Back in January, I wrote a series of articles about false prophets and false prophecy. Throughout this blog (since that time, as well as prior to it), I have frequently mentioned various false prophecies made by JS (and perhaps other Mormon/LDS leaders). I thought it might be good to have a post just on the subject, especially since Jerald and Sandra Tanner have already done the hard work of assembling many of them. I don’t think these are all of the false prophecies (since it calls them “samples”), but I intend on adding to this post as I find more and as I have the time. (Just because I don’t have something posted doesn’t mean I don’t consider it a false prophecy. It may simply mean I haven’t gotten around to adding it to the post. If you know of a false prophecy I should add, by all means comment or email me and let me know! I never turn down help.)

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See also my other posts that touch on false prophets and false prophecy:

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Other problems and issues in and with the BOM

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A Simple Sample

A Sample of Joseph Smith’s False Prophecies” (click the link to read the supporting evidence, and here is a PDF with much of the same information, but no links to online resources, only to print books — it’s probably a pre-internet tract they created then eventually digitized):

  1. Saints to gather to Independence, Mo. and build Temple (D&C 84)
  2. Zion (Independence, Mo.) can not fall (D&C 97:19)
  3. Army to redeem Zion (Independence, MO) (D&C 103)
  4. Civil War Prophecy (D&C 87)
  5. United Order (D&C 104 — V.1 Commanded as everlasting order; V.48 & 53 dissolved and reorganized.)
  6. Riches of Salem to pay church debt (D&C 111)
  7. Apostle Patten to go on mission in Spring 1839 (D&C 114)
  8. New gathering place and temple in Far West (D&C 115)
  9. Build a temple in Nauvoo and house for Smiths (D&C 124)
  10. Christ to return in 1890-1891 period (D&C 130:14-15)
  11. US Government must redress wrongs or be destroyed (History of the Church, vol.5, p.394, vol.6, p.116 and Millennial Star, vol.22, p.455.)
  12. Three grand keys to test Messengers (D&C 129) — No known reference where any LDS church leader ever used this test. Does God give meaningless revelations? (I will say that this isn’t precisely a “false prophecy”, but it is akin to it, for why give it, if it is never used? While LDSs would probably say they believe this to be true revelation and thus something they should believe and practice, if you were to go to an LDS and claim to be “a messenger” with “a message from God” and shake hands with him [as the D&C says], and gave the LDS the message of “repent from Mormonism and believe the Bible”, would the LDS believe you were actually an angel? He should, if he really believes this D&C!]

[Edited to add — I was recently made aware of another website that lists several of JS’s Prophecies as well as those of other Mormon leaders, so I’m including it here, for ease of reference. The general way that it’s set up is the author gives the relevant section then gives an “analysis” explaining why he thinks it’s problematic. Note that one of the first examples is of Columbus discovering America, which obviously isn’t a “false prophecy” (so I don’t include it in my list), but is problematic because it was written well after the fact.]

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False prophecies in the Book of Mormon

A work in progress:

