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- [00:02]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Welcome to the Standard of Truth podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat and Dr. Richard Leduc explore the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the life and teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith. They examine the original historical sources and provide context for events of the past. They approach the history of the church with faith, expertise and humor. Foreign hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. That's right, we haven't been canceled quite yet. I guess since we have no sponsor and it's just us, we we'd essentially be canceling ourselves. So I am your host, Dr. Garrett Dirkmont and I'm joined by my as yet not canceled but. But we're looking into it. Co host Dr. Richard Leduc.
- [00:59]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Hello Garrett. Thanks for having me back. For this non sponsored section of the Standard of Truth podcast, I've sent out many, many requests to not sponsor the podcast but to sponsor little bits, right, like, like the Phoebe Draper Mailbag sponsored by Briggs and Stratton. They weren't interested. Small engines didn't. They didn't see the connection. Although I do feel like for the majority of the people that listen to this podcast, it's people that are forced in the back of squad cars. It's youth that are forced in the back of a car while their parents are listening. It's my mom, it's your mom. It's missionaries that have nothing else to do on a P day. Or it is people mowing their lawns. I spoke with a friend of mine, Spencer, that's when he listens to it. And so I feel like there is a direct connection to Brazenstraten. So, you know, obviously we're Toro people now and that's where we're going to be reaching out to them.
- [02:02]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
You know, I think I like the idea that that means our listenership should pick up in the summertime if you're primarily a lawnmower. Now when I mow the lawn, I don't know what lawnmower Spencer has. When I mow the lawn, my lawnmower is, is so loud that I can't hear anything even if I have headphones in while I'm mowing. So he must have better headphones.
- [02:28]
Dr. Richard Leduc
He has aircraft carrier headphones. You know what I mean?
- [02:32]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Or maybe it's best to listen to us when you can't actually hear what we're saying.
- [02:37]
Dr. Richard Leduc
We highly recommend it. We appreciate the downloads obviously, so thank you for doing that. But yeah, having it when you can't hear us is, is obviously best.
- [02:48]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
We are still efforting to get Yoo hoo to a temperature below 100 degrees. We are. We've tried different things. We've. We've put it in. We're going to put it in dry ice. We've tried freezing it overnight. Now all that does is. Is warm up the freezer. It melts everything else in the freezer. Whatever substance is in that box. Thank you so much for sending that along, Leslie and Ryan. But it. We cannot cool it to a temperature that is chilled. It's. It's. It's like reverse gazpacho. You. It's not served chilled. It literally can't be served chilled.
- [03:29]
Dr. Richard Leduc
We have reached out to the USAP in hopes that they might be able to have an answer for us. That's. That's the U.S. antarctic Program, Garrett. The British Antarctic Survey. They responded that they weren't interested, but we're hoping, like with Toro versus Briggs and Stratton, we're hoping for a better response from.
- [03:50]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
I mean, why would you not insulate the Antarctic ice base with Yoohoo? You can't get it below lukewarm does. I legitimately had it in the fridge for two days, took it out of the fridge immediately, put a straw in it and drank it. I mean, it wasn't hot.
- [04:10]
Dr. Richard Leduc
No.
- [04:11]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
But it was not cold.
- [04:14]
Dr. Richard Leduc
I mean, you're just walking a line. My guess is that it actually did violate the word of wisdom and that you're. You're trying to say that it wasn't hot, but we all know.
- [04:23]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Yeah. I heard a joke the other day. I saw someone said that, you know, you know, your mom's so Mormon that she calls the coffee table the hot chocolate table.
- [04:34]
Dr. Richard Leduc
So that's pretty good.
- [04:36]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Yeah, pretty good.
- [04:38]
Dr. Richard Leduc
I did want to introduce. We received a stinger from a Litner, and I want to play that here as we go to everyone's favorite new segment.
- [04:50]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
When you want to look smart in Sunday school, if you want your friends to think you're cool, when you want to seem wise and not a fool.
- [04:58]
Dr. Richard Leduc
It'S Christy's Corner, Christie's Corner, Garrett, Dr. And Covenant.
- [05:05]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
There's nothing I can say that will follow up how great that music is. Scott, thank you for sending it in. I can only assume that it was your barbershop quartet that sung it and not some AI generated thing.
- [05:23]
Dr. Richard Leduc
I'd like to think that they were. That they were know that they got together. It was a community theater production of the Music man, and they. They took off their straw hats, the four of them, in between. Whatever.
- [05:36]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Hats. A lot of Striped vests, a lot of vaudeville going on. It was. It was. It was quite impressive, but Christie's Corner.
- [05:47]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Garrett. Covenant, section 51 through 50 something or other.
- [05:53]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Say, I'm sorry, I can't get the R to go backwards. I can't do the Cyrillic R. Oh.
- [05:58]
Dr. Richard Leduc
He doesn't have a Russian keyboard. It's too bad.
- [06:02]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's exactly what I expect a Russian spy in America to say when he's emailing a podcast. You know, I. I don't have any way of making Cyrillic. It's not possible. So.
