Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 379: Mormonism Part II - I'm in the Bible Now

Episode Date: August 24, 2019

On the second part of Mormonism, we cover the writing of the Book of Mormon itself, including all of the myriad sources Joseph Smith used to cobble together the American religion as well as all the ways Joseph had to sidestep and bullshit to get the thing published.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last time on the left Boys boys gather round I Had a vision last night. No kiss will do not I'm not laughing do not be laughed because I know it's because you're a feared You're a fear of change listen boys. I am I'm listening. I had a vision a Man came to me while I was asleep last night He came in through the balcony door like he actually walked through the window He opened up the sliding glass door and he walked in yeah, and he was beautiful You have two flashlights attached to I believe some sort of football gear

On his shoulders shoulder pads and he told me that there was a place where I could go where I could find a hidden Series of plates in a box. Yes again. I know I know that all of this sounds ridiculous. It sounds like a fairy tale Yeah, I was laughing, but now I'm not laughing anymore. Listen to me. Listen to me brethren. Listen to me And I went I found these plates and I looked at them and they told me an incredible story of a little brown-haired girl That was homeless that she found Resemption in the arms of Jim Belushi And it was an incredible story

and I per name was Quirly Suya Interesting edible, but there's a last chapter which I have to show you guys. It's me. It's I am still shook it with the beauty of what I've seen It's called Golden Shower teddy bear It was the last chapter and some of these plates were quite graphic There is so you basically you fell asleep while watching Curly Sue after you jerked off to Peeporn Is that what's going on?

I had a vision Hey, what's up everyone? Welcome to the last podcast on the left. I am Benjamin Grant. Gissle along with Marcus Jordan Parks. Oh, thank you for remembering my metal name. It's you have a great name Thank you JP and then we have Henry Thomas Zabrowski right over there in Los Angeles. You wouldn't believe how the teddy bears were dancing and pissing How the teddy bears had little human piercings really know how the smiles on their teddy bear spaces as they found Exultation in the drinking and the gargling of the urine of the other

Captain bears, which is what they call themselves in these leather overalls Uh-huh, very excited. I can't believe how many of them peed fully erect Wow, what a visionary I would love if you started a cult Henry because they're your followers would be some of the stinkiest boys around the angel Sammy He won't leave my house. Okay. You have a homeless man living at your house It's starting to gather evidence and it seems that that is the that is the case. All right, everyone We are on to part two of our long series on Mormonism, so let's get you Mormonism part two

So when we last left Joseph Smith the angel Moroni had finally allowed Joseph to bring the fabled golden plates home To begin the translation of the book of Mormon or at least that's what the Mormons believe That's what they have to believe. Yes. And of course the angel Moroni Uh, he would he had to finish all the spaghetti on his plate before he could read What the plate said I want you to prepare yourself because that's not the last joke on men from Queens That this episode is going to provide so just be ready And from what Joseph Smith told his followers at the time and this tells you a lot about Mormonism

The retrieval of the book was a process that spanned four years and the entire thing was absolutely fraught with ritual See Joseph Smith was told that he had to purify himself of greed before taking the golden plates And that he would have to return once a year for four years straight before he could finally take the plates home God that's like showing up at Popeyes for that chicken sandwich one day a year for four years and just having to stand outside of the restaurant and look in the windows and masturbate I will say this is a good lesson for him though, right because he was a grave robber He was greedy. He was so this is actually pretty this is this is pretty good

But still That's the things that Joseph was not super pure because he still tried to take the plates each time you went I shall have them. Oh, how shiny they are and then Moroni has to be like get out of here already Come on kid. You know you're not ready. Yeah, and he was stopped each time Like what did he say like didn't he say that he was shocked when he tried to grab the plate so that he felt some sort of like I guess he felt some sort of Energy that kept him from taking them. Yes. He touched them and literally a bolt of electricity went through his body when I'm Moroni's

Hey It's like when you put the dog collar on a dog and then it shocks him when they leave the yard We try to do that with my dog growing up, which I don't recommend It's very mean, but all the dog does is have to run 10 feet Get through the pain. Yeah, and then they never come home again I tell you what it really worked on my sister though. Well, you did that with Jackie Yeah, that's what made her such a pit bull But that electric shock only came on the first two times on the third time that joseph smith tried taking the plates

He was stopped by an actual creature See on that night according to one source the angel was maybe gonna let joseph smith take the plates So joseph was instructed to wear black clothes to the retrieval and to arrive riding a black horse with a switching tail Now this is a part of the story that is true is that he did have to dress and and we'll get into this far deeper in the next Two episodes and to deeply ceremonial gear he used to cover himself in black and leave Seems to be that in in reality This was an instruction from joseph smith's father Well when smith arrived at the stone box to retrieve the plates on the third time and i'm simplifying this because it is highly confusing

He found that there was along with the book something like a toad inside Oh cool And that toad soon assumed the appearance of a man-like thing Hey joey, it's so good to see you Hey, take maybe this time you can take me home Oh, no fell leaves that is not how it works in joe's world. This is joe's world and you're just living in it It didn't so joseph smith came up with the cliche. It's my world and you're just living in it. Yes I certainly didn't bottle anything

really It's also interesting a toad Transform transforming is a titular point in the film psychomania. That's true. Yes, indeed That's a deep cut for our horror fans Well when smith reached into the box to retrieve the book the toad man punched him in the side of the head Oh my god, I can just see him with his little cane in his top hat. What a cute toad And it happened again and again joseph kept trying to search Why are you striking me frogman? Why are you striking me? Honestly a man a man at the way I was born

This is where I check out of Mormonism. I can't be following a leader who got beat up by a toad There's no way you got to beat up the toad. I'm sorry. You got one rules a human to beat up the toad Finally the toad man told joseph you haven't followed the rules So you got to wait another year. You're not telling me all the rules. I'm just making them up as I go I guess I will come back to you from now because I've got fuck else to do Besides become a more powerful right-hand path magician Now over the course of this series. I'm going to be saying the words. I think a lot because Mormon theology is some of the most confusing shit

I've ever read and we're probably going to get some shit wrong. I mean, we're not Mormon scholars here Even Mormons who study this shit their entire lives don't know this story that well. All right It's going to probably surprise you all out there. There's like a lot of sources for this topic Really a lot of material written on it and just to go through it apparently Some people devote their entire lives to understanding this topic And so we're just like getting into it But I do believe sometimes in the confusion a lot of it what it's supposed to be is that it really is just about Marcus do you have the fucking stones to say that you believe in one thing or not?

Or are you going to be a flip-floppa? Don't say that Well part of this confusion has to do with the fact that while joseph smith was a fantastic oral storyteller and a fantastic public speaker He wasn't all that great when it came to the written word. So he's like a sasha gray type Very interesting. What she told him. I've never read her short stories Oh, you don't think that she told oral stories. That was a whole thing. She's she's just talking about pornography When she had a story arc in her art And in addition you got to remember that again mormonism by its very nature is an improvised religion

And joseph told different stories to different people at different times in his life concerning the origins of the book of mormon And furthermore many religions like say catholicism are complicated by design Because if you've got a belief system that's simple and easy to understand what the fuck do you need a priest in a church for? But the interesting thing about the book of mormon is that originally it was supposed to be just that a book See the smith family was once again in financial trouble and joseph was trying to figure out a way to contribute to his family fortunes Yeah, dude, this is like fucking flubber He had to get he had to save the camp Yeah, they were coming and they were going to take the camp big people going to buy his family's farm so we his back

Was against the wall right you get a bunch of little misfits and he put together a baseball team And he taught them how to write the book and them and the misfits and all the kids from the fat camp They all got together and they beat jesus christ Wow you into creating a new religion you just combined so many movies in this analogy It's amazing But flubber if you go back and watch of course it's surrounding about a basket It's about a basketball game and the only way that white people can jump is through the magic of science and cheating

Well joseph had the idea for a story that would give a new history to the americas because that was a hot topic at the time Like what was america like before columbus came? Oh, I wonder if there's a whole group of indigenous people perhaps you could ask them. What was this land like? Nah, nah, come on. That's boring. They're a liar and all they do is complain about all the shit we do But the problem is that while joseph smith could read He could not write really and that is actually something that is a bit of a misnomer about joseph smith because many people called joseph smith Alliterate but the thing was that they were using alliterate in the sense of the time see back then Alliterate could mean that you could read but you couldn't write. Yeah, if you couldn't write it was called a writer

