John Taylor's 1886 Revelation

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett and I am here as always with Ian Wilkes, who requires no introduction. Ian, how are you, sir?

I am doing mighty fine.

How are you? You know, I'm all right. I can't complain too much. I mean, I could, but who would listen?

So it's, uh, it's a beautiful day here in British Columbia. The sun is out, the sky is blue. Uh, sadly the world's in a bit of a mess, but, uh, we are just grateful for each day, Jim.

We are grateful for each day. So today I am grateful to have something really compelling to talk about. Because I think it raises huge issues, and I think it also presents some unlikely opportunities for the church that I don't think the church has necessarily considered. And I certainly don't think that most people who are talking about this issue are talking about it in terms of opportunities. But, um, but I'm just going to leave that out there as I introduce this topic. So, uh, the Church has quietly added something to its public archives. They've added a revelation that was given to, uh, John Taylor, third president of the Church. He was president of the Church in 1886, which is when this revelation was recorded. It's dated September 27th, 1886. It's written in the voice of the Lord, like much of the Doctrine and Covenants is. My son John, you have asked me concerning the new and everlasting covenant, how far it is binding upon my people. Thus saith the Lord, all commandments that I give must be obeyed by those calling themselves by my name. Unless they are revoked by me or by my authority. And how can I revoke an everlasting commandment? For I, the Lord, am everlasting. My everlasting covenants cannot be abrogated nor done away with, but they stand forever. It goes on, and this is a revelation about plural marriage. And in 19— in 1890, sorry, Uh, that was when Wilford Woodruff issued the manifesto. And the issuing of the manifesto, we now look at it in hindsight and talk about it as if that were a revelation, but it was not presented as a revelation. And in fact, if you go and read Official Declaration 1 in the Doctrine and Covenants, it's very legalistic. It just says we're not going to perform any more marriages that are against the law of the land. Bada bing, bada boom, that's it. And it wasn't until 1904 that the church issued essentially what's now called a second manifesto, where they insisted, no, we no longer are going to perform plural marriage, because the 1890 manifesto left wiggle room to say, okay, we're not going to perform any marriages against the law of the land, which is the law in the United States, which is why we're going to go down to Mexico and create Mormon colonies in Mexico where we can continue plural marriage. And it wasn't until 1910 that essentially there was a third manifesto issued where they said anybody that enters into plural marriage will be excommunicated, because a number of even high-ranking church leaders entered into additional plural marriages after the 1890 manifesto and even after the 1904 manifesto. So here you have this revelation given to John Taylor, uh, and in— after the 1904 second manifesto, John W. Taylor, who was John Taylor's son, who was also an apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, um, balked at this and insisted that, uh, the church was in apostasy. And he was removed from the Quorum of the Twelve for that, and he was eventually excommunicated as a result of this. And this 1886 revelation was presented at his excommunication hearing And he insisted this is a revelation given to the prophet, my father, and therefore the church is in apostasy by, by discontinuing a practice that this revelation insists can never be discontinued. That revelation has been the basis for a number of different splinter groups, including the FLDS Church, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.. But a whole host of other groups have also— they also cite this revelation essentially as their founding document. So what was the church's response to this? I mean, this seems very clear. John Taylor was president of the church when he received this revelation. He recorded it. He talked about it being in the voice of the Lord. It even has the words, thus saith the Lord, in it. This isn't a proclamation like the Family Proclamation, which does not have that kind of language. There's nothing in the Family Proclamation of 1995 that says, "Thus saith the Lord." There's nothing in it even that suggests it's a revelation. It just says, "This is a proclamation that we are giving to the world. This is where we stand." But this revelation is very much in the spirit of the revelations that you find in the Doctrine and Covenants. And there are no revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants recorded by John Taylor. There's one recorded by Brigham Young. Uh, there's a statement by John Taylor, uh, talking about the death of the Prophet Joseph Smith. But other than that, everything else— oh, and there's one revelation given to Joseph F. Smith. In 1938, his vision of the redemption of the dead. Other than that, all of the revelations of the Doctrine and Covenants were given to Joseph Smith. They're all written by Joseph Smith. And Joseph Fielding McConkie on my mission had us all speak on Doctrine and Covenants section 5, verse 10, which says, this generation shall receive my word through you. And the you being Joseph Smith. And the case that President McConkie made was all the revelation we need came through the Prophet Joseph Smith, and that we don't need to receive any more additional revelations like that. I've always kind of found that problematic, and we may talk about that as we go forward, but I just want to lay the groundwork here as to what's happening. So This revelation, the church knew about it. It was never presented to the church to be adopted by common consent. It was never proposed to be incorporated into the Doctrine and Covenants. We don't know the circumstances under which Joseph— or I'm sorry, John Taylor received or recorded it. And so there have been many people, uh, I think out of wishful thinking more than anything else that have tried to say, well, this revelation isn't authentic, it's a forgery. And there are some apostles that made that case. But anyway, at one point, um, the church issues a statement in June of 1933. President of the church is my great-grandfather, Heber J. Grant, and the First Presidency issues this statement and says, is it is alleged that on September 26th through 27th, 1886, President John Taylor received a revelation from the Lord, the purported text of which is given in publications circulating apparently by or the instance of this same organization. As to this pretended revelation, it should be said that the archives of the church contain no such revelation The archives contain no record of any such revelation, nor any evidence justifying a belief that any such revelation was ever given. And it goes on and talks about this, uh, there are elements of that statement that are technically true, but to some degree that even makes the statement worse. Because they're leaning heavily into the idea that the revelation is not physically in the church archives. The archives contain no record of any such revelation. Actually, that's not true because they did contain a record of the revelation. There were copies of the revelation that were in the archives. This was issued— this statement was made in June of 1933, and the physical text written in John Taylor's handwriting of the revelation was donated to the church in July of 1933. So they knew the revelation existed. They knew it was authentic. They knew at least that John Taylor wrote it. And but so they issue the statement, say, well, it's not in the archives, but then it's in the archives the next month. And they obviously don't issue a statement after this, uh, talking about, oh no, we were just— we were wrong. It— this revelation does exist. We do have a record of it. It's, it's in the archives. And so the essential official story or line of the church about this revelation for over 100 years, or almost 150 years, has been this revelation is either not authentic or it— I mean, it's just kind of been dismissed. We just haven't addressed it. We haven't talked about it. But what the reason we're talking about it now is that the Church History Online archive has quietly, with no announcement, put this revelation online. You can go read the revelation from the Church History— from the Church Archives website. You can see images of the revelation. So the church now, again, quietly, without any fanfare, is admitting that this revelation is authentic. So there's a lot to unpack here, and I'm happy to unpack all of this, but I've gabbed here to just lay the groundwork. I very much want to hear your reaction before I launch into mine, because again, I, there's a lot to unpack here, but I also think this represents an opportunity that I want to take, and I will talk about that. But first, Ian Wilkes, I want you to weigh in. What do you think?