- [06:17]
Dr. Richard Leduc
DNC. DNC 51 through 57. Garrett.
- [06:20]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Yeah, well, so there's a lot of things you could take from here, but I'm going to take Doctrine and covenants, section 54, and I'm going to connect it to doctrine covenant, section 49, which you might anyway, do that if you read this section heading, but just to kind of place in context. So in section 49, you have the mission to the Shakers, and it does not appear to be terribly successful. The Shakers reject what these men have to say, the missionaries, in part. One of the biggest reasons why they reject them is because they're married men. And so when you go to an abstinence commune and these people believe that the highest form of demonstrating your discipleship is never having any sexual relations whatsoever, well, when you show up at that commune and that person says, so you guys, like, married and stuff? And if their answer is yes, they immediately stop listening. It's like, you know, when you meet a fairly rigorous evangelical from another Christian religion, you're able to have a conversation with them about Christianity right up until they find out you're a Mormon. And once they find that out, then you can't have a conversation anymore. That it's just all, you know, wrong Jesus and polygamy. But for. For the Shakers, they reject the message. But worse, Lehman Copley, who was a former Shaker who wanted to go up there, he comes back and he orders the. The Saints who are living on his property, which he had consecrated to the church. Now, he had consecrated it, but he hadn't officially deeded it to the church, so the deed was still in his name. So he shows up and guess who's living on his property? All of the Colesville Saints. So these are all the people who had already prayed to God to have God help them with how badly they were being persecuted in Colesville. The response they get is doctrine coming to Section 38, which tells them to just leave, to leave them that have farms that cannot be sold, let them be left, or let them be rented to seemeth them good. And they just leave. They make the difficult trip to Ohio. There's nowhere for them to live. So they live in Thompson, which is a township outside of Kirtland, quite a few miles outside of Kirtland, on Lehman Copley's consecrated farm. But then Copley comes back from the Shaker mission and with a Shaker elder, goes and orders all of the Mormons off of his property. So now imagine you are these Colesville Saints. You just arrived in Ohio three or four weeks earlier. You have been frantically busy building cabins to live in, planting crops so that you can get a crop in, you know, because you're getting there kind of late in the planting season, you're building fences for animals, all of these kinds of things. And three weeks into it, the owner of the property shows up and says, you got to get off my property. So they go to the conference that's being held in Kirtland to ask Joseph, what are we supposed to do now? And Leman Copley gets a. You know, he gets a fair share of condemnation in here for what he's doing. But he goes on to say, but the Lord goes on to say this. Wherefore go to now and flee the land, lest your enemies come upon you and take your journey, and appoint whom you will to be your leader and pay monies for you. And thus you shall take your journey into the regions, westward, unto the land of Missouri, under the borders of the Lamanites. So what the Lord is telling them in verse eight is, I know you just gave up everything you had and moved several hundred miles to an unfamiliar place, and that you last, you just spent an entire month building up that place, trying to get ready for the coming year. I want you to leave and walk another thousand miles to Missouri, where you once again will have to build everything up from scratch. If you're a member of the Colesville Saints, you've lost your home twice in one year, and you've been forced to make two giant treks. The trek to Missouri itself will take more than a month. It's oath thousand miles away to get to where they're going. So things are pretty rough. In fact, Joseph Knight, Jr. When he talks about it, he says that Leman Copley fined them for the damages that they did to his property. And he's like, yeah, he fined us for building his fences and planting his crops for him. You know, the fine came in pretty steep. But I love verse 10 of 54. Once you understand that context, that these are people who have given their all for the church and they have not been rewarded in any positive way. In fact, they're going to walk another thousand miles. Verse 10 says, Again, be patient in tribulation until I come. And behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me. And they that have sought me early shall find rest to their souls. The Lord knows that he's asking them to make a gigantic sacrifice, and he tells them to be patient in their tribulation. Until when? Until we get to Missouri? No, until the Second Coming, with the promise that when he does come, everyone will be rewarded. Those that have sought me early shall find rest of their souls. The suffering that you go through in this life is temporary, and the Lord has promised that he will make it up to us in the next life. So I think that's something to take away from Christie's Corner.
- [12:58]
Dr. Richard Leduc
That's very nice. I like that. Now, that was. You said section 54.
- [13:03]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Section 54, yep.
- [13:04]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Okay. So now, this is very, very, very important. In a gospel doctrine class where you're covering a lot of sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, it's entirely possible, in fact, likely even, that you might not get 2:54 for a discussion. And so it's very important that you raise your hand and make this point as completely non sequitur to whatever is being discussed, because it's entirely likely that you're not going to be able to get to it. And again, the whole purpose of this is to look smart in your class. So you're going to have to take the bull by the horns and say, you know, it doesn't look like we're going to get to this, but I'd like to talk about something I Learned in section 54 of the Doctrine and Covenants.
- [13:46]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Well, so here's your transition point. Section 52 calls dozens of people to go on missions to Missouri. So if you're Talking about Section 52, you just raise your hand and you say, well, I'd also like to talk about some other people that were sent to Missouri because I'm different and I'm smart.