Or it's someone who was extremely stupid very low intelligence who constantly drops knickers wrappers on the ground They're alliterate an idiot literate an idiot You know what folks, you know, it's not all gold. We've only been doing this for 400 episodes. Okay It's not all gonna be crash my car. I'm laughing so hard. So just Take your PT cruiser and just go 65 and have a safe trip home. All right Another thing that joseph smith knew from his treasure hunting days that if you really wanted to sell something You needed a hook So joseph smith gave his story divine provenance i.e visitations from god jesus and an angel named moroni

See the Book of Mormon at its core is really the synthesis of a bunch of different stories that were floating around america at the time You can also say the same thing about shakespeare. Yeah shakespeare um, uh all five of him uh the multiplicity group that was shakespeare stole Stories from the past and repackaged them in fun ways. Mm-hmm interesting That's because one of joseph smith's greatest strengths was the ability to take all these different stories and cast them in a new light Which honestly isn't necessarily a bad or even uncommon practice in modern fiction And for just a couple of examples like say the invisibles one of our favorites here

The invisibles is a gigantic pastiche of dozens of different sources And it actually rips pretty heavily from robert anton wilson's illuminatus trilogy And as far as like tv goes the framework for battle star galactica is mostly ripped from the book of mormon How battle star galactic was created by a mormon the 12 you like the 12 colonies, you know the planet kobal You know in mormonism. It's colob. Yeah, the creator of battle star galactica was a hardcore mormon That is a brilliant form of religious indoctrination But that's what we get. We get the good stuff out of it. You have what's her name trisha helfer No, trisha helfer. That's not a mormon thought. She was not included anywhere

Interesting But a fair number of joseph smith's rips came from the more mystical parts of the bible Urim and thummum the magical seer stones were mentioned in exodus as Adormance on erin's breastplate. Although we have no idea what their actual magic function was Covering up those titties Well, yeah, erin was they honestly the original definition of the name erin means big nipples And so he was just so scared and so ashamed of how big his nipples had grown that he needed these stones to get his power back I see and it wasn't just those small details that joseph smith borrowed

He took 100 names from the bible for the book of mormon and direct swipes from the old new testament make up almost Ten percent of the text. Okay But for the actual narrative of the book of mormon joseph smith mostly took from the stories that were at the time Threatening to become official parts of american history See as we mentioned in the first episode upstate new york was home to a large amount of indian burial mounds And it was thought at the time by a surprising amount of people both educated and not that these mounds were the remnants of an extinct race Well, it's because it's much easier to deal with a race that no longer exists and not have to come to terms with the actual

Crimes of your civilization that showed up and rolled over the previous civilization So a really good way to do that is just kind of forget that they were even there So you are so you know, like that's done. Why are we living in the past? Like it's that thought process. There's a book called the fifth head of serborus by the guy that wrote the uh sword in the citadel series, uh wolf He basically said it's all about that about how they showed up on a foreign planet And then just got rid of the old species and then said, oh, they've been gone for centuries and then moved people there And the amount of nerd knowledge that you have is truly. I mean, it's it's you're very smart henry

But that isn't interesting. There's a sociological phenomenon as well Uh oftentimes people of a different class literally just do not see certain other people So they've done like studies be like how many homeless people did you pass on the street? They'd be like, I didn't see any but in reality they passed like four and then someone else would see the four It's very interesting stuff. Say hello to everyone. That's what I do. Hello Like a giant mentally handicapped And what was more is that they not only erased the history of the people already there They also constructed a story that made the whole thing

Those people's fault. Oh Brilliant, it was thought at the time that at least some of the remains in those burial mounds belong to an advanced extinct white race Who had been wiped out by the darker skinned natives in a great war And all those people were buried in these large mounds post battle Wow Also specifically the place where they were in new york right in upstate new york where they said they had found these Giant mounds and so they had originally postulated that it was this battleground

Cemetery that they thought that these mounds were evidence of these giant battles that happened And so these were the losers skeletons that we're looking at which are these advanced people that had tools and Furniture and homes and all this shit So they said it was an outside force because they weren't reading the actual history And did not know that they were put there on purpose right and this wasn't just folk belief This wasn't something that farmers were telling each other like on days off Academics bandied this shit as probably true and William Henry Harrison just before he became president for 30 days Of course before he died he wrote admiringly about this possible prehistoric america. He thought yeah, that makes sense

Yeah, I mean and if you can't trust someone who is too stupid not to be able to live for at least a month When president then who can you trust? Well now we know that these mounds were merely aggregated burial sites made up of ancestors of the kahokia tribe But back then a person could attach pretty much any story They wanted to these bodies and joseph smith had a lot of practice telling stories about these mounds See at first joseph made up stories about these hypothetical american forebears to entertain his family And going off the theme that the book of mormons is essentially a fantasy novel

Joseph smith was a master at world building His own mother said that when her son told these stories He knew how the people dressed how they traveled what animals they domesticated what their buildings looked like how their cities were laid out How they made war and most importantly what their religious worship was like Oh, my son joseph is the smartest historian i've ever met He explained to me they wore hollowed out melons for clothes And they knew that the clothes were dirty when the birds had eaten all the melon rinds off of them and they became nude And they used to drink only pee

And a bunch of teddy bears would come out of the forest and big masculine teddy bears with worth of human penises Making love to each other and defiance of of morality and defiance of god's law and you know what i I appreciate their freedoms, but i wish they wouldn't put it in my face Well sometime between 1820 and 1827 we don't exactly know when joseph smith decided to put this history to paper But before we get to that it's important to talk a little about joseph smith's Family history because henry discovered some new shit since we recorded the last episode Cool, I did it you did it henry. I can just see you like a truffle hog in there researching with your big old joint What henry discovered is that it is very likely that the smith family even outside of joseph smith himself

Were practicing right hand path magicians And the evidence for this lies in the magical artifacts that the smith family allegedly owned Okay, what we're going to see over the next two episodes is that joseph smith At some point was massively educated about the ancient rituals of like alchemical magic And hermetic studies right so at some point he knew the stuff and slowly but surely layered it into mormonism The book of mormon. We're going to find out is the most pedestrian part of the entire religion The book of mormon does not hold any of these secret rituals that will slowly be built in that We're going to cover more in episode three

But in order for him to even know this at some point his family must have been heavily involved And it seems to be that they were involved in magical thought But it was a practical version of right hand magic what we'd call folk magic That seemed to have been handed down from generation to generation Yeah, I mean, let's go through some of the magical artifacts the smith family actually owned Okay They had three Parchments covered in magical symbols copied directly from three well known magical texts

The magis by francis barrett published in 1801 the new and complete illustration of celestial sciences by ebony's or sibley published in 1784 And the discovery of witchcraft by reginald scott published in 1584 Oh, that's very nice. There was also a book called the three philosophies of the occult by I want to say a Gripa a grippa. I don't know how to pronounce it And that is another gigantic compendium And what we're going to see too is that joseph almost stole the idea of I can just curate A series of thoughts right from these books where you take these but all of these books are cobbled together

Of ancient people telling the next person and the next person This is how it's done in ancient texts and then these people are not making the shit up completely They're packaging it creating connections But they are taking old stories and making them new which is what joseph smith just inherently understood That's how somebody works. You got to be making remakes So he's basically the first instagrammer who has an account that just steals everybody else's work and then gets Three million followers and then monetizes it aggregator. Oh, he's an aggregator So but so that is really what's interesting about that then is if that's how he kind of grew up as a family

That is the basis of Mormonism. I suppose it's not uh foreign for humans to build on another person's literature and those kinds of things But that's a really fascinating little seed for Mormonism. It is. Yeah Also the beginnings of Scientology And if you probably look back and you actually had video cameras or some kind of evidence back in the day I could fucking guarantee it is also the backbone of Christianity and then also the idea of just the cabala being in its old mystical center in the middle of Judaism very interesting highly compelling stuff

Well furthermore joseph smith's brother hyrum inherited a true blue magical tool from joseph smith's senior Hyrum smith was in possession of a ceremonial dagger which was used in the pursuit of what else But treasure this artifact now known as the mars dagger Had the seal of mars inscribed on one side of the blade and on the other was the zodiac sign for scorpio And the Hebrew letters for Adonai And while it may seem like all this is a little hodgepodge the Hebrew letters in particular when it comes to treasure hunting Seemed to be tied to the magical writings of the aforementioned Henry Agrippa Which date to around the 16th century these people knew what the fuck they were doing. Yeah, dude