Yeah, this is extraordinary. I'm looking forward to learning from you and, and as you unpack this, this, uh, is significant. It's a major event. I can understand why the church wants to keep it quiet. There's a whole bunch of questions that this, uh, raises. You know, are they, you know, they, they had this document, they had this revelation. This is a revelation. It's very clear in the language that you've, uh, you know, in the quote there, it's absolutely, you know, thus saith the Lord. It's in the same language as the Doctrine and Covenants. And, and so this revelation, why is it not in the Doctrine and Covenants? It's clearly, uh, one of the most important revelations, if, if not the most important, on a major subject, uh, of the day and a, a topic and a subject and an issue that's still that plagues the church today, polygamy. If you ask anyone about the Mormon Church, the first thing they will think about is, well, it's, you know, how many wives do you have, right? It's polygamy. And, uh, you know, the church claiming to be the only true church built on revelation, it's a restored, uh, uh, church, et cetera. Why is this, uh, revelation not in the Doctrine and Covenants? And the other question is, How many more revelations like this exist that the church has got access to in its archives that it denied that it had? You know, as I, as I did my own research on this and listened to you, I, I kind of try to understand it and summarize it. So 8, sorry, 4 days ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The only true church, the church that claims to have the truth and to be, uh, claims to be honest and have integrity, uh, quietly published a previously denied pro-polygamy revelation attributed to John Taylor, uh, from 1886. This revelation asserted that plural marriage was an everlasting covenant, and that contradicted the church's 1890 renunciation of polygamy. It's clear in the language that, and in the revelation, this is a revelation that cannot be overturned. It's fixed, it's set in stone, and it's an everlasting, part of the new and everlasting covenant. And so for what, what, what is it, over 100 years, uh, church leaders denied the document existed. And the revelation, uh, copy of the revelation resided with the prophet John Taylor's son, John W. Taylor, who continued to support and believe in plural marriage, actually continued to perform those marriages, solemnize those marriages against the direction and counsel of the church in the Second Manifesto of 1904. John W. Taylor was excommunicated for continuing that practice. And said that his father's revelation was his defense. And after his death in 1916, the document looks like it stayed with his family. And then in 1933, the church presidency explicitly dismissed rumors that this revelation existed. And you've quoted a very important word there, pretended revelation. You quote the First Presidency there. However, Nellie Taylor, John W. Taylor's widow, informed them of the original document's whereabouts. By July 1933, the church possessed the revelation but chose to not reveal it rather than confirm its veracity, even though a copy had existed in the church historian's office since 1909. So they've had this for over 100 years. Uh, the Taylor Revelation, as it's called, it gained some mythical, uh, level amongst fundamentalist Mormons who, as you and I both know, continue to practice polygamy. I think even some of them do that today, um, privately, uh, quietly. Uh, I think that's still illegal, but they still, uh, practice that and they pin their practice to this, uh, this revelation. And so the recently published digitized file, uh, that you've referenced, Jim, includes that handwritten text addressed to my son, and it states that God's everlasting covenant cannot be abrogated nor done away with. While the documents confirm the revelation existence, they don't substantiate other fundamentalist claims, claims such as the ordination of the clandestine priesthood council, which is another subject., attached to this. So the church has, what's happened 4 days ago is quietly, uh, published this document on its historical, uh, uh, website. And it raises so many, uh, questions. And so I'm reminded of the, um, uh, comments, concerns, uh, information that church leaders have communicated when they've been challenged about church history and church doctrine. Uh, Elder Ballard, for example, uh, when he was, um, uh, challenged, um, years ago in a, uh, it was a face-to-face, it was a broadcast called Face to Face on November 19th, 2017, and he was addressing questions about church history with Zelta Ballard regarding, in that situation, multiple accounts of the First Vision. And, um, he was being asked about church transparency, and he says this: there has been no attempt on the part in any way of the church leaders trying to hide anything from anybody. He goes on to say So just trust us whenever you are in the world and you share this message with anyone else who raises the question about the church not being transparent. He goes on to say, we are as transparent as we know how to be in telling the truth, which is a fascinating answer, isn't it? Um, I always, you know, we, I, we met Elder Ballard, um, and spent some time with him before he came out on the mission. This was in July '87 in Scotland. It was the handover of the mission president from Joel Dunn to President Banks. Uh, Rich Van Hagen was there. We've talked about this before on the podcast. Ella Powell presided, and it was an interesting, uh, conversation with all the missionaries. And I remember asking him about the geography of the Book of Mormon, and he, he, he said he wouldn't, he didn't wanna discuss that. He, he wasn't interested in talking about the geography of the Book of Mormon. And so I remember that, um, and I was kind of puzzled, but being so obedient, I didn't, you know, I didn't question that. And so again, if you look at all the, any materials that the church has got that's been released accidentally, on purpose, or stuff that it's still got in archives, there's probably a lot that is just unhelpful. And so it reminds me again of Elder Packer's statements and quotes. He says here, some things that are true are not useful. He talks, Elder Packer talks about, there is a temptation, quote, for the writer or the teacher of church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy of our faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful. Historians seem to take great pride in publishing something new. Particularly if it illustrates a weakness or a mistake of a prominent historical figure. You talk about, you know, uh, fallibility of church leaders. He goes on to say, for some reason, historians and novelists seem to favor such things. If it related to a living person, it would come under the heading of gossip. History can be as misleading as gossip and much more difficult, often impossible to verify. So the church, and that they're just a handful of quotes. There are others, of course. The church has this, uh, uh, claims this moral high ground of having, like Elder Bednar talks a lot about integrity. It's incredibly honest. It claims completely transparent, provides full disclosure, nothing to hide, proud of no major scandal. I think that's another quote from somewhere. And has, uh, uh, claims to be the only true church, has the Doctrine and Covenants, has this extremely, uh, prescribed code for living, demands a lot from its members, demands that its members be honest, completely transparent. Are you honest in your dealings with your fellow men? Otherwise you can't get a temple recommend and go into the temple. So holds its members to a, a very strict level of honesty and integrity. And yet this, uh, uh, quiet publication of a revelation that the church denied even, uh, happened at least in part, and certainly denied from what you, you're saying to me that it denied even had a copy, an original copy of the revelation. And now it publishes this, uh, document that didn't exist only 4 days ago. So, you know, it, it's clear, and I'm just gonna be blunt here, the church isn't honest, has lied, has deceived, is deceptive, has misdirected, and, uh, tried to dismiss this as a pretended, you know, uh, uh, revelation. And again, it's found to have been dishonest. And so how can the ch— the only true Church of Jesus Christ of the Saints, claim to have the moral high ground when it's not following its own standards, its own beliefs, its own doctrine? And why can't the church, and we've talked about this so often, just be honest and say, hey, look, you know, things that were said and done were a mistake, or it was wrong, or they were said and they were right at the time and we've changed our mind. How about that? So prophets did and said certain things in the past. We didn't agree with them. You know, the church is under massive pressure, obviously with the polygamy and property and members' assets, you know, and, and members were being prosecuted for practicing polygamy. The, the federal government came down pretty strong on the church. Church, uh, acquiesced, gave in, agreed with the, uh, federal government that it would no longer practice this, put out this manifesto. There's another manifesto, et cetera. These things are happening secretly in the background. And, uh, and now it, it, uh, it turns out that there's a, a significant revelation which, uh, states very clearly that there's a new and everlasting covenant that can never be changed. And I actually find that extraordinary because we know, you and I have talked about this privately, secretly, personally in the background with all the doctrine in the background, all the context. We know the church leaders believe and practice it because we know Elder Oaks, for example, has sealed the two women. And we know that in, in the next life, there will be the opportunity, if that's the right word, to practice polygamy. So it, it, it wants its cake, you know, it, it, uh, you know, what's that saying? You know, you can't have your cake and eat it.

It, it, yeah, can't have your cake and eat it too.

Yes. So it, it, it Publicly it denies and it rejects polygamy and it's done away with that, right? Um, privately we know, uh, if it's honest with itself, that it still believes that and practices that. And, and so this revelation kind of confirms that. Um, but again, it's just covered this up. It's just another example of the church not being honest. So, and how many more revelations like that exist? And why is this thing not in the Doctrine and Covenants? So, you know, they're my thoughts, but I'm really looking forward to getting into, um, the detail as you've, you know, uh, researched this and, and are gonna unpack this for us.

