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This is the second part of a special series on Adoption, where Denver discusses one of the lost ordinances that must be restored as part of the Religion of the Fathers.
When the first temples were built, or inherited by ancient civilizations, the center of life, government, education, culture, and art was at the temple. This was handed down from the first generations. The temple was founded before and will be needed to be the foundation again. When there has been an apostasy, temple building has been part of restoring. A new civilization will only become possible through teachings learned in the future House of God. The necessary ordinances can only be restored in that setting. There you will receive an uncorrupted restoration of the original faith taught to Adam and the patriarchs.
Joseph Smith was told that God intended to restore what was lost (meaning the fullness of the priesthood), but it was only to be accomplished through a temple. These were the Lord’s words to Joseph:
For, for this cause I commanded Moses that he should build a tabernacle, that they should bear it with them in the wilderness, and to build a house in the land of promise that those ordinances might be revealed which had been hid from before [the foundation of] the world… Therefore, verily I say unto you that your anointings, and your washings, and your baptisms for the dead, and your solemn assemblies, and your memorials for your sacrifices by the sons of Levi, and for your oracles in your most holy places, wherein you receive conversations, and your statutes and judgments for the beginning of the revelations and foundation of Zion, and for the glory and honor, and endowment of all her municipals, are ordained by the ordinance of my holy house, which my people are always commanded to build unto my holy name. (T&C 141:12)
Joseph was martyred before there was a place where God could come to restore what had been lost. Joseph began to roll out a portion of temple ceremonial worship, but it was never completed. Uninspired men who have changed, deleted, and added to what remained from Joseph have corrupted those incomplete ceremonies.
The gospel is for redemption. Redemption from the fall returns man to God’s presence. Ascending the heavenly mount is always taught in a properly-organized-temple’s ceremonies. Ascending to heaven, redemption, and becoming part of the Family of God are all part of the ancient temple rites and must also be part of future temple rites.
The concept of “adoption” is widely recognized as part of Christianity. The term is employed loosely to mean that a person believes in Christ and recognizes Him as their Savior. The language of Paul is often cited and understood to claim believers are adopted into God’s family.
For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. (Romans 1:34 RE)
Language in the Book of Mormon has also been used to support a loose understanding of the term “adoption.” Marvel not that all mankind, yea, men and women—all nations, kindreds, tongues and people—must be born again; yea, born of God, changed from their carnal and fallen state, to a state of righteousness, being redeemed of God, becoming his sons and daughters (Mosiah 11:28 RE).
The loose understanding of “adoption” was considerably tightened around October 1843 when Joseph Smith expanded his use of sealing authority. It grew from establishing marriages to include, also, man-to-man sealing through adoption. The last eight months of his life, Joseph sealed or “adopted” other men to himself. There was no settled, formal ordinance that has been preserved, and the proof of Joseph’s practice is mostly post-mortem, as those who were exposed to the practice only vaguely recalled what he had done.
Nearly a decade after Joseph died, when temple ceremonial work resumed in the Endowment House in Salt Lake, Brigham Young declared that adoption was the crowning ordinance. It was more important than the other temple rites, including washing, anointing, endowment, and marriage sealing:
This Chain must not [be] broken for mankind Cannot be saved any other way. This Priesthood must be linked together so that all the Children may be linked to Father Adam. …we will seal men to men by the keys of the Holy Priesthood. This is the highest ordinance. It is the last ordinance of the kingdom of God on the earth and above all the endowments that can be given [to] you. It is a final sealing an Eternal Principle and when once made cannot be broken by the Devil. (The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, Vol. 5, 13 January 1856, Vol. 2, p. 1033-1034)
In that talk, Brigham Young taught that the “turning of hearts to the fathers” foretold by Malachi was only to be fulfilled through adoption. He also taught the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham regarding “his seed” would only be fulfilled through the temple ordinance of adoption. LDS Church leaders unsuccessfully tried to sort out how to practice adoption.