They were ladled with magic and well and then we'll see ladle later on when joseph smith is even dead We're gonna find out what he even had on his own fucking body at the time of his death at the end of Mormonism All this shit man. Yeah is a knocky and fucking magic But he took all the dick and pussy out of it and he made everybody not drink coffee Well, that's a different kind of approach there. Isn't alchemy just thinking that dog shit can become gold It's not necessarily dog shit, but I'm just saying but that's a fun world view because it's allegorical It's the trans allegorical. I know I'm just saying listen to me, sir I'm closer to me sir. It is allegorical

If you believe in it, it makes walking through a cow farm much more exciting because it's not just piles of dung It's potential gold. You're just not listening You're just not listening. I heard it was allegorical Well, another thing we found out since the last episode is that crazy old treasure hunter that we dismissed as an old Coot in the last episode the guy named walters He was actually a physician named doctor lumen walter and dr. Lumen walter had traveled extensively in europe studying alchemy and hermetic lore and young joseph smith Spent a lot of time in walters tutelage. Interesting. Just cut to him rolling around in pig shit. Just being like it's liquid gold

Liquid gold baby liquid gold. I'm just that's what I know what to I will say do not count him out for being an old coot dog me because even doctors can become old coots You just got to get to it. It's a I can't wait. That is what I'm shooting for because right now. I'm just a young coot Right. Yeah, you'll get there buddy. You're gonna get there now We're not saying that these beliefs were real or that even the or that they even produced real results But the point we're trying to make I'll get into it But the point we're trying to make is that joseph smith at the very least since he was a teenager was immersed in magical ritual

Which actually makes 19th century america a much more interesting place when you realize that just like fucking farmers were practicing ritual magic That does make it much more exciting than what I would imagine which is farmers just waking up at 3 30 in the morning Having to touch every part of the teat on their cows. I tell you what that back on I don't really go unless you give it a good suck And then just stare at a corn and just been like I hope bugs don't come Yeah, we're not saying that every single farmer practice ritual magic, but some of them were and that's cool as shit But back in 1827 joseph smith was still a long way from actually putting any of his ritualistic knowledge to use for anything Other than treasure hunting because he just didn't have the belief in himself or the scope to even conceive Of these ideas. He didn't know what it was working. He didn't know what he what works. He was working

He didn't know that this shit was in the background Right now joseph smith is young dumb and full of calm and all he wants to do Is get as many wives in his saddle as possible and he wants to right now. Yeah, he's gonna discover how awesome that'll be We have fundamental disagreements on what the purpose of polygamy is, but anyway, I know no Well, now I have more deep deeper gnostic understanding which will bore people with next week With that shit, but it's you know, but at this time, he's a good-looking dude Who's just trying to save the family farm. I think we all know the purpose of polygamy is to get a reality show That is the purpose

I heard it was suicide by nagging. Come on. Yes Come on. Are we in a vfw? Well at that time joseph smith was just trying to sell a book so he wouldn't have to be a fucking farmer But still joseph smith couldn't do this on his own because as we said joseph smith couldn't write But before he could get to actually recording the story itself the story Surrounding the book of mormon the hook still had to be filled out First he had to convince his family and considering how into the occult They already were it wasn't that hard to convince him that he'd eventually found a magical tome of his own that he couldn't

Show to anyone lest they die a horrible death Well, this would actually this cleared something up for me learning more about his family history Is learning about how like why they all jumped in when he said I found this book It's an absolutely incredible your mind's gonna be blown. I have to make it up. I didn't say it I didn't hear me say that But if I show you any of this source material swish swish swish air quotations Your heads will explode and they're like yeah, I know books like this. I know head exploding books Well, it's funny, but it's because now they're in the story like now. They're no longer on the outside of the story

They're no longer just doing these rituals like now the smith family who have always been poor who've always thought that they Are better than everyone else now the smith family. They were the story Cool And I mean it wasn't like he wasn't uh, he was telling the truth somewhat, right? I mean he was working on the book It wasn't like shelly devol finding jack nicholson writing in the uh in the main entrance of the hotel in the shining At least no he was working on it, right? He was yeah, okay. He had a higher output than jack torrance. Yes, good But to bolster the claim joseph was able to show his family the other magical artifacts that he'd found He showed them the seeing stones and he showed them the breastplate that he supposedly found with the golden plates

And those things did exist because the breastplate like breastplates were relatively common in upstate burial mounds So we probably just robbed that one from a grave show them like look This is what the angel showed me. These are the seeing stones The book I can't show it to you, but I promise it's there and they figure two out of three ain't bad Not at all But some of them some of the family had a closer look at the seer stones than others Because some of them said the seer stones were of the they are solid shiny rocks and some of them said that they were I think it's hermitite. It's a clear quartz like rock

But we don't know but it just seems interesting that everybody's got a different story of what the fuck they look like Yep So once smith convinced his family he moved on to his wife who was a much harder cell See imma was starting to suspect that maybe she'd married a con man And her father never stopped telling her that she had definitely married a con man What that meant was that the divinity of the book of Mormon played a role not only in keeping the entire smith family afloat But also In assuring imma that she hadn't made a huge mistake in marrying a handsome treasure hunter from new york

Which is how Colts get kind of born right where now people feel that they are invested personally In believing the central ideas These are the kind of beginnings of it because this is to all you ladies and men out there If you got it you got a dude or a woman you got a significant other that's telling you that they they got time They got to put something together They don't have time to have a job because they're too busy working on a big secret project

Right You have to either make sure it's a book by going through the computer and making sure they're not stockpiling guns Or just a bunch of different butt plugs and they're just trying to make the world's biggest gate Which is fine. You can get sponsorship. Yeah, you can monetize that. Yeah Well, since imma placed no stock in the occult Joseph smith had to dazzle her with his talent as a storyteller. Okay So imma was tasked with being the first transcriber for the book of mormon And as she sat ready and waiting with a pen and paper

Joseph smith was across the room staring into his seeing stones and when inspiration finally struck Smith began the tale that would become the book of mormon Life from your grave Life from your grave Now as we said the book of mormon was a record of the history of the american indian and like the bible It was written by prophets and divided into different books And we don't want to get too deep into the theology But what the book posits is that while nine of the lost 10 tribes of israel from the old testament were indeed still lost

One of those tribes were the first people to populate would eventually came to be known as the united states of america And these guys were so jewish. They lived in tents. They were so jewish. They could speak to bison Really? I didn't realize that was a stereotype of the american jew See it was the prophet nephi who had left jerusalem 600 years before the birth of christ and with nephi was his father lehi and a few others were all That's cute. I like it when people have family names that they all rhyme like this is kyle. This is lyle. This is myles This is ban. This is clan. This is shman and this is ribbon

We're out of ideas, but we can't stop having babies Well, nephi lehi and a few others all left Jerusalem because the city was due for destruction and like joseph smith Nephi had two older brothers who were named layman and lemuel and like joseph smith Nephi had three younger brothers sam jacob and joseph But in the book joseph cast the two older brothers as evil And because they were evil god cursed them and all of their descendants With red skin. Isn't that great that they that till god was super racist

And he saw the punishment was making them look native american. Wow. That is unbelievable. So there's a lot of bigotry in here Yes, and obviously we can go into that. No way. No, it's gonna get a lot worse. No, I know I remember I know what happened in 1973 when the liberal mormons said black people were actually people for the first time I know and thus the laymanites aka the native americans were born And since nephi had stayed in the good graces of god He retained his white skin Because it's a well-known fact that everyone from jerusalem and 600 bc was white. Oh, yeah, buddy That's where white people are born because there's nothing there's no place where I see white people feel more natural, especially me in the desert

Sun beaten down absolutely my pale white skin. I don't need protection I had a palm frond which I'd carry from place to place like there's ha ha. So yes, of course. I'm from africa Yeah, naturally So that meant that the white men the nephites were the good guys and the native americans the laymanites were the bad guys Okay, see the laymanites were described as quote wild and ferocious and a blood thirsty people full of idolatry and fiddlethiness feeding upon beasts of prey Dwelly intense with a short skirt good at about their loins You could see their dangles and their dangles

They're just trying to live have eat some meat. You know have some good barbecue and beef jerky Well by contrast the nephites were quote affair and delight some people Known for their love of culture. They were farmers and architects They were good civilized folk who only wanted to bask in the glory of god Sucks grab every one of them by their ankles and just shake them like they're a sheet that needs to dry I would love that. I hate those kinds of people And these two tribes warred with each other for a thousand years and after each battle The dead were piled in great mounds and it was the dead nephites and laymanites who dotted the landscape of western new york