Well, sure, cuz I have all the answers. I, I, uh, I know everything. Uh, a few things. I mean, as I'm listening to you, I mean, these are things we've talked about many, many times. And, and I'm not going to dispute, uh, a lot of what you're saying here. Uh, I am going to say that, well, first of all, I don't think that there are a number of hidden revelations that we don't know about because this revelation we knew about. And I knew about. I was asked by John DeLinn about this revelation when I did my 14 hours with John DeLinn, and I responded that I didn't think it was legitimate. And John DeLinn pushed back and said, oh, so you think it's a forgery? And I said, no, no, I don't think it's a forgery. I think, I think that it's not legitimate because In order for a revelation to be binding on the church, it needs to be presented to the church and accepted by the church by the law of common consent. We don't do that very often. The last time we did it was in 1978, and it wasn't just for the priesthood revelation. It was also for the last two sections of the Doctrine and Covenants— Doctrine and Covenants sections 137 and 138. 137 being Joseph Smith's vision of the celestial kingdom, where he sees his brother Alvin in the celestial kingdom with its streets paved with gold. And it talks about how anybody who would have received the gospel, uh, with their whole heart will receive an inheritance in the celestial kingdom. And Section 138 again is Joseph F. Smith's vision of the redemption of the dead. And in 1978, both of those were presented to the church and said, we want to add these to our scripture, we want to canonize these. And the law of common consent is such, as outlined in the Doctrine and Covenants, that no revelation is binding unless it, it is presented in that way. And so my response to John DeLynn was This revelation was never so presented, and therefore I'm not bound by it, and neither is anybody else in the church. So what this gets to in a number of different ways is basic understanding of what revelation is, what a prophet is, and yes, once again, how important it is to recognize the role of agency in denying infallibility, that we do not believe in prophetic infallibility. We believe prophets are capable of making mistakes. And, uh, I mean, that's, that's our doctrine. But again, it's the old joke that Catholics say the Pope is infallible, but they don't believe it. Mormons say the prophet is fallible, but they don't believe it. And I mean, so we, we keep coming back to this, but I want to go to the first couple of things because, all right, here's a scenario that, uh, I, I think best represents a narrative of what actually happened with John Taylor and with the church. So, uh, the Doctrine and Covenants, when you read it and you read it in the voice of the Lord, you know, Joseph Smith wrote all of these revelations in King James English. The Lord speaks as these and thous, even though even by the 19th century that's not how English worked. And, and back in the time when the King James Bible was published, this wasn't even necessarily the common language. That this was— this has always been a sort of heightened, formalized version of language. But when you read the Doctrine and Covenants and you read these revelations in the voice of the Lord, it is very easy to imagine a process whereby a prophet is sitting there and something comes in on the teletype, or something comes in by email if you want to use more modern technology. Teletype doesn't really exist anymore. But essentially, there is a text that is dictated from heaven, and all the prophet does is take that text and pass it along. He's just the newsreader. He's just the messenger boy, you know. He, he doesn't have anything to do with the text. The text just arrives, and it's the prophet's job to sort of publish that and make it known. Uh, everything I understand personally about revelation, not just what I have read about revelation, but I think this is consistent with what I have read about revelation, but what I have experienced with regard to revelation, because I believe in revelation. I believe revelation is a real thing. I believe that God communicates with his children, and he does so in a process that Joseph Smith described as imparting pure intelligence into you. He says, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you— and every time I have received revelation that I believe to be undeniable revelation, that has been the process. Is that there is this, this essentially you are flooded with insight and love and just this divine communication that, that is so powerful and so real that it's also almost impossible for language to fully contain it. I've talked over and over again about that revelation I received walking my dog. When I was thinking of leaving the church over the 2015 policy. And I always— the words I use are, be patient, it will all work out in the end. But those words are so inadequate to encompass the entirety of, of what happened in that moment in my life. And so now when I read the Doctrine and Covenants I see Joseph Smith trying to clothe in language these sort of impartations of divine knowledge. And I think one of the reasons they're in King James English is that he has so much respect for them that he feels that using colloquial language, uh, would somehow diminish them or degrade them. And I have reached a point where I no longer feel— I feel like King James English diminishes, uh, it creates distance between myself and God. And so in my personal prayers, I mean, in my prayers that I give at church or in public, I still use the King James English and the these and the thous. But my personal prayers are much more like Fiddler on the Roof and Tevye. Sort of just talking to the heavens. And I remember having that conversation with God where I said, look, if you're my Father, if you're my friend, I don't want to feel this distance between us. I don't want— I want to be able to talk to you the way I would talk to my own father. And, and I imagine my Heavenly Father very much like my earthly father. And that, I think, has created connection that would not be there if I were to continue to use King James English in my personal prayers. That's a little bit of a diversion. Anyway, what I'm saying is, um, I do not believe in the idea that these revelations are dictated from heaven. I believe that they are, uh, attempts by fallible men to frame and include um, whatever knowledge they receive from heaven into a piece of text that will communicate at least a sliver of that knowledge to whoever reads it. John Taylor has spent most of his presidency in exile. The federal government is breathing down his neck, and John Taylor goes into hiding. This was a man with tremendous credibility with the Saints. He was in Carthage jail. He was shot in Carthage jail when Joseph and Hyrum were killed. And this is a man who was at the center of the Restoration since essentially the beginning. And so he has all this credibility, and he is a true believer in plural marriage. Okay. So this is the background. This is the context in which this revelation was written. So John Taylor, I believe, received a revelation and then decides to write it down. And I firmly believe that once John Taylor becomes a participant in recording this revelation, then John Taylor's fallibility and agency are also introduced into the equation in ways that cannot be easily dismissed. Same is true for any revelation. The same is true for anything Joseph Smith wrote. The same is true for the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon talks about how the errors that are in the Book of Mormon— acknowledges that there are errors in the Book of Mormon, but they are the mistakes of men. It says so on the title page, and there are several scriptures that reiterate that, that the weakness of servants of the Lord mean that there will be errors in how revelation is recorded. So, okay, so John Taylor receives a revelation and goes to write it down, and this is how he interprets that revelation. Now, is he interpreting interpreting it correctly? I don't know. Maybe he's interpreting it entirely correctly. Does some of his wishful thinking enter into it? Does some of his paranoia and his frustration enter into it based on the circumstances in which he's living? I think that's entirely possible and even likely. So John Tanner writes this out. And puts it down on paper. Now, the next step, and the step that Joseph Smith took every time that he did that, was to take that revelation and present it to the church and say, this is a revelation I have received from the Lord. Let us adopt this and canonize this by common consent. Now, it wasn't ritualized like that, but the revelations that were put in the Book of Commandments and then later in the Doctrine and Covenants essentially all went through a form of that process where the church had an opportunity to accept that revelation as binding, accept that revelation as authentic and, and meaningful. John Taylor, as far as we know, never made any attempt to do that with this revelation. Uh, there are a number of different reasons why that might be the case. We know that Joseph Smith went back, and even in the text of the Book of Mormon where it talked about behold Mary the mother of God, he went back and edited the Book of Mormon to say behold Mary the mother of the Son of God. And a lot of people get angry and say, okay, well, then how can he edit this? How could it have been from God if it was wrong or if he's changing it? Joseph Smith edited his revelations throughout his life. Uh, the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants underwent a number of different edits, and people get upset about that because if this is a revelation, how can you edit it? Well, in the model that I'm presenting here Uh, it is not— the text is not the revelation. The text is an attempt to explain, to capture the essence of the revelation that is wordless and much more massive than what's written in any kind of text. So, okay, so John Taylor writes this revelation. At some point, does he look at it and go, maybe that's not quite right? At some point, does he look at it and say, uh, you know, maybe there's some of my wishful thinking, maybe that's really not what was happening here? Uh, we'll never know. We can't read his mind, and he's dead. But he never presented it to the church. He never said to the church, okay, here we go, this is a revelation. And so the church is not bound by it. And the fact that John Taylor's son digs it up and says, okay, well, here's this revelation and it's bound by the church, all of a sudden you're going outside of the process by which revelation is understood, accepted, and approved. John Taylor's son had absolutely no authority to do that, any more than I have authority to dig through David O. McKay's writings as a descendant of David O. McKay and then find something where I go, aha, see, David O. McKay believed this, and this should be binding on the church. But the other framing of this is, is that, okay, well, this revelation contradicts other revelations, and therefore the church can't possibly be true because there are two contradictory revelations. And my framing of this sidesteps that by saying this revelation was never adopted, so it was never binding. We don't know why John Taylor didn't want to present it, but we don't have to worry about the contradiction. But I think addressing the idea of conflicting revelations is absolutely essential given the fact that we have much more recent examples of that happening, one specifically being the November 2015 policy, which we're going to be interviewing Greg Prince in a bit.— and I've talked to Greg Prince about this. Greg Prince said, okay, when I talked to him, he said, that policy came out, the 2015 policy of exclusion, and when it first came out, everybody assumed it was a lie because the person who broke the story was John Dehlin. And so clearly this is an anti-Mormon lie. Clearly the Church wouldn't be punishing innocent children. For who their parents are. And then it became clear that yes, it was true. And all the people saying it was an anti-Mormon lie suddenly shift to, well, it's true and it's great, it's wonderful. And, and we're preventing children from being raised in homes where they're going to be taught contradictory things. And isn't that wonderful? And isn't that lovely? And this is just fine. And I was always just baffled by the whiplash. That came from that shift. And, but Greg Prince says, okay, so what happened after that is all of these '70s are going out reorganizing stakes. You know, the '70s are out and about throughout the world, and they're getting all this pushback from membership as they go out and do this. And a number of them start saying, well, look, this is just policy. Policies come, policies go. This probably isn't gonna last all that long, so just don't worry about it. And Russell Nelson goes to Hawaii and stands up and says, not only is this not just policy, this is a revelation. We were all in the room when Thomas S. Monson, who at this time was suffering from dementia, but Thomas S. Monson suddenly received the revelation, uh, that this was to be the, the way the church would move forward. And so we were all witnesses to that. And Greg Prince says he doesn't think that's true. He says, he says that, uh, he talked to Tom Christofferson, who's Elder Christofferson's brother, and that Tom Christofferson first— or that Elder Christofferson first heard about it on the news. That Russell Nelson, this, this, this idea of all of them being in the room and watching this revelation, he says that's just not true. So you've got that, that issue. But this is presented to the church by Russell Nelson, who was then president of the Quorum of the Twelve, as a revelation. This is a revelation. Okay, 3.5 years later, this terrible policy, which was wrong from the outset, is revoked, is rescinded. And what are we told? We're told in a statement by Dallin Oaks that it was rescinded by revelation. And you sit there and go, well, why did the Lord change his mind? What happened other than the fact that this policy was an abject failure that drove thousands of people out of the church because they could see how unjust it was and how wrong it was. I mean, what if, if the Lord knew that would be the case? Is that what the Lord wanted? Is that why the Lord would have revealed that to Thomas Monson? The pretzels you have to, you have to twist yourself into to somehow say that both revelations are equally legitimate and that nobody was wrong at some point, that human error or human weakness didn't inject itself into this process at some point and things got messed up. There's no way to do that. You have to embrace fallibility, not just accept it, not just acknowledge it, not just quietly sort of pretend it's there. You have to embrace it. You have to say, yes, this is real and we messed up. We take accountability for it. And this is what mortality is about. Mortality is about us taking accountability for our mistakes, repenting of them, learning from them, growing from them. We, we teach that individually. We refuse to do that institutionally. And this episode is just one more, uh, a piece of evidence that we can't do that anymore. We can't do that anymore. We can't just go, okay, quietly. Oh yeah, by the way, yeah, this revelation is, it was real and we said it wasn't, but we'll just put her on the church's website and blah, blah, blah. We can't do that anymore. It doesn't work. So all the way back to what I said right at the outset, this is an opportunity. This is an opportunity. This is a chance for the church to come forward and say, look at something we screwed up, and here's why we screwed it up, and here's what we can learn from screwing it up. Here's what we can learn about revelation, how revelation works, how— why it's so essential to sustain church leaders, not because they are perfect, but because they require our sustenance. You don't sustain perfect people. Sustaining means that the person needs help. The person needs people to lift them up. We sustain our leaders not because they are perfect, but precisely because they are not. So this is an opportunity for the church to jump out in front and say, we gotta take a better approach to this. We've got to embrace the reality that we have made mistakes. And here is one. And going forward, we're going to make some more mistakes. We want you to have as much patience and grace for us as the Lord does. And going forward, we want to have the humility to be able to recognize those mistakes, and we need your support to be able to get us through them. That is, I think, the only way forward for the church. That's my download. So what do you think?

