Elder Cook to Take on Church History Questions!

[blazerb]

They tell us to go read the essays.

Yeah, and then what? There is no followup for problems you find in the essays or questions that are not answered by them. The real purpose of the essays is precisely so they can say "go read the essays," then dust off their hands and walk away, knowing that a) very few members will actually read the essays, and b) those who do read them and are not satisfied can and will be treated as unrepentant, hard-hearted, darkened-countenanced lesser-thans.

You're absolutely right. The existence of the essays is curious. Most members don't care that they exist. The members don't care enough to spend time reading them. They can only bolster the faith of those who just need to know that they are available or those who want to read them but are not inquisitive enough to want to know more. Anyone who dives in and starts looking at the footnotes has entered the rabbit hole.

[Emower]

I missed that. When did the Freudian slip occur?

Try this:

https://youtu.be/K_ste5qjZPQ?t=6199

(Hasn't been edited out... Yet. )

Thanks for linking that! I kept going back over his precatory comments and couldn't find it. Now I know why!

I have to admit I have misspoken enough that I will give Elder Cook the benefit of the doubt on this. It is funny, though, isn't it?

The thing I find more problematic is leading off with the question about hiding church history. Why does this always come up? Why was it the first question they answered?

Because it is a perennial problem! And the side-stepping of the issue doesn't help people who know the church has been hiding stuff for decades.

I immediately thought of Exhibit A in this regard, which is Boyd K. Packer's talk, "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect," which loosely translated means, "The Church Leaders are Far, Far Greater than Your Puny Brain," or put another way, "When the Prophet Speaks, the Thinking has been Done."

I saw how Elder Cook tried to get around this one by specifically limiting his claims of not hiding history to the 22-years he has been an apostle. He seems to have been trying to avoid the Elder Ballardism from last November that church leaders have never hidden anything about the church.

But even then, I have to say that Elder Cook is the apostle who claimed in GC a few years back that the church is not losing members in unprecedented numbers; that in fact, the church is strong!

So his record on telling the truth is not stellar, which makes me tend to doubt his claims about the LDS Church not hiding history even within the 22-years of his apostolic tenure.

I have to listen to the whole thing when I have the chance.

May want to do a podcast on it or something . . .

Holy cow, he has been an apostle for 22 years? I am a young guy and that makes me feel old...

I will look forward to that podcast...

[Arcturus]

Try this:

https://youtu.be/K_ste5qjZPQ?t=6199

(Hasn't been edited out... Yet. )

Thanks for linking that! I kept going back over his precatory comments and couldn't find it. Now I know why!

I have to admit I have misspoken enough that I will give Elder Cook the benefit of the doubt on this. It is funny, though, isn't it?

The thing I find more problematic is leading off with the question about hiding church history. Why does this always come up? Why was it the first question they answered?

Because it is a perennial problem! And the side-stepping of the issue doesn't help people who know the church has been hiding stuff for decades.

I immediately thought of Exhibit A in this regard, which is Boyd K. Packer's talk, "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect," which loosely translated means, "The Church Leaders are Far, Far Greater than Your Puny Brain," or put another way, "When the Prophet Speaks, the Thinking has been Done."

I saw how Elder Cook tried to get around this one by specifically limiting his claims of not hiding history to the 22-years he has been an apostle. He seems to have been trying to avoid the Elder Ballardism from last November that church leaders have never hidden anything about the church.

But even then, I have to say that Elder Cook is the apostle who claimed in GC a few years back that the church is not losing members in unprecedented numbers; that in fact, the church is strong!

So his record on telling the truth is not stellar, which makes me tend to doubt his claims about the LDS Church not hiding history even within the 22-years of his apostolic tenure.

I have to listen to the whole thing when I have the chance.

May want to do a podcast on it or something . . .

Holy cow, he has been an apostle for 22 years? I am a young guy and that makes me feel old...

I will look forward to that podcast...

Wasn’t Cook promoted to apostle in 2007? He’s only halfway to 22. Or is being a 70 equivalent to being an apostle now?

[nibbler]

Holy cow, he has been an apostle for 22 years? I am a young guy and that makes me feel old...

I will look forward to that podcast...

He's a few weeks shy of being an apostle for 11 years. Maybe what they meant is that he's been a general authority for 22 years.

[Arcturus]

Try this:

https://youtu.be/K_ste5qjZPQ?t=6199

(Hasn't been edited out... Yet. )

Looks like the video was taken off youtube.

[Palerider]

Try this:

https://youtu.be/K_ste5qjZPQ?t=6199

(Hasn't been edited out... Yet. )

Looks like the video was taken off youtube.

Time for some retro-fitting....???

And the sad thing is they will look even more ridiculous for fixing the video than if they just left it alone. They can’t win here.

[Rob4Hope]

Try this:

https://youtu.be/K_ste5qjZPQ?t=6199

(Hasn't been edited out... Yet. )

Looks like the video was taken off youtube.

Time for some retro-fitting....???

And the sad thing is they will look even more ridiculous for fixing the video than if they just left it alone. They can’t win here.

If they fix it, it will be a hilarious self indictment. This whole thing is silly. It seems silly, even ridiculous. And yet there are so many TBM who are intellectually lazy that buy it.