Okay, first of all, they went to ward for hundreds of years That war would have been over in a second as soon as the whites missed their tea lunch And then they're like no better stop better stop fighting. We missed our tea People that love architecture are great fighters. Is that right? Oh, yeah Oh, it must be said that Emma was absolutely Flabbergasted when joseph seemingly just streamed a conscious this whole fucking story like as far as from her perspective He's just sitting there staring at a table and he's just spouting this shit up Dude, he's robbing williams-ing his way throughout this whole thing without the horrible ending

I guess he didn't want to see what a common real hard was like But when he when joseph smith was in the shit in the flow He's just been like and you got mounds over here and mounds over there everywhere. You look there's mounds everywhere And she's just like He's robbing crazy fucking rhymes. Yeah nuts. Well, that's because imma honestly did not think her husband was capable of creating such a story on his own But imma was just the first of many people to underestimate joseph smith's raw Intelligence. Hmm. See a big part of Mormon belief is that joseph smith was just a simple farm boy Who just wasn't all that smart? Well, that was the idea, right? But that was in doctrine

It was that that was how he knew that's how you knew the revelations were real because he was too simple He was because you technically if you met joseph smith the way they portrayed him He'd be like, well, I don't know what happened and a lot more than I could mankind to me in the nottingham gave me so many fancy dishes So many fancy dishes saying funny funny stories And like but then you meet the real joseph smith. He's like hey, how you doing? And he's got like a bluetooth thing in there like what does that do? He's like it's a whole thing It's like a thing I got from an angel. What's going on? It's absolutely a brilliant way to do it though coming through the back door because then people are like

Oh, he's just one of me or maybe even make him feel like they're more intelligent than you and the next thing you know They're voting for you as president of these united states of america But as farm brody points out and no man knows my history This actually does a great disservice to joseph smith because if you look at some of the other things being published at the same time as the book of Mormon You see that joseph smith was actually Very well read See in 1823 about five years before the book of Mormon was published a pastor named

Ethan smith wrote a book called view of the Hebrews or the 10 tribes of israel in america Now although the book was badly sourced and its conclusions were fantastically wrong Ethan smith was drawing upon what sources were available at the time to explain where the native americans actually came from And it was Ethan smith who first floated the idea that the natives had come from israel with civilization in tow But over time had devolved into a way of living that us whites had deemed inferior But their idea is that they left from boats from israel. Yeah, it's very difficult It's a very difficult Way to get to america or the idea that they just weren't asian people that came over the bearing straight

I just it's difficult. There's also some of these stories where they're like They grew out of cabbage patches where you're like, I I don't think that that is good either But whatever gets them here. I don't know guys interesting So they just refused the idea that they were indigenous that they actually owned the land. Yes. This is all just them doing mental Uh, uh gymnastics gymnastics to not feel like total horrible pieces of shit exactly And jesus smith even used this book to support his own hypothesis years later But cleverly jesus smith used a reprint of the material that was published after the book of mormon Which made it look like the book of mormon had actually inspired this book

Rather than the other way around smart nice And it wasn't just the overall hypothesis that jesus smith swiped the opening was the same The prophets were the same both quoted a lot from the book of isaia and both said that the job of white americans Was to bring the indian into the christian flock But this was just the base for jesus smith. This was the jumping off point What gave the book of mormon the actual oomph was the biblical connections See, there's a line in the bible from jesus that says Other sheep i have which are not of this fold them. Also i must bring and they shall hear my voice

That's also what we do here at last podcast network trying to get people to subscribe to our very shows Absolutely. So jesus is he's just yelling at a bunch of sheep You're probably gonna want to get over here sheep and it was jesus get over here. That's what it would have sounded like That's what jesus sounds like over here Like scorpion. Oh cool And it was jesus smith's contention that those other sheep were the lamanites and the Nephites of america And from what jesus smith claimed jesus did come to america around the time that he was executed on gorgatha Ah, well the story goes that when jesus came to america the Nephites and the lamanites have been locked in a vicious battle

But after jesus came both tribes accepted the gospel and made peace at least until satan Undid the whole thing a few generations later Got to but all this story it wasn't just emma smith who was doing the transcribing Quite a bit of it was done by a man named martin harris whose family sometimes employed joseph smith's family for day labor See martin harris, although he was a perfectly honest and very nice young man by all accounts Was extremely gullible and swallowed jesus smith's story about the golden plates and moroni from the very beginning Joey do you think that maybe i can get a look at some of these fancy plates of yours? Uh, yeah, if you want your head to explode

Oh Joke Maybe i can wear sunglasses or something to protect my My brain from the from the golden plates Yeah, sure thing martin Well the reason why martin harris fell for this so easily was because martin harris had what you might call a wandering conviction Before hitching his start of smith harris had been a restorationist a universalist and a quaker But joseph smith's story held a special allure like i mean martin harris was a guy that was searching for something new

What were those what the reservationists restoration restorationists? I don't know Yeah, I don't know. I've never heard that. Well, I mean the quakers are still around Of course, but this was also a time in america where there were so many different Uh ways of looking at christianity because like we said in the first episode Like this is the first time where in we're in a country you could do whatever you wanted with religion and america was full of dreamers We didn't just have a gold rush for monetary gain. We also had a spiritual rush people were trying to find the truth Yes, the great spiritual Reformation and the restorationists their job with i mean i think that it comes down to what mormonism was also said to do

Which was restore the true christian church. Like that's at all. This is about it's whoever is the glass guy You said now we've revamped it. We made samuel all jackson shaft And that should be enough All right Yeah, it's the whole like a primitive church theory like where we got to bring the church back to its most Because the book of mormon was also extremely Anti-catholic like violently anti-catholic in a time when people were burning down nunneries Okay in america but for martin harris joseph smith story held a special allure

Because with joseph smith martin harris was getting on getting in on the ground floor of something brand new and that just made it that much More exciting. Yeah, man See for martin what was most impressive about the book of mormon was that it seemed to solve the problem of just where the Fuck the native americans came from because apparently that was a big question in the minds of a lot of white people at the time They were obsessed with this question. Like where do they come from? They should be because they keep running to places where they are told Ah the west the final frontier will go and you'll see all these unadulterated lands free for speculation free for habitation and you go and there's like a bunch of families living on it

You're like, oh man You guys are like here though Weird well speaking of getting in on the ground floor. I gotta I gotta run my package of herbal life is here And I think I'm gonna do it you guys like herbal life because I'm told I get both of you guys to sign up I'm making so much money You know what's on my bucket list is shitting myself to death So yes, please send me send me some great great It was impressive as martin harris thought the story was he still wanted to see the plates for himself

Now smith refused naturally But he did give harris a copy of what he said was some of the engraved characters from the plates So harris could take these engraved characters to a learned man to translate So it's as good as the plates, right? You're gonna want to keep this. I owe you Because this is really really very expensive. He just wrote a bunch of symbols down But we're gonna find out. I mean he did a little bit of work a little bit for this con A little bit now concerning these characters like you'd think that you know if he's gonna be writing this shit You know if it's gonna be common from god if it's gonna be coming from angels, it's gonna be in hebru

But the thing is is it speak even though speak in hebru and america was rare at the time There were still people who could speak hebru in america, especially so close to new york city What nobody knew anything about just yet though in america was egyptian hieroglyphics See before the rosetta stone was finally deciphered in 1822 People assumed that the written language of the ancient egyptians was forever lost and joseph smith assumed That it was going to be forever lost that no one was ever going to be able to figure out what all these things are No, man. No, they can't know dude. That's like the golden state killer Like they'll never come up with the technology to catch me. I think i'm going to be just fine forever

And these even after the stone was deciphered because the stone the rosetta stone Uh was deciphered around the time that mormonism was created But those findings weren't published until 1837 years after mormonism was already established So joseph smith figured he'd be safe if he just copied a bunch of hieroglyphs along with other Along with a lot of other impressive-looking symbols and call it reformed egyptian That's a great way of just saying total horses Because they were all i love the idea of being reformed egyptian where it's like you take your horus hat off though

Like you don't always go to the temple of salaman It's like you celebrate some of the various ramsy celebrations with some that you don't Well, there were some people that thought that the ancient egyptians and the people of the americas Had made contact with each other because you know you had all the pyramids down in south america Like those were being discovered at this time. So it wasn't a ridiculous notion It was one of those because joseph smith was very good at taking all these new Scientific discoveries that weren't wrong at the time But he was very good at taking them to give his own story a little bit of clout. Okay, but what martin harris did with

