"Predatory Techniques of Mormonism's Prophet Joseph Smith"

I highly recommend the video lecture, "Predatory Techniques of Mormonism's Prophet Joseph Smith" on YouTube by Mormon Discussion Inc.

Listening to this video above, you will understand why John Turner, author of the book Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet, begins his book by basically saying he would not have trusted Joseph Smith to be around his daughters; and even the devout Mormon historian Patrick Mason, said in a Mormon Stories podcast interview around 2024, that trying to defend Joseph Smith's polygamous marriages would be like trying to put lipstick on a pig!

The information covered in this video lecture linked above is pretty damning. Even if the Mormon apologist were to argue against calling these young women "children" by saying they were at least 14 years old (a legal age to marry at the time in the 1800s), you still have a clear case of grooming behavior. You have Joseph Smith isolating the teenage Fanny Alger, leading Emma to find some interaction between Joseph and Fanny in a barn. You have Joseph Smith adopting foster daughters and then marrying them plurally while in some cases sending the father away on a mission! 

At 39-44 minutes, they discuss Orson Hyde and how after Smith sends him on a 3-year mission, Smith marries his wife. They discuss how Joseph Smith creates the problem of Hyde's wife becoming desolate leading to Joseph Smith composing a so-called "revelation" where the Lord allegedly directs Smith to take care of her financially after she agrees to become one of his next plural wives. This reminds me of how when many Christians were speculating on whether or not Native Americans were Jewish or not (i.e. from the Lost Tribes of Israel), Joseph Smith took advantage of their uncertainty by answering by Smith claiming absolute certainty through his own revelatory book of scripture called the Book of Mormon. In the video above they mentioned other times when an LDS man was sent away on a mission and then Joseph Smith marries his wife plurally. 

As I listened to all of this, I could not help but think of the content in my Holy Joe series (see the table of contents for this site), where I point out that it is clear that Joseph Smith, even if he was to a certain degree what Dan Vogel calls a Pious Fraud (meaning he was sincere in his deceptions to create conversions to Christianity), that doesn't change the fact that he clearly utilized manipulation tactics: like threatening his Book of Mormon readers with hellfire and scaring them with talk of the Devil and demons. We know this was manipulation because in D&C 19, Smith states that such Hell language was used to "work upon" the reader. So even though  Smith himself did not believe in an actual hell, he was willing to use such language to intimidate and mentally terrorize his early readers into conversion. If he was capable of doing that then he was capable of threatening women equally deceptive claim that an angel with a sword would kill him if they didn't become his next plural wife; or Smith saying that if the young woman did not marry him in a plural marriage the young girl's family would not gain exaltation. We can thus see a clear pattern of behavior, from the hellfire threats of the Book of Mormon to the angel with a flaming sword and telling young women that if they don't have sex with him her family will not get into the highest level of heaven. 

When you then realize that Smith’s whole theology after 1840 is based on justifying his sex life, by saying the Gods themselves accumulate wives and concubines in order to grow their kingdoms, as I discuss here; and it becomes clear that what Mormonism today calls "scripture," is basically a codified text on how to manipulate your way to gaining a harem of wives and concubines. 

"Latter Days" It Ain't: Smith’s End-Times Doom & Gloom Preaching and Pay Tithing to Avoid the Day of "Burning""

 

See the video clip Nelson: Pay tithing or else you will burn at the day of vengeance by Thoughts on Things and Stuff. The description of the video states:

In the April 2011 General Conference, [LDS] Apostle Russell M. Nelson teaches that one must pay tithing to the church in order to receive certain blessings and that if you do not pay tithing, then you will not be counted among the Lord's people and you will not be protected at the day of "Vengeance and burning."

The article Tithing: A Blessing from Heavenly Father to Help Us on Our Mortal Journey by Elder Marcus B. Nash (President, Africa West Area Presidency) on the LDS Church website states:

While recently traveling on the Africa continent, President Russell M. Nelson stated: “We preach tithing to the poor people of the world because the poor people of the world have had cycles of poverty, generation after generation. That same poverty continues from generation to another, until people pay their tithing.” It is living the law of tithing that will break the cycle of poverty. Those who live this law will join the millions of faithful members of the Church who bear solemn and joyous testimony that the Lord keeps His promises to those who love Him and keep His commandments.

 

On page 12 of An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton, edited by George D. Smith, we read:

Victims of the Industrial Revolution [in tne 1800s] found it easy to believe that the end of the world was imminent. Farmers and craftsmen had left their ancestral villages to find employment in large cities. Factory workers lived in crowded tenements with poor sanitation and rampant disease; unemployment and homelessness were prevalent.

 

Latter-day Saint missionaries to England brought the good news that Jesus would soon introduce a glorious new kingdom over which he would rule for a thousand years. Nineteenth-century ministers of several faiths preached the Millennium which would close out the history of the world (Rev. 20:1-5), but the Mormons offered a concrete plan of action. Regardless of class distinction, members were invited to “gather” to help build the Kingdom of God, first in Illinois and then in Utah.

 

In his journals Joseph Smith had recorded a vision telling him that “the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors.”[17] Unlike other millennialists Smith avoided the pitfall of predicting an exact date for the end of the world. However, when he resided in Missouri the prophet designated a spot on the Grand River in the northwest part of the state as the location of the biblical Garden of Eden and the place where Jesus Christ would return.[18] In 1835 he said that “fifty-six years should wind up the scene” and eight years later added “there are those of the rising generation who shall not taste death till Christ comes.”[19] Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt even wrote to England’s Queen Victoria to tell her that the end of the world was at hand, that governments and churches would vanish, and that God was about to establish “a new and universal kingdom, under the immediate administration of the Messiah and his [Latter-day] Saints.” Pratt reflected the general feeling in the Mormon British mission during the 1840s that the millennial kingdom would be on the earth by the end of the century.[20]