story was that, based on my direct observation of my grandfather's severely deteriorated state of physical and mental health at the time that this phone conversation allegedly took place, he would not have been able to find the phone in his apartment, much less have been able to have used it.
_____


--President Benson's Private Apartment Nursing Staff Witnessed Him Performing His Prophetic Role but Given The Sacred Nature of These Acts, Has Chosen Not to Talk About What They Beheld

I was told by a devout Mormon that, based on inside information relayed to this believing Saint, one of President Benson's attending domestic nurses saw President Benson do things in his apartment as she cared for him that definitely testified to his calling as God's prophet.

What those things were, however, were never explained.

Personally, I saw my grandfather's nurses patiently feed him by spoon as he sat, stooped over and silent, at the kitchen table in his Church apartment.

I also saw them take President Benson, dressed in a sweatsuit and diapers and wrapped in a blanket, and prop him in a reclining chair so that he could stare out, unspeaking, through the window of his upper-story Eagle Gate apartment toward Temple Square.

I saw his nurses plant him in a soft recliner next to a radio in his aparment studio, so that he could listen to sessions of General Conference he was too weak to attend, as I sat by his side.

I never saw my grandfather do anything remotely prophetic in his apartment.
_____


--President Benson Appeared in a Dream to a Faithful Latter-day Saint in Order to Pressure Me to Rejoin the Mormon Church

After I left Mormonism in 1993, a Mormon called me anonymously from California and left two voice messages on my phone. This person informed me that my grandfather had appeared to him in a dream, instructing him to tell me that my grandfather wanted me to return to the Mormon fold.

I figured that if my grandfather wished for me to be re-baptized, he could have appeared in a dream to me--or better yet, in spirit person form--rather than to a complete stranger, where he could have told me directly to my face what he wanted and, in the process, cut out the middleman.
_____


--Conclusion: What Can I Say?

Other than the time is far spent, so get off your backsliding behinds and repent!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOsiXRXhL00



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2013 02:48PM by steve benson.