Okay, I'm listening intently, made some notes. The church is not all true. The church is not always right. It makes mistakes often. And it is run on a combination of inspiration and man-made philosophy mingled. If you look at the the old temple ceremony there, you know, pre-1990, you know, mingled with scripture and subject to private interpretation. You know, we know where that comes from. Uh, Richard Bushman said that the dominant narrative of the church is false. You know, those basic, uh, ideas, concepts that the church has stuck to, it it's much more nuanced than that. It's not black and white. There are multiple gray areas, and it's afraid of addressing those gray areas. It wants things to be— I've said a few times on the podcast that when I was absolutely, Jim, committed and devoted and living with exactness, I felt a level of certainty and confidence. I had the answers. I had the answers because So I thought, because I followed a living prophet and the prophet knows what to do and how to do it and will never lead you astray. And the prophet's got it down. The prophet has a unique, distinct relationship with God and Jesus Christ. Uh, and, and that revelation, um, process extends to individuals where you and I can receive personal revelation from God. That is absolutely profound. We can pray, we ask in faith, we can receive private revelation. Further, as a companionship on a, as a mystery companionship, you can receive revelation for your companionship. As a father, you can receive revelation for your family. It's extraordinary how that process works. It was amazing. The whole structure, organization of revelation, the process of revelation was just so clear and so certain to me. There was a degree of certainty and, and safety and comfort in knowing this is how God works, how he's organized and structured, that God is a God of order and structure and, and a clear defined process. As a bishop, you can get revelation for your ward. I was a bishop, I got revelation from a ward. State presidency, serving in state presidency, you get revelation as a state presidency for the stake. This is huge and that shapes and informs decisions and directions where you're going to go in a stake. It affects people's lives in a, in a very profound way, certainly the stake level and certainly on the ward level. And of course, all the way up to the prophet who receives revelation for, on behalf of the entire membership of the church and, uh, for his family and for the Quorum of the Twelve and for the General Authorities and for every auxiliary, you know, specific revelation for each auxiliary. And lo and behold, revelation for the entire world. That's huge. You know, everybody, uh, you know, can look to the prophet and receive that revelation. The prophets have been very clear that, uh, the prophet of the church has the keys. He has the priesthood. He's the only person on the earth with all the keys. We taught that. You taught that. I was taught that. We've taught that, uh, endlessly. You know, in our entire lives that the prophet is the only person that holds the keys of the fullness of the gospel. And actually there's one extra key as the key holder. You know, in the church there's key holders, right? The prophet's a key holder. Um, a bishop's a key holder, a stake president's a key holder, and there are certain other callings that are key holders. And, uh, Alyssa can go and research what that means. And so the prophet is a key holder. He's got all the keys of this dispensation. He's got this unique, distinct relationship, this revelation superhighway hotline to God and to go ask questions and receive revelation and get answers to prayers, or maybe not, but has to wait and fast and pray. And eventually God will, God who knows everything, omnipresent, omnipotent, knows everything, can know You know, God knows what's happened in the past. He knows what's happening now. He knows what's going to happen in the future and extends that revelation directly to his prophet, that the only true church upon the face of the earth. The prophets have said very clearly, Wilford Woodruff said, the Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as president of this church to lead you astray. It is not in the program. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place. And so he will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty. Uh, other prophets have said this. Joseph Fielding Smith has said, neither the president of the church nor the First Presidency nor the united voice of the First Presidency and the Twelve will ever lead the saints astray or send forth counsel to the world that is contrary to the mind and will of the Lord. Elder Ballard said in 2001, if you listen to the living prophet, and the apostles and heed their counsel, you will not go astray. President Nelson, a few years ago, said the Lord has promised us that he will never allow the prophet to lead us astray. So I want to provide some specific brief responses to some of your comments. So I agree, I think we agree that, you and I agree that the church has known about this revelation has known that it's had this document in its archives, denied its existence, yet had it in its, in its, um, uh, in the archives. And only now, a few days ago, has it released it and confirmed that it exists and we have a copy of it. So that's, I think we can agree on that, that the church has not been, I don't want to put words in your mouth, so please push back, but I think we can agree that the church knew about this, had this document, and has only released it under pressure and denied that even it even ever existed. To your point, I didn't deny that the revelation happened. I think that's what you said. Again, jump in if I got that wrong, but deny that this document existed. We know it existed. Um, we know the contents of the document is absolutely significant. You talked earlier about, um, you made you quoted from the Revelation. I think you said, my son John, you have asked me concerning the new and everlasting covenant, how far it is binding upon my people. And I think you said, or you quoted that John Taylor, the prophet, said in the Revelation, thus saith the Lord, all commandments that I give must be obeyed by those calling themselves by my name. Unless they are revoked by my authority, or can I revoke an everlasting covenant? For I the Lord am everlasting. My everlasting covenants cannot be abrogated nor done away with. They stand forever. Again, I made some notes from what you're saying, and it goes on to say basically the Lord's word doesn't change. It's forever. You know, this is, this is not just the principle of the Lord being very clear, unmistakably clear that his word never changes, but this specific revelation will never change. And also it's tied to the title, which is New and Everlasting Covenant. Everlasting, that's forever, never changes. And so I think we can agree on that. You know, I think we can agree that this is a revelation, I think we can agree that the church had this document and kept it back. I think we know why, I can understand that. But I want to push back on something that you said earlier, which I find a little bit complicated or even confusing. You have, I ask myself, are you, in your early comments about the role of a prophet and the fact that a prophet can receive revelation, but it's not a revelation unless he What did he say? It goes through the process of common consent. And I asked myself in my mind when you, I was listening earlier to what you were saying, is Jim Bennett trying to have his cake and eat it? And I don't know. I wanna explore that briefly right now and then I'll hand the time back over to you.