  • Testimony of TPJS — the angel goes to heaven, and after a brief space of time, the light and angel come back and the angel repeats what he had just said, and also warns JS “of great judgments which were coming upon the earth, with great desolations by famine, sword, and pestilence; and that these grievous judgments would come on the earth in this generation.”
  • 1 Nephi 13:38 says that the Gentiles will take the Bible and the BOM to the Lamanites (“the remnant of the seed of my brethren”), which the early Mormons believed were the Native Americans living near them in and around the U.S., but the modern LDS Church says they don’t know who are the Lamanites. This is either a false prophecy or the BOM is saying that the North American Indians (who did get the BOM and the Bible) are the Lamanites.
  • 1 Nephi 13:39-40 indicates that after the BOM comes out, other books from the Gentiles will go to the Native Americans and convince them and Jews worldwide “that the records of the prophets and of the twelve apostles of the Lamb are dtrue.” Of course, the Native Americans and most Jews worldwide still do not accept Jesus as the Messiah and the Apostles as true.
  • In 1 Nephi 13-14, around 600 B.C., Nephi has a vision and sees, basically, a broad overview of human history from his time until JS’s day — including the writing of the NT, with the claim that “the Great and Abominable Church” would remove “many plain and precious truths” from the Scriptures. Here’s the problem: the BOM says that the OT would be handed down from the Apostles to the Gentiles **in purity**, and only after that, would the Scriptures be corrupted. Elsewhere, the BOM says that the OT Scriptures had the writings of Zenock and Zenos, which speak of Christ being slain.
    Thus, Mormons need for two mutually exclusive things to be true at once: that the OT Scriptures were corrupted *and also* were kept in purity, until after Jesus established His church during His earthly ministry.
    Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls proves that the OT that the Apostles had was essentially what we have today (and any differences do NOT support the claims of the BOM!), we know that there was no corruption of the Scriptures by the GAC after the time of the Apostles. Thus, the BOM is disproven, because it says it happened, when it didn’t. [In general, the BOM gets stuff right when it talks about things that happened prior to 1830. I think JS deserves double “false prophet points” for getting something wrong that happened in his past — though admittedly, at the time he wrote, people didn’t realize that it was impossible for the GAC to have altered the Scriptures. Now we know it didn’t happen and was actually impossible, because the Scriptures went everywhere, and neither the Roman Empire nor the Roman Catholic Church could find all the copies to alter or destroy them.]
  • 1 Nephi 15:13-14 says that when the descendants of the Lamanites hear of the BOM, that they will believe and accept it and become Christians; this of course did not happen. [Some Native Americans did come to believe, but for the most part they remained unbelievers. The way the BOM speaks makes it sound like most if not all will believe it.]
  • 1 Nephi 22:12 says that the Lamanites will be returned to the lands of their inheritance and come to believe in Jesus, but instead they largely rejected Christianity and were forcibly removed from their lands.
  • 1 Nephi 22 also says that the Great and Abominable Church will have some sort of civil war and will be destroyed so that Satan will no longer have power over mankind.
  • 2 Nephi 3 says that the Native Americans will accept the BOM and come to faith in Christ; according to the LDS footnote,
    v24 also identifies JS as “there shall rise up aone mighty among them,“, which means either JS had to have been a descendant of Native Americans (which nobody claims) or that JS lived near or among the descendants of the BOM Joseph. This would then mean that the American Indians of JS’s day were the descendants of Joseph, which nobody believes.
  • 2 Nephi 9 says that the Jews have had and will have prophets in every generation, from the beginning “until the time comes that they shall be arestored to the true church and fold of God; when they shall be bgathered home to the clands of their inheritance, and shall be established in all their lands of promise.” — but that was false in JS’s day (there were no prophets in his generation nor for centuries before; not to mention the centuries between Malachi and John the Baptist!), and Mormonism didn’t change anything about this (i.e., they have never had Jewish prophets either)
  • 2 Nephi 10:11 says that there will be no kings among the Gentiles who are in the BOM lands, which means that any place in the Americas that has a king either cannot be the BOM lands or must be peopled by Israelites — or else this is a false prophecy in the BOM.
  • 2 Nephi 25 says that the BOM will cause Jews to turn to Christ, but that of course has not happened
  • 2 Nephi 28:2 says that the BOM “shall be of great bworth unto the children of men, and especially unto our seed, which is a cremnant of the house of Israel.
  • 2 Nephi 28:16-17 says that soon after the coming forth of the BOM, God will “speedily visit the inhabitants of the earth” with destruction unless the wicked repent (with the context being that these “wicked” people are false Christians of one sort or another); no great changes were made in Christianity post-1830, but there was no destruction.
  • 2 Nephi 30 says that many Gentiles will believe the BOM and will take it to “the remnant of our seed” (i.e., the Nephites and/or Lamanites), and they will believe and “many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a pure and a cdelightsome people” (some editions of the BOM have said “white and delightsome), and “the aJews which are scattered also shall bbegin to believe in Christ; and they shall begin to gather in upon the face of the land; and as many as shall believe in Christ shall also become a delightsome people.” (Note that the Jews are not said to become either pure or white, but all the Jews JS would have known would have been white to start with.)