This sheet that had all these reformed egyptian characters on it martin harris took it down to columbia university And at columbia a professor told martin harris that he pretty much just brought him a bunch of bullshit But admittedly it was intriguing bullshit. Yeah, because I want to meet the fucking asshole That sent you with this like who sent this to me So the professor asked if he could see the original plates Now, of course martin had to admit that even he had not seen the plates because to do so was forbidden I hope you like having that head Because if you weren't

Even try and look at these plates when i'm told even sunglasses won't keep your brain from exploding He's like, oh, yeah really And when martin harris told the professor that he couldn't see the book the professor said quote I cannot read a sealed book So martin went back to palmyra crestfallen But what joseph smith did next truly shows how intelligent he actually was According to harris when he told joseph smith the line about the sealed book smith immediately went over to his bible

Opened it to the book of isaiah and showed harris this verse Hey harris you want to shit your pants? You want to shit your pants and the vision of all has become unto you as through the words of a book that is sealed Which men deliver to one that has learned saying read this i pray thee and he saith i cannot For it is sealed boom goes the dynamite another fucking three I just drained it from the center core

So instead of destroying his faith as it should have this episode actually bound harris closer because martin harris had unwittingly Fulfilled a biblical prophecy now They have a saying about everything. It's the fucking bible. Of course. It's the golden chorale of all religions They got everything you need see now harris is a part of the story now. He's in it. He is in the fucking bible Wow And with that harris pledged to finance the publication and distribution of the book of mormon God we got to start a godium religion man. We need that free ass money

But while martin harris was getting carried away with his new buddy martin harris's wife Was none too keen on literally betting the farm on knee fights and lamanites and angels with goofy names Oh, she didn't like that idea, huh? I wonder why it is straight up tim allen and patricia. He this is her this is patricia He I could see the looking on the face being like you did what with our fucking money and he'd be like, you don't understand This is just i'm in the bible now. I'm a big shot. I'm a big guy And she became especially concerned when martin told her that he was leaving the farm to be closer to joseph smith Because martin harris had volunteered to take over scribe duties from imma because imma was now pregnant

So when martin went his wife lucy went with him because she wanted to see the shit for herself and for two Weeks lucy smith searched high and low for these fucking golden plates not given a shit About the warning joseph had given that seeing the plates resulted in your fucking head exploding Show me the plates. I honestly concede. It's just that line. I'm walking into house being like hi Hi, how you doing? You're my you're my husband's new boss. Show me the plates. I'll deal with my head exploding I'll grow a new head I read a thing last week that says I can grow a new head if I if I step on a daffodil with my left foot three times

I don't know bro. It'll show me the fucking place a little helmet on maybe keep it all contained. Yeah After that fortnight was over and done with lucy harris finally said the hell that she said do whatever you want I'm going back home. Hey, technically he won. That's how you win a fight in a relationship always push We're watching it happen with I don't want to say fucking big boys fucking tax Information instead of you just keep saying like nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope eventually people stop asking Yeah, indeed Yeah, and so martin harris stayed in palmyra to continue the writing of the book of mormon And as it went along joseph switched up his style of dictation with harris

Smith divided the room with a blanket and martin harris was not permitted to look at joseph While while joseph was dictating through the seeing stones and of course by by switching it up He did the gym carry from ace ventura where he bent over spread his butt cheeks and spoke out of his asshole Do you have any bonacca? Yeah, exactly So this is how the dictation goes This is incredible very bizarre And so after two months they had the first 116 pages of the book of mormon including what imma had already transcribed Although there was not a single comma capital letter or period in the entire manuscript

Because neither imma nor martin had punctuation in their skill set Which is why so many sentences in the book of mormon begin with the word And I I don't know what wins the competition of make you fall asleep while driving Then listening to either LRH's technique 88 on cd player, which I was doing for a while Or listening to the audible version of the book of mormon Yeah, because when the When the uh typesetters were given the manuscript it was just a wall of text No punctuation. No, no line breaks. No nothing. So they just kind of had to add in punctuation

Where they saw that that can change a lot though. Yeah, absolutely I do think it's one of those things where you want to read it after you take three bumps a real good coke And then you're like, I totally get it. I'm reading just as fast as they're writing. I think I'm doing just fine Well martin harris thought that these 116 pages Constituted proof that joseph had been telling the truth all along because martin harris had bought the whole fallacy The joseph smith was just too simple to come up with this story on his own So martin harris begged smith to permit the passage of the pages back to his wife Who would now surely be convinced of smith's divine inspiration? Oh, yeah, that's definitely

She's not definitely she hasn't been just stewing for three months just like ready to take the shit out of him Yeah, fun blowing that guy. You have fun doing whenever the fuck it is you're doing over there You guys enjoying each other or doing whatever the fuck it is eating lunch. I don't know. I don't give a shit What's this? There's a book It's not even an entire book Mm-hmm. It's literally a section of it. It's technically just one long sentence This is all our money is paid for

Uh took a lot of convincing but smith finally relented and he let martin harris take the pages But then a week went by And another week and another and there was no word from martin harris and while smith was waiting Emma went in a labor and they had a fucking tragedy the baby died in childbirth and imma That almost died as well And finally imma told joseph Just go see martin harris and find out what the fuck happened to the goddamn book. Where's the book? Where's the book smith? Where's the fucking book?

Wow that i mean i'm actually surprised he would give a random and not a random man, but why would you give the book away? I would never have done that. I think this is an early mistake Yeah, it's an early mistake, but it's also it's hubris because I think joseph smith was starting to I think he was starting to believe it like When lucy sees these pages when she sees how fucking awesome this story is She's gonna turn right around and we're gonna nip this whole problem in the bud And we're all gonna be buddies. We're all gonna go out and fucking dinner dates together Maybe if you had one comma she would have trusted it more

That's not my fault the words are rushed they are true inspiration And I trust lucy's gonna love it But when joseph smith showed up at martin harris's house. He discovered the terrible truth Uh-oh See predictably the pages did not impress lucy harris the way that martin had hoped they would In fact lucy decided that if nobody was allowed to see the plates And there was only one way to prove that the translations were real So to test joseph lucy hid the manuscript and told her husband that if joseph

We're really translating these plates word for word and he'd have no trouble whatsoever in just doing it again Honestly, man. Do it again, bro. Martin is dating sharon osborne married to sharon osborne and she's just in charge of the family business She is just fucking on lockdown the only smart person in this whole scenario besides joseph smith and she's just like just do it again Just do it again. Yeah, and lucy smith said if you can do it again, then you can convince me He's like i she's like i can't see the plates fine. This is how he he can convince me and if he can do this Then yeah, sure everything will be fucking great. Well, I'll be friends Now let's put joseph smith in a bit of a pickle. No way

Because he gets him he'd be like I gave him like So you didn't want Oh, you hid the manuscript top so I could just do it again Oh That makes perfect sense See if he was off even a little then he'd lose Everything. Oh my god. He'd lose martin harris's money. He'd lose his wife's faith

And most likely he would lose his father's farm because the father his father's farm was nearing foreclosure like the stakes were Could not have been higher for joseph smith. I tell you what Joe I'm I'm believing you and I know you can go out there and hit all Home run to save his whole team. You know the good kids camps going to get the farm It's your big old man. I know you gotta do it first, Joe All right, let's add the movie basket basketball and uh heavyweights the film heavyweights and basketball great What was more emis smith like was still hovering near the land of the dead since the stillbirth

And the realization that her husband was a complete and total fraud might well have actually killed her But I will say if he can pull this off if he can't pull this off. I might be converting guys So joseph smith did what else but sidestepping bullshit He said that as it turned out Good news guys God had already planned for just such an eventuality Nice and god directed smith to a second set of plates It's called the plates of neify that covered pretty much the same period of time as the original golden plates

Because that's what god always does god always creates a second copy that's slightly different Always and as far as why smith couldn't just translate from the originals because it's not like lucy Harris stole the golden plates. It was because satan through lucy harris Had sullied the message. He took a dump on the plate And therefore the original golden plates should never be translated or read ever again because now they had the taint of satan See me tell me satan put his gooch on me and i'm the one who fucked this up. I'm the one lucy I'm the problem. I did this. How did this get flipped to me? No one listens to a woman

All right, joseph smith sidestepping indeed But the funny thing about lucy harris's ruse was that through this small act of chicanery She may have inadvertently redirected the course of history See the first draft of the book of mormon was more of a narrative story. It was just something to sell But when joseph gave it a second go He had to give it a different flair because he was supposedly translating from different plates So instead of just telling a story joseph smith made it a religious history The butterfly effect so she inadvertently created mormonism if she had just left well enough alone