All right.

But you said that a revelation for the church is not a revelation for the church. And again, if any part of this is incorrect, please correct me. Um, not a revelation unless it goes through the process of common consent. I think you said that a prophet can have revelation, you know, go to the Lord, get this revelation, and then he takes it to the apostles and says, hey, I've had this revelation, this is what the Lord thinks, let's talk about it, let's discuss it. And then through this process of common consent, which I'm not intimately familiar with, that's probably another conversation for a podcast, there is a conversation, and I guess it's like a stake presidency or a bishopric, I guess. I suspect it's identical. I mean, it wouldn't be any other way that you discuss it with the counselors. You talk about it. What's the reaction? You know, let's look at the revelation. What did you get? What were the words? What the impressions? What your inspiration? And then you formulate, as state presidents do. And I know, I know that process from, you know, that, that state presidency level and the bishopric level. You kind of formulate it. You kind of have a conversation and you kind of, uh, develop it. With your own inspiration and your own capabilities in your mind to try to get some understanding, some interpretation of what the Lord is trying to tell you. And then you go back, as we've done on presidencies and bishoprics, to say, Lord, we receive this revelation. This is our understanding of the revelation. This is what we did in the bishopric, Jim Bennett, and in the stake presidency. We've got this, we've had this revelation, we've discussed it. This is what our understanding is. And we go back to the Lord and we kneel up, we kneel in the office, all of us. And we then restate what we think is the revelation. This is the process that the stake presidencies and bishoprics follow or should follow, certainly we did. And then the Lord confirms or guides us or corrects us or try to give us impressions to help us understand and interpret the revelation as best as we can as fallible human beings with all the weaknesses. So what you're saying, if I understand it correctly, John Taylor went to God, had this revelation that's absolutely binding forever. John Taylor is a prophet, is a keyholder. He spoke directly with God, and the message was absolutely clear. There's no ambiguity whatsoever that this new and everlasting covenant, this revelation was revelation, and that's God's will. That is what I get from This conversation is what I get from my research on this. It's what I get from the, you know, the quotes from the actual revelation. And you are now saying, uh, rather, or you are saying that it's not a revelation unless it goes through the process of common consent. So my question, and so help me understand this, uh, are we saying then that, uh, John Taylor's revelation, the revelation that John Taylor received from God is not a revelation because it didn't go through the process of common consent. So I'm, I'm trying to be, um, constructive. I'm trying to understand it and I'm trying to understand what you said. And I think you've said that it isn't a revelation because it hasn't gone through common consent. Is that, is that a fair assessment? Am I being too Critical thinking here.

No, you're not being too critical thinking. It's, it's an incomplete assessment. I am not saying it's not a revelation. I'm saying it's not binding on the whole church. And maybe that's too thin a hair to split.

But I thought it was binding on— sorry to interrupt. I thought it again. I'm enjoying this. I'm learning from this. I thought it was binding on the church. If you look at the Revelation, he's saying it is the prophet, prophet, key holder, the prophet of God, right?

Right.

He's saying clearly, at least my understanding, it is binding upon my people and that the New Everlasting Covenant is binding forever and can never be changed. And I think you're saying that because it didn't go through that process, it isn't binding on the church, and I'm trying to make sense of that.

Well, there are a number of assumptions inherent in what and how you're framing this that I would push back on, because one of the things you said in, in, in, in framing the question was this is the prophet, he spoke directly to God, which is the model that a lot of people in the church still have, which is this idea that the prophet has a physical interview and a conversation with God in the same way we're having a conversation right now. That— so God was there. John Taylor was talking to him. God said the words that are in this revelation. And then there it is. And in my big lengthy rant, what I was trying to point out was, is that I don't think that happens And I don't think that's how revelation works. I think John Taylor encounters God, or encountered God, the same way I encountered God when I was walking my dog. I didn't see anybody. Nobody showed up. Uh, there— the heavens didn't open. Angels weren't around. Uh, but there was pure intelligence that flowed into me, and I consider that a revelation. I consider it an undeniable revelation. And, and I've tried to clothe that revelation in language without success. So my point is that, that if I accept all of your framing of this, for instance, if I accept the idea that God was in the room, that God said these words to John Taylor, and, uh, and then the church knew that, hid it, uh, then I would have no choice, I think, but to leave the church. Because if that's the way it works, and then, then fallibility is not an option, then there's— then that's saying God is fallible. That's saying, okay, well, God said something and God can't make mistakes, so therefore I would have to leave the church. I think everybody would have to leave the church. And I think that's one of the reasons why things like this are so unsettling to so many people is because when they've been fed the Boyd K. Packer model of some things that are true are not very useful, and so they haven't heard truths that are uneasy. Truths that are difficult to deal with, truths that make them uneasy, I should say, then they feel like they have no choice but to leave because all of a sudden this isn't, this isn't the way God would work. This isn't how— I mean, so often it's, it's where are your expectations? What do you expect from a prophet? And so what the way I've tried to frame this is not that this was not a revelation. It was okay. Something happened between John Taylor receiving this revelation, writing this revelation, and then choosing not to present this revelation to the church. I don't know what that was. In fact, nobody knows what that was. I don't know if John Taylor second-guessed himself. I don't know if John Taylor decided, no, this isn't real. I don't know if John Taylor wrote this thing. It's possible he wrote it as what would a revelation look like? Or what would I want a revelation to be? I mean, there are so many things, so many ways to account for these words. Once you take God physically out of the room, once you recognize that this is John Taylor writing down something that is a, is a way to interpret a revelation that did not come in the form of specific language, that opens up a whole lot of possibility for human weakness to intervene. And so what I'm saying is, um, the, the process by which a revelation becomes binding on the church is that the President of the Church receives the revelation and presents the revelation to the Church and says, this is a revelation, and the Church should be bound by this. Do we all agree to be bound by this? And the Church, by common consent, says, yes, we agree to be bound by this. I, you know, I don't expect, for instance, the Church to be bound by the revelation I received while walking my dog. But again, I don't have the stewardship of a prophet, so that wouldn't make any sense. But one of the things that prophets have told us is that when you receive revelation, and sometimes you may receive revelation that gives you insight into the church, or in, I mean, there are people that receive revelation, you know, patriarchs receive revelation, and I don't know how many patriarchs have promised their people they're giving blessings to that they'll be alive during the Second Coming and having those people die. I have a neighbor who has a patriarchal blessing that tells him he'll be dead by the time Second Coming comes. So the fact that he's still alive, I'm always going, okay, Second Coming's not going to be here as long as my neighbor's still here. But, but, but the thing is, they're— we're explicitly instructed, if you receive revelation, that revelation is for you. And keep it to yourself, that people get into trouble when they start going out and saying, I've received revelation for the whole church. So, so my point being that I am not disagreeing with anything that you have said, because the way you have framed this, if that were exactly how it happened, then I think you would be 100% right. And I think I would have no choice but to leave the church. I don't think that's how it happened. I don't think that's how revelation works. And I have a whole big long, whole podcast episode about what it means to say the prophet won't lead us astray. I think that's a promise of intent, not a promise of infallibility. That is, the prophet will never— the word, when Brigham Young talks about it, he says, I would never knowingly or designedly leave the church astray. And it's a promise that the prophet will never be sort of a secret agent for Satan and bring the church down from the inside. He will always be acting in an attempt to try to lead us where he wants us to go, but it's not a promise that he will never make a mistake or that he will never misinterpret a revelation or any of that. And so I think that's a whole other episode that might, that might be kind of fun. But, uh, but so that's, that's my response to that. And I don't know if that's satisfying to you or if that makes sense, but, but that's how I interpret it.

