Transcript part 2.

Fourteen hundred years later, a young treasure seeker named Joseph Smith, who was known for his tall tales, claimed to have uncovered these same gold plates near his home in upstate New York. He is now honored by Mormons as a prophet because he claimed to have had visions from the spirit world in which he was commanded to organize the Mormon Church, because all Christian creeds were an abomination. It was Joseph Smith who originated most of these peculiar doctrines which millions today believe to be true. By maintaining a rigid code of financial and moral requirements and through performing secret temple rituals for themselves and the dead, the Latter-day Saints hoped to prove their worthiness and thus become gods. The Mormons teach that everyone must stand at the final judgment before Joseph Smith, the Mormon Jesus, and Elohim. Those Mormons who were sealed in the eternal marriage ceremony expect to become polygamous gods in the celestial kingdom, rule over other planets, and spawn new families throughout eternity. The Mormons thank God for Joseph Smith, who claimed that he had done more for us than any other man, including Jesus Christ. The Mormons believe that he died as a martyr, shed his blood for us, so that we too may become gods. This gods from Kolav, it sounds like Von Dyneken or Battlestar Galactica, but we know it's bizarre. I know as a finite being I can never become an infinite God. It's a logical absurdity. That's when I stop believing it, but I couldn't get my wife to even talk about it. She had to divorce me and find another man that was working his way to Godhood, or she could not become a God. Are you saying that the Mormon Church pressures individuals into divorcing their spouses when they're not measuring up to the Church's standards, and also pressures them into marrying another spouse who is working for this Godhood? There's no doubt my motivation in all of this stems partly from my own personal experiences. I look back on my own life seeing a bishop counsel me to divorce my wife, seeing my five children whom I raised in the Mormon Church pulled from me, and spending all these years just trying to reestablish those relationships. I know literally hundreds of families whose stories like this could break your heart. Reagan Jolene divorced because of the Mormon Church, and have now remarried. He was raised Christian, and I was raised Mormon. We just had a very beautiful relationship, but it always came back to the Mormonism. I had to convert him in some way, and after two and a half years of really trying hard, I just couldn't do it, and I was advised to divorce him. Well, it became obvious to the Church leaders that my husband was not going to go along with the Church standards of the word of wisdom and had no desire to be active in the priesthood, and so they thought that it was perfectly fine and accessible and encouraged me to divorce my husband. The second visit to the counselor, he went over the things that we had told him, and he said, well, there are just some people that shouldn't be married. I couldn't imagine a bishop actively counseling for divorce. His job is to seek for ways in which the marriage partners can be reconciled. And yet in my case, my wife was advised by the bishop that we best to have for her to divorce me. There will be situations where, for reasons of incompatibility of one form or another, a divorce will become inevitable. But because we have such a firm belief in the family unit and the sanctity of family life, it would really be the end of the road and not something that was ever entered into in terms of a convenience. I went to my bishop, and he advised me that it would be better for me to live without him and to be a servant in Mormon heaven than to stay married to him. And here is a Church that teaches family unity, and they destroyed my marriage. Gentlemen, this isn't helping your case. These people have the religious freedom to believe anything they want to. But why should they have the freedom to break up families and destroy lives? The pressure on the Mormon women is incredible. They must be perfect. They swear a note of total obedience to the husband in the Mormon Temple. There's a whole area of psychiatric care dealing with the depression in the Mormon woman. I have a friend who is a nurse in the psychiatric ward, and she came to me and asked, why is it that there are so many Mormon women in my wing? What's the trouble? And I believe that it's simply because it is an impossibility to live up to the standards that are put upon these Mormon women. They must be perfect so that they can go to exaltation with their husbands. They don't even get out of the grave unless the husband calls them forth on the morning of the first resurrection. And if you do make it to celestial exaltation, heaven to the Mormon woman is being pregnant for all eternity, one spirit baby after the next. I came a point in my life as a Mormon woman that things were not going right at all. My whole time was spent in doing what the Mormon leaders had told me to do. In fact, I came to the point where I felt like live juice wasn't worth living anymore. Sandra Tanner, ex-Morman, author, researcher, considered to be one of the greatest living authorities on Mormonism. Utah has a higher than the national average rate of divorce. It has higher than the national average rate of suicide, especially teen suicide is much higher in Utah than it is nationally. This is partly due to the fact that Mormons emphasize perfection and so many of these young people feel defeated in their striving for Godhood. They can't measure up to everything the church is asking of them and it just so demolishes their self-esteem that they can't go on and so then they take their life. I always felt like I wasn't doing good enough in the eyes of God. I couldn't ask for a better brother than Cap. Gene and Perry Elias and father and brother of young Kip who committed suicide early in 1982 at the age of 16. Kip was almost the perfect son. He was a four-point student, capital high school. He was involved with the track team where he got the most inspirational track team member. Kip was my best friend and partner since his mother passed away when he was five years old. Last two years Kip was so busy with his other activities with the church that most of our outside activities came to a halt. More deeply Kip got involved with the church the more depressed he became so I sat down with Kip and would discuss this problem with him and to find out what was bothering him. That point he told me that he had feelings, sexual feelings that were in direct conflict with the teachings of the church. When Kip went to the LDS counselors they only reinforced the teachings of the church which just increased Kip's feelings of unworthiness. I know what Kip was going through I went to the same type interviews that he did. The pressure was great to strive for worthiness to be perfect all the time. The only problem is Kip took it a little too seriously. The Mormon church with its beautiful ads and the reader's digest would like us to believe that it's Christian through and through yet what the outsider sees is not what the insider sees and the Mormon