- [14:04]
Dr. Richard Leduc
There we go. And this is. This has been Christie's Corner. Now, Garrett, that Stinger is hilarious. It made me laugh out loud when I listened to it. But we do have no Stinger music to Phoebe Draper Palmer Brown's mailbag. But we do have quite a few emails to get to here. And we'll start with someone that was having a baby.
- [14:34]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
As we always do. People having. And they did. They followed up by sending a picture of the baby. Because Richard has put it into people's hearts that someone might just go to the hospital for like a blood draw and then say they were having a baby. Like, we see if anyone's in a gurney at all. Like, oh, there, I'm having a baby. So I.
- [14:58]
Dr. Richard Leduc
There was a. I have a slight. It's a problem. I'm overly cynical. I'll tell you what, if I see feathered bangs in the photo, I'm gonna be like, wait, this was taken like 50 years ago. This doesn't count. Anyway, but. So this comes to us from Elizabeth and then her husband Bennett. Using Elizabeth for the. For the email. My husband told me if I was in labor, I'd get my question read on your podcast. I'm a sporadic listener. When he forces me to actually listen again. That goes back to our original statement of that's the only way that people actually listen.
- [15:36]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
I think all of our listeners are against their will. It's crazy. We are like the Lucifer's plan of podcasts.
- [15:44]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Yeah, yeah, I guess follow him is to act and standard of truth is to be acted upon, I suppose is the way to look at it. But he tells me about your episodes all the time. We're very sorry about that. He thought he would take over and ask his own question and take advantage of my pain. But too bad for him. I have one of my own. My close friend recently left the church. One of her main issues was race in the priesthood. I'm hoping that you could clarify the context surrounding Brigham Young's initial priesthood ban and help us understand what we know and why it occurred. Elizabeth and then her husband hops on here. I now have my phone back and was instructed to send the email, which I will, but not immediately because she can't stop me. I just want to say how much I appreciate your sacrifices in creating the podcast. I find it to be very inspiring and faith promoting. I wish you and your family the best and will ask my question in future emails. That will most likely be ignored since I'm not nor ever will be in active labor.
- [16:55]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Well, I appreciate the candor. So, I mean, as to the question, you know, unfortunately I don't think we'll really cover it today in part because this is one of these gigantic questions that would require like a 95 part series. The church has a great gospel topics essay that talks about this as well as other videos and statements on its website that talk about this one. More difficult aspects of Latter Day Saint history. When people say that that's the reason why they left the church. I mean, my experience is that there's a lot more going on than that. But what happens a lot of the times, and we're going to talk about people leaving the church with some of our other emails, a lot of the times people are looking to make the argument that justifies their actions most more than they are trying to actually give a fair assessment about why they did what they did. And you see this unfortunately a lot. And even when I meet with people who are struggling with Latter Day Saint history who want to clarification, I find regularly, and I mean, I don't want to say most of the time, but it's approaching 50% if it's not over 50%, that the issue that they're meeting with me over is, you know, it's one of these, you know, lightning rod type issues like plural marriage or something like that. But as we begin the conversation, as we get into it, it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that they actually don't really know very much about that topic at all. That they aren't like some kind of expert on the topic. They haven't read everything there is to read on the topic. They didn't, you know, I've read 17 books on it and that's the reason why now I can't believe instead what they're arguing for is a kind of moral superiority. Because what I believe is something that you can't refute, then it's okay that I made the decision to leave the church and that's one of those topics. So I would encourage you to read the Gospel topics essay on it first. Other groups have some pretty good writings on it that can help you understand. Race is an incredibly complex issue in the 19th century. And there's not a politician or religious leader that exists from the 19th century, from, from the mid 19th century that does not have statements that they make or feelings that they have that would be considered, you know, odious to people today. That's a fact of studying the past. And so what do we know? We know that the, the church has stated today that those old explanations were trying to explain why they're abandoned, that those are not doctrine and people tried to find an explanation, but those explanations were, however well meaning they might have been, they were incorrect. So I will, you know, punt to that extent. But as far as it goes to your friend, you know, realize that there's something deeper than that. And I'm not saying it has to be sin. What I'm saying is when people have questions about the gospel. Often they realize that if they go to the most currently popular topic, that that makes it so that people can't refute their position. And I'm just saying that it rarely comes from a place of someone having done a deep amount of study. It just. It's coming from a letter to the CES director. It's coming from some other, you know, anti Mormon subreddit. It's not coming from a place of someone genuinely trying to understand. So we'll leave it at that and we'll talk to you the next time you have another baby.
- [21:18]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Very well handled there, there, Gareth. You. You handered it better than I handled telling you how well you did.
- [21:27]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Questions on the Standard Troop podcast.
- [21:31]
Dr. Richard Leduc
We took an excerpt from an email here. This email comes from. From Bryce. We loved the imagery of it as I listened to the two of you making jokes and calling people faithless losers. I don't remember myself doing that. I can't help.
- [21:48]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
No recollection of those events, Senator.