Thank you for that. Our podcast is called Inside Out. You know, you have a perspective on the inside and you've, you've, you know, the last few comments, another example that the opposite on the from the inside. My perspective is different. I'm on the outside. And so I agree with some of that. I have a problem with some of that. I don't think I, my short-term memory here, I don't know if I said specifically that John Taylor received the revelation with God in the room. I don't think I said that. If I did, then I want to clarify that.

Well, I don't know that you said that either, but the way you were talking about it was like he's spoken directly to God.

Well, let me clarify that because this is the area that I've got a bit of a problem with. Let me clarify that. So again, revelation, you know this as much as I do, right? With our experience in the church, what we've been taught, revelation, clear defined revelation, depending on, you know, if you're your role, if you're the leader or your father or your, you know, quorum leader, et cetera. Within that, um, area of responsibility where ones are authorized with the keys to receive revelation for your quorum or your family, et cetera. I think we understand that. I think that structure that I mentioned earlier is really established across the church, that, that structure and the Holy Ghost and the keys and the priesthood, uh, an ecclesiastical structure is really well established and clearly defined. And really well organized, I must add. But I don't think I said that John Taylor necessarily had a physical, uh, revelation with God, as in God was physically in the room. I don't think I said that. And I want to clarify that my understanding, my take of this revelation on such a critical topic. Now, you said earlier that the statements from the prophets are You know, not leading astray is a message of intent, not, you know, uh, a fallibility, et cetera. I would push back and say, well, on something so important, on topics and subjects that are absolutely critical to, you know, salvation of its members, um, eternal doctrines of Christ, the critical things, um, the church prophet leaders surely have to get right. They have to get those things right, surely. Yes, there is leeway and flexibility on other stuff, but surely the most important things has to get right. And that's his position. We get, well, I don't think the church ever admits of getting anything wrong. I've never heard or read anything where the church has said, look, we made a mistake. I think the closest it came to is Elder Uchtdorf, who said that You know, mis— leaders made mistakes. I think that's the best and closest you're ever gonna get. But on the most important things like this, like polygamy, I, I, I think it's safe to say the church claims it, it gets those basic things right. Going back to the earlier point where, uh, I said that John Taylor received this revelation from God, uh, didn't mean to imply that God was physically in the room at the time. What I'm saying is that Reading the revelation, doing the research, is absolutely clear that John Taylor had this revelation. We don't know, we don't know what happened. We don't know any information that we can trust, at least from my perspective, in terms of what he did with that revelation and whether he actually went through that common consent process. I know you've said what you've said. Church would have its own position on that. This opens up a whole bunch of questions of what actually happened to that revelation. And so what I'm saying is that yes, a prophet can receive revelation for the church on absolutely critical subjects like this and not receive them directly from God physically or Christ in the room. That a revelation, uh, of this magnitude and significance doesn't necessarily have to have God or Christ physically in the room as a man speaketh to another man, so to speak. That a revelation of this magnitude can be received through inspiration, through prayers, through feelings, through, as you said rightly, this, I think you said, pure intelligence, in quote, and I like that. I've experienced that myself at times. And the prophet can receive revelation like that in that way on really, really important items and issues. And, and that's probably what, that may have what happened here with John Taylor. And I think that, um, so my question is, does that in your mind, uh, in this context of this conversation, assuming John Taylor, let's say he didn't see God. Is that not of equal value as revelation to, uh, receiving revelation without necessarily having God in the room? Is it not the same? What difference does it make? Surely a revelation by spirit is the same as revelation by God. We are the same. The spirit's the same regardless of whether God's in the room. So that's the point. If you could just touch upon that. Um, And then the other thing is, um, in the context of all these things that I'm trying to, these dots I'm trying to connect to bring it back to the main point I'm trying to make, um, if we agree, we might not, uh, is it not therefore reasonable to accept that John Taylor's revelation is pure revelation from God? Not necessarily being in the room, and therefore, and that was extended to all the, you know, all the members. And I think, again, trying to quote the Revelation there, that it's actually binding upon the people. And so, and then you tie that to what the church really privately thinks. So I don't know if you can kind of make sense of what I'm saying to kind of connect those dots. So If you can respond to those points, that'd be fantastic. And therefore, going back to the question I asked of you, if you could respond to those points, can we not accept that then as revelation from God? And that the church, you know, whether it got, regardless of whether it went through the process of common consent, is still revelation from a prophet. We're binding upon the people. And has the church not in the church rejecting of that, being forced to reject it by, or, or deny it or denounce it because of the pressure that it had politically at that time, albeit secretly, privately still believes in polygamy. But is there not an argument of the church has gone astray? If that was correct and true, that, that revelation must continue and it came from a prophet, from God, you know, of God. And it was correct. Is the church not apostatized and gone in a completely opposite direction to what God told John Taylor? So, uh, I know I'm dancing about a bit on some of these points. I'm trying to connect it in my own mind, but if you could kind of, um, connect those dots and, and, and organize it better than what I've done here, that would be fantastic. I'm, I'm learning a lot about this, so I'm, and I'm learning a lot about the revelatory process in the context of my own experience, Jim Bennett. You know, getting a revelation, praying about it. Do we understand it correctly? Let's pray again. Lord, we understand this. And you restate, by the way, like you name when you're calling people to a calling, you restate the name. And we've had this, we feel, Lord, that this is the name that you want us to call to this particular position. Could you reconfirm to us? This is the process that I am familiar with. That worked well in those presidencies that I worked in. So if you could join up those points and in the usual articulate way that you do, that would be fantastic.

All right. Well, I don't know if I can join up all of them because I don't think this is clean or tidy.

Well, hey, we're imperfect. We're fallible. You and I are fallible.

That's right. No, We're not perfect.

We're trying to understand this. I'm trying to make sense of this.

Yeah, but, but we're the only true and living podcast on the face of the earth.

So that's a big claim for sure.

