Open Book —
Mormon History

Explanation: The 1832 account states Joseph had already concluded by searching the scriptures that no denomination had the true gospel, and that his motive for praying was to seek forgiveness of his sins.

Explanation: Joseph Smith—History 1:18 states that which church to join "had never entered into my heart" before the vision. This contrasts with the 1832 account, in which Joseph had already drawn that conclusion before praying.

Explanation: The Joseph Smith Papers documents at least four distinct First Vision accounts: the 1832 holographic account, the 1835 account in Joseph's journal, the 1838 account (canonized), and the 1842 Wentworth Letter account. Each differs in details.

Explanation: The 1835 account recorded in Joseph's journal describes a vision of "many angels" and then of the Lord — but makes no mention of God the Father appearing as a distinct personage. This is a significant difference from the 1838 canonized account, in which both the Father and the Son appear and speak.

Explanation: The LDS Church's own Gospel Topics Essay on plural marriage acknowledges approximately 30–40 sealings to Joseph Smith, and that a number of these women were already legally married to other living men at the time.

Explanation: The 1835 D&C Section 101:4 contained a formal declaration that the church believed "one man should have one wife" — a statement of institutional monogamy published at the same time Joseph Smith was secretly practicing plural marriage.

Explanation: In a May 26, 1844 sermon, Joseph Smith publicly denied practicing polygamy, saying he was "the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago" — at a time when he had already been sealed to approximately 30+ women.

Explanation: The LDS Gospel Topics Essay on Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo acknowledges Helen Mar Kimball was 14 years old at the time of her sealing to Joseph Smith. The essay also notes Joseph told her the sealing would bring salvation to her entire family.

Explanation: D&C 132:54 states that if a wife refuses to consent to plural marriage, "she shall be destroyed" — while the husband may still take additional wives, provided those wives are virgins who have not yet made vows to another man. This language remains in canonized LDS scripture.

Explanation: Brigham Young's "Adam-God doctrine," recorded in Journal of Discourses 1:46–53, directly identified Adam as God the Father — a teaching later called "false doctrine" by President Spencer W. Kimball in the October 1976 General Conference.

Explanation: In Journal of Discourses 13:95, Brigham Young stated that all of his sermons sent out to the people could be called scripture — a sweeping claim later complicated by the official renunciation of several of his specific doctrinal teachings.

Explanation: Brigham Young taught in the Journal of Discourses (4:51–57) that there are sins so serious that Christ's blood cannot cover them, and that the sinner's own blood must be shed for a full atonement. This doctrine is no longer taught by the LDS Church.

Explanation: D&C 130:22 explicitly states that "The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's." This sets LDS theology definitively apart from the Nicene tradition of Christianity, which holds God to be incorporeal and omnipresent.

Explanation: Both LDS and non-LDS Egyptologists identified the rediscovered papyri as a common Egyptian "Book of Breathings" prepared for a man named Hor. The LDS Church's own Gospel Topics Essay acknowledges that the translation cannot be verified from the available papyri.

Explanation: The official LDS Gospel Topics Essay on the Book of Abraham acknowledges that the characters on the recovered papyri do not match what Joseph Smith said they meant, and that the translation cannot be verified from the available source documents.

Explanation: In Facsimile 3, Joseph Smith identified Figure 1 as Abraham sitting on Pharaoh's throne. Egyptologists identify this figure as Osiris. The figure Joseph labeled as "Pharaoh" (Figure 2) is identified by Egyptologists as a woman — likely the goddess Isis. The LDS Gospel Topics Essay acknowledges these discrepancies.

Explanation: The LDS Gospel Topics Essay on Book of Mormon Translation confirms that Joseph used a seer stone placed in a hat — the same stone previously used for treasure-seeking — and that the gold plates were frequently absent or covered during the translation process.

Explanation: Court records from 1826 document Joseph Smith being charged with "glass looking" — using a peep stone to locate buried treasure for pay. This occurred before the Book of Mormon translation and involved the same type of seer stone later used in that translation, as confirmed by official LDS history topics.

Explanation: Metallurgical analysis in 1980 confirmed the Kinderhook Plates were 19th-century forgeries. Joseph Smith reportedly began producing a translation of them before their fraudulent origin was established, as documented in official LDS History Topics.

Explanation: Emma's 1879 interview with her son Joseph Smith III describes Joseph placing his face in a hat with a seer stone, and that words appeared until the scribe had written them correctly. She also confirmed the plates were sometimes not present. This account is consistent with other historical records and acknowledged in the LDS Gospel Topics Essay.

