Praise for The Mormon Delusion

A selection of a few of the unsolicited comments on file received from people around the world concerning The Mormon Delusion, TMD articles, and 2010 Exmormon Foundation Conference live presentation.

I again commend Jim Whitefield’s books. …put off buying a number of lesser volumes …  For my money, they are on a par … with Mormonism – Shadow or Reality. The Tanners’ topics are more numerous; Jim Whitefield’s, much more detailed. (A).

He does do his homework very, very thoroughly and presents the data as a detached impartial historian would be expected to do… (T).

I would like to thank you for your books … I appreciate your integrity and I do believe your books will make a difference. (MD).

…the style and pace was excellent. I found it content rich and very well written. (BB).

I… can’t tell you how much I appreciate the great work that you are doing… (MA).

You thoroughly covered a lot of material. I don’t see how anyone could still believe after reading your 3 books where you call a spade a spade… (DO).

I used a link on RfM to get to your site, hadn’t been to it before and found it intelligent and enlightening. (DA).

…thank you so much for letting people know the truth about Mormonism. (NH).

I saw your lecture. The documented timeline of Joseph’s monotheism evolving into polytheism was positively breathtaking. Very solid work. (CZ).

I purchased your three books and can never thank you enough for taking the time to write them. I do not think I can explain in words what you have done for me in helping me piece together the truth. (C).

I am so amazed by your courage and the depth and amount of research that you have done. (AE).

I hope you help the many who will come seeking with open hearts and curious minds. (TM).

Thank you for the awesome presentation. Now my testimony of Joseph’s Myth is buried 12′ in the earth, instead of only 6′. (K).

I loved your presentation. …Thank you for your insightful research and ability to synthesize all this for the rest of us. (Du).

What a pleasure it was to meet you and hear your amazing presentation. (E).

The presentation was awesome and you are fun to listen to. (NR).

…within the first minute of your presentation, I knew it was going to be good and I was so very excited for all of us who would be listening to you speak, and for you who had come all that way to deliver such a riveting presentation. (S).

I enjoyed your presentation! … Thank you so much! I thought about it for days and days. I thought, “No wonder I was always so confused in Mormonism!” (F).

I want to thank you for your work to expose the truths of the LDS faith. (RG).

…very well researched and well presented. (DM).

My biggest regret is that I can’t meet you in person to express my thanks for what you are doing. (CN).

Thanks — love your work! (TC).

I am not at all surprised that people have been picking up on the fruits of your massive achievement.  Everything good that has happened has been thoroughly well-deserved and I congratulate you most heartily for it. (DP).

The data Jim revealed checked out 100%. (VM).

I found your “testimony” on Exmormon Scholars Testify and wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading it… (BF).

Your books are very well researched and thought out. I want to thank you for your efforts and time. (GJ).

I can never repay the debt I owe you; your work is saving my family. (PG).

Please accept my heart-felt thanks for these incredible sources of valuable information. They are a treasure of information… Your irrefutable logic, laying out plainly and simply, the lies and contradictions of J.S. and those who followed – even to today, is unmatched in any other work I’ve read on this topic. (DJ).

November 2012

At the October 2012 General Conference of the Mormon Church, it was announced that the eligible age for male missionaries (who serve for two years) is to be reduced from nineteen to eighteen, and for females (who serve for eighteen months), from twenty-one down to nineteen.

One eighteen year old family member had his mission interview this week. Another, who recently returned from a mission, got very excited about the announcement, posting an enthusiastic comment on a social network site which included his conclusion that “missionary numbers are going to DOUBLE now!”

Of course, he didn’t do the arithmetic; lowering of the age most certainly won’t “double” the missionary numbers. Numbers may temporarily increase by a few thousand but as this is a one off adjustment, within a couple of years the numbers will of course revert back to where they were before the change. The net result long term will be younger, less experienced and less mature missionaries in the field than was previously the case.

If this age reduction is intended to increase the number of convert baptisms then the effect will of course be short lived. The Church previously made a ‘one off’ change to its statistics two or three decades ago in order to artificially bolster membership numbers when they were falling significantly behind earlier ambitious projections, by adding in all the children below the age of eight years and then adding new births each year. This now accounts for about 100,000 new ‘members’ born every year but the numeric effect is no longer noticeable as previously they would have been added when they were baptised at age eight anyway.

Clearly, any temporary increase in missionary numbers will only affect conversion figures notionally and for a short period of time, so there has to be another reason. The Church may claim that it is to allow youngsters to serve missions earlier in order to return to college later. However, previously, returned missionaries have been encouraged to marry as soon as practical following a mission. Only time will tell what happens in future.

Perhaps the real reason for getting young Mormons away from ‘the world’ and out on missions as young as possible is because the Church is now losing too many of them when they discover the truth behind their Church and then leave. This may largely be due to information which is now readily available on the internet, as we also have this message from the October Conference:

“Some have immersed themselves in internet materials that magnify, exaggerate, and in some cases invent shortcomings of early church leaders. Then they draw incorrect conclusions that can affect testimony. Any who have made these choices can repent and be spiritually renewed.” ~ Quentin L. Cook, General Conference, October 2012.

So, perhaps the Mormon Church is trying to ‘save’ more young members by encouraging them to “repent” of any such internet research and be “spiritually renewed” by making them emissaries for the Church while they are still young, thus saving them before they discover the truth.

It is a fact that whilst there is always misinformation out there, most “internet materials” that I have seen do not actually “magnify, exaggerate” or “invent shortcomings of early Church leaders”, leading young Mormons to “draw incorrect conclusions that can affect testimony”. Most just expose the truth directly from falsified Church history and it is ‘evidence’ that can affect a testimony. Fact trumps faith.

Again, time will tell but I predict that after a ‘settling in’ period, when the missionary numbers stabilise once again, the use of younger and less experienced missionaries will do the Church more harm than good. I would expect to see fewer conversions per capita (of total membership) as the order of the day from about 2016 onwards. (See also TMD Vol. 2:331-336). I also expect we will see more and more young Mormons continue their internet research, discovering the truth – and their testimonies will not be affected by misinformation, they will be destroyed by the facts. Common sense and reason will lead to acceptance of conclusive evidence verifying the hoax created by Joseph Smith and the continuing conspiracy to deceive members today.