Bob Bennett's Final Fireside

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett and I am here with Ian Wilkes. How are you, sir?

I'm doing very well today, Jim.

How are you? I'm doing all right. I, I know people are kind of Upset. Well, I don't know, upset is a strong word, but we are a little late on this podcast. And I think that's my fault because I was off in the Philippines with the Tabernacle Choir and I thought that we might be able to coordinate doing something while we were overseas. But you were in Canada and I was 15 hours ahead and it was kind of a mess. So I apologize to all of our listeners who have been waiting with bated breath for a new Inside Out episode. And here it is. So I hope you're excited. Actually, this is going to be a very special episode because Ian has graciously allowed me to talk about something that's very near and dear to my heart here. I've gone back— for those of you who are listening, know my background. My father was former Senator Bob Bennett, is former Senator Bob Bennett. It's always hard to talk about somebody in the past or present tense when they've passed on. But my father passed away on May 4th, 2016. On April— I want to get the dates right here. On April 11th, 2016, my father suffered a debilitating stroke that left him incapacitated, and all of his children gathered around his bedside for the next 3 weeks. And had a very precious time with my father as he was dying. And prior to that, he had been suffering from pancreatic cancer and was diagnosed with that about a year and a half earlier and had gone through a lot of treatment for it. And we thought he'd beaten it. He, he, he went through chemotherapy. We thought that the tumor was dead. And we thought everything was going to be fine. And then he went back up for a checkup and found out that the cancer had metastasized throughout his body and that he didn't have very long to live. Uh, at the time, my father was living in the Arlington, Virginia ward, and the bishop of that ward was a man named Aaron Sherinian, who we've talked about on this podcast. He's recently been hired by the church as the new PR spokesman for the church. But at the time, he was serving as the bishop of the Arlington Ward, and he asked my father to give a fireside to the Arlington Ward about the Book of Mormon. My father had written a book in 2009 called Leap of Faith: Confronting the Origins of the Book of Mormon. That's actually a fascinating book in some ways and also a very boring book in others. I mean, he wrote it, he wrote it after Mitt Romney's first presidential campaign, and he thought there would be a whole lot of interest in Mormonism in the country at large, in the United States. And so big sections of the book summarize the Book of Mormon, summarize the Book of Mormon narrative. And I find those sections really boring because I'm familiar with the Book of Mormon narrative and I don't need the summary. But the other parts are where he talks about his experience dealing with forgeries. He used to work for Howard Hughes, and there was a guy who wrote a book that purported to be Howard Hughes's autobiography. Howard Hughes at the time was a recluse and was living in Bermuda and wasn't seeing anybody, and nobody had seen him for years. And so this guy wrote a fictitious biography of him. And tried to pass it off as legitimate. And my father was working for Hughes at the time and pointed out that there were a lot of things in the biography that seemed appropriate at the time, but as time went on, became less and less appropriate and became very clear that they were evidence for forgery. And he says the Book of Mormon is sort of the reverse of that, in that when it came out, it was less plausible ancient record than it is now, that the evidence has actually gotten better for the Book of Mormon over time, although there are still some serious problems and serious anachronisms in the book. Anyway, so that was the background. He wrote that book in 2009, and it got a certain degree of traction. And Aaron and Bishop Sherinian said to him, you know, we would love for you to do this fireside. Now, my father's health was failing during this time. And he kept saying to himself and saying to the family, I've got to stay alive for the fireside. And this was sort of his goal, was to live long enough to deliver this message about the Book of Mormon. And I was not there for the fireside. I wish I had been, had I known that he would be gone weeks after he gave that fireside. I would have done everything I could. I would have moved heaven and earth to be there. But somebody recorded it there. It's a very poor recording, and I've enhanced it with an artificial intelligence sound enhancer. It's still kind of rough. And so you're going to hear it. If you listen to this, you're going to hear an edited version of it and It doesn't really sound like my father's voice as much as I would like it to. And it's kind of rough in spots. But the thing is, the thing that's fascinating about it is that he had, he had just sort of willed himself to live long enough to deliver this message. And within hours of delivering the message, and by all accounts, I mean, he stood there, he gave this with no notes. He stood for, for about an hour. You know, he was an 82-year-old man dying of cancer, but he was very vigorous as he gave this fireside. Everybody who attended it said it was extraordinarily memorable. And within hours of giving the fireside, he suffered a stroke. And 3 weeks later, he was dead. And so it's hard not to see some sort of divine providence in the importance of those words, importance of that message, at least for him and certainly for his family. But I want to share this with everybody who's listening to it. And after we're done doing that, I— Ian, I've given this to you to listen to and you've listened to it. And so fireside, we're not going to interrupt it. We're just going to play this, this fireside for you to listen to. And if you don't want to listen to it, skip to the end here because then Ian and I are going to talk about it. All right, here we go.