- [21:52]
Dr. Richard Leduc
I can't help but picture the two old Muppet Muppets heckling whenevering they're on screen. There are also times when Richard is laughing super hard and tries to speak and his voice goes to a higher pitch and you can't really make out what he's saying. He sounds like Beaker saying, that was a pretty good. I feel like that was a decent Beaker. A better maybe animated car that's honking its horn in. In India. Yeah. It brings a smile to my face. Bryce. Thank you so much, Bryce.
- [22:28]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
I love Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. Dr. Bunsen Honeydew was one of my favorite people on. On the muppets. Hello, I'm Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and this is my assistant, Beaker.
- [22:42]
Dr. Richard Leduc
That's. That's pretty good.
- [22:43]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
And then. And then, of course, everyone's favorite is Statler and Waldorf. Now, I grew up watching the Muppet Show. I'd come home from school and watch the Muppet Show. Did you?
- [22:54]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Yeah. No, I love the Muppet Show.
- [22:55]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
It was on, like, in the afternoons when I got off of school.
- [22:59]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Yeah. My, my. The. The Jason Siegel reboot of the Muppet.
- [23:04]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Was the greatest thing ever.
- [23:05]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Was hilarious. And the songs were great. I think they won an Oscar. It was written, am I a man.
- [23:10]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Or am I a Muppet?
- [23:11]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Muppet. I think the songs were written by one of the Flight of the Concord, folks. So, like, great. Absolutely great. Yeah.
- [23:22]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Unlike our Christie's Corner jingle, we expect to be winning. You know, what are we going to win? Let's win. An Emmy. Let's just win an Emmy for.
- [23:33]
Dr. Richard Leduc
For the podcast.
- [23:34]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
For the podcast. Look, we're up for all kinds of awards, so we have to. We have to limit where we put our. I mean, people are just beating down our door to get us into their award ceremony.
- [23:51]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Well, now, so I read that email perfectly. I nailed it from beginning to end. But we have a couple emails, and so, Garrett, you're going to read this next one from Rosie the Revender.
- [24:03]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
I don't think that her name is the Riveter, but she did say, my experience meeting a Shaker. Now that. Now she did that to catch my attention.
- [24:14]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Well done.
- [24:14]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
And it worked because there's only two Shakers left. And so for all I know, Rosie is from Sabbath Day Lake, Maine. Maybe she went there to go visit the Shaker commune there. I don't know. So I busily dove into the. To the email, thinking, did she meet one of. You know, did she meet the shakers? And then she said, just kidding. I've never met a Shaker. I just wanted to get your attention. Well played, Rosie. And as we read your email, you'll see how well it works to deceive us in the way that you have. I am a newer littener of your podcast. I was turned to it by listening to the Fall Hymn podcast. I have loved listening to you guys bicker. Do we bicker?
- [25:03]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Yeah. Yeah. You could define it as bickering, I'm sure.
- [25:06]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Yeah. Whenever I hear bicker, all I can think about is the scene from Monty Python on the Holy Grail where Lancelot breaks into the wedding and kills everyone and they stop him. And when the father of the bride realizes that Lancelot might be a better person to marry his daughter off to, he then tries to stop everyone from killing Lancelot. And this is the speech that he gives to people that settle them down, like, because the people are like, he killed my dad. I killed my auntie. And then he's like. He's like, I. This is supposed to be a joyous occasion. Let's not bicker at all. Who killed it over who killed who? And so that's what I think of when she says that we're bickering, that we're bickering and arguing over who killed. Ooh. But. And I enjoy the heated conversations as long as they're not about sports. Well, you're gonna be. You're gonna be leaving this podcast pretty soon. Rosie, I want to start by thanking you for perfectly stating the abhorrent nature of sloppy joes. I was literally discussing with my husband just the other day about how I can't figure out how anyone would choose to eat, let alone pay for at a gas station, a sloppy joe. Rosie, we are kindred spirits because I hate them so much. And Richard, you're. You're not a fan, but you'll eat them.
- [26:37]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Well, I mean, yeah, like, let's say that I was in the chateau deep. Yeah, maybe. And it was my birthday.
- [26:46]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
You were. If you were the Count of Monte Cristo. If you were. If you were Edmond Dante in the, in the prison cell and someone gave you.
- [26:56]
Dr. Richard Leduc
And we hadn't caught a rat. So if the option was rat meat or sloppy joes, obviously rat meat's going to win.
- [27:06]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
How are you preparing the rat meat? That would be the next question. Like, is it with a slimy, nasty tasting sauce that you mix?
- [27:13]
Dr. Richard Leduc
I would prepare almost kind of like a sushimi kind of.
- [27:18]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
No, you wouldn't. That sounds terrible. See, now we're bickering. This is what she's talking about. I went through a few years of feeling disenchanted by the church due to things that I'd read about Joseph Smith a few years ago. Within the last year or two, I've been on a spiritual journey. I've been studying and listening to a lot of podcasts like yours. Follow him and church history matters. I have many burning questions. And I considered tricking my husband into having a third baby by not using birth control for the opportunity to ask some questions while I'm in labor. Wow, Gary, we gotta get.