The book of mormon may have just been a curious if not completely forgotten piece of frontier literature But as it was she helped create a religion that now has a membership of 16 Million people. Oh, that's amazing, but they all don't go to heaven Isn't that weird, isn't there? They got a lot of there's a lot of levels. There's a lot of layers there like we're gonna get into this guys And that's why again, I want to sell you on herbal life. Henry you mentioned wanting to shit yourself to death This product can do that marcus. Do you want to vomit yourself to death? Of course this product can do that. Yeah, wow wow

And from that day forward like martin harris did not come through this entire thing unscathed he pretty much became joseph smith's whipping boy because Um, admittedly martin harris had fucked up pretty bad Yeah, and eventually harris was replaced in the translator role by a young school teacher named oliver cowdery And we just recast in it. You just oh, yeah, let's just get another guy. I'm sorry martin. You're out all everybody's throw away when it comes to the vision he understood His strengths like this is not any different than being a showrunner Honestly, he has now become a showrunner of a television show that will become Mormonism. So

They're not serving the narrative. Bye. Bye as soon as their contract out They're done like so he is now moving to new blood new energy It's like when roseanne got a whole new older daughter and it's like we're just supposed to roll around with it Like oh, we don't notice. It's a different person. What about the fresh princess new mom. I mean come on. Oh my god Whatever happened to her Wow suicide by cop And with oliver joseph switched up the process yet again So the way he jumped into a form of scrying

That was him with a hat on his knees and the seer stones at the bottom of the hat and he'd sit With his face in the hat in his lap, right? And so he's sitting there. It's coming like the prophecy is coming Don't worry oliver. It's coming. Oh, oh oliver. Oh oliver the process of prophecy is really cooking now Wait a second joseph is there is there a hole cut in the bottom of that? Really Is that right henry? Joseph smith sucked his own cock when coming up with Mormonism and that's how he he received all the the proper words He had a rib removed so we could suck his own dick

That's the maryland manson lore. I don't think that's true Well, what joseph smith says that he'd bury his face in the hat hole and in the darkness The words would appear before him illuminated in perfect english I would love to see his face in that hat though. Just being like i better fucking come up with something Okay, okay, let's get this shit out They said that he actually did have writer's block every once in a while and he but he would say that he was not Spiritually pure and I totally get it man. Like sometimes you got to go get your mind off shit. He'd go out to uh A river nearby and throw rocks into the river until his mind restart. I do the same thing

I play bass when my writer's block comes. Yeah. Yeah, we all he throws rocks at carolina He goes outside. He runs around the block as fast as possible He only tries to deliver postman's mail for them. I've seen marcus's process. It's very interesting So by the time the book of mormon was finally finished in 1829 the manuscript had reached 275,000 words And mormons claimed that the book of mormon was finished in 75 days Which meant that smith dictated about 3,700 words per day And I put that in a perspective our book that runs about 90,000 words

Since it's about 400 pages and that book's still in the copy editing process and we started writing it almost three years ago All right, but to be fair It really is the person transcribing it. No, joseph smith is the one that's coming up with the story I know But the writer was the one doing the hard work because if we know he's just talking No, that's the coming up with you think Okay, so you think I like to see how frustrated marcus is because you're saying that the person who worked the hardest on our Book was microsoft work. Yeah, that's like what you're saying. You're saying you're saying the hardest part is not a person

I'm saying it's the person with a quill having to follow every single insane person that this man is talking So you're saying that for me the hardest part about writing the bulk of this book was that my hands got sore every once in a while Marcus if you had to write this book with a quill. Yes, I would say that I mean I will admit. Yes. I did have to sometimes take tylenall when I was having to write like 20 30 pages in a week But I'm just saying the person who transcribed this and actually wrote everything that must have been extremely difficult He's just got a story tell In his own mind that you do not win this argument. You do not win this You don't win even though you said the last sentence

I will you don't know. I think the audience is gonna side with me on this I don't think the audience is gonna side with you that just writing down is harder than coming up with the Framework for an entire religion how you got to keep up pace. You got to you got carpal tunnel You got to roll with it. This guy is on fire. You got to go Strange man, you are. I don't know it's very difficult But still before we get and also you were writing factual stuff about history making stuff up is not that hard It's very so you're insane. It's so much more difficult. We always do is make things up Writing fiction is so much more difficult than what I do. Thank you. You just proved my point

Writing fiction is more difficult for the writing. Wow. Yes I just You're gonna kill Marcus We just started this series We just started it All right But before you get too impressed with joseph's word output know that the phrase and it came to pass Appeared somewhere in the neighborhood of

2000 times That's great. That's like when you're a kid and you have to write like 50 words You'd be like I really really really really really like pencils and then your teacher has to yell at you Yeah, and as I said 27,000 words in the book of Mormon were lifted directly from the bible And also he had a running start. He'd already written one version in 116 pages of it So he actually had some rough draft work already done So then he can probably spit stuff out a little bit faster in the beginning and then Get to uncharted land and then figure out where the hell he is. So emma was inadvertently also his editor

Some what well this by this point. It was a cowdery that was doing this shit No, he had no editor in any way whatsoever. No, it was just straight up stream of conscious Yeah, he's full on rush limbaugh right And he did admittedly he fucked up a time or two Among his more egregious errors were the misplacement of john the baptist and his claim that jesus was born in jerusalem Not bethlehem. Ah, yeah, that's a pretty big detail to fuck up Doosie. Yeah, and he fucked up having the natives bring horses cows and sheep in 400 bc when it was common knowledge Even at that time that those animals didn't exist in america before the arrival of europeans

And he had the meat and wheat and barley which didn't exist before the europeans instead of potatoes And corn and they were drinking bud light. How the hell did he even know about that? And they recorded their favorite programs on a vcr This is incredible, but smith had an ingeniously self-depreciating failsafe against these criticisms Built in the book of mormon. He had moroni proclaim this And if our plates had been sufficiently large We should have written in hebrough But the hebrough has been altered by us also

And if we could have written in hebrough, you would have had not imperfection in our record Now if there be fault, it would be the mistake of man Not me because I tell you what you get the best pork roll in new work You gotta take the bqe. You gotta hit the new jersey turnpike You get off a whole bokeh. You gotta remember you take the dirt exit and sometimes ah, you know Sometimes they don't heat it up. You gotta yell at that fucker All right, and really drive it home joseph repeated that last sentence again later on in the book If there be fault it be the mistake of men

And then when he said at the second time he added that if anyone called him on a shit That person would be edging dangerously close to hell fire That's a hell of a fucking thing to like just hammer someone home with. Yeah, if there's any mistake It's the guy's fault. Don't blame don't blame god. Don't blame the the god Don't blame the words of god blame the hands of men. Oh, and so whose hands are so wonderful now ben see the person with the quill Very strange the pen is mightier than the sword my friend. It's nothing. You're just saying things now you're just saying things But the real reason why joseph wrote the book So goddamn fast was because while joseph was farting around with blankets and hats with his buddies

His parents had lost the farm And they've moved in with joseph's brother and joseph was about to have to share some of that burden And honestly, I think this is one of the big motivators in the life of joseph smith and in the development of Mormonism See joseph knew that if this didn't work, he had no choice but to go back to farming He couldn't help the idea of like I'm a special guy. Yeah, right. I'm a special guy I can't go back to some regular job. I need to be a leader. I'm too smart I'm gonna say it's another page at a lrh's playbook where it's just been like his body's too beautiful His mind is too swift. His voice is too sweet. There's no way he can just have some office job

LRH has got to fly LRH has the body of everyone with an office job Other than the people listening to this, you're all absolutely beautiful and stunning But that is also what you have to do as an entertainer You can't have a backup plan when your backs against the wall you have to move forward Otherwise, you're going to be totally screwed. I had a backup plan. What was your backup plan? Uh, I had a few actually What yeah, mine was credit card fraud Honestly, that's the only way I made it. Yeah Uh mortuary assistant like mortit like going to mortuary school, uh or uh history professor

You're you're talking to a true ghoul. He could live like a ghoul if he needed to No, okay, that's that's cool, man Well once Mormonism started to take off joseph smith still knew in the back of his mind that if he failed There was always a farm waiting and most likely joseph smith wasn't gonna own that farm joseph smith We're just gonna be working that farm and joseph smith would do fucking Anything to keep from going back to the fields, which is a motivation that I understand Completely it's like the end of red dead redemption towards the end. You have to start farming all over again, and it's very hard Yeah, you have to pick up shit. You have to nail stuff in there's literally for those that haven't played yet