This witnesses, they were just bamboozled by his charisma. Um, actually, we think he was kind of dull, but to make the case, he confused everybody. We have to change our description of him depending on what it is we want to attack with respect to his background. We can, we can go through all of the rest of hell and come up with a complete explanation. And then there's the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon exists. Ah, siu shariu. That means somebody wrote it. It didn't come out of an imagination of something into a speech. Somebody wrote it down. Somebody created it before 1829 because it got to the printer and got published. You have to explain who wrote it. It's here. It's physical. It cannot be waved away the way some of the descriptions of visions and other things could be waved away. If we step back and think of it for just a minute in something other than straight religious terms but marketing terms, we have to say, what a genius decision if we want to launch this new religion. To give it a book that cannot be waved away, has to be examined in terms of answering the fundamental question: who wrote it? You can't get around that question. You can't avoid it. Who wrote it? OK, one of the things that we know about books is that the book always tells you something about who wrote it. You can't hide it. You can disguise it, but you can't hide it. And in today's world, unlike the world of 1829, you really can't hide it because you could use a computer to do an analysis of the syntax used, of the sentence structure and the paragraphs and all the rest of it, and the computer can say this person wrote it. They've done this in controversies as to who wrote Shakespeare., and they will take certain Elizabethan, uh, it could take certain Elizabethan, uh, praises or sonnets and so on and say, yeah, this is from the Elizabethan era. This, this clearly comes out of the time when Queen Elizabeth was around, but these words were not written by Shakespeare. The computer says no, that was Roderick Bailey. Early on. So we're going to start out tonight with the desire to find out who wrote it, with the understanding that every book always tells you something about its author. Okay, do we have a 24-year-old anywhere in the crowd? Okay, you give us a tip. I want to create forgery, a religious book for my own purposes, and I think you need to write. You're 24 years old. That's how old Joseph Smith was. Everybody turn around, take a good look at it. There's Joseph Smith. That's how old Joseph Smith was when the Torah was called in his heart. Now let me describe to you what I will want in this book, and I've got it here in metal. Outlined kind of form. Actually, I want 3 books. They're all going to be punched together in one volume, but I want 3 books. And here's the timeline: 600 BC is when you start, and 3, I believe, 85 AD is when you die. So you've got to fake something. This is coming out in 1859. It's a little bit later, he created many kinds. So you're dead, you're doing all of this 1,000 or so years after you die. Okay, that's kind of a challenge for any author. But you look like a pretty smart 24-year-old, so you may be up to this. Now, the first book which I have here, and I was so proud of you all to see this, I've labeled that Family Journal. You're gonna write a family journal. That means first person, I, Weedy. You're gonna describe what happened to your family. Or you have this now. Now you're not just going to sit down and write it straight through, and it goes from 600 BC to about 124 BC, and it's going to be filled primarily with 4 principal authors, which means You got to change who you are 3 times. You could start out being Levi— that's the name on it today— and start out being Levi, describing your description, your circumstance. And then you're going to pass this on to your brother Jacob, and he's going to write for a while, and then he's going to pick a prophet nobody's ever heard of called Zedekiah, and he's going to write some stuff in there, and then you're going to fill up the rest of it with quotations from Isaiah, and they better be the right quotations because there are certain things, points I want to make here So you got 4 people that you get, and one of them is fairly easy. That's Isaiah. You can crib him from the King James Version of the Bible, but don't crib him exactly. We want to make some changes along here because we've got some points to make, and the changes will help us make those points. Okay, you're up for this? Very much like— That's a lie. Now, at the same time, the town of Meafly, who were put at the front of this family history, writes another book simultaneously. This he calls "The Small Place of Meafly." This is "The Large Place of Woodsworth." Woodsworth all the way to from 600 BC on to 325 AD. Okay, this is a history. This is not a family drama. This is not first person. This is third person. Yeah, the Italian writes a little of the history here. This is the family stuff that's on the computer. Here are the kings and the wars and the government and the— they— all of the logistics of a major society so that when Nephi dies, then the next historian comes along and then the next historian, and they just pass this record on down and on down and on down until the final guy who gets it, whose name is Will, is going to summarize. So you're Nephi, now you're Mormon, and you're going to go back over 1,000 years of history. And described the waters and the rivers and the government chambers and all of the rest of that. And this time it's not just 4 people who are going to be talking. There's a whole bunch of people who are going to be talking all the way through. 1,000 years. You ready for that? Okay, now in addition, in addition, I want to affirm history, and I bleed off to the side here because we have no idea when it began, but I won't hold you to a date because we'll tie that to the Tower of Babel. So 3000 BC, pick a date, then God, I mean, you've got to come forward with this history, and this history ends about the same time this one does, as these people destroyed themselves. Now the problem is these folks are all start out in Jerusalem. They're all Jews, Hebrews, Israeli people, whatever. Okay, they all start out in Jerusalem, so through their history everything will have the flavor of the culture in which they were born. You can't deviate from that. These folks had nothing whatever to do with Jerusalem, and you can't allow any of that to leak into this one. This one has to be completely different. Okay, you can sit down. I meant to sit down now. And let's go through this and talk about certain things that would happen in this. By the way, ile nain, we're going to have to be ready that Tuk. The first 116 pages of this history were lost, so you have to start the history about the same time these other two begin. Which means it has to come across like a movie that you have stepped into 20 minutes after it started and you have no idea who any of the people are who led up to it. So, okay, let's go. That's the book, Melanin. 1st and 2nd Nephi and Jacob, and then the additions made by Jacob's descendants in the small plates, he will come. And then you add the remaining part, the large plates of Book of Mormon, after the 116 pages were lost, and then it just so happens that the ending of the small plates comes pretty close to coinciding with the period, the beginning of the movie, the walking in the boot. So what we have in the Book of Mormon today, we just slid small plates down, you know, So you read the small place and then you get to the history of the large place, and the transition is very confusing. You don't quite understand how that works because you go immediately from a first-person family history to a third-person history of The, uh, the folks who made it— wait a minute. And there is still a gap because up here, most of this by Jacobs, uh, to Simmons has no entry into the wall. All it says, I got the plates from my uncle and I put my name on them and passed them on. To my son, whatever. And then suddenly you're caught, King Benjamin is caught. Who is King Benjamin? We don't know. Ask one of the 16 pages. She was with him precisely. And it gets very difficult when you get into this for you to be a forger because Mormon, who is reading all of this history coming from all of these other folks, is quoting them at length. So you can't just pretend to be Mormon, you have to pretend to be King Benjamin. And if you want to make this thing look real, King Benjamin cannot sound like that. Nor can he sound like Alma. Alma is the most quoted of all of the people that Mormon uses, he quotes directly. Yeah, there's first person in this, but it's never Mormon. It's always the people he's quoting. And so Alma takes up 36 pages, and if you read Alma carefully, he doesn't sound like King Benjamin. He doesn't even sound like Amulek, who is his bishop unto men. The two of them were up there together, and Alma has one way of preaching, and Amulek has a different way of preaching. You don't sound like a Benadadai. Who's standing there? According to the law of Moses, uh, you, you go through all three. You start with the Benadadai, and then you got Benjamin, and then you got Alma, and then you got Amalek, and you got Samuel Benadadai, and you got Zenas, and you've got Edom. And he doesn't give any sermons at all. He just tells you about the wars. And I'm swallowing an inuit of quotes and sermons from him, but he didn't give him any. So as you do all of this, you got to be switching from talking about war to all back and forth. Quick aside: does it bother you that Alma doesn't