- [27:52]
Dr. Richard Leduc
We gotta get the spirit spirits here somehow.
- [27:55]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Gary, I feel like this podcast could reverse the direction of fertility in the United States because we have declining fertility rates. As far as people having so many children, if enough people want to get on the podcast, we could reverse the entire trend.
- [28:15]
Dr. Richard Leduc
It's like our army coming home from World War II. There's going to be a standard of truth boom. We're very excited about what that could.
- [28:23]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Mean in 18 years of truth boom.
- [28:26]
Dr. Richard Leduc
I go on missions and get the.
- [28:29]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Yeah, I don't think so. Check back in nine to 12 months for that. But in the meantime. So she wants us to check. So look, you keep us apprised. I mean, we expect to see a picture, you know, of. Of your gender reveal that you do when, when the time's coming. If I've caught your attention, maybe you can give me your thoughts on if you think we'll get to see a restoration of the stolen. Not while she has stolen in ALL CAPS. 116 pages in our lifetime. Thanks from Rosie. A full time and tired work from home, mom of two toddlers, two dogs and a large child that I'm married to. The husband doesn't make out too well with that one. But you know, Rosie, it's a great question. It's one of those mysteries of Mormonism, right? That will we ever get what was in the last 116 pages? I will say that in the documents community it is one of the, you know, it would be the Holy Grail. Speaking of the Holy Grail of finding something and the entire time I have worked as a church historian, either for the church or byu, almost every year and sometimes multiple times a year I have had someone say to me, oh, we think we know where it is, we think we found it. And you know, spoiler alert, no one's ever found it yet. I, I don't know that it will ever come to light. We do have multiple sources that say that they were destroyed. And it's pretty hard for destroyed things to come to light, at least before Jesus comes. At the same time, I don't know that it was destroyed. And maybe it is somewhere, maybe someone does have it in a box of dusty papers somewhere. The longer you go, the harder it is to believe that you'll ever find it. Just given the fact that, you know, it would be a substantial number of pages, anyone examining it at all would be curious. And so, you know, it's more likely than not that it doesn't exist anymore. Now, could the prophet receive it by revelation? I mean, I suppose he could, obviously, but I wouldn't expect to. That's my, my thought is I, I assume we'll get the lost 116 stolen pages at the same time. We get the sealed portion. I, that's what I would assume that they're, they're coming together, but I, I don't know. So. Thank you so much for your email, Rosie, and thanks for, thanks for working to get back on the, on the path. I mean, I really, you're a perfect example of what people need to do. We are all going to have someone say something to us that troubles us. We are all going to read something that makes us go, wait a minute, I don't feel good about the fact that someone said that. What do we do with it? Do we say, that's it, I'm out of the church, or do we undertake to build our spiritual muscle? Do we do the things that would cause us to have a testimony? One of the more surprising things that happens when people lose Their testimony is they stop reading the Scriptures, they stop praying, they stop getting any wholesome, faithful material, and they spend all their time in either secular studies that are not designed to produce faith, or most often reading anti Mormon arguments which are deliberately designed to destroy faith. And then they wonder why they don't have faith. It would be a very odd thing. You know, it reminds me of Homer Simpson where he says, I don't get it. I eat and I eat and I eat and I just don't get any smaller. If you're going to feast upon words, they are going to affect who you are, whether it is, you know, a book series that you love, and I'm not saying that that's negative, or whether it's, you know, the words of Christ or whether it is an antagonist. What you spend time with will slowly start to change you and in some cases, quickly. And so I am very grateful, Rosie, that you have demonstrated someone who deals with the questions that are totally common and natural to being a faithful person and chose instead to lean into faith rather than to lean into darkness. So that you're a great example, even if you don't write us back in labor at some point.
- [33:27]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Well, so now this. Now, usually, Garrett, we don't read last names of folks, but we want to.
- [33:36]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Expose them to violence that will certainly ensue.
- [33:39]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Right, Right. Well, so this one, this one. Now you and I have last names that put us on the island of misfit toys in that it's never pronounced correctly and the variation is significant. I had a really good friend in high school. We ran for student. We ran for student government together. We were really good buddies. And he ended up, I believe, served his mission in England. And anyway, he was also the starting quarterback for our, for our high school team. I was obviously in. In the, the shadow of his popularity, as I did not have near that level of athleticism. But I did pay for, you know, gas money occasionally. I think I still probably owe him seven or eight thousand dollars in gas money, but that's neither here nor there.
- [34:28]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Where were you guys driving?
- [34:30]
Dr. Richard Leduc
He drove a lot, and I never. I didn't have a car. And so I'm just. I'm I'm also factoring that he would, he would have fines. That would. That would be onerous.
- [34:41]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Again, back to another Simpsons episode when he. When he leaves his car illegally parked at the World Trade Center Plaza.
- [34:50]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
- [34:51]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
And when he finally gets it, well.