We're held to a higher standard. Yeah. A couple, a couple of elements that I think hopefully will tie this together because I don't know if I can respond specifically to each dot. And I think we're, we're coming up, um, on the end here. And so we may be exhausting the listeners' patience on this. But a couple of things that I want to frame that hopefully will put this in a context. The Revelation, at least the handwritten recording of the Revelation, is dated September 27th, 1886. Um, General Conference, at least the semiannual General Conference, would have been, um, 2 months later in November— oh no, I'm sorry, 1 month later in October of 1886. And then there was also another, uh, General Conference, an annual General Conference, in April of 1887. John Taylor died of congestive heart failure in July of 1887. So, from the time that this revelation is recorded and the time John Taylor died, he had two opportunities to have this revelation presented to the church, and he chose not to take those opportunities. So, Where I am coming down on this is in saying John Taylor made a deliberate decision not to make this revelation binding on the church. I think the evidence is overwhelming on that. He had two— he had, he had almost a year and he had two opportunities where that would have been the time to do it at General Conference. And he chose not to take those opportunities. Now, he was in hiding during this time. He didn't speak at those general conferences, but he was still governing the church. He could still have had the revelation presented to the church by common consent, uh, and chose not to do it. So why? We don't know. We cannot answer that question. But what it says to me is there was a reason. It was a deliberate decision on John Taylor's part. It was not an oversight. If he felt this revelation was in fact something that the way he written it was exactly the, you know, encompassing the communication that he had received, if he was comfortable with it, if he's like, yes, absolutely, this is exactly something the church needs to know and needs to see. He had the opportunity to present it to the church and chose not to do it. Now, my guess is that he recognized after writing it down that there was more John Taylor in it than there was God in it, or at least there was enough John Taylor in it as opposed to God. That it probably wasn't something that he ought to present to the church. I think John Taylor was living in under a circumstance where he was so under fire for plural marriage and so under fire and in hiding and away from his family— families, because he had multiple wives— but living this life of, of oppression, at least in his mind. And he's, he's this this crusader for this, and I can see him pouring out his soul to God, demanding, you know, it's like Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail. Oh God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place? You know, where are you, God? If this is of God, if this is of you, plural, I'm fighting for this, God. Why aren't you backing me up on it? Why am I in hiding? Why is it? And, and he's pouring out his soul, and the revelation he wants desperately is the one that he wrote down on paper. And my guess— and I don't know, nobody knows, nobody knows, nobody knows— maybe God was in the room, maybe— we don't know, we were not there. Nobody was there but John Taylor, as far as we know. If God was there, if Jesus was there, if Moroni was there, if somebody else participated in the process of crafting that piece of paper, what's written on that piece of paper, we— it is lost to history. But my guess is that he received a revelation and that the revelation was affirming and uplifting and accepting of him and accepting of his offering and accepting of his sacrifice to defend the church, and it was filled with all of these things that John Taylor wanted. And as he's writing it down and recording it, um, he gets carried away and decides, hey, you know what else is in this revelation? It's a promise that this will never go away. And he writes that down lets it sit for a day or two, maybe. Again, this is all speculation. Nobody knows. Lets it sit for a day or two, goes back and looks at it and goes, um, maybe I went a little too far. And the revelation in full, it's interesting, uh, later on it says, um, great numbers of my people have been negligent in the observance of my law and the keeping of my commandment. And yet I have borne with them these many years, and this because of their weakness, because of the perilous times. And furthermore, it is more pleasing to me that men should use their free agency in regard to these matters. Which is an interesting thing to put in there, that men should use their free agency in regard to these matters. So, so, so this is, this is how I reconciling this. This is not This is not the definitive answer. This is not the church's position. Uh, the church is in a terrible spot because I don't think the church can issue a position other than accepting that something screwed up. And the church, as we've talked about many, many times, just won't do that. This is an opportunity for them to do that and to get it right. I don't think they will take that opportunity. Uh, but so this is not the definitive answer, but this is my answer. This is what I envision. I see John Taylor as a beaten and battered man looking for some solace from the Lord, receiving some reassurance from him, getting overeager about it, writing it down. Because the other thing is, we don't have any other kind of recorded revelation from John Taylor. So this would have been a sort of a singular experience for him. You know, we don't have revelations in the voice of God written in the style of the Doctrine and Covenants. From any other prophet other than Joseph Smith and one revelation to Brigham Young. And so this may have been, aha, this is my chance, this is my chance to be just like Joseph. He goes and he writes it down, he gets excited and it feels better, and it just doesn't sit well with him over time. And, and the next month comes around and it's General Conference, and he knows this revelation is sitting somewhere in his desk or in his closet or somewhere. And he doesn't pull it off the shelf and hand it to Wilford Woodruff and say, you're the president of the Quorum of the Twelve, you're not in hiding, please present this as a revelation I've received from the Lord. So John Taylor at some point made the decision not to present this to the church. And that to me is the reason why it's not saying it's not a revelation. I believe John Taylor had some kind of encounter with God. I think it's John Taylor is the one who decided this was not to be presented to the church. I may— I, John Taylor, may have gotten something wrong in this. This may be me being overeager, whatever it is. But the only things we know about this revelation is, one, it exists. To it was never presented to the church. Now you can create some kind of conspiracy where maybe he tried to present it to the church and the other leaders rejected it. Uh, I think you could probably make a case for that if you wanted to. I don't think that's what happened. I think the, the most human way to look at this is the— at least in my mind is the way I've looked at this, that, that that John Taylor wrote down the revelation, had second thoughts about it, decided not to present it to the church, even though he had the capacity to do it, even though he had the opportunity to do it. So the second point— and so we've gone way over— second point that I want to bring up, and I'll do this much more quickly, is you, in pushing back, you said, well, yeah, yeah, we can accept fallibility, we can accept mistakes, But when things are this important, um, I think is the phrase you use, when things are this important, the church has to get it right. And I don't believe that. And the reason I don't believe that is because I don't believe that the Lord will ever ever interfere with agency, no matter how important it is, because that is the purpose of mortality. And you can find examples in the Old Testament, uh, Moses wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, the trip from Egypt to Palestine. Didn't take 40 years. I mean, they actually got there and then they got scared and they wandered back out and then they end up wandering in the desert and it's Moses wandering with them. The children of Israel and even Moses to some degree is wandering along with them. He's just as lost as they are for 40 years. You know, the other example that Paul Reeve brings up when he tries to talk about the priesthood ban, People say, well, the church couldn't have gotten this wrong for 150 years. And the example Paul Reid uses is he says, well, go back and look at Samuel in the Old Testament when they come to Samuel and say, we want a king to rule over us. And the revelation Samuel receives is a king will destroy Israel. A king will be a disaster. You do not want a king. And Samuel went back to Israel and said, "This is what the LORD said." And they said, "No, we want a king." And so, they go back and they get a king, and they had a king for like 400 years, and it was an absolute mess. And for a lot of the time, Israel was in bondage, and eventually Israel falls because the king becomes corrupt, the kings become wicked. And the whole thing falls apart. And they were warned about that 400 years before they did it, but they got it wrong for 400 years. So, so, so my point is that this absolutely requires a different paradigm than the one the church is peddling now, because the church is telling everybody prophet can't lead you astray. What that means is the prophet won't make a mistake, prophet won't get big things wrong. Everything is exactly the way the Lord wants it, and we don't make mistakes. We'll acknowledge— we'll let Dieter say something about mistakes, but really we're just going to plow ahead and don't pay any attention to the revelation behind the curtain. Don't pay any attention to this. Don't— and that just isn't going to work anymore. The paradigm has to be the Samuel paradigm. The paradigm has to be the Moses wandering in the wilderness paradigm. Paradigm, the paradigm that even prophets can wander in the wilderness along with the church. We can get it wrong. We do get it wrong. And when we get it wrong, uh, it should be— the reason the Lord lets us get it wrong is because we're supposed to learn from it. It's the reason we came down to earth, for heaven's sakes. We came down to earth specifically to get things wrong. That's how we learn. We left the presence of God where we were getting everything right because God was always there. We could always see what the right thing to do was. We never had to make a decision for ourselves. And God said, I want to prove them now herewith. I want you to go down and figure it out for yourself. And you know what? You're going to screw up. Your entire life is going to be filled with sin. Your entire life is going to be filled with error. You're going to be You're going to be subjected to suffering. You're going to be subjected to pain. You're going to be subjected to all of these things, and you're going to get all these things wrong. And that's the reason I'm sending you there, because you're going to have to learn from it. And don't worry, you'll still be able to come back because I'm going to have my Son pay the price for it. I'm going to have my Son suffer so that you getting it wrong doesn't prevent you from coming back into my presence. So I just think the whole argument about fallibility, uh, it— we frame it as a bug in the system. It's not. It's the central, uh, thrust of the gospel. It's the most important principle of the gospel. Most important principle is Everyone is fallible. Everyone has agency. Everyone will make mistakes. That includes every member of the Church, including the President of the Church, including all 12 apostles, always. And well, then how can we know? How can we— how? The same way. You, you never ever, uh, forfeit both the right and the responsibility to know for yourself. You never ever forfeit that. You never ever hand that off to the president of the church. You never hand that off to an apostle. You always have that right, and you always have that responsibility. You have to know for your— the fact that somebody says something in conference and, oh gosh, everybody seems to believe that, and oh, that's wonderful, and oh, all 12 apostles seem to believe that too, that does not absolve you of your responsibility to find out for yourself. It just does not. That is not how the plan operates. So those are my answers. I don't know if they're satisfying. I'll let you have the last word. We've gone way over time. I think this has been a really, really productive and fun discussion, so I don't mind going over time, but I hope I haven't exhausted your patience.

No, not at all. Our listeners are incredibly patient. I've had a revelation just now. This is one of the most important conversations we've ever had on any podcast, in my opinion. It's one of the most important conversations I've ever had in my life. I'll explain why. I think Jim Bennett and the church can have its cake and eat it, and I'll tell you why. What you've just said, is a response to me pushing back, being critical, trying to understand it, understand this complex process. And your response, listening intently to your response, each point makes absolute sense with my own experience. You've described and articulated in a way I've not heard before or read my own experience. As a bishop and stake president, how the revelation process works. And I'll summarize it super quick like this. So I am comfortable accepting that John Taylor, uh, approached the Lord, met with him in person or not, regardless, had a conversation, had a prayer, received a revelation, inspiration. It was absolutely revelation in, in his mind, the understanding revelation. And similar to my own experience on a stake presidency or a bishopric where the Lord gives us an impression, a revelation on something that we are trying to understand, we're trying to make sense, and we wanna make the right choice. Because as a bishop and a stake presidency, the decisions that you make in those callings, or even as a father, that affects and impacts the life of your family, your ward, your stake. It's serious stuff. You've got to get it as right as you can. Never perfect. I think I mentioned I set someone apart as a piano player, and I learned on the day that they couldn't play the piano.