sound like Amulek? Does it bother you that Elder Holland doesn't sound like Elder Oaks? And they're both testifying the same thing, but each is responding to his own experiences. I have Elder Holland as a great classroom teacher. It was lots of fun to listen to those wonderful stories. And Bill Brooks, who was an old Supreme Court, State Supreme Court Justice, who laid it out in the kind that lawyers like Elder Patti could understand. And you know, too, because it all gets down to Mormon, and he's completed all of this. And then he gets killed in 385, and his son Maronite comes along. Mormon has completely neglected this third book about the people from the Tower of Babel. And Maronite was plenty of time on his hands. Decides, "I'll add that to Dad's repertoire." So the Rama'i sits down and gives us this record. Wow, these people are really weird. They have kings that rule in captivity through their whole lives and the father children in the captivity, and then the children try to overthrow the other king, and they have weird names, Adolph and all that. Why in the world is that there? Because Laurel and I decided it was important to sit there from our point of view, but you're the forger, my instructions are you are decided on wanting this Now, you're 24 years old, which means you've got to be doing this before you get to that age. And by the way, you write a little bit yourself. You mean— And here come the computers. You don't sound like him, baby. The writings that Joseph Smith put in the first edition of the Book of Mormon describing what happened to the 116 pages— we don't have them anymore, we don't put them in the Book of Mormon anymore, people apparently don't pay much attention to them anymore— but Joseph felt very strongly about it, so strongly that he put them right in front And you read that paragraph where he describes it and you say, whoever wrote that didn't write anything in the Book of Mormon. There is no connection. Well, modern technology, computers— you have to have been such a good forger in making up all of these different personalities and changing the way the way they talk that the computers are fooled. And the computers say all of these speeches in this one, all of these sermons are by different people, and Joseph Smith is not one. We check Joseph Smith against Ellen. Nope. Joseph Smith's getting right on So my, my thesis to you kids, if you're going to approach the Book of Mormon on a strictly intellectual basis rather than on a spiritual and just analyze it for what it is and what it says, Rejecting Joseph Smith as the author of the Book of Mormon is the way to go. I would say, in a court of law, beyond a reasonable doubt, you could demonstrate Joseph Smith did not write the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith, no more than you, have great ability, great to confidence in her ability. But Joseph Smith didn't write all of these things, put them all together, and have them forged together. Now, talk about forgery, and I've had some experience with forgery. And I wrote a book asking the question, is the Book of Mormon a forgery? And in the process, you know, I analyzed for my readers what is wanted. And there are three tests for fork, traditionally three tests. There are internal tests, and there are external tests. Then there is the fundamental question of motive. Well, I think I've demonstrated with this Well, the Mormon Pass is the interlocutor. You can't look at it and how it's constructed and how things relate to each other and say there's anything in this that says fortune. Oh, by the way, you gotta be other things, I will guard over you. The longer the forgery, the easier it is to detect. Remember the forgeries of Mark Hoffman, that he foisted off on the church, Salamander Letter, all these kind of things? Very short, not much to check, very easy in a very short presentation to see to it that it fit together internally. It didn't pass the internal test. We want to see whether this forgery passes the internal test. By the way, this Clyfford and Drury 5 pages long, that's not very short. That exposes you to all kinds of possibilities of mistakes. If you don't write something that only The other thing that goes with that on the internal test, there's an old saying, truth is the daughter of time. The farther away you get in time from the forgery, the less convincing the forgery is. You go back to the Othman forgeries and the time in which they took place, they all looked pretty good because people were talking about the subjects he was forging things on. There were a bunch of scholars that were saying, "Oh, Joseph Smith was caught up in pulp magic." Oh, okay, so let's write the Salamander card that proves that Joseph Smith was doing the folk magic and therefore cock inspired. The people lost interest in folk magic and you look at the Solomon letter now and you say, why didn't they pay any attention to this? But at the time you had this book scope, Truth is the Daughter of Time and the Short in the Pen. If you want to make it to the toilet. So what has truth done to Joe and to me, to the Book of Mormon? Let's go to the next area, which is a short little round of external tests. We'll come on and make perhaps all the deeper tests of all these things put together. But what about the external things? And Hinuman constructed a ledger. Now one side of the ledger, here on the right, are all of the external evidences that the Book of Mormon is not genuine. And over here on the left are all of the external evidences that the Book of Mormon is true. And we date the ledger 1830. What are you going to find? You're going to find on the right a whole series of things that demonstrate that the Book of Mormon is nonsense. External evidence. This is nonsense. And over here on the left, why not? This Joseph's word and the wording of some of his associates who let it— it's a metal plates. Who writes on metal plates? That's absurd. Big cities. Larkin Clay, everybody knows the Indians from Coburg who go around with teepees and moo all the time. May I be able to sit? No, that's nonsense. This whole thing is crazy. My grandfather used to have an ongoing controversy with one of his closest associates who lived on the border. He said, "Heber, the Book of Mormon says they built cities out of cement. There's no cement among the Indians." My grandfather would say, "If the Book of Mormon said they had cement, they had cement." The truth is that, well, you know, they were resolved that kind of a conk. Okay, well, I'll just run through a few of them for you. Metal plates. Today we know that people of the Abrahamic covenant, right, Jim Bennett, wrote sacred things on metal plates and buried them in the ground for future generations to find. And sometimes put them in stone boxes. We have found— been found in Iran the stone box. It looks just like the stone box that Joseph Smith describes the plates came in, in which there are metal plates on which there are engravings. And the plates are exactly as Joseph Smith described the plates for the Book of Mormon, except they're a little bit bigger. Joseph Smith's plates were a little smaller. The Dari plates, they were called, named after the Syrian king, are on the bit. There are over 100, maybe by now 200 or more, I don't know, plus count of examples of people being branded, cousin, writing on plates and burying. Okay, we're going to take that off at this side of the ledger. As they stayed against the— and move it over to this side, because not only did Josephus this time knew about the place except Gilead, names appear, all the people came from Jerusalem, so all of their names in the Book of Mormon should be Jewish names. Names tell you a lot about where people come from. If your name's McGregor, you have Scottish ancestry. If your name's O'Malley, Irish. The most common name in England, Smith. The most common name in Wales, Germans. What's the most common name in the Old World? Anybody got a guess? Somebody has to. They need to decide. I think— Helly. Where'd that come from? The White Hall? Going back to that Samuel German, Levi points out that he had an education. His father provided him an education, and it's fairly clear that his father would want him out. How did you become wealthy in Jerusalem in 600 BC? One really good way to do it was to trade with the Egyptians. Now let's take Lehi for just a minute. Lehi was married. Let's assume that he got married young by our standards, 17, 18, with Annes Kort. And they had two children, and they named them standard Jewish names. Laban, Laban, same kind of names everybody else used in the time. But he was doing business in Egypt by now, and he knew Egyptian, and he had two more sons, and they named them Sam and Levi. Now Sam is not a contraction of the New England name of Samuel. Sam is a perfectly legitimate standalone by itself Egyptian name, and so is Abi. So look at it, eh? He's now out of his teens and had his first kid, he's now into his 20s and in his career. And he names his next two sons— gives his next two sons Egyptian names. And then he gets called as a prophet and told to leave and spends his year— 8 years or so wandering in the wilderness, reading the scriptures. And he has two more sons. Now, what does he name them? Jacob and Joseph, two of the most important prophets in the scriptures that he's reading about. So we have got to have some Egyptian names in the Book of Mormon as well as Hebrew names. In the Book of Mormon if it's going to be internally consistent. And the most common name in the Book of Mormon is Haman. What was the most common name in Egypt in 600 BC? You don't need any hints.