  • False prophecy in Jacob 5 — This says that after the BOM comes forth, the Lamanites will believe it and the gospel, but that didn’t happen. [Jacob 5, by way of an analogy, likewise says that the Native Americans (the Lamanites, the descendants of the BOM people) will become believers, but this has not happened; it also says that soon after the coming forth of the BOM, God will “prune” the “vineyard” one more time, which refers to something destructive (JS frequently predicted woe or doom and gloom), but nothing like that ever happens.]
  • Jacob 6 is even more explicit, with v2 saying, “And the day that he shall set his hand again the second time to arecover his people, is the day, yea, even the last time, that the bservants of the Lord shall go forth in his cpower, to dnourish and prune his evineyard; and after that the fend soon cometh.” This “second time” is the coming forth of the BOM, so “the end” should be “soon” after that. It’s now nearly 200 years later, but v3 still hasn’t happened: “And the dworld shall be eburned with fire.
  • Alma 37 (see more at Problems in Alma 37 about the Plates of the BOM)
    • v4 says that the plates would be kept until they go unto all the world, but supposedly the plates were taken back to heaven as soon as JS finished the dictation.
    • v5 says the plates would retain their brightness, but one of the Eleven Witnesses said he saw a corner of the plates when the cloth was accidentally removed, and they had a greenish cast to it, which means this part didn’t retain its brightness.
  • Helaman 15:13 and 16 predict that the “Lamanites” (i.e., the Native Americans) would become believers, but this did not largely happen.
  • 3 Nephi 16 likewise says that the BOM will be taken to the Lamanites who will believe, and while the early Mormons did send missionaries to the Native Americans (whom they called Lamanites), the American Indians largely did not believe, so this is a false prophecy. (Once again, we see that the only prediction JS can make that comes true is one that he has full control over — such as sending out missionaries — but he fails when it comes to the part he can’t control, such as whether someone believes.)
    • There is also the (false) prophecy that if the Gentiles don’t believe the BOM, then these believing descendants will prevail against the non-believing Gentiles.
  • 3 Nephi 20 again says
    • that once the BOM comes forth, the Lamanites will by and large believe (v13),
    • and that if the Gentiles don’t believe, then the believers among the Lamanites, “shall be among them as a lion among the beasts of the forest, and as a young blion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he goeth through both ctreadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.
    • It continues by saying that the Lamanite believers would be given the promised land as their land, and reiterates that the Lamanites will believe and will get the land: “29 And I will aremember the covenant which I have made with my people; and I have covenanted with them that I would bgather them together in mine own due time, that I would give unto them again the cland of their fathers for their inheritance, which is the land of Jerusalem, which is the promised land unto them forever, saith the Father. 30 And it shall come to pass that the time cometh, when the fulness of my gospel shall be preached unto them; 31 And they shall abelieve in me, that I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and shall pray unto the Father in my name. 32 Then shall their awatchmen lift up their voice, and with the voice together shall they sing; for they shall see eye to eye. 33 Then will the Father gather them together again, and give unto them aJerusalem for the bland of their inheritance.”
    • The chapter ends with v46 reiterating the physical nature of Jerusalem being the land of promise: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, all these things shall surely come, even as the Father hath commanded me. Then shall this covenant which the Father hath covenanted with his people be fulfilled; and then shall aJerusalem be inhabited again with my people, and it shall be the land of their inheritance.
  • 3 Nephi 21 has numerous prophecies, most of which I would say haven’t been fulfilled, but I could also see that Mormons might claim those prophecies were spiritual and thus we can’t say they haven’t been fulfilled, since Mormons would claim they were fulfilled in a spiritual sense. Other passages place modern Mormons on the horns of a dilemma:
    • V4 is either a false prophecy or the United States is the same land as the BOM land, and the Native Americans of JS’s milieu were the descendants of the Lamanites.
    • V26-27 is either a false prophecy, or the lost tribes were reached by early Mormon missionaries: “Verily I say unto you, at that day shall the work of the Father commence among all the dispersed of my people, yea, even the tribes which have been clost, which the Father hath led away out of Jerusalem Yea, the work shall commence among all the adispersed of my people, with the Father to prepare the way whereby they may bcome unto me, that they may call on the Father in my name.“.
  • 3 Nephi 29 says those who reject the BOM are rejecting God’s work, and “the sword of his justice… shall soon overtake you”, but this of course did not happen – by and large the Americans didn’t accept the Book of Mormon but suffered no “sword of God’s justice”.
  • Mormon 3:17 Therefore I write aunto you, Gentiles, and also unto you, house of Israel, when the work shall commence, that ye shall be about to prepare to return to the land of your inheritance;” — 200 years later, and this still hasn’t happened.
  • Ether 4 says that after the BOM comes forth, the events of Revelation will take place (with the context indicating that this is in close temporal proximity); yet here we are 200 years later, and we seem no closer to that time.