I think you did. Yeah, that's right.

It was, it was staring at me and actually laughing at me, and I just I got it wrong, right? So, you know, as a leader, you try your best. You go to the Lord and say, Lord, we felt this. We understand this. Is this what you want? Is this the name correct? And Jim Bennett, I never said this earlier, but often, sometimes the Lord comes back and gives you a stupor of thought. You remember that scripture?

Sure.

The stupor of thought, right? And by going back and and kind of restating what you understand the revelation to be. And if you're humble and you're in tune with the Spirit, the Lord has the opportunity to correct you. Either you got it wrong, or like with, you know, as I mentioned, no, this is not what we're going to do right now, the prophet spoke, and et cetera. Or it's either, you know, it's a bad idea, or you've misunderstood, you've got it wrong, or you've not interpreted it correctly, and here's some more revelation to help you. And by the way, to your point, Jim, You've got agency, so we're gonna let you kind of, we, we'll give you all the answers. Like Brother Jared, you know, who needed to, uh, light up the, the barges and, and, uh, you know, he had, he couldn't have any windows cuz they'd be dashed by the sea. He had these closed barges, these closed vessels, and he, he had a problem about light. Lord said, you know, what do you want me to do? And Brother Jared came up with the idea, 16 stones. Lord touched him with the finger. Brother Jared came up with that idea, right? So the Lord wants us to use agency, intelligence. You've talked about pure intelligence, and I think that's what's happened here. And this is, uh, extending respect and, and being gracious towards the church based on what I think is one of the most articulate responses to a difficult question I've ever heard, frankly, from your response earlier, is that John Taylor had a revelation. Went through the process that I described earlier in my own experience, wrestled with it, went back to the Lord, went back to the Lord, and again, to give benefit of the doubt to the church and the whole revelatory process, the Lord stopped him or corrected him or whatever, or said, John Taylor, you don't understand it correctly, your timing is not right. But for some reason, He didn't bring that to the, uh, the apostles and, and, and the leaders of the church for whatever reason. It wasn't complete. I think you said earlier, maybe the revelation wasn't complete. Maybe the timing wasn't right. Maybe through, um, agency, John Taylor decided, you know, I got the revelation, but I'm gonna use my agency. And maybe the timing is not right. Maybe you don't understand it fully. I mean, this is a serious revelation, right? This is a serious thing. Maybe it wasn't complete. There's a whole series of reasons that you have kind of touched upon and framed really well that I, that makes sense to me. That makes sense because that was my own personal experience. And often we would get this impression that what we thought was right, it turned out not to be right. And we needed to go in a different direction. So we went back to the drawing board. And came back to the ward with a whole different plan or a different name or a different idea or a different strategy. And we had to work hard, Jim Bennett, through that process. And you've been on a bishopric, you know, you have to work really hard, praying and thinking and talking and trying to figure stuff out for the ward or the stake, because it's, you know, you want to, you want to, you want to be a good leader, you want to be an honest leader, and you want to be humble, and you want to, you You want to, you don't wanna do your will, right? I know that's not always the case in these. You want to do what the Lord wants to do for the state, the Lord's will. That's what, that's what good leaders want to do. And I think that's what's happened here. I think, um, you know, it didn't take it to the, to the church for that reason. It's not, um, uh, it's not even ratified. It just didn't take it to the church. And for whatever reason, including the stuff that we talked about. It didn't go through that process, and I can accept that. So this, this, I'm going to close here, but I want to say, uh, two things. This has been the most amazing learning experience for me and conversation, uh, and I hope I, you know, I hope our listeners, um, get something from this. But I want to say this, uh, isn't this, to your very first word at the very beginning, I think one of those was an opportunity you said at the very beginning, isn't this an opportunity for the church to address this and to speak openly about this? And this is the other part of my revelation. I'm kind of, you know, tongue-in-cheek about being revelation of God. But isn't this an opportunity for the church in its teaching and its training, its preacher training at General Conference to talk about this experience that we're talking about right now? To say, hey, Bishop and stake president, they do the best that they can. They have agency. They have to interpret it, go through the same thought process that you and I talk in here, and to talk about it openly and to say, we're trying our best. The Lord gives us direction, instruction. We get revelation. We're trying to make sense of it, understand it. We don't get all the answers all the time. We have to work it. The Lord doesn't hand everything on a plate. There's a whole effort of hard work and sweat and process to work hard, and you have to earn it. You have to work at it, and only then will you get further light and knowledge. Surely the opportunity that you refer to, is this not the shape that the opportunity should take, right? To talk about this at General Conference, and say, here's the process. And, you know, we wrestle just like prophets have done. Isn't that the opportunity? And isn't that the doorway then that we can, as members, you know, can understand and look through the window or the door we can walk through and get a broader understanding of the relative process and then come to the point later on, if the church is trying to position itself to this, where we can have, to your point, the conversation that leaders are fallible, that yes, we make mistakes. Isn't this a good stepping stone, a transitional point to talk about the struggle about revelation and how we, you know, we sometimes get things wrong, you know, like I did. Often as a bishop and the state presidency, we got things wrong. Isn't that a nice or a really good transitional point to that opens up the conversation to talk about leaders being imperfect? A prophet makes mistakes and yes, Brigham Young said awful things and we don't believe that anymore. So for me, this has been extraordinary. It really has on on a personal level, I've learned so much and I've understood revelation. I understand revelation, uh, better than I ever have. I'm not, I have a perfect knowledge on this, of course, but it kind of connected so much and has made a lot of sense to me in terms of how that revelatory process works. Anyway, I know we way, way over time. Maybe you wanna split this podcast into two parts. I don't know. Our listeners have been incredibly patient. I'll stop talking. I'll hand it over to you and any other final words you've got, and then you please, please close this.

No, I'll let that be the last word. I, I, I have learned just as much, if not more, listening to you talking about this, because I think you represent a good faith representation of why people are genuinely troubled by this. I think you have framed it in a way that I think people can understand and can respond to. And I think these are the kinds of questions that need to be raised. And these are the kinds of questions that the church should not be afraid to answer. Because I think there are answers to them. I mean, the fact that you had that response, uh, I mean, demonstrates that, look, it's not like my answer is the definitive binding answer on the whole church, but everybody's going to feel better if we address this together. Excuse me. Rather than shame the people who are asking the question. Because every question you have raised, every concern you have raised is 100% legitimate. And if, if people are saying this isn't troubling or this isn't difficult, I don't think they're being honest, at least not even with themselves. I think that, I mean, this is one of the reasons I think also, I didn't want to say anything more because I just wanted to say you, you're brilliant and I think magnificent, and then we'd be done. But, but, um, this is one of the reasons why I think, um, difficult questions spark confrontational, angry responses from church leaders. Because you go to a stake president and you say, President, I've just read this revelation that was given to John Taylor, contradicts the church's narrative. It says that polygamy will never be taken from the earth. The church in 1933 said that this revelation didn't exist, but they knew that it did. I got a problem. Uh, the reality is that stake president is just as ignorant or just has as much of a problem.

That's true.

I mean, they sit there and listen to it and they go, well, geez, yeah, that's troubling. But then they go, but geez, I'm a stake president. I can't say that. I can't tell them this is troubling. I can't tell them I'm wrestling with this. Uh, what am I? And I don't know anything about this. I mean, very often, you know, church leaders are not called based on their understanding or knowledge of church history. Or scripture. I mean, I remember finding that out when President McConkie took over, because President McConkie knew the scriptures backwards and forwards. And I remember thinking back to President Banks and thinking, President Banks, lovely man, devoted disciple of Christ, he didn't know anything about church history. He didn't know anything about the scriptures. And I don't want to say nothing, but It was like, that's not why people are called. People are in leadership positions who are just as ignorant— that's too harsh a word— they just don't know the same way that everybody else doesn't know. And so they get scared, and the only recourse they have is to lash out, to say, oh, you should just trust and have faith. They're telling themselves that as much as they're telling everybody else. Anyway, so that's, that's a, that may be a wonderful long conversation, but thank you very much for this. Uh, I hope everybody sat through this whole thing. More power to you. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Ian. We look forward to seeing you all next time on Inside Out. Thank you.

Thank you, Jim.