Amakauam.

Get down to this third road through the Tower of Babel, and there are no lions, and there currently no windows, there are coriander, muller, chile, sheeluk, whole bunch of weird names, and I don't see about waters. I don't see about water. Do those things ever leak up? Things that you don't— yeah. They do it. There are some Judaic names that are in this list too. Where did they come from? Well, about the same time that this happened, a last Judaite makes his way up into Zarahemla and takes enough culture with him When that would be, so there are a few of the Urukite names from that time forward, nothing prior. It's shown in the Book of Mormon. Okay, take the names off the ledger on this side, move them over to this side. This is another demonstration. Poetry. Every culture has its own poetry. You may get introduced to a haiku You know you're talking to somebody who knows something about China, because nobody writes all words in the hieroglyphics except the Japanese. Get in 1 Nephi, read Lehi's statements to his sons in the valley, and then you have desert court, appropriate to Haman, and desert court. Nobody in Joseph Smith's time knew anything about desert poetry. Well, it was in the old ones. Let's keep building up on this some and all of the good things for the Book of Mormon and keep reducing those things on the other. Well, I could ramble on, but we're getting towards the end and I want to wrap this up. I just have one more statement about the the things that have come to light in extra-millennium. One of the greatest complaints against the Book of Mormon, Kane's critics, is archaeology. There is no dependable Book of Mormon site anywhere in the Americas that can be identified as a Book of Mormon city. By anybody other than a Book of Mormon archaeologist. I'm sorry, Mormons think they found cities that correspond to the Book of Mormon, but they can't convince any other archaeologists that they've done so. So that stays over here on the list of things that says The Book of Mormon, external evidence that the Book of Mormon is not true. That is, you're looking in the wrong place. It's like the old story, and there's a tremendous interest in going to the Middle East as an example of problems dealing with the Middle East. A fellow says to his neighbor, I've lost a very valuable ring. Come help me look for it. The neighbor said, all right, I'm go— out. He's straight looking, careful, and his street light is on as he's sitting out. And the neighbor says, where did you learn to do this? He said, I lost it in the house. Then he built a wall. He said, well, why are we looking out here? He said, because the light is good. And it doesn't matter. The Book of Mormon doesn't give you enough information to find an archaeological site. Himy Americans with any kind of our accuracy. The family journal, the first block up there, gives you clear information about the family's wandering on the Arabian Peninsula, and that's one of the few places in the world that probably still looks exactly today like it did in 600 BC. There are these superhighways across the Arabian Peninsula. Now, they just leave that alone. That's just the way it always did. That if you follow Nephi's description of their journeys in the Arabian Peninsula exactly, you find a gold mine. Why would you need a gold mine? Gold plates, that's where we get the call. They came across the city, the, the, in the, the Hebrews, they did not use knowledge. The archaeologists uncovered right about where Nephi would have adventured when Ishmael died and they buried him. They buried him in a town called Baal and a ancient cult town, which was a marriage site. Archaeologists within the last 10 years, 15 years, have found the site on the Arabian Peninsula right about where Miphaishu Baal would be at Baalbek, Karla. An inscription of the name of the town and it says N-H-M. And they choose to open this ballot. It's an archaeological bullseye. You're out there looking in the streetlight, guys, when the archaeology of the Arabian Peninsula makes it very clear that you should be looking in the Arabian Peninsula for validation on the— Nephi's description of where they went. And if you do, you'll find the land of Balaam, where there's plenty of wood to build a ship, like Nephi said he would. Turn directly east, and it takes you right smack into an area that would be similar to the land of Balaam. And nobody in Josephus' time had ever Well, I could go on and on and on. The external evidence is piling up, piling up on this side of the ledger and shrinking and shrinking on this side of the ledger. Truth is the daughter of time, and the longer the forgery, the more likely it is to be uncovered. Here we had Heiderbäum, Beer, Jörgsen, and others in the book of Mormon with far more evidence that says it's had its Jim Bennett in man time. Well, I'm a Skull Hunt, but I need to end with the main point. It's intriguing, rambling for 45 minutes, I don't think I can do the main point. All of this is interesting and it's fun and it's important for us to know as we get attacked by those who are leaving the church by telling us Joseph Smith was a fraud, the Book of Mormon is a forgery, and so on. It's important for us to have the tools. Elder Ballard said we need to gather this now. We didn't used to have to have this. We do now. But it's not the main point. You don't need to know about the location of the nail. You don't need to know about the proliferation of plates. You don't need to understand about ancient names in order to live a more successful and worthwhile life. You need to know about the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Book of Mormon did not come as a history to be interesting and filled with these kind of parallels. That's not why it was part of the Restoration. That's not why the Lord made it available to Joseph Smith so that he could say to people, "Sheer, this exists, somebody wrote it." Now, what is its message? And so we have to add a fourth criteria to the— I've skipped over motive because of time. Okay, you get the point. Yeah, internal evidence, external evidence, what's the motive?

God's.

If the Book of Mormon does not pass this last test, It is about thou. And the last text is relevance in our lives, in our day. How much work that represents that our 24-year-old and who are going on with this. As I got through all this writing my book, I was interviewed on, on a closed circuit TV in Detroit, Bob. I got asked a question that I had not anticipated, had not thought about. I was asked, "Who is your hero in the book of books?" Ronald Reagan. Deep out. I had never thought about that. But she asked the question. I don't know the answer. I'm not saying it's inspiration. I'm saying it's me. And I'm not saying that anybody else has to share. She said, "Who is your hero?" I said, "McQuarrie." And I said, "Nanny." How much work was that? How much work was it to bring it to us, and why do we have it? Because it truly is another testament of Jesus Christ. Go back to the Isaiah passages that are in the family journal that Nephi and his brother Jacob pulled out and put there. What do they talk of? Judah. This is Isaiah, though. The gathering of Israel in the last days, the coming of the Messiah. To Israel. That is a message as old as human history that God has wanted all of his children to receive. He foresaw the time where we live where that message would be ignored. Ready to— people would turn their backs. Joyce and I were in Poland. We saw a couple of young men walking across in brown overalls, white shirts, dark tie, and black badge on their shirt pocket. And we were pretty sure we knew what they did. So we went out to the middle of the UAE, chatting with somebody. And I said, Poland, pretty tough. And he said, yeah, Poland, pretty tough place. I said, heavily Catholic. And he said, no, no, that's not it at all. He's people of a bit of God. Catholicism is cultural to them, but it's not religious. We can't, we have to convince them that there is a God before we can teach them about God. Karen Armstrong, who is the leading writer of Christianity and Adventism, she and I got in a conversation one day We talked about the state of Christianity in Europe, and she said, if you say to anybody in Europe today that you're a religious person, you're treated with disdain. Europe is post-Christian. This is the world in which we live. This is the world in which we preach the gospel. This is the world to which we must bring the message of the reality from Jesus Christ. And the Lord gives us the tool with which to do it. It requires everybody to recognize this exists, this is here, this is not somebody's speech. This is real. I won't tell the Proctor story in any kind of detail, but I will close with it, how our army knew Proctors. When we called on Bill O'Brien Proctor for the first meeting, we had left the word upon him, O'Brien, and I tried to not go in. In Mannheim. He was reading. Bill Brockto was reading by the fire, which I took as a good sign. And then he stood up and he came to me. And he said, look, Lance. He said, I know why you're here and you're wasting your time. I have no intention of joining your church. 'But this is an interesting book you have. So I'll tell you what let's do. I'll buy your book and you go on your way.' So they both said, 'Ta kōkī kū.' 'Agreed?' I said, 'Agreed.' 'Yeah, but as long as we're here, we better not have had a book.' 'Ah, okay.' So as long as we're here, we sat and we gave him his first discussion on the book. And then we asked the magic question, when would be a good time for us to come back? And he gave us a warning back. And there's much more to the story, but very part— before I left Scotland, Excuse me. I get too high into dedication to carpentry. Before I left Scotland, I said to him, "When did you know?" I knew when it was going to happen. The Book of Mormon is true. He said, "Oh, that first night." So the Spirit was there. Hole Clayman telling him, telling me it was true. He didn't need any internal or external validation or any intellectual background. All he needed was a golden heart that we ain't got for him. Praise unto the Holy Ghost. The, the Book of Mormon can survive any attack by any enemy in the Church because the proper example has been repeated millions of times in every culture. In every country all around the world. The Lord's wisdom in having Mormon do all that work and having Moroni deliver those plates to Joseph Smith and then the translation is validated again and again. Book of Mormon is indeed another witness who Jesus Christ and the precious gift, the God's gift, would go out in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