What is sad is the idea that "the thinking has been done" is welcomed by SOOOO MANY! They don't' want to THINK. That takes effort and may require turning off the big-screen.

[wtfluff]

Looks like the video was taken off youtube.

Time for some retro-fitting....???

And the sad thing is they will look even more ridiculous for fixing the video than if they just left it alone. They can’t win here.

If they fix it, it will be a hilarious self indictment. This whole thing is silly. I seems silly, even ridiculous. And yet there are so many TBM who are intellectually lazy that buy it.

What is sad is the idea that "the thinking has been done" is welcomed by SOOOO MANY! They don't' want to THINK. That takes effort and may require turning off the big-screen.

My goodness. I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry that LDS/Mormon-Inc. is so predictable.

The video has been moved, and it has been edited:

https://youtu.be/kpLN6AomRQY?t=3471

Give me a few minutes and I'll find a link to the original.

Edit, here's the original:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... rtyred_in/

I'm sure others have copies of the full original....

[consiglieri]

Sweet Jesus!

Why do they do these kinds of things?

On the one hand, I get that Elder Cook didn't actually mean to say the Savior was martyred in Carthage, Illinois.

And I get the fact that somebody caught the slip, and wanted to correct it.

All of this makes sense to me; so they edit it with a cut to the audience instead of to Elder Cook and slice out the Savior and let the "s" stand for Joseph Smith which everybody knows is what he meant.

Like I say, I get it.

But this is also the church that is famous for retrofitting talks to make them say what they were supposed to say, a la Elder Poelman in 1984.

They really should put a little note on the new video showing the edit and why.

I am guessing they didn't do that, though.

[wtfluff]

But this is also the church that is famous for retrofitting talks to make them say what they were supposed to say, a la Elder Poelman in 1984.

They really should put a little note on the new video showing the edit and why.

I am guessing they didn't do that, though.

Even more ironic that the entire video was basically designed to try and preach: "We don't try to hide history," yet they are incapable of letting a simple freudian slip remain, and they re-write history to make Elder Crook look better.

[Palerider]

I'm a little astounded.

I really thought they would let it stand and just give people the credit for having brains enough to realize what happened. It was an honest, (albeit telling in a way) mistake.

But they must be extremely sensitive to the accusation that they are Joseph worshippers. They couldn't afford to allow critics this unforced error to be used against them. It's hitting much too close to home.


In their guilty mental state they have no choice but to change it. They can't stop themselves. Even when making the correction makes them look paranoid.

ETA:

In the video I watch the sound is basically blank when it identifies who was martyred at Carthage. And that is actually quite correct. Someone was murdered at Carthage....but nobody was martyred.

[Dravin]

What gets me is they seem to be too slow to realize that editing the video doesn't pull the original back from the internet. So they've not removed the clip from existence, they've just provided an edited clip to be held up in contrast to the surviving original.

[RubinHighlander]

The church would need about 8 of these sessions at 3 hours a piece to even begin to address all the problems. Do they really think one session is going to get it?

I think they know this, which is why they keep it short and keep the answers to "Go read the essays." They know the average TBM will simply be too lazy to do so and most of the others that do bother to find the essays and read them will be satisfied with the half truth apologetics. Those TBMs can then smugly look down on their NOM and NoMo friends that now they believe they have been there and done that and there's none to molest nor make afraid.

[nibbler]

What gets me is they seem to be too slow to realize that editing the video doesn't pull the original back from the internet. So they've not removed the clip from existence, they've just provided an edited clip to be held up in contrast to the surviving original.

The lost 116 milliseconds.

[Arcturus]

My goodness. I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry that LDS/Mormon-Inc. is so predictable.

The video has been moved, and it has been edited:

https://youtu.be/kpLN6AomRQY?t=3471

Give me a few minutes and I'll find a link to the original.

Edit, here's the original:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... rtyred_in/

I'm sure others have copies of the full original....

wtfluff - can you make an OP with these links for easier access in the future?

[wtfluff]

My goodness. I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry that LDS/Mormon-Inc. is so predictable.

The video has been moved, and it has been edited:

https://youtu.be/kpLN6AomRQY?t=3471

Give me a few minutes and I'll find a link to the original.

Edit, here's the original:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... rtyred_in/

I'm sure others have copies of the full original....

wtfluff - can you make an OP with these links for easier access in the future?

You want a new post with a link to the original (deleted) YouTube video, along with this last link to the new edited video, along with the Reddit snippet?

(I'm pretty sure folks who have copies of the complete original video will upload them somewhere, and LDS/Mormon-Inc. will more than likely have them removed. )

[Arcturus]

You want a new post with a link to the original (deleted) YouTube video, along with this last link to the new edited video, along with the Reddit snippet?

(I'm pretty sure folks who have copies of the complete original video will upload them somewhere, and LDS/Mormon-Inc. will more than likely have them removed. )

Yep. I'd love to reference this in the future and not have to find it on page 4 of this OP...

Good luck to the church to get that off the web. It's interesting that they chose to edit it. What's worse, the simple slip-up on tape or the coverup? Surely they must know that it would be recorded by someone and the cover-up would be documented.