Explanation: A comparison of the original 1833 Book of Commandments (Chapter 28) with the corresponding 1835 D&C Section 27 shows that the passage describing John the Baptist's appearance and the conferral of the Aaronic Priesthood was absent from the 1833 text and added in 1835.

Explanation: David Whitmer stated he did not hear of the claimed Aaronic Priesthood restoration by John the Baptist until 1834–36, years after it allegedly occurred in 1829, and that he did not believe the event took place.

Explanation: Book of Commandments 7:3 describes Oliver Cowdery's gift as a "rod of nature" — a reference to a divining rod used for treasure-seeking. This was changed in the 1835 Doctrine & Covenants to "gift of Aaron," obscuring the treasure-seeking connection.

Explanation: Official Declaration 2, announced by President Spencer W. Kimball in 1978, lifted the ban that had excluded Black members from holding the priesthood and from receiving temple ordinances since the 1850s. The LDS Gospel Topics Essay on Race and the Priesthood confirms this history.

Explanation: Multiple documented accounts indicate Martin Harris described seeing the plates in a visionary or spiritual sense — like seeing a city through a mountain — rather than with his natural eyes. He reportedly hefted a box but did not directly examine the contents.

Explanation: The Three Witnesses were Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris. All three eventually separated from Joseph Smith and the church at various points, though none ever formally and publicly recanted their signed testimony of having seen the plates.

Explanation: Historical records show that most living Book of Mormon witnesses and most of Joseph Smith's immediate family initially supported James Strang's claim to succession. Strang produced a letter of appointment dated nine days before Smith's death (now held at Yale's Beinecke Library) and claimed an angelic ordination at the moment of Smith's martyrdom.

Explanation: James Strang's succession claim included an angelic ordination, buried metal plates he called the Plates of Laban, 7 witnesses who signed a formal testimony in language nearly identical to the Book of Mormon witness statement, and a translated scripture called the Book of the Law of the Lord. None of the 7 witnesses ever recanted.

Explanation: The Community of Christ (formerly the RLDS Church) is headquartered in Independence, Missouri — the site Joseph Smith designated as Zion — and does not practice polygamy. It is the second-largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement and has ordained women to the priesthood since 1984.

Explanation: The Smithsonian Human Origins program and the broader scientific consensus establish that skin color variation is determined entirely by melanin biochemistry in response to UV radiation exposure across generations. No spiritual, ancestral conduct, or divine action plays any biological role.

Explanation: Brigham Young taught in multiple sermons that dark skin came as a curse from ancestors who rejected the priesthood. This doctrine was used to justify barring Black members from holding the priesthood and from receiving temple ordinances — a restriction that lasted until 1978's Official Declaration 2.

Explanation: The 2013 Gospel Topics Essay explicitly states the church "disavows" the theories — including ideas about pre-mortal conduct causing the ban — that were previously used to justify excluding Black members. The essay does not clearly identify who instituted the ban, when, or why.

Explanation: Elijah Abel, a Black man, was ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood and served as an LDS missionary during Joseph Smith's lifetime. The LDS Church's own Gospel Topics Essay confirms this, implying the racial priesthood ban was introduced after Joseph Smith's death, primarily under Brigham Young.

Explanation: Boyd K. Packer taught in a 1985 New Era article that "a testimony is to be found in the bearing of it" — the practice of declaring belief aloud as a path to gaining conviction. Apostle Dallin H. Oaks similarly taught in 2008 that "some testimonies are better gained on the feet bearing them than on the knees praying for them."

Explanation: Pew Research documents that members of virtually every major world religion report personal spiritual confirmation of their specific tradition. LDS, FLDS, and Community of Christ members each sincerely bear testimonies affirming Joseph Smith while endorsing mutually exclusive living prophets. If spiritual confirmation via testimony reliably indicates truth, it should not produce contradictory results across competing truth claims.

Explanation: D&C 9:8 describes a "burning in the bosom" as a sign of divine confirmation. This passage is widely used in LDS missionary work and is the basis for the "Moroni's Promise" invitation (Moroni 10:4) for investigators to pray about the Book of Mormon and receive a spiritual witness of its truth.

Explanation: Both secular and LDS-friendly geneticists agree that Native American DNA traces entirely to ancient migrations from Northeast Asia (Siberia), with no detectable Semitic or Middle Eastern ancestry. This is acknowledged in the LDS Church's own Gospel Topics Essay on Book of Mormon and DNA Studies.

Explanation: In 2006, the LDS Church quietly changed the Book of Mormon Introduction from "the principal ancestors of the American Indians" to "among the ancestors of the American Indians" — a significant shift made without public announcement, widely understood as a response to DNA studies confirming Asian (not Middle Eastern) origins for Native Americans.