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False prophecies in the Doctrines and Covenants

  • [Note – this is a running list; I started this post after already having covered most of the D&Cs in original posts (you can see them here: D&Cs, including the 2021 “Come Follow Me” LDS Series), and I haven’t gotten back to writing them all out here.]
  • Changes to Doctrines & Covenants — A link to a bigger discussion on major changes JS made to various D&Cs, most of which changes benefited him.
  • D&C 1:17, “Wherefore, I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., and spake unto him from heaven, and gave him commandments;” — what calamity? The only bad things that actually happened were nothing extraordinary, while other statements from JS about this future “calamity” are in terms of the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus, which obviously hasn’t happened.
  • D&C 87, which I cover here, predicting a Civil War that might start in South Carolina over the issue of slavery, which sounds legitimate, but it also claims it will spread to become a world war which would make “a full end of all nations” which obviously didn’t happen. Not even close. Also odd, is that the compilation of revelations by JS printed in his life time didn’t include it, almost as if he thought the prediction had failed, so didn’t want to draw attention to it….
  • D&C 101 — particularly the last few verses which promise the Mormons that they will keep their land in Missouri, though they were actually driven out before long.
  • D&C 105 — v15 says, “Behold, the destroyer I have sent forth to destroy and lay waste mine enemies; and not many years hence they shall not be left to pollute mine heritage, and to blaspheme my name upon the lands which I have consecrated for the gathering together of my saints”; this never happened.
  • D&C 109 — v5 says the Temple is to be built as a place where Jesus can show himself (hasn’t happened); v27-28 says God will fight for the Mormons and “smite” their enemies (which never happened); and v38 says God is “about to send” judgment “upon the inhabitants of the earth” (which also never happened).
  • D&C 110 — v10 says “the fame of this house will spread to foreign lands”, but that house (Temple) was essentially abandoned before long, with the Mormons moving ever-westward; v14 & 16 also say that the time has “fully come” and “the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors”, but nothing happened with that either.
  • D&C 111 is a “saving face” revelation necessitated by a failed prophecy (that there were riches in a particular house, but that never came to fruition), and as mentioned above, it also contains another false prophecy, that the city’s “wealth pertaining to gold and silver shall be yours” (which never happened).
  • D&C 112 says that JS will keep his “keys” until Jesus’s return which sounds like he would still be alive at that time, but he died in 1844.
  • D&C 114 — as stated above, this short D&C says that David Patten will go with others on a mission trip the following spring, but he died long before then.
  • D&C 115 — as stated above, Far West was called Zion and said to be a physical place of refuge for when God poured out his wrath on earth (which didn’t happen; also, Far West was later essentially abandoned by Mormons)
  • D&C 117 — Oliver Granger’s “name shall be had in sacred remembrance from generation to generation, forever and ever, saith the Lord”, yet he seems all but forgotten by modern LDSs
  • D&C 118 — this is more a contradiction than a false prophecy: the last verse appoints 4 men by name to fill the empty places in the Q12, but that’s not how modern LDS Apostles are appointed. If there are instructions in the D&Cs for how Apostles are to be appointed, then why weren’t those instructions followed here?
  • D&C 121 — in v11, we are told “they who do charge [JS] with transgression” will have “their prospects [melted] away” like frost melts when the sun rises — but this never happened, so far as we know. (I suspect LDSs will say that this will happen in the afterlife, but that doesn’t quite fit the context.) In v15, we are told that “not many years hence” these people under discussion (“they who do charge thee with transgression”) will be gone, both they and their posterity — though later we are also told that “their houses and their barns shall perish, and they themselves shall be despised by those that flattered them. They shall not have right to the priesthood, nor their posterity after them from generation to generation.” Again, this didn’t happen — but it also contradicts the v15 which says that they will have no posterity!
  • D&C 123 — another failed prophecy that the Mormons’ enemies (or even the nation in general) would suffer and perish if they weren’t given relief; relief was not given, nor were the others punished.
  • D&C 124 — the Mormons are promised that if they are good, they “will not be moved out of their place” (Nauvoo), but they were forced to move after JS’s death, so it’s either a false prophecy or the Mormons were somehow wicked enough to lose out on the prophecy; later, the D&C asserts that the office of Patriarch of the Church would be maintained in perpetuity, but it was phased out in 1979.
  • D&C 127 says in part that God will punish JS’s enemies, but this never happens.
  • D&C 130 says the bloodshed that will start before the second coming of Christ will start in South Carolina (but Jesus didn’t return after the Civil War, and the bloodshed stopped in 1865), and suggests that Jesus will return around 1890 (which of course didn’t happen). As a kicker, it implies that since JS didn’t live to age 85, he won’t see Jesus (so this may actually be a true prophecy).
  • D&C 133 — a mishmash of “doom and gloom” Bible verses that speak of soon-coming doom, but this doom never happened.
  • D&C 136 — technically not a false prophecy of JS… because it was Brigham Young; it says in part that the U.S. would endure calamity if they didn’t repent, but nothing happened.
  • D&C 137Apostates in the Celestial Kingdom? — An early record of D&C 137 has JS seeing the Q12 in the Celestial Kingdom, but some of them left Mormonism and never returned.