All right, so that was his message. Ian, I'd love to hear— I've been talking this whole time— I'd love to hear your reaction to it.

I can see where you get your love of the Book of Mormon. Your father had a deep affection and a profound relationship with the Book of Mormon. He, he looked at it intellectually, spiritually. He says at the end that the real test is actually not the secular test necessarily, that the best test is to read about it and pray about it and receive a spiritual witness. He is an extraordinary speaker. And it was similar to listening to a General Authority. You know, he quoted, he referenced Elder Holland, Elder Oaks. He talked about the different styles of the Book of Mormon. The different names, the history. He's clearly read the Book of Mormon, has an intimate knowledge and understanding of the Book of Mormon, the writing styles, the different characters, the different names. He holds to his position that it's a historical text. He talks about, you know, why it came forward, the effort that Joseph Smith had to put into it at the age of 24 years old. He talks about, again, the different characters, the structure, and it's clearly got a profound love and understanding of the, of the Book of Mormon. What interesting that stood out to me amongst many things actually was the reference to gold plates that had been found in Iran, which I wasn't aware of, also in stone cases, casings or boxes. I wasn't aware of that. And so he made a pretty strong argument for the intellectuals looking at the Book of Mormon. He also referenced computer technology and putting the— I got the impression that he had access or familiar with some of the studies or assessments that modern technology had played in assessing the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, integrity of the Book of Mormon. And I thought that was interesting that he brought that that in. I, again, I did some research on that, and I looked it up, and I think the big data AI technology found 28 different writing styles in the Book of Mormon. Again, that's quite unique and quite significant. He has a deep love of the Book of Mormon. He referenced Scotland. I didn't get all of the information about Scotland, his mission, but he clearly loved his mission. That came through. There were parts of the audio that I didn't completely understand or hear, but a lot of it I did. And what I got from his comments was a position that the Church has been in and held since the very beginning, where the Church has said that the divinity of the Church stands or falls on the Book of Mormon. And I think what came through in his remarks was that same message that, you know, a big part of the divinity of authenticity of the church is the ability and authenticity of the Book of Mormon. And I still— the note I made here is that the Book of Mormon— and this is my opinion, this is my— these are my words— that the church— rather, sorry, the Book of Mormon is the last stand and test of the church. I think a lot of things in the church have been— some things in the church, rather, many things in the church have been found to be irregular or perhaps not as true or as accurate as has been made out over time. The Book of Mormon is still there and it still contains profound scriptures. And I shared with you many times that even though I'm on the outside of the church, I find the Book of Mormon to be inspiring. There are many excerpts in the Book of Mormon that I find inspiring. In fact, your dad's talk there reminded me of the love and affection that I had and in some ways still have of the Book of Mormon. And I'd forgotten that. And your dad's talk reminded me of that. I'll give you an example, because there's excerpts in that that mean a great deal to me. Personally, even now I'm outside the church and I'm talking about Alma 5 and, um, where it says that, um, in Alma 5:26, and now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of heart and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can you feel so now? And, and that amongst many, many excerpts of references in the Book of Mormon still inspire me.

I'm thinking about that specific scripture a lot on your mission.

I did. I did that, but also many other— I had this ability to— I read it so many times. I had this— I had a little bit of a photographic memory. You could read a passage in the Book of Mormon, and I would tell you where it was and which side of the page was in the top left or top right. Often, not always. And so I had a pretty good knowledge of the Book of Mormon. I got the Scriptorian Award. I think Elder Tolworthy got the Scriptorian Award. There's a few of us that did. I think Elder Hayes did as well. And I got the Scriptorian Award. And, and a lot of it was remembering scriptures. But I had this love of the Book of Mormon. And the Doctrine and Covenants. But the Book of Mormon, I could remember passages, and I would be able to retrieve them very quickly at the right time in the lesson or in the discussions. And I had an extraordinary and profound love of the Book of Mormon. So that thought that you— that byeside you got delivered under those circumstances notwithstanding, it was, was quite actually quite emotional to me because of his relationship with the Book of Mormon. And I repeat, a lot of the Book of Mormon I find inspiring and uplifting. And this, for example, 3 Nephi 17 is an extraordinary chapter. Alma 42 talks about the relationship between justice and mercy in quite profound ways. And I think Alma 34 talks about repentance, and the language is extraordinary, where one is racked, using those words, with pain. And then a moment later, when you feel the redeeming love of Christ, that the— that release, that forgiveness, uh, is, um, I think again, it— my knowledge and my memory of the Book of Mormon has faded, but it is exquisite, or exquisite, uh, relief, if you like, um, to help us.

Why is it exquisite? As the pain was.