- [34:54]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Barney actually took his car, goes on a bender, gets drunk and he leaves the car. And.
- [34:58]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
But so Homer finds the car with all these tickets over it. It's got boots on it. You know, it's, it's. And there's a. One of the tickets. You know, there's a number that you call and it's pre recorded, except someone has put in, you know, the person's name and this particular file. So it's like thank you for calling. You know, on your, your automobile. Yeah. You. Your car will be greeted by Officer Grabowski. It's like super gruff that breaks in with his voice and where you will have your car's boot removed after you pay a small. And then he says large lateness penalty. So yeah, the, the large lateness penalty is what you would be paying because of the, of the gas. For sure.
- [35:51]
Dr. Richard Leduc
That's for sure.
- [35:52]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
I digress several times.
- [35:54]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Well, so, so this comes to us from Heidi Lutten Gay. And the reason that I. So when we were kids. So I don't know. So she's saying that in laws live in Nampa, Idaho. Well, that's where I'm from. And, and so that's your buddy with the same buddies. My buddy's last name, you know, he's Brian Luton Gay. There's no way that they're not related.
- [36:21]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
If they're from Nampa. Yeah, that's.
- [36:23]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Well, not even if they're from Nampa. I mean, I mean, are they from, you know, what are they from?
- [36:29]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Are they from Earth?
- [36:31]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Yeah, there's. There's six Luton Gays. And so it has to be. Anyway, so you know, I know how to pronounce it now. When he was the starting quarterback for the Skyview High School Fighting Hawks, we weren't fighting. I put fighting in front of every mascot though. It's more fun. But. So when he would get introduced at away games, it would be. It was slaughtered. I mean, the spelling is L, U E K E N G A. So like, yeah, best of all, Lukanga is what he got the most. So. Brian Lukanga Quarterback, Skyview Anyway, so this is from Heidi, who I assume is cousins or in some way related to people that I very much know and love in Nampa. She starts doctors. When my son was called to serve his mission to Russia, I introduced him to spies like us, instructing him instead to say elder. Elder. Elder.
- [37:28]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Elder.
- [37:30]
Dr. Richard Leduc
I am sure you get many thank you stories. I add to those. And also a question first. After extensive research, maybe a total of eight scattered paragraphs from the Joseph Smith papers, as well as researching countless Internet sites, all four of my siblings, their spouses and by their leadership, quote unquote, all their 20 children, all my sweet, mostly innocent nieces and nephews are out of the church, Also out of Christianity, So not going to Hinduism or Buddhism, which was, I think, the previous episode. Yeah, by default, if Joseph. If the Joseph Smith story is fictional, how could there be any other answers except Big Bang? Sadly, without a compass or law, the default is to be amoral, which leads to some pretty evil things. And because my siblings have sought to take away my spiritual life, like Nephi, I've separated from them. Heartbreaking. I truly love them, but cannot associate with that level of evil. It brings understanding to how our Father in heaven would cast out a third of his children and how Noah and Nephi were separated from their families. Meanwhile, I'm learning everything I can to have that much desired imaginary conversation with them that will flip their switches and bring them back. Because of my experiences were too numerous and too personal to just write off as coincidence or my mind playing tricks on me, I decided to read at least nine scattered paragraphs instead of the eight.
- [39:06]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Nice.
- [39:07]
Dr. Richard Leduc
The problem is the eighth gonna leave you. You're gonna leave the church if you.
- [39:09]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Read eight paragraphs and you're like, wait a minute, this is a township in Ohio. And then you're gone. You read the ninth one and you're like, okay, it's a township in both Missouri and ohio.
- [39:21]
Dr. Richard Leduc
And justice. Ms. A prophet. Yeah, exactly. In the midst of that, I found your podcast. Not only did you have all the answers to questions that they brought up to me, but you addressed them with undeniable logic. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you. My foundation is in Christ. And when the whirlwinds and shafts come, they may have gut punched me and knocked the wind out of me, but the foundation was there, and your podcast has helped shore that up. So, again, thank you. When I first started listening to you, it was intentional and mainly to get answers to help solidify my testimony of the restoration. But now I choose to listen to you for fun. The.
- [40:02]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
You know what? That's. Someone crossed over. They crossed the line from. Yeah, you know, I. I'm being forced to listen to this to. Okay, I'll do it of my own.
- [40:13]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Free will, but only when I'm mowing the lawn.
- [40:16]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Yeah, Mike, like, we do need to try to start our own lawnmower line. That sounds like that's the best way for us to go.
- [40:23]
Dr. Richard Leduc
There's a vertical integration opportunity there for sure.
- [40:26]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
We are like Rockefeller. We're gonna have a lawnmower line. We need to have a laundry basket line as well as, you know, washing machines. Yeah, you're listening to the podcast while you're doing laundry. Why not have the standard of truth washing machine. This washing machine able to just. You just go right into it. Wow.
- [40:47]
Dr. Richard Leduc
So now this. So this reminds me of another Simpsons episode when Crusty the clown puts his name on everything. The crusty eyewash station.