In a meeting of the reorganized School of Prophets in Salt Lake City on January 20, 1868, attended by the church presidency Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Daniel Wells, along with Elders John Taylor, Orson Hyde, George A. Smith, Erastus Snow, George Q. Cannon, Phineas Young, and Joseph Young, the topic of adoption was discussed. President Wells conjectured: “On Adoption he supposed it had reference to the linking together of the Priesthood…that it might reach back to the link that had long since been broken, that it might present one unbroken chain” (Salt Lake School of the Prophets: 1867-1883, pp. 11-12; entry of 20 January 1868). In response Orson Hyde said: “The Doctrine of Adoption he knew but little about and should decline touching it until the line is chalked out” (ibid, p. 12). Scholars struggle to make sense of what Joseph was doing. And the attempts to reconstruct Joseph’s later adoption innovation are insufficient to give any firm understanding of what took place, how, or why.
Thirty years before he would become church president, Wilford Woodruff concluded that adoptions would be something a resurrected Joseph Smith would return to sort out during the millennium: “Man also will have to be sealed to man until the chain is united from Father Adam down to the last Saint. This will be the work of the Millenium and Joseph Smith will be the man to attend…it or dictate it” (Salt Lake School of the Prophets: 1867-1883, p. 42; December 11, 1869).
A half-century after Joseph’s death, the apostles struggled to know how it ought to work or who should be sealed to whom—how and what effect it would have in the afterlife. In a meeting on June 1, 1893, attended by Lorenzo Snow, Franklin D. Richards, Francis M. Lyman, John Taylor, Marriner Merrill, Abraham Cannon, George F. Gibbs, John D. McAllister, Nephi Cannon [Clayton] and James Jack, they “had some talk about the ordinance of adoption in the temple. Joseph F. Smith said Pres. [Brigham] Young had told him to follow in ordinance work for the dead the rules which [would] ordinarily govern similar work for the living” (Candid Insights of a Mormon Apostle: The Diaries of Abraham H. Cannon, 1889-1895, p. 388). The practice was to seal faithful children to parents, and faithful parents to Joseph Smith. Woodruff explained: “I was sealed to my father, and then had him sealed to the Prophet Joseph” (ibid, p.488).
The concept of adoption affected how people understood the afterlife. This led some people to view adoption as a chance to pursue their self-interests. People began to aspire to improve their post-mortality by recruiting and acquiring descendants using adoption. The Logan Temple president was told to end his practice of recruiting adoptees. Eventually president Wilford W. Woodruff announced a final adoption practice on April 8, 1894: “Pres. Woodruff announced the doctrine of the sealing of children to parents as far back as…possible to trace the genealogy, and then seal the last member to the Prophet Joseph [Smith]” (ibid, p. 496).
Family relationships were reckoned by sealing, not biology. For example, Heber J. Grant was the biological son of Jedediah Grant, but because his mother was sealed to Joseph Smith, he was regarded as Joseph Smith’s son.
What Joseph Smith understood about adoption did not get passed to subsequent church leaders clearly enough to preserve the practice intact. In September 1887, two months after John Taylor died, his son-in-law, John Whitaker, wrote in his diary:
I went back to the office where I found [Apostle] Brother Lorenzo Snow and [First Council of the Seventy member] Jacob Gates. They conversed a long time. He finally entered into a deep subject on “The Law of Adoption.” Brother Gates said he didn’t believe in it as did also Brother Snow. He [?] referenced back to the time that Brigham Young was in Kirtland[;] he had a person asked him about it and he said “I know nothing about it.” President Taylor on one different occasion had a letter written to him for the following reason: it was [two undecipherable words followed by] of … J[oseph] Smith or rather Sister Eliza R. Snow Smith (Brother Gates didn’t know which)…about 70 persons were adopted into President J[oseph] Smith’s [family;] Sister Snow Smith said “she didn’t understand the law” but had no objections to them being sealed to her husband. And this led Brother Gates to write to President Taylor asking him if he knew anything about it. He never answered the letter. But on another occasion Brother Gates saw him and asked him plainly. President Taylor said he knew nothing about it. And also just lately when asked by Brother Snow, President…Woodruff knew nothing about it. [“]It hadn’t been revealed to him.” I know this at this time to say [or show] a prevailing feeling among the Twelve that they don’t understand it. George…Cannon also said he didn’t understand it. (“Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism,” Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 37, No. 3, Summer 2011, p. 3; pp. 101-102)