church the book of Mormon itself calls the Christian body the whore of Babylon the temple ceremony mocks the Christian pastor calls him a harling of Satan. Once I got into the church I was asking questions and it wasn't the same it wasn't Christian as they had told my mom and myself it just wasn't right. We won the believes in Christ as a Christian and we believe that we are Christians above all other denominations because we have so much revealed information about our redeemer our Savior Jesus the Christ. Mormons are instructed to use Christian terminology when talking to potential converts words such as God Jesus and salvation all have different Mormon meanings which the outsider may not be aware of. Do you consider Mormonism Christianity? Yes I do we believe in God the eternal Father and in the Son of Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost. There are so many that have part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We think the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has all of the gospel in its total fullness. Joseph Smith's first vision is the cornerstone of the Mormon church and yet there are nine versions each of which contradicts the other. One leaders are deliberately keeping from you the true history of their religion because they know you will have a hard time believing it's from God if you saw how it really was all put together. In the unpublished accounts we find that Joseph Smith first said it was just Jesus that appeared to him. The second time he wrote a story down a few years later he says many angels appeared to him then some years later he says that two beings appeared he changes the date he changes how old he is he changes the motivation why he went into the woods to pray he changes who was there and he changes what the message was that they gave him. So if he were giving us an actual account of a real experience we would assume he would have known the first time around whether it was God or Jesus if it was both of them what their message was and when it happened yet we find him redrafting this story well if you were a witness of an accident and someone asked you to tell about it if you gave three accounts as divergent as those three are people would say you couldn't have witnessed the event. The Mormon church keeps changing its scriptures the changes are incredible there are so many thousands of them recently they canonized the 137th section of the Doctrine and Covenants when I read this for the first time I recognized that they omitted over 200 words of the actual revelation as written by Joseph Smith why did the church omit the 200 words because they contain three blatantly false revelations prophecies of Joseph Smith. You know Joseph Smith said the moon was inhabited with people dressed like Quakers and living to be about a thousand years of age and Brigham Young seconded it when he said that the moon not only was inhabited but the sun was inhabited I believe some of the strongest anti-Mormon literature if you want to call it that is the actual publications of the Mormon church if I believe that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were prophets of the living God I'd have to be a polygamist the true doctrine teaches that there is no eternal life without a polygamist relationship. First Elmer Gere author lecturer outspoken ex-Mormon and great-granddaughter of convicted Mormon assassin John D. Lee sitting here by this fireplace I'm reminded of my great-grandfather John D. Lee who was Mormon pioneer a bodyguard for Joseph Smith and Brigham Young as they visited secretly their numerous polygamist wives I'm reminded that my great-grandfather had nineteen wives and sixty-four children. Emma Smith Joseph's wife is admonished in the same doctrine and covenants to be obedient to the call and to accept these otherwise of Joseph Smith or receive the penalty thereof. This diary tells how Joseph was sneaking around behind Emma's back to practice polygamy how he had to promise Emma he would give up all his plural wives just for her and yet he tells his friend that I had to tell Emma that but I didn't really mean it. Today in Utah there are approximately twenty five thousand polygamist marriages these people are the fundamentalist who believe that Brigham Young was a prophet of God and that this section of the DNC is true and that they cannot take away this eternal covenant with God by some law of the land. The Mormon Church has deliberately hidden the records of its early church leaders of the early documents their early publications from their members. Ron Pritis, business manager of the Seventh East Press, a newspaper published by young Mormon seeking reform in the church through exposing Mormon cover-ups. Some of the items that have brought the most attention to the paper are items of church history, theology and some of the dishonesty on the part of some of the administrators in dealing with students. There are so many things in the church records if they were open for public inspection it would tarnish this beautiful image that the church puts out the missionary comes to your door we have a beautiful story to tell you about families and they want to tell you what a glorious place this is to raise your children. The missionary isn't part of the cover-up he doesn't know this he has been told that everything will check out it's all a hundred percent true he thinks the records are open he doesn't even realize he couldn't go to Salt Lake and see these documents for himself. We're in the Christian faith week we find our scholars looking for earlier manuscripts always refining always going back to the earliest manuscripts to improve and validate the authenticity of the holy scripture in Mormonism it's completely the opposite. The leaders have to go back and rework re-write cover-up change delete add all the way through on all of their books their history their scriptures they suppress their diaries because these things show the confusion and the man made nature of the theology and the religion the book of Mormon claims to be an actual historical record translated from real plates that Joseph Smith unearthed in a hill in New York now if this is a genuine history one would assume you could study this just like you would study any historical book. Dr. Charles Crane author college professor expert on Mormon archaeology as we look at the book of Mormon we find it entirely different story instead of being an actual record of actual fact I have looked over maps checked archaeological information and I still am left to wonder where is the land of Zerhemla where is the valley of Nimrod where are the plains of Nefaha I have been unable to find a record of even one city as mentioned in the book of Mormon we turn to the book of Mormon we have nothing there is no Nephite language there are no Nephite cities there is not a map in any book of Mormon you cannot locate any site there is no evidence for the book and yet it's supposed to be a historical record. Dr. Richard Fales author lecturer archaeologist we have never excavated one single artifact that even remotely relates to this alleged civilization that the Mormons claim existed in the United States Central America and in South America.