Yes, as the pain. The contrast of the language to, to, uh, communicate the contrast between being wrapped with pain through— because of our sins, and then comes the song of redeeming love where we feel that forgiveness from the Savior. It's profound. It's inspiring. I, you know, as a 19th century text, it's inspiring, and it comes through very strongly in, in great abundance, um, in your father's comments and talks. I'm surprised it's not in any other form of, um, text or found anywhere elsewhere in like the, uh, you know, Brigham Young list of talks, Brigham Young University list of talks, the non-General Conference category of talks, you know, great firesides that you and I have listened to, like Truman Madsen firesides, and those firesides that other General Authorities or great speakers have given who were not in General Conference but given extraordinary talks. I rank it alongside those. And I think the other reason why I found it quite emotional is because of why that those remarks, that talk is important to you. A great deal of love and affection for you. You speak with deep love and affection of your father. Often you have this extraordinary relationship with him. You have, I believe you've got this relationship with the Book of Mormon because of your father. I think there was a great influence there. And so I could see the relationship that you have with him through that talk. Um, a great man, extraordinary depth of spirituality. And what a very blessed individual you are and your siblings are and your whole family to have, um, have had him in your life and to actually call him your father. Senator aside and, and all these other extraordinary political achievements that he achieved, he clearly was an extraordinary man and a wonderful father. And, um,. And you had that very personal relationship. And that comes through, for me at least, very profoundly in, in his remarks. But again, his, his intellectual approach to the Book of Mormon, about Joseph Smith, the relationship between Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon. He talks about, uh, the book speaks a lot about Joseph Smith himself, speaks a lot about the author. One quote that I absolutely love, amongst others, is that the truth is the daughter of time.

Yep.

He made at least two references to that in the, in the audio. And it was just wonderful. It was extraordinarily uplifting. I could see his love. I could, I could even relate to it from an intellectual perspective. It made a lot of sense. He talked about the, the reference between the Book of Mormon and the— is it Nahom?

Nahom?

Yeah, Nahom, in the, in the Middle East there, and the church has referenced that a few times. I think that's one of the the one of the few, perhaps from an intellectual perspective, intriguing relationships between the Book of Mormon and historical, you know, Middle East. So I thought it was just extraordinary. And we can get into some of the details, but there's a— there's my initial reaction or response overview to your dad's fireside there.

Well, you're very, very kind. And And I'm grateful that you were able to, to, to get that sense of who he was and of, of, of what his spirituality was. You know, it's very hard for me to separate the message from the messenger because I listen to that. I remember right after he died, I transcribed the talk. I sat and listened to it, and it was as if my father were still in the room and were still alive. And so this is a sacred text to me in a way that nothing else is. And, and so the fact that it was able to have some kind of impact on you, I find that I just think that's lovely. I'm very grateful for that. If I try to separate the message from the messenger, he talks about two different things. One is sort of the apologetic defense of the Book of Mormon. You know, people use the word apologetics thinking that they're talking about an apology for the Book of Mormon. Whereas apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which is talking about a defense. An apologetic argument is a defensive argument. It's a defense of the Book of Mormon. And, and Dad is, is giving sort of a summary of most of the defenses that have been offered by people like Hugh Nibley, Daniel Peterson, and other people that have come under fire to some degree because, because of their apologetics to some people don't hold up to scrutiny. But what's interesting to me is that he pivots near the end. He says, now I'm going to tell you my main point. And he says, and I've been talking for 45 minutes. And so you're thinking, well, how can you be talking for 45 minutes and not have gotten to the main point? And his main point is he tells that story of the Proctors in Scotland that he— that— and I had the opportunity when my parents— when I finished my mission, my parents came to pick me up and we went out to dinner with the Proctors. And so I met these people and they were just lovely, delightful human beings. And, and the affection they had for my father, you could sense that. And it was just— it was just wonderful. You know, I had a lot of experiences on my mission where I would bump into people who had known my father, and there was a bishop in Drum Chapel who was baptized by my father when this bishop was 8 years old, you know. So, so there was just this wonderful connection, wonderful history to it. But at the end, he talks about the fact that it's the spiritual power of the Book of Mormon that converted the Proctors. It wasn't the argument about Nahom. It wasn't the argument about stone boxes and Iranian golden plates. Or any of the other kinds of things that have been marshaled as evidence for the Book of Mormon as an authentic ancient text. He talks about the spiritual power of the Book of Mormon to change lives and how it transformed the lives of the Proctors and how it's transformed the lives of so many people who've read it. And I'm reminded of a conversation I had with Greg Prince, who was a scholar who wrote the book David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism., and he interviewed a number of people in my family for that book. But he talks about the Book of Mormon and he says that he asks people— this is Greg Prince. Greg Prince says, I ask people 3 questions about their experience of the Book of Mormon. First, did you read it all the way through? And the answer is almost universally no. Second, what did What do you remember about what you read? And the answer is something along the lines of, well, there were a lot of wars. And the third question is, what was your experience like as you read it? And he says, that's when their face lights up. Well, let me tell you, you know, let me— and, and the line I remember from him is something happens when people read that book that is not in that book. You know, it's not the text itself. It's the power of the spiritual experience. I describe it as a divine access point. I mean, my experiences with God are firmly rooted in the Book of Mormon. My discovery of God, my recognition that God knows who I am, and is aware of me and loves me came in the process of reading the Book of Mormon. And it was not an intellectual process. I can't point you to a scripture that convinced me that God loved me. I can tell you that while reading the Book of Mormon, while having that encounter with that text, I had that spiritual experience that to some degree has nothing to do with the specific language of the text. So the older I get and the more I'm engaged in this world of people in the church, out of the church, on the edge of the inside of the church, one way or the other, the less interested I am in the arguments about Book of Mormon historicity, uh, that my father lays out for most of that talk. The less interested I am in talking about Nahom, the less interested I am in talking about chiasmus and all of the things that are marshaled as evidence that the Book of Mormon is an ancient text, because at this point that doesn't matter to me. And that, I mean, that may sound like a dodge, uh, and, and it probably is, because I, I've spent so much time sort of in the trenches defending the Church, particularly on the Book of Mormon. You know, when I wrote my CES Letter reply, the lion's share of that is a defense of the Book of Mormon. That's where Jeremy Runnels attacks the most. And what's interesting about those attacks is that they're coming from all different sides. He's talking about, okay, well, the Book of Mormon must have been plagiarized from the book a view of the Hebrews, or it was plagiarized from this book or that book, or it was taken from all of these things. And what that does— and when you have all of these arguments, it weakens each of them individually. There is not one common agreed-upon secular explanation for the Book of Mormon's existence. And that, I think, is compelling evidence that there is something going on here. That there is something significant and inspired that happened here. Anybody who has written anything of any length can tell you how extraordinary it is. For even if Joseph Smith wrote this, if he wasn't translating it, if he wasn't receiving any revelation for it, he dictated the Book of Mormon as a first draft that ended up getting published in draft form. And that's, that's unheard of. That's impossible. That's not something that any author can do. You write something and then you rewrite it and you rewrite it and you rewrite it. And all of the contemporary evidence suggests that he read it off. It was dictated to Oliver, mainly Martin Harris for part of it, Emma for part of it, but mostly to Oliver Cowdery. And it was dictated in a first draft. And then it went to press. And that's, that's unheard of. So, so I think there are some intellectually interesting things to discuss about the Book of Mormon. And I think we get bogged down in those discussions and we start talking about the witnesses and we start talking about all of this, that and the other. And, and more and more and more, having spent plenty of time engaged with those kinds of arguments more and more and more, I just don't care about them. They just don't matter to me. Because even if the Book of Mormon is a 19th century text, I cannot deny that God has used that text to touch and bless the lives of millions of people, including me. And so I stand convicted of God's hand in the Book of Mormon. And I can't get around that. I can't get away from it. You know, whenever I feel frustrated with the Church, and I get frustrated with the Church an awful lot, and if I'm frustrated with a leader in the Church, or I'm frustrated with the teaching, or I'm frustrated with this or a policy, any kind of thing. And I, and I'm tempted to just sort of throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's the Book of Mormon standing in my way, and I can't deny what the Book of Mormon has done in my life. And I can't deny that God has used the Book of Mormon for whatever reason to change and shape the course of my own life. And it gets harder and harder also for me. You know, when we were missionaries, you would get out there and you would push the Book of Mormon as hard as you could. And you know, everything rests on the Book of Mormon. We were missionaries when President Benson was president of the Church, and he was talking about flooding the earth with the Book of Mormon. And the Book of Mormon was just the centerpiece of everything that we were doing. And more and more and more as I get older, the focus becomes much smaller and much more intimate. It's okay if you read the Book of Mormon and it did nothing for you. Well, God bless you. You know, I, I'm not going to hit you over the head with it. I just can't deny what the Book of Mormon has done for me. I can't deny that it's been that divine access point. And it sounds to me like it's been a divine access point for you as well throughout your life.