Explanation: The LDS Gospel Topics Essay proposes that Lehi's family was a small group that migrated into a land already populated by large indigenous groups, and that their genetic contribution would therefore be statistically undetectable in modern or ancient DNA samples — a model sometimes called the "limited geography" or "small founding group" theory.

Explanation: Minutes from May 3, 1834 (Joseph Smith Papers) document the church's name being changed to "The Church of the Latter Day Saints" — removing Christ's name — a state that lasted four years before the 1838 revelation (D&C 115) restored it. This occurred despite 3 Nephi 27:7–8's command that the church must bear Christ's name.

Explanation: The original 1830 Book of Mormon title page (held at the Joseph Smith Papers) identified Joseph Smith as "author and proprietor" — a legal copyright term. Later printings changed this to "translated by Joseph Smith, Jr." The shift has implications for how the book's divine origin is characterized.

Explanation: In 1 Nephi 11, the 1830 edition's verse 18 read "mother of God," verse 21 read "the Eternal Father," and verse 32 read "the Everlasting God." The 1837 edition changed all three to clarify Christ's role as Son, not Father. BYU Studies documents these as among the most theologically significant changes in the text.

Explanation: The 1830 Book of Mormon promised converted Lamanites would become "a white and delightsome people." This was changed to "a pure and delightsome people" in the 1981 edition — the same year as significant church attention to race-related issues — removing an explicit racial promise from the text.

Explanation: Joseph Smith formally declared his candidacy for President of the United States in early 1844 and mounted an active campaign, dispatching missionaries as political canvassers across the country. This is documented in LDS History Topics. He was killed at Carthage Jail in June 1844 before the election.

Explanation: Acting as Mayor of Nauvoo, Joseph Smith ordered the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor press in June 1844. The newspaper had published exposés about plural marriage and other practices. This act led to his arrest on charges of riot and treason, and he was killed at Carthage Jail on June 27, 1844.

Explanation: In the King Follett discourse, Joseph Smith explicitly taught that God was once a man who lived on an earth and progressed to become God — a radical departure from traditional Christian theology and from his own earlier more orthodox-sounding statements about God's nature. This teaching forms the basis of Lorenzo Snow's famous couplet.

Explanation: The SEC's February 2023 press release and cease-and-desist order documents that Ensign Peak Advisors used 13 shell LLCs over more than two decades to avoid disclosing a portfolio that reached approximately $32 billion by 2018. The SEC noted the church was concerned that disclosure "would lead to negative consequences." Ensign Peak paid $4 million; the church paid $1 million.

Explanation: The LDS Church publicly reported detailed income and expenditure figures at every General Conference from 1915 to 1959. In 1959, following deficit spending, the practice ended. The annual auditor's report since then discloses no dollar amounts — only that funds are "properly accounted for." The church does disclose full figures in the UK, where charity law legally requires it.

Explanation: Local LDS leaders — bishops, stake presidents, and others — serve without monetary compensation. However, general authorities such as members of the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency receive a "living allowance" drawn from church funds, as confirmed in official LDS FAQ documentation.

Explanation: The UK Charity Commission requires all registered charities — including the LDS Church's British operation (charity no. 242451) — to file annual accounts with full income, expenditure, and asset figures. The church's 2022 UK filing reported £34.1M in tithing income and £250M in assets. No equivalent legal requirement exists in the United States.

Explanation: Mainstream archaeology finds no evidence of horses, steel tools, wheeled vehicles, or Old World grains in pre-Columbian Americas during the relevant timeframes. Elephants (mastodons/mammoths) went extinct thousands of years before the Jaredite period as described. The LDS Church takes no official position on where Book of Mormon events occurred.

Explanation: The LDS Church's Gospel Topics Essay on Book of Mormon Geography explicitly states that the church takes no official position on where the events described in the Book of Mormon took place. No specific archaeological site has been officially identified as a confirmed Book of Mormon location.

Explanation: North American mammoths and mastodons went extinct roughly 10,000–13,000 years ago, well before the Jaredite civilization described in the Book of Ether. The text places Jaredites arriving after the Tower of Babel, generally estimated in the range of 2500–3000 BCE — thousands of years after proboscideans disappeared from the Americas.

Explanation: D&C 130:22 explicitly states that "The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's" — a defining LDS doctrine that sets the faith apart from mainstream Christian traditions, which hold God to be incorporeal.

Explanation: LDS doctrine of exaltation, taught in D&C 132 and the Gospel Topics Essay "Becoming Like God," holds that faithful humans may ultimately become gods. Lorenzo Snow's famous couplet — confirmed as a valid LDS teaching in the official essay — summarizes this belief.