There's about three hours of the game where you just have to do fake manual labor And I hate it. I hate it so much. That's why I think red dead is a highly overrated game I love it. Wow very controversial towards the most controversial Very good. Yes, I understand completely, but the other thing that joseph smith had to do to keep this narrative moving forward Always moving forward He had to borrow from a lot of different sources and in addition to the histories and the bible joseph smith ripped part of his story straight from the headlines of the day Not too far away from paul myra an author named morgan had gone missing

Allegedly because he was writing an expose on the evils of the free masons Cool And not too long after a body washed up that was thought to be morgan But was really a man named monroe and although we don't know for sure fawn brody speculated that it was an amalgamation of the names morgan and monroe That gave us the word Mormon

Because otherwise the etymology of the word Mormon is a total fucking mystery Well, well, we also remember the book of mormon is that technically the concept is that mormon is the one writing the book He was just a guy that was the son of one of the various members of the i forgot I think it was the good race. Yes, leah and he was representing right So mormon was a name that was used as a character and then we'll find out later on joseph smith hated the term mormons He didn't like it He thought it was he thought it was belittling to his people because that was just a character in the story Which is the liked christ the the idea i forgot what the actual term that he liked

But it was you had to be a ladder day saint. Yes ladder day saint That's what they actually like to be called ladder day saints not necessarily like mormons And in fact like mormon at one point in america like mormon was a pejorative It was an insult to call someone a mormon. It's such a human Way to come up with the name. It's very interesting But it wasn't just the name that smith may have taken from this freemason story And what's amazing here is that conspiracy theories about freemasons overthrowing and controlling the government were actually much more intense in 1830 than they are today

But there was way more practicing freemasons like actual powerful freemasons at the time and our entire government 1776 was Largely informed by the freemasons freemasons were dubbed that whole society was deeply Embedded in the creation of our country so you could see why they were actively concerned because they were really around And there were freemasons in power. Yeah, and you know and the idea that there's like a big evil organization That controls our government like it's been around forever and it still survives to this day It's just now the masonic lodge has become the deep state and the freemasons have been replaced with the fbi But the point is that all this bullshit is nothing new, right? Yeah, the evil shadow government has always been there

It's always been a part of our society But it's it's interesting to see how again where conspiracy theorists where you are born is the seeds That were real the little things that were real that an extrap extrapolate into something huge And as he rebranded certain religious tenants, that's all we do here We just rebrand things with different names as marcus mentioned exactly and joseph smith used these stories to great effect He introduced a secret society into the book of mormon called the gadi antons Oh, that's fun. They make like uh, they they walk with uh, coconuts and they pretend they're horses That's right. That's right. You're getting in the dream

And the aim of the gadi antons was to overthrow the democratically elected knee fight government And just see if these claims made about the gadi antons in the book of mormon sound familiar Thus they might murder and plunder and steal and commit Hordoms and all manner of wickedness Contrary to the laws of their country and also to the laws of their god And the gadi antons had rituals and oaths that were almost direct rips from masonry And it was said that the gadi antons murdered government officials and were eventually responsible for a war of extermination Fought near a hill that was disgustingly called

camora Oh, yeah, baby But despite all this seeming intrigue the book of mormon is not objectively a good book In fact, mark twain called it quote chloroform in print Jesus mark Heavy handed a little slightly heavy handed man mark twain had a lot to he had a lot to say about the mormons He was quite no. He had good hot takes. Yeah, he had real good. Yeah. Yeah. Well. He was the hot guy at the time

I know he was yeah, but I mean it was boring It's a boring ass. Look it's looking awful. It's so badly written the characters are awful. Like it's such a bad book But by the time smith finished it He was starting to realize that it didn't really matter how good the book was He was starting to realize that it was not the story in the book of mormon itself that was grabbing followers Rather, he found that the narrative that resonated most with people was the story of joseph smith Now at the time the only people who really believed in joseph smith were his wife a few buddies and his family But that was a start and smith started to think that maybe

Just maybe he had the makings of a church Yeah, dude, that is fucking promote yourself to god and he is going to learn how to do this And it's gonna he's gonna teach the people that follow him how to do this and it's all about Looking go for that ring, baby But in order to do that He had to take it just one step further with the dudes that were already in his corner And one of joseph smith's many talents was the ability to induce visions in his followers Now I know this sounds kind of ridiculous

But it is possible to induce hallucinations without the use of hallucinogenic drugs Especially if the inductee is highly invested in experiencing a vision that day Well, the way he put the way he put Visions to his people was essentially if you don't believe in this you are not or you are not with me You are not a part of this movement. And so I don't know if it's necessarily I you can induce hallucinations Definitely, especially by spiking their drinks with the ergot route all it says happening That's around at the time like all that kind of stuff is around natural hallucinogens Or you just say you better see this because if not our friendship's over like our relationship's over

So you'd be surprised what people say that they see when you're like trapped in that like essentially an ultimatum Yeah, absolutely But ben I mean you've been you were went to a you grew up in an evangelical church Like you know how hardcore people can get when they really want to believe something they will believe anything I mean the whole um getting uh the speaking in tongues and then having a pastor touch you laying of hands falling over the laying of hands People will test their testimonies are straight up spiritual magical. I mean nonsense, but nonetheless They really do truly believe it and it does alter their lives Yeah, and although joseph smith pretty much decided that a church was the way to go his acolytes weren't so sure

So joseph smith started with oliver cowdery and the two of them headed out into the woods in may of 1829 There the two of them knelt and prayed and eventually Oliver cowdery saw a vision of john the baptist And afterward became convinced that a church was the best way to go and of course john the baptist in the vision says You don't have to pay taxes You are tax exempt if you're a church. Yes, you will collect all of your money. The government doesn't want your money No, no taxes tax John the baptist are you is that rand paul?

But here's the interesting thing about this vision See oliver cowdery later wised up and left the lds In fact all of the early followers of the lds eventually left joseph smith, but oliver cowdery Still maintained until the day he died that on that day in the forest with joseph smith He saw john the baptist even though he said joseph smith is full of shit. I don't believe him I don't believe in what he said. He still maintains. I saw an angel that day. I saw john the baptist There's a way of looking at life a kind of cross-eyed way where you can Hold these two thoughts in your head at once. Yeah that on some level he did

present john the baptist to himself in these moments in order to Essentially live up to what joseph smith was putting him up to being like you want to be in on this thing You got to be able to lie like old daddy joey You got to be able to spin the urn Like I spin it and so you're sitting there and you think about like do I want to be vice president of this of this religion

Do I want to be the dude? Do I want to be a part of the thing and you are sitting there and be like I do believe in god and I'm waiting for it And then you just see john the baptist in a pile of bear shit And you're like there he is Now i'm seeing it and you can say that forever. Yeah So pretty soon after that martin harris and a new follower named david wittmer Joined smith and cattery in the forest to see if they could repeat the visitation or at least see something similar And the four men prayed and prayed and prayed but nothing happened. Finally martin harris played with doubt just threw up

Just Seeing god and if he's gonna say i'm too skinny I hate when people think fun to me for how skinny I am And so the other men figured they weren't seeing visions because martin was being all weird So they said go pray alone for a little while and then come back But soon after martin came back and the visions began And an angel appeared with the message the golden plates and everything in them was in fact truth But here's another interesting thing about these visions

Even though the message was the same for all three men all three of them had a completely different vision And although all three of them later left the church again None of them ever went back on what they saw that day. All right. It was induced like joseph smith I mean that is it is hypnotism. He's able to induce He is able to induce hallucinations in his followers You get a group of people super gullible you take them out into the woods You're setting the scene and you know, i'm gonna say there's something to eventually the her medic ability Of joseph smith that he didn't realize that he was tapping into an idea of a group of people like

I I firmly believe this and this concept of magical thought right where you Can create this religious reality In these moments in these moments of high energy and high concentration You have these visions and they do seem concrete and they are real to you and if they are real to you Then in fact they then become real It's still you're in a weird it's still real to me damn it And what's even more interesting about this is that martin harris even in his hallucination He still saw the golden plates covered in cloth

Even his subconscious wouldn't let him break joseph smith's rules And i asked marona, is it okay if i bring like a welder's helmet? Son in a ring really protect me and seeing it because it's the old boy. I'm as curious as a golf cat And when martin harris was asked by a lawyer later like dude come on Like did you actually see the plates like even if they were wrapping cloth like did you actually see them martin said quote I did not see them as i do that pencil case Yet i saw them with the eye of faith Okay, so we just is good. It's really not though sir. Uh, so you didn't see them