As John Taylor’s health was declining in the last month of his life, Wilford Woodruff recorded in his journal on June 8, 1887: “I wrote 4 Letters to Jaques Emma Clara & Roskelly. I did not rest well. To much deep thinking to Sleep” (Wilford Woodruff’s Journals, Vol. 8: 1 January 1881 to 31 December 1888, p. 441). Roskelly was employed as the recorder in the Logan Utah temple. That letter included the following mention of adoption:
I have adopted this rule in Sealing and Adoptions: to take such as the Lord has given me, and leave the result[s] in His hands….Paul talked a good deal about Adoptions, but we did not understand much about it, until the Lord revealed it to Joseph Smith, and we may not, perhaps, understand it now as fully as we should. Still the Sealings and Adoptions are true principles, or our Prophets have been badly deceived. (“Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism,” Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 37, No. 3, Summer 2011, p. 3; p. 103)
Adoption became progressively more controversial as time passed. Since the idea was not well understood by church leaders, they could provide no answers to questions on the subject. While bishop, Edward Bunker denounced the idea altogether, resulting in an 1892 church court that the church president and one of his counselors attended. The former bishop was charged with teaching false doctrine, and in his defense, he wrote a letter to the high council stating:
The adoption of one man to another out of the lineage, I do not understand and for that reason I would not enter into it. And adopting the dead to the living is as adopting the father to the son. I don’t believe there is a man on earth that thoroughly understands the principle. If there is, I have never heard it taught as I could understand it. I believe it is permmited [sic] more to satisfy the minds of the people for the present until the Lord reveals more fully the principle. (Edward Bunker, Letter to the Bunkerville High Council, April 25, 1891, Edward Bunker Autobiography (1894) 37, microfilm of holograph, MS 1581, LDS Church History Library)
In his summary of the court proceeding, Wilford Woodruff relegated the subject of adoption to one of the “mysteries” which church members ought to avoid discussing because they cause difficulties. He wrote: “June 11, 1892 We Met in the Tabernacle at 10 oclock on the trial of Bishop Bunker on Doctrin [sic]. We talked to them Plainly of the impropriety of indulging in Misteries [sic] to Create difficulties among the Saints. They professed to be Satisfied” (Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, supra, 9:203).
Although John Taylor perpetuated the practice, over time it diminished and then disappeared beginning with Wilford Woodruff’s presidency. Woodruff changed the policy in April 1894 to seal within biological families as far back as were known and then to seal and adopt the last parents to Joseph Smith. This made adoption less of an issue and the genealogical search for ancestors of greater concern. But by 1922 the de-emphasis on adoption allowed it to be ignored altogether. The practice Woodruff announced in 1894 was deleted in the published account by the Utah Genealogical Society and from Clark’s Messages of The First Presidency. Today adoption has vanished from the LDS church and was never practiced by the RLDS church or other branches of the Restoration.
Joseph Smith did not leave the Christian practice of “adoption” a loose idea, with believers becoming sons of God by conversion, belief, or baptism. He tied it to both authority to seal and an authoritative ordinance. Both of those were lost when Joseph and Hyrum were killed.
If adoption is (as Brigham Young thought in 1856) the highest ordinance above all the endowments that can be given, if it is needed for the gospel (as taught to Abraham) to be restored, then the loss of adoption rites is indeed a sign of apostasy. Brigham Young taught adoption would bind a person beyond the devil’s power to break. But adoption was abandoned before the end of the 1800s. Adoption will need to be restored as a rite (with an accompanying authoritative ordinance and sealing) in order for the things Joseph Smith alone understood and taught to be renewed.
The LDS church has attempted to preserve other ordinances Joseph Smith began. Unfortunately, those ordinances have also been poorly preserved, changed, and compromised.
Joseph did not live to see the complete Nauvoo temple, and he never finished the temple ceremonies.
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Civilization, p. 30-32 (of 32)
There is work to be done. Almost all of it is internal to us. The five prepared virgins and the strangers who brought a wedding garment will be those who keep the covenant. It is designed to give birth to a new society, new culture, and permit a new civilization to be founded.