- [40:58]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Right, the emergency acid eyewash station. Although if we were to do something like that, we would have to have Gil be the salesperson for us. Gil is the hapless car salesman who at one point, Homer's trying to buy a car. He just wants to buy one, sight unseen, basically just blindly because he's infatuated with it. And Gil is, like, trying to close the deal with the upsells. So he's like. He's like, let's jug roast brewing these. They'll rust right up on you. Oh, shut up, Gil. Close the deal. Close the deal.
- [41:47]
Dr. Richard Leduc
So sorry, my question is this, and I haven't listened to all of your podcasts yet, so if this has been addressed, please let me know which podcast to go to. I heard somewhere on another podcast that Sir Isaac Newton. Well, that it wasn't ours for sure. Right there. Hard stop.
- [42:07]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Yeah. Did you mention a mathematician that wasn't Blaise Pascal? Move on.
- [42:15]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Sir Isaac Newton also claimed to have a seer stone. Many people apparently thought him to be some sort of a wizard. Well, he invented calculus, so, yeah, kind of. Or use witchcraft because he came up with many of his mathematical equations out of nowhere. It's hard for me to believe that complex mathematical equations came from a loving father in heaven. Maybe he was on shrooms. But I digress. I'm curious if you have come across other others in history who have claimed to have or use seer stones that also left notable historical fingerprints. Thank you ever so much for all you do and have done to help explain and solidify my testimony, as well as countless, although they are all numbered others. Thanks for letting me jump on your research train. As a passenger through this tour of history, your humor is a rare gift that pairs nicely with what I used to look at as a boring history lesson. Regards, Heidi Lukanga.
- [43:18]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Well, that's very, very, very kind. Yeah, Lukanga.
- [43:22]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Yeah.
- [43:25]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Thank you for the kind email. So Joseph Smith, of course, is going to find his stone that he will use digging a well. And he lives in at a time when people believe that that is a. A special ability that some people have, that some people can find lost objects in stones that There's. There's a connection between a person and their. Their body and, and the stone that allows them to see certain things in a way, a type of clairvoyance in that regard, but much more accepted by culture, which is what I'm guessing happens with Joseph. My guess is that when Joseph finds the stone digging the well, he knows there's something special about it. And literally anyone. He would have said that to anyone, if he would have said to anyone, friends, family, you know, mom and dad, if. Well, maybe not the local Methodist preacher, but he's already had that experience once, so he's probably not talking to him about it because this is. We don't know when he found the stone. It could be as early as 1819. Some people place it as 1822. But either way, in that time period, if anyone would have found that stone, if he would have said, there's something about this stone, I don't know what it is, it's weird. Their reaction would have been, oh, I'll bet. Hey, you know what? You're probably one of those people who can find things in stones. If you think there's some kind of weird connection between you and the stone, then, because they're developed in 19th century. Really, it was 18th century America, the colonial Americas. This idea that there were some people who could look into stones and find lost objects now certainly not use them the way Joseph ended up using them, which is translating an ancient record. We don't have records of that. As it goes back to your particular question of Isaac Newton. I don't know enough to know, so I won't give a blanket statement. I do know that Isaac Newton, he believes a lot of things and not all of them are gravity. One thing that he is particularly infatuated with is alchemy. Richard, do you know what alchemy is?
- [45:48]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Yeah, I'm currently working on some projects right now. I just purchased a bunch of lead weights and see if we can turn that into a mortgage.
- [45:56]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Well, you know, metals so expensive now, maybe lead, actually you could turn it into a mortgage. But yeah, it's the idea that you could take. Usually it's other metals, but, you know, frankly, you get a lot of people claiming a lot of things and that you could turn them into gold. Now, alchemy seems absolutely preposterous to us. I mean, it seems utterly impossible to us. And the idea that anyone could believe it just seems like it's, you know, wizardry and voodoo and weird beliefs because we have something called science. But he believed that there were Certain elements that you could combine and that you could produce gold. And that was everyone in his day and age was trying to figure out how you could use chemicals to produce, to transmute lead or copper into gold. And Heat himself doesn't really write about it, but he has a lot of notes that he keeps on it. And it's at least reported. I don't know whether or not that's true, but it's at least reported that the great, and I don't mean great by I love his ideas, but the well known economist John Maynard Keynes, he, you know, having purchased a bunch of old Newton's papers and stuff, he said that something like, to the effect of that Newton, we shouldn't think of Newton as being the first person of the age of reason, should be thinking of him as the last of the magicians. So a little bit cynical there. You know, they believed in something. I think maybe what they were talking about was in that time they believed in something called the philosopher's stone, which is what they believed was like the perfect element. Then that's what was at the center of the earth and that if you could replicate that, it would have healing properties and stuff. So that's what I'm guessing. I am not a Newtonian expert and I don't even believe in gravity. No, I, I mean, so I don't know all of those things, but that's what I'm guessing. I'm guessing it's a reference to his belief that you could transmute certain types of metals into gold. And he certainly did believe that. I mean, frankly, all of us believe something right now, that 100 or 200 years from now your great, great, great