Yes, it has. I listen with great intent here in regards to your thoughts and feelings. It really resonates with me, a lot of things that you say. And as you know, I'm on the outside of the church. Excuse me. As soon as you mentioned mission, just a moment before you mentioned Ezra Benson, I've written down Ezra Benson because when we were serving our mission in Scotland, it was President Benson was the prophet and the Book of Mormon was the focus. We associate President Benson, you know, if we look at different milestones, we look at the different prophets and what they focused on. I think President Benson is the Book of Mormon, easily, arguably. Temples. I think he was the usher in the beginning of the growth of the temples there. President Hinckley built on that. As you know, there was extraordinary growth in temples. But President Benson was the Book of Mormon prophet, and we were full-time missionaries living that experience day to day. The second point is that I— that direction from the prophet at that time gave me an impetus to read the Book of Mormon, and to try to develop an intimate understanding and feeling relationship with the Book of Mormon, which I believe I achieved. It had a profound impact on my mission. I, I didn't understand it intellectually, but I could best summarize my experience with the Book of Mormon at that time, and few times since, but certainly mostly on the book at the time of the mission, was that when I was reading the Book of Mormon— your question earlier about where we read it, you know, what great princess questions. You know, what was your experience? My experience at that time, in my most spiritual state of mind being, was that I felt I was living the characters in the Book of Mormon. And I've said this in my journal. I felt, you know, I was there during the battles. I was there when Christ visited the 2,500 Nephites, and the children were there. I was there. I was at a witness. I could see myself in my mind's eye being there, watching that experience of that, because the spirituality that came through so strongly from those pages in 3 Nephi 17 was profound. I was there when Alma received forgiveness of his sins and, you know, felt that he was racked with pain. I was there as a witness. And throughout the Book of Mormon, at different times, at different experiences, Um, I felt I knew the characters, the individuals.

Yeah.