See also my posts on the D&Cs, including the 2021 “Come Follow Me” LDS Series.

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False prophecies in the Pearl of Great Price (POGP)

  • Book of Abraham, chapter 2 puts a false prophecy into the mouth of God! — with God telling Abraham that he should say that Sarah is his sister because Sarah is so beautiful, the Egyptians will kill Abraham to get Sarah if they think they are married. However, we know that when the Egyptians find out that they are actually married, they don’t kill Abraham, but send him away in peace. [Even worse is that later in Genesis, the same thing happens again except with a leader named Abimelech, and when he takes Sarah into his harem, God threatens to kill him if he doesn’t restore Sarah to Abraham. So the Bible makes it clear that God can prevent Abraham from being killed, while the BoA makes it look like God is helpless, and needs to have Abraham lie and to relinquish his wife, to save his neck.]
  • BOA ch 3 tries to explain away why Adam didn’t die within 24 hours even though God said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die”. The answer is simple — the phrase “in the day” is a Hebrew idiom simply meaning “when”, and doesn’t necessarily mean that specific time of 24 hours. Abraham wouldn’t have made such a puerile mistake in writing his memoirs nor would God have given JS such revelation. QED, the BOA is not revelation from God. Since JS claimed that it was, then this is actually another example of him falsely claiming to speak for God, which is condemned in the strongest terms in the Bible (particularly Jer. 23)

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Miscellaneous other false prophecies of Joseph Smith