grandchildren will think that you are an absolute unmitigated idiot of a person. They will, they will. I mean, and the thing is, is that we don't know what that thing is yet. How could we know? We don't know what that thing is yet. Just as an example, an example. I, I'm not saying this. I'm not on some kind of dark subreddit where I'm reading this and I'm trying to. This is where he secretly. And then he puts in the Christie's Corner theme song. If you play backwards, it shows. No, I'm just saying as, as an example, as an example, let's say 50 years from now they come up with definitive evidence that using a handheld cell phone causes a certain type of cancer. Okay, I'm not saying that it does. So please, I don't need the emails about how it doesn't Also, I don't need the emails from those of you who are going to email and tell me that it does. Okay? What I'm saying is not. Not some one off that someone in a study somewhere said something. I mean, it becomes completely accepted by the culture that handheld cell phones cause cancer. Imagine what all of our selfies are going to look like to your great, great, great grandchildren. If that ever became the case, they would look at us and they would think, man, like, people talked about great grandpa Dirkma as like being a historian and stuff. Look how stupid he is. You can see him. He's got a cell phone in his pocket. You can see he's taking a picture with a cell phone. I mean, geez. I mean, I get. I guess the guy is supposedly smart, but he's obviously an idiot. It's really easy when we look back on the past to find the holes in someone's knowledge because we've already filled those holes with our own knowledge. What's impossible to do is to fairly look at our own selves and then project forward into the future what holes we have in our knowledge. Because if we knew what holes we had, we wouldn't have the holes. And so, yeah, he certainly believes things that we would consider crazy. But you know that I'm glad to hear that we've been helpful in your difficult situation and I really sorry to hear about your family. I'm really hoping that it doesn't extend to the friend Richard knows, because that would be. Yeah, it was right.
- [51:34]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Yeah, it was an in law, but still, you know, tragic all the same. Now, now, Garrett, I don't know that we have enough time for another, Another email here. We have a couple more. We're at, we're, you know, over 50 minutes. Did you want to read another one or get to Greg, possibly, or hold him over?
- [51:54]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Let's. Let's read Greg. Let's. Let's do it.
- [51:58]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Okay, this. This email comes to us from Greg. The very same Greg we were just speaking of.
- [52:04]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
What are the odds, Greg, of standard of truth fame?
- [52:09]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Is it inevitable? Is the subject probably not a question that lends itself to podcasting. And I'm fine if it doesn't behoove you to answer it because you are too busy chasing filthy lucre and brushing up on 80s and 90s pop culture Easter eggs.
- [52:24]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Wow. You know what? Yes.
- [52:28]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Yeah. Do you think it's actually possible to share information that changes the arc of someone's faith crises? My current operating assumption, based on experience much more limited than yours, is that Everything depends on how the person prosecutes the journey. Do they actively seek to believe? If so, sharing information and perspectives can provide them valuable help in finding reasons and faith to stay. If instead they place the burden of proof on the church to prove itself innocent in their eyes, I'm not sure that any information or perspective can help because they're seeking for something they can't find, namely faith without risk or belief. So have you seen people shift from expecting the church to defend itself in a courtroom of their choosing or a position of someone actively seeking for belief? As yet, I haven't. Either way, we strive to fight the good fight. I've certainly learned a lot from people in their struggles and feel I'm more compassionate and thoughtful about my own faith when than I was before those experiences. God bless.
- [53:44]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Well, this is a profound question and boy, I, I very, I very much, I appreciate it deeply. Not just the chasing filthy Lucre and the 80s and 90s pop culture references. We should, we. I don't think we've been saying enough that you know that because we've had a couple of people ask. So I should take this opportunity to say, if you're still listening, which you aren't, we make the premium content available to missionaries for free. So if, if people send in their missionary email address, then we make it available to them. We develop the premium side of the content in part because people wanted to try to donate to keep us on the air and we felt like, well, I don't want people to just donate and get nothing, so let's create some more content that if they decide to donate, they can get. So we're really grateful for everyone who does support us in that regard. As to your question, which is much better than any explanation I can give, you really have hit it on the head, right? And really, I mean, frankly, you know, Moroni hits it on the head, right? Because you have to ask, wanting to believe. If someone doesn't want to believe, you can shoot down point after point after point. I know that Richard has been with me on several counseling trips where we are talking to people who are struggling in their faith. And probably the most surprising thing to someone is that you can have someone say, well, this is the real issue that I have. This is where I'm struggling. This is where, you know, where all of you know, Luke and Gay's family, you know, you know, go off. It's this, it's this point here. It's this point here. And you can demonstrate that what they think they know about that thing, they don't even know at all. I was in a conversation with someone who was making the argument that the Joseph Smith Civil War prophecy. And so look, they got, look, they got on a bad anti Mormon subreddit. I get it.
- [56:11]
Dr. Richard Leduc
It happens versus, versus all the good ones.
- [56:14]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat
Yeah, yeah. How do you, how do you vet the level of quality of 720 off the half pipe anti Mormonism when you're just reading it online? And so