And I thought I was, um, I was there as an unworthy witness in many ways, but I was there and I was privileged and allowed to see that experience, witness it through the pages of the Book of Mormon, through those words that leapt out at me on those pages and, and touched my soul as a missionary. And I would There were times, Jim Bennett, when I read the Book of Mormon, I was in tears. Didn't happen very often, but there's 2 or 3 times I got quite emotional. So the Book of Mormon has certainly a profound impact on my life and certainly the mission. The other thing I would say, and I'll break this last comment down into 2 parts, one is intellectual, one is spiritual. I have two theories as to the divinity, authenticity of the Book of Mormon. One is intellectual, one is spiritual. The intellectual side, and I've looked at it from an intellectual perspective, but the Book of Mormon from that perspective, and I believe that the Book of Mormon, which is written in a very Presbyterian, Protestant, 19th, 18th, 19th century Protestant language, you know, I grew up in the Church of England and read Church of England text and Protestant and, and you know, the Brethren and all the Presbyterians and Methodists at that time. There was, there was, they were the scriptures that we used to read in Sunday school. When I refer to Sunday school, I'm talking about the Church of England Sunday school. I used to go to Sunday school with the Church of England on a Sunday. I didn't join the church till I was 16. And so reading the Book of Mormon, I can see that relationship between the Book of Mormon and the 19th century Protestant text. And I believe the source of the Book of Mormon to be mostly Joseph Smith, but also other authors. The theory of the multiple author, where people have read it and yes, he did that draft. I accept what you said, that he published his first draft. I think that was his first draft, which again is an extraordinary feat. But also other people, he collaborated with other people to, to complete and to polish the Book of Mormon. And again, we know that there's been changes to the Book of Mormon text periodically since the beginning. What we now have is a culmination of, of changes and improvements and text changes and grammar changes over a much longer time span. But even to create, write it as a you know, multiple author source, I think is extraordinary, but still achievable. If you look at Tolkien and the collaborators that he had with the Lord of the Rings, which brings me to my second point, which is the spiritual test, if you like, of the Book of Mormon. So, and this is my theory, this is, and it, I'm comfortable with this theory. It's still, this second theory does not in any way, for me at least, diminish or bring into question those profound spiritual experiences whatsoever. In fact, it enhances, and I'll explain what I mean. When I've watched The Lord of the Rings or read Lord of the Rings text, and I wasn't never a big fan of Lord of the Rings growing up, there are elements in the movie that actually touch me that I find quite profound. Gandalf, you know, when he's talking to one of the hobbits there, some extraordinary quotes there from the book.. And there are elements of that film and the book which are quite, for me at least, quite inspiring, quite uplifting, make me feel good. And, you know, my, you know, the hairs on my, my, my arms stand up. And it's very similar, if not identical, to having a spiritual experience with the Book of Mormon. It's, it's, I've thought about this for a while. And for me personally, it's very similar. And I've had that experience. At times and certain movies like Wonderful Life is my favorite movie. I, I watch that. I try to watch that every year. My kids are not remotely interested in watching it. I can't get them to watch it. It's, it's the most boring piece of film they've ever seen. And, and, and it, for me, it's an, it's an annual yearly pilgrimage to watch that movie cuz I find it incredibly inspiring. And it, it, it, it, I sound a bit soppy here, but it, it, it's made me cry a couple of times because it, what a great message at the end that, you know, when you're struggling, when you're down and out and you're at the end of your tether, your family and your friends come through for you just at the right time. I find that inspiring. And so there is other text and movies and material that I find inspiring, and I connect that to what I describe as universal principles that are found in the Book of Mormon, which where we then me personally, at least, that generates or translates into a personal and at times quite profound spiritual experience. So when I've read the Book of Mormon, and I've read about forgiveness and love and, and all these extraordinary experiences that Alma went through, or Moroni went through at the end, where there's, you know, there's a battle at the end, and he's the only one or one of the few who's left, you know, at the end, his job is to hold up the plates and to preserve the plates, etc. And they're very lonely, desolate experience and all the different experiences that they all go through. The universal principles around that, around sacrifice and determination and motivation and love and forgiveness, I believe for me, that is where the spirit comes from. It's not in the— and this has been my experience in the church, in those very peculiar, very different aspects of the church, which are quite odd to many people outside of the church, I've not got much spirituality from those strange elements like the temple, for example. I don't get it from that part. I get my spirituality from the universal principles that the Book of Mormon teaches, or even the Bible teaches, New Testament. Again, profound passages in the Bible there, in the New Testament, mostly, uh, for me at least, compared to the Old Testament. And then if you look at the, um, other, uh, sources of inspiration for me, it's, uh, books like Lord of the Rings or Wonderful Life movie, that, that touches me on a very personal level. And I've had similar experiences with text, non-Book of Mormon texts, as I have with the Book of Mormon. So I think it's— so I'm comfortable with that. I accept that for me personally, that's where, that's where it comes from. Does that mean the Book of Mormon is the, is the word of God. Um, if those— yes, if those, uh, we teach those universal principles of love and kindness, forgiveness, sacrifice, absolutely. I, and I'm totally 100% with that. That's God speaking, or a supreme being speaking through these different mediums— books, movies, people's comments, etc., people's experiences, people's journals, um, where we get that inspiration, those universal principles of those things are spoken of. Absolutely. That, that is the supreme being or God or reaching out to us, connecting with us. But I don't think the Book of Mormon is, is unique in that sense. I don't think it's exclusive in terms of, you know, that's the sole source of that kind of inspiration. Does it mean it's the only— it's the most correct book of any kind? I don't think so. I think it's 19th century text. I don't accept it as a historical text. Notwithstanding, it's a, it's an extraordinary a collection of, of, uh, uh, stories, uh, which are based on wonderful, extraordinary true principles. And we get, it's the same as the Lord of the Rings. We get that from, for me personally, I'm saying I don't speak, I get that from those other texts. So, so they're my thoughts and theories. And your dad was more than that. He believed it to be an historical text and that's fine. He, he had this incredible personal relationship with the Book of Mormon. And that comes through very, very strongly. So yeah, that's my way of separating, you know, the— I try to understand the correlation between the intellectual component of the Book of Mormon and the spiritual side. It's a model that works for me. And even now, outside the church, there are Book of Mormon passages. In fact, your dad's talk reminded me— I think I said this at the beginning— reminded me of those passages that I read, that I am still so fond of. And I, to your point, I can't get around them. They're inspirational. They're wonderful. They make me feel good. You know, Greg Prince's question is, how did it make you feel if you read the Book of Mormon and really taken it seriously? Well, if you ask me that question, the Book of Mormon inspired me, made me feel good, made me feel to want to be a better person, be a better member of the church. So yeah, that's my, that's my relationship with the Book of Mormon. And your dad reminded me of that, which I, I used to have. And so I'm very grateful for that, because I want to revisit my old scriptures. Now, I've got my scriptures opposite me, they're in tartan cover. I've not opened them for quite some time. They're very dear to me. I found the covers in the Irving flat. Before we drove, when I drove down to, was it down the, sorry, Clark and I drove down to Strand Road. I had no covers on my scriptures. I found them in this dusty old closet in an urban flat. And I've got them and I'm gonna open them and I'm gonna read some of the passages that I've, over years almost wore out the paper in the underlining of some of the words. And I just wanna thank you and your dad for doing that. I'm going to read those scriptures because I find them inspiring.

Well, I find that inspiring for you to talk like that, because, because when you leave the church, you don't have to leave behind all of the good the church did for you. I mean, the fact that you still can quote Alma 5:26 from memory, and that you can still find joy and inspiration in this text, to me is very inspiring. And, you know, you talk about the fact that you get inspired by Lord of the Rings and everything else. The Book of Mormon, I remember thinking, as a young man, that eventually we would start getting other scriptures because the Book of Mormon talks about how everybody is writing down their histories, you know, and all of the tribes are writing their histories. And eventually we will have all of these histories. And I envisioned this, this massive canon of scripture that would include all of these other tribes. And the older I get, the more I realize that, uh, that's a true principle in the sense that everybody who writes down the things that are inspiring, the universal truths as you describe them, uh, that, that God backs those up. You know, when we are taught true principles, uh, we, um, we get the confirmation of the Spirit wherever those true principles are found. And the older I get, the more— even though I firmly believe this is where God wants me, and the Book of Mormon has sort of been the pillar of my faith and also been sort of the pillar of my commitment to the church, I recognize that, that God doesn't exist in a box. That God loves all of his children in or out of the church and continues to love his children even if they leave the church and continues to allow for inspiration to come whenever we encounter those kinds of truths that are so replete in the Book of Mormon. So, uh, I mean, the sermon was fairly long, and this podcast is going to be fairly long. So I want to wrap it up fairly quickly. I think we've touched on all of these things. But I am very grateful for your willingness to listen to Dad's talk and your willingness to share that with me, because I just I find so much meaning in that. I find so much value in that. And, and I hope that people, no matter where they are in the Church, I hope that people can get a sense from this podcast, a sense of God's love for them, that they can access God through the Book of Mormon. And if that doesn't work for them, they can continue to access God through the Lord of the Rings or It's a Wonderful Life or whatever else it is that brings them joy. But I, um, I, I, I just think that that's, that's necessary. Oh, you grabbed your Tartan scriptures there. That's the MacKay Tartan, by the way.

Is it?

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Amazing. Your dad's been able to achieve something that no one else could achieve. I'm opening my scriptures today. I've not done that in maybe 6 or 7 years. And, uh, just reminded me, it reconnected me back with my, uh, memories, my spiritual memories with the Book of Mormon. And, uh, that's never, that's not happened in 6 or 7 years for me. And I, I mean that genuinely. I'm gonna, I love these scriptures. I'm out of the church, but I've invested so much time and energy into them and they're so personal to me and I still keep them and they're very precious. And I hadn't thought about them until Billy Daz Firestein. So thank you.

Well, thank you. I think that's a beautiful place to end this. So to all of you listening, thank you very much for spending this time with us and we look forward to speaking with you again in our next episode of Inside Out.