Take the word saw and put it in quotation marks. What exactly is seeing anything right like you're seeing me now Is seeing c s e a How you got two different words You would just say meaning and doesn't make any sense. All right. Just get your sandwich and go please Oh, thank god for this free sandwich. I can't afford lunch. My coupons got all wet and rain Nevertheless the vision that these men saw is now the introduction to the book of mormon This is the proof but still this wasn't enough for joseph smith If he was going to start a real church, he'd need more witnesses

So he drew up a second statement and a dindam called And also the testimony of eight witnesses of eight witnesses witnesses see that's even more than the three The witnesses and they had to sign a document where they all agreed and he's like see it's legal Yeah, it's legal. They sign a piece of paper. They can't lie. Of course sign a piece of paper Yeah, no one would ever do that these eight witnesses were three of joseph's relatives and five members of the whitmer family And for this one joseph had to take it to the next level after making all of them pray for hours upon hours Joseph brought them into a room. He showed them a box and told them the golden plates are inside But when joseph opened it everyone said

Ain't nothing in that box joseph So joseph chastised them for their lack of faith told them that it was their fault They didn't see anything and he made them pray for another two hours Yes, and then the next time they looked in the box. It was the head of brad pit's wife in the movie Oh, no Oh, it was wrath No, when they open up the box they think about this shit where joseph's like are you ready? Big day, huh?

See in the plates. You've wanted to martin. You see you got sunglasses on I just want you safe Martin, I'm gonna slap you. I'm gonna beat the living shit out of you. I'm gonna show you all right now He opens up the sarcophagus and it's like ha ha Ah gaze upon them nothing in there and it's just a room of dudes. It's like Where's that? And then you get yelled at Wow

Can you ever come back and you got to pretend? Yeah, lo and behold After those two hours of praying we're up joseph smith opened up the box and everyone said yeah Man brilliant there they are Brilliant, dude. I love it. Yes fucking. Oh shit. They got ridges and oh, I see the gold Plates in there. Yeah, it's a big place Yeah, well what fawn brody says about these episodes and I'm inclined to agree with her is that these acts were not necessarily cynical like say

Jim Jones was cynical See after the first two visions in the woods Joseph Smith was starting to believe that he actually had the power to make these things happen and in a way He was making them happen Even though they were hallucinations and not concrete angels and plates and such These people actually believed what they were seeing was real and smith believed that he was responsible He wakes up every day and he's like I make people see

me. Shit. Yeah, I do it. It's in my brain. It's like jeremy renner putting together his new album of poppets For he jeremy renner believes that all of the people around him that paid sound technicians and studio musicians love his music Do you have that confidence that power man? Nothing can stop these are super hero in more ways than one And it was in this fog of newfound magical power that the book of Mormon was finally put into print Using the money that martin harris made After he was made to sell his family's farm

And this could have been joseph smith putting martin harris in his place His martin harris was getting a little vision happy and he wasn't shy about telling people All about these weird ass visions that he was having I saw john the baptist in a bucket Wow cool He said he'd seen jesus in the shape of a deer. He'd seen the devil covered in mousy fur It was the little tiny devil and he was Brown and it came into my house and it was eating all my bread

And then I gave it a cookie and it laughed and I was like I guess that's what happens when you give a devil a cookie Interesting could have been a rat And martin harris was telling everyone that he'd had a vision that Mormonism was going to be so popular Immediately that within eight years America wouldn't even need a president Yeah No, they certainly didn't need the Mormon one anyway In other words, martin harris was getting ahead of the game

And making him give up everything he owned in order to put the word of god out into the world Was a good way to remind him of just who was in charge here now now Please just envision that you still have a house because you don't I got a hammock. That's all I need me and his devil mouse that I've seemed to have befriended And I feed him a little bit of corn he hangs in my pocket and oh, I have you know what the devil's not such a bad little mouse What jesus smith was telling him is You don't have visions that tell the future of Mormonism. I have visions that tell the future of Mormonism Sure, you can have these visions. You can do whatever you want

You don't tell people about these visions You tell me these visions and I decide if these visions should be told to sounds like two Methodics arguing over the remote control It's just all right Because that's the thing is that like the visions that uh harris was having were stupid I don't know. He is just speaking of something stupid about what I saw. I saw king Solomon in a bull soup You did. That's not stupid. Hey He's real

Well, jesus smith was starting to have a vision and you can't have martin harris telling people that we're not going to have a President in eight years because that makes mormon sound like a bunch of fucking idiots as opposed to you know There's a line there is a fine line that this man had to walk Yes That was one thing that uh someone said about the book of mormon is that you know not many people saw the book of mormon Maybe one percent of americans actually saw and read the book of mormon But out of the people that saw and read it and listened to jesus smith A lot of those people ended up becoming mormons a lot of those people ended up becoming converted

And so the book of mormon went in a print and was first put on sale at a bookstore in palmyra on march 26th 1830 and the first reviews were to say the least unkind The first review published in the rochester daily advertiser featured the headline blasphemy the book of mormon alias the golden Bible Oh, they made it sound really freaking cool. It's not cool. It does and this is what that review said The book of mormon has been placed in our hands a viola imposition was never practiced It is an evidence of fraud blasphemy and credulity shocking both the christians and moralists

The author and proprietor is joseph smith jr A fellow who by some hocus pocus Acquired such influence over a wealthy farmer of wane county that the latter mortgaged his farm for three thousand dollars Which he paid for printing and binding five thousand copies of the blasphemous work But as farm brody wrote and as joseph smith knew at the time The success of joseph smith's church was not dependent on the quality of the book of mormon It depended on joseph smith himself And over the following 14 years

joseph smith would go from a 23 year old former treasure hunter to the leader of a religion With its own militia that was bringing in followers by the thousands That is until joseph smith was dragged from a prison and murdered by a mob in 1844 And just how all of that happened is what we'll cover on mormonism part three. All right There it is mormonism part two. I mean to be fair the mormon militia Extremely tired. No coffee at all. No coffee. Come on I mean the the nazis were were hyped up on mescaline and meth Well, we'll find out what happens because they had coffee for a little while until he got a revelation that turned out that he had to stop

People smoking and drinking coffee. We'll get into why that is a little more domestic than you'd think it would be But this the next section of this story is what's going to show the true potential of joseph smith It's going to show his magical powers and full full fruition. We're going to see him go from con man to Religious zealot Very very quickly and a lot of blood is going to get spilled and we're going to see how that energy is that thing That's going to shuttle off mormonism deep into 2019 where we almost had a fucking mormon president. I mean we never almost had one

But he was caught off came kind of close He's closing off. Yeah, probably cost him the election being a mormon. Um, all right. There it is Well, I hope someone can clean up. We need to get a mardi over there in the aisles to clean up all that blood I guess but we'll talk about that. Um, thanks so much for listening everyone Let's see. We are going to be in europe and I have to say full disclosure Our european tour is basically sold out, which is a total miracle. Thank you all so much We cannot wait. However, we still have some tickets. I believe available in bristol So if you want to get on out there in bristol, come on out, uh, it'll be a blast

We also have tickets in birmingham and birmingham the bees. That's where we have the tickets It's in birmingham. Everything else completely sold out birmingham is the place where we got about a hundo tickets left Come check it out. We're very excited to be in europe. Oh my god. We're gonna be um, we're gonna drink a lot of beer Yes, I cannot wait. We're gonna we have a couple of days off when we get to dublin I think we have a day or two. Mm-hmm, and I'm just so excited to be there Um, I'm gonna eat meat drink guiness. You have a little jamo. You have to have a guiness with me marcus I'll have a guiness way straight out of the teat. I'll have it man Yeah, I'm gonna see if I can try to find my way out into the irish countryside. You're gonna fit right in be careful

Please be careful. Yeah. Um, all right, everyone. Well, thank you so much for listening Thank you for supporting all the shows here on the last podcast network check them all out You're gonna love them and um, yeah, I guess that's about it. Don't forget. Hail yourselves Hail satan again. My goodness deletions tell me Man, oh man, I can't wait to have some I like them to my own the secret underwear. It seems really comforting What is that? Um, is we'll get into it next week. We'll see because I'll buy some You can't think it would take like several pairs. Oh, they're tiny

Oh, you're you're tiny their secret underwear Hmm Okay, I'll find the insult in there This show is made possible by listeners like you thanks to our ad sponsors You can support our shows by supporting them for more shows like the one you just listened to Go to last podcast network.com