  • The King Follett Funeral Discourse (a.k.a., the KFD) is full of problematic statements from JS; here are my posts on it:
    • The King Follett Sermon (Part 1) — JS himself says if he doesn’t prove from the Bible what he teaches about God (that God became God and men have to learn to become Gods themselves), then he’s a false prophet
    • The King Follett Sermon (Part 2) — among other things, JS ends the sermon by saying he won’t die until he’s finished everything he’s supposed to do, but he died 2 months later, leaving many things undone. (One possible example of this is the JS Translation, which was said to be finished but which modern LDSs say was never actually completed. Either JS didn’t finish it, in which case it was one of those things left undone when he died, despite this prophecy, or he did finish it, in which case modern LDSs should find no fault with it or say it’s incomplete.
    • In the KFD, JS taught both that “intelligences”=”spirits” and that “intelligences” are eternal, but he elsewhere taught that God is the father of our spirits, which would then indicate that our spirits had a beginning and are not eternal. These cannot both be true, yet he taught them both.
    • See also The King Follett Funeral Discourse (a.k.a., the KFD)
    • 2 Nephi 11 vs the KFD — These two teachings of JS are diametrically opposed.
  • See also my post on the LDS article Thoughts to Keep in Mind: Prophets and Prophecy
  • I suspect that if you line up all the claimed prophecies that came from JS, including those in the BOM, and put a check-mark by those that came true, and a check-mark by those that were in JS’s control (e.g., three men would be special witnesses of the gold plates) and/or came true prior to the earliest evidence we have of the prophecy (e.g., Columbus discovering America), there would be almost perfect overlap between the two. Similarly, if you put an X by those that did not come true, and also put an X by those that were truly predictions of the future and also were not in his control, there would be an almost perfect overlap between these two columns as well.
  • Selling the Canadian copyright to the BOM
  • Did JS prophesy that the Mormons would migrate to the Rocky Mountains? See this article written by Mormonism Research Ministry.
    • Among other things, it notes that 1) there is no evidence that this “prophecy” even existed prior to its first being published in 1855; 2) it’s not in JS’s handwriting; 3) when it does appear, in a handwritten entry dated in August 1842, it is squished into the bottom of the page as if it was written in later, rather than being a regular part of the entry.
    • Further, there is much extant evidence showing that the early LDSs had no knowledge of any prophecy of them settling in the Rocky Mountains, and this includes things like various people saying they didn’t know where they would end up, that Brigham Young sent out scouts to Oregon and California, that some were pretty sure they were headed for Vancouver, etc. These are all incongruous with JS having given this as a prophecy two years before his death.
    • While it seems quite unlikely that this was actually something said by JS, even if it was, it would not be at all unusual for followers to obey their leader, so this would be almost like him “prophesying” that someone would go on a mission and then JS ended up being the one to send him on said mission.

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Miscellaneous other false prophecies of LDS Leaders

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Miscellany on prophecies and other things in and out of the BOM

  • Honorable mention goes to 2 Nephi 28:1, which correctly identifies true prophecy from God as something that must come true: “I have spoken unto you, according as the Spirit hath constrained me; wherefore, I know that they must surely come to pass.” Contrast this to modern LDS Mormonism which says that true prophets can claim to speak revelation from God that won’t necessarily come to pass.
  • 2 Nephi 33:11 (among other places in the BOM) specifically claims that Jesus commanded Nephi to write these things. Remember Ezek. 13, which may have the most concentrated denunciation of false prophets in the entire Bible, with verse after verse after verse excoriating false prophets who “prophesy out of their own hearts“, with God saying, “Woe unto the foolish prophets that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing“, and “they have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, ‘The LORD saith’: and the LORD hath not sent them: and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word,” among other things. The false prophets and their prophecies are likened to building a wall with shoddy materials, which will certainly fall ere long.
  • Alma 37:16-17
    • 16 But if ye keep the commandments of God, and do with these things which are sacred according to that which the Lord doth command you, (for you must appeal unto the Lord for all things whatsoever ye must do with them) behold, no power of earth or hell can atake them from you, for God is powerful to the fulfilling of all his words.
    • 17 For he will fulfil all his apromises which he shall make unto you, for he has fulfilled his promises which he has made unto our fathers.
  • “Ye shall know them by their fruits…” — what are the “fruits” Jesus said we should look for, considering that this is sandwiched between a warning about “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and “Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter into the kingdom of heaven”?
  • The Rules of LDS Scripture Regarding Plural Marriage, and How JS Broke Them
  • Blind Faith vs Biblical Faith — LDSs “faith” is “believing without evidence” but in the Bible and in most places in the BOM, faith is “believing because of the evidence”
  • Mormonism Live: 069: Gaslighting — one to file away for when you need examples of the LDS Church lying and/or gaslighting about the past.

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