The Lord’s civilization will require His tabernacle at the center. Through it, a recovered religion will be fully developed. God’s house will include a higher law—an education about the universe—and a divine university will be established. It will be an ensign in the mountains, and people from all over the earth will say: Come, let us go up to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us; we will learn of his paths, to walk in them (see Isaiah 1:5; 2 Nephi 8:4 RE). That place will house a new civilization. There will be no hermit gurus proud of their enlightenment.
No one will offer himself or herself up as some great idol to follow. It will be a place of equality, where people are meek and lowly, serving one another without any attempt to compete for “chief seats.”
Christ’s apostles competed to be greater than one another. In the New Covenants, Luke 13:6, Christ’s reaction is recorded:
There was also a strife among them: who of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the gentiles exercise lordship over them, and they who exercise authority upon them are called benefactors, but it ought not…be so with you. But he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who is chief, as he who does serve. For whether is he greater who sits at [the] meal, or he who serves? I am not as he who sits at a meal, but I am among you as he who serves.
Christ is the great example. Christ would have fit into Enoch’s city, would have been welcomed among Melchizedek’s people, and could have dwelt in peace with the Nephites of Fourth Nephi. Has He, as once before between Jerusalem and Emmaus, walked among them unnoticed to enjoy their peaceful company?
I cannot keep the covenant. You cannot keep the covenant. Only we can keep the covenant.
But if we do, God’s work will continue and will include the fullness previously offered to the gentiles and rejected by them. It is impossible to understand the promises that Elijah will “turn the hearts of the children to the Fathers” unless the fullness is recovered. Joseph Smith cannot fix or finish the Restoration by returning as a resurrected being in the Millennium, as conjectured by Wilford Woodruff. If the necessary rites are not returned before the Lord’s return, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming (JSH 3:4 RE). There will be a new civilization built around God’s tabernacle where He will dwell. We know the purpose of that house will be for the God of Jacob to teach those people to walk in His ways. We know Joseph Smith began adoption sealing as the highest ordinance and is now been lost.
We have been given a new revelation that explains resurrection and adoption to the Fathers in heaven are linked together:
I was shown that the spirits that rose were limited to a direct line back to Adam, requiring the hearts of the fathers and the hearts of the children to be bound together by sealing, confirmed by covenant and [by] the Holy Spirit of Promise. This is the reason that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have entered into their exaltation according to the promises and sit upon thrones and are not angels but are gods. (T&C 157:42-43)
The fullness can only be returned through a temple accepted by God as His House. He must return to restore that which has been lost. But ungodly people cannot build an acceptable house for God. There is no commandment to build a temple because people are not yet qualified to do so. So far we have been spared the experience in Nauvoo, where an abortive attempt to build a temple in which the fullness could be restored resulted in the Lord not performing His oath. Nor did the Lord fulfill the promise they expected to receive. Instead of blessings, the people in Nauvoo brought upon themselves cursings, wrath, indignation, and judgments by their follies and abominations. If we are going to receive that same condemnation, it would be better to not begin to build a House of God.
Only we can keep the covenant. Only those who keep the covenant together can establish a new civilization with God’s holy House at its center.
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Talk 10, p. 22-23 (of 38)
every time there’s a covenant, there is always a land. And this is the land that God covenants He will give. And the people to whom He will give it are those that come back and receive the covenant, including the Gentiles in whose ears this first shall sound…if they will come. And coming unto the covenant—that is not yet possible. It requires more than has at present been given. It is possible to come in and become part of His church. It is possible, if you follow as you’ve been instructed today, to become part of the church He recognizes and will preserve. But coming fully into the covenant… That will require more than has at present be given. It will require a covenant. It will require adoption. It will require sealing. It was what Joseph looked forward to have happen at some point in the future during the days of his prophecy.
And they shall assist my people, the remnant of Jacob, and also as many of the house of Israel as shall come, that they may build a city, which shall be called the New Jerusalem. And then shall they assist my people that they may be gathered in, who are scattered upon all the face of the land, in unto the New Jerusalem. And then shall the power of heaven [in this case, it is the singular—it’s not the “powers”—because when you have Him present with you, you have all the authority—then shall the power of heaven] come down among them; and I also will be in the midst. And then shall the work of the Father commence at that day… (Ibid, vs. 23-26)
Christ will come. Once the covenant has been renewed, the city of Zion will follow. The Lord’s presence will come, and then the final stage begins.
…even when this gospel shall be preached among the remnant of this people. Verily I say unto you, at that day shall the work of the Father commence among…the dispersed of my people, yea, even the tribes which have been lost, which the Father hath led away out of Jerusalem. Yea, the work shall commence among all the dispersed of my people, with the Father to prepare the way whereby they may [be]come [in] unto me, that they may call on the Father in my name. Yea, and then shall the work commence, with the Father among all nations in preparing the way whereby his people may be gathered home to the land of their inheritance. And they shall go out from all nations; …they shall not go out in haste, nor…by flight, for I will go before them, saith the Father, and I will be their rearward. (3 Nephi 21:26-29; see also 3 Nephi 9:12-10:1 RE)
It’s not gonna happen in haste. And the work of the Father that will commence in those nations, to commence the possibility for the gathering, will involve destroying a great deal of political, social, and military obstructions that prevent the gathering, prevent even the preaching to those that would gather if they could hear. But the work of the Father (and it’s always masculine when it comes to destruction)… The work of the Father is going to bring this to an end. All the scattered remnants will be brought back again. The original, unified family of God will be restored again. The Fathers will have our hearts turned to them because in that day, once it’s permitted to get that far, we will be part of that family again.
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Covenant Pattern, p. 11-13 (of 27)
Why is it not your ambition to join the Fathers of whom Malachi spoke, who were the first fathers, who are the fathers now in heaven, having returned back in a resurrected and glorified form, to dwell in the heavens? Those are the ones about whom the promise is made. You’re one motorcycle accident away from your dead kindred. You’re one bout of some nasty, infectious disease from joining them. There’s no great accomplishment to be spoken of by dying and going into the world of the spirits. The promises are more glorious, but they are also about something far more ancient.
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall seal the heart of the Fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their Fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” (Malachi 1:12 RE).
That is how the prophecy of Malachi is worded in the Old Covenants (in the scriptures that are being published now that include Joseph Smith’s interpretation or inspired rendering of the text). “He shall seal the heart of the Fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the Fathers.” That’s not there in the typical rendering and not in the King James Version, because there it says, he will turn the hearts of the children to the fathers (see Malachi 4:6 LE).
This is referred to, also, in the New Covenants:
“And he shall go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of
the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready
a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:3 RE) is how it’s rendered in Luke.
In 3 Nephi, the Lord quotes Malachi to have this information added to the record in possession of the Nephites. This is how the Lord rendered it:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful
day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart
of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse”
(3 Nephi 11:5 RE).
In the Joseph Smith History, when he was visited by the angelic visitor Nephi, he quoted the prophecy in these words:
“And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and
the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers; if it were not so, the whole earth
would be utterly wasted at his coming” (JSH 3:4 RE).
So, now we have (in various renderings of this) something that is referred to as “sealing hearts of Fathers to children and children to Fathers,” something that is called “turning the hearts,” and something that is called “promises made to the fathers.”
“Promises made to the fathers” are covenants that God made with them concerning the last days’ work, in which there would again be on the earth those who are connected to the Fathers in a way that avoids the earth becoming utterly wasted at His coming. This is something that has to be attended to through the restoration and construction of an authentic temple conforming to the pattern of heaven, in which these things can be attended to and the knowledge and understanding imputed, in order for people to comprehend what it means to be a “greater follower of righteousness.”
This was a revelation given in March 2015: “Hence, the great need to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and the fathers to the children—and this too by covenant and sealing through the Holy Spirit of Promise” (Plural Marriage, Denver C. Snuffer, Jr. March 22, 2015). This is to restore us—as God restored Abraham— to the original religion.
Abraham came into this world uniquely different from the fathers that had gone before. There was an unbroken chain that continued from father to son and father to son, from the time of Adam, down through the generations until the time of Melchizedek. All of them were participants in an unbroken familial line. Abraham came into an apostate family in which his father worshipped—indeed made—dumb idols as the god to be worshipped. Therefore, Abraham is the first one that will join this line, who emerges from apostasy into possession of the original holy order. In that sense, Abraham is representative of all who would follow after, that seek after righteousness, in a world that is constantly overcome by apostasy.
Apostasy exists the instant that God ceases to talk, the instant that God ceases to restore, the instant that further light and knowledge by conversing with the Lord through the veil comes to an end. Abraham—because he came at a time of apostasy and because his father had turned to the worshipping of dumb idols—could not inherit that same standing as the first uninterrupted period, unless it were possible for that to be accomplished through adoption. Therefore, Abraham represents the revolutionary idea that one can emerge out of a state of apostasy back into (and be adopted into) the line that is in possession of the fullness of the gospel and to be one equal with them. Abraham represents an astonishing revolutionary moment in the history of God’s dealing with mankind, and he also represents the opportunity for redemption for others at remote times, in remote places, who dwell among people who are apostate. It represents hope for us. And so, when the hearts of the children are turned to the fathers, that hope is verified and confirmed primarily through God’s covenant with Abraham. Abraham inherited the promises that had been given to the first fathers, to be sure, but Abraham represents hope for us. He represents our opportunity to, likewise, obtain that same hope, which was given to Abraham 430 years before the law was added through Moses.
Now, at the time of the founding of Egypt, the original Pharaoh of Egypt was a righteous man who sought earnestly to imitate the order that began with the first fathers. The government of Egypt was an attempt to imitate Adam and imitate a family order that came down from the beginning. That founding occurred at a period that is referred to as Predynastic; and the Early Dynastic Period also is plagued with some lack of records, some destruction of material. The Old Kingdom really begins with the Fourth Dynasty, and it’s after the Eighth Dynasty that what is referred to in Egyptian history as the First Intermediate Period took place.
The First Intermediate Period represented a radical period of apostasy from what had gone on before. While there had been an effort to preserve the order that came down from the beginning in Egypt, the First Intermediate Period represented something very much akin to what would take place in the Jewish Kingdom at the time of the bickering and the fighting and the strife of the Deuteronomists, when the Southern Kingdom was taken captive into Babylon. And then a remnant of the Southern Kingdom returned back to rebuild the temple, at which point the religion had been remarkably revised and the content changed to reflect the kind of strife that was taking place just a few years before the “migration out” of Lehi and his family (that we read in the first chapters of the Book of Mormon—where the idea of the Messiah was trying to be suppressed, trying to be altered). One of the reasons why Zenos was dropped out of the record of the Old Testament is because it’s filled with Christological content that they intended to suppress.
Well, the kingdom of Egypt was going through something similar, and in the First Intermediate Period, they were forsaking things that had come down from the beginning. What is remarkable is that Abraham entered Egypt to teach the Pharaoh immediately following the First Intermediate Period. Now, the right that Pharaoh claimed was not his; indeed, when Abraham went into Egypt, Abraham entered possessing that right. (I don’t know that he claimed that in the presence of Pharaoh; that might have been fatal.) But he came to teach, and he came to restore, and he came to reinvigorate the understanding of the Egyptians concerning that first order that came down from the beginning. Therefore, when Abraham came, he came not merely as evidence that you can emerge from apostasy and inherit the rights that belong to the first fathers by adoption; he also came as a messenger and a restorer to provide such light and knowledge as those who were his contemporaries were willing to receive.
In many respects, you are now in possession of a great body of knowledge—much of it originally established through Joseph Smith, but neglected or misunderstood or misapplied or currently being opposed—that the people among whom you live would benefit by having that knowledge restored to them.
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The foregoing excerpts are taken from:
- Denver’s conference talk entitled “Civilization”, given in Grand Junction, CO on April 21, 2019;
- Denver’s 40 Years in Mormonism Series, Talk #10 entitled “Preserving the Restoration” given in Mesa, AZ on September 9th, 2014; and
- Denver’s conference talk entitled “The Book of Mormon Holds the Covenant Pattern for the Full Restoration” given in Boise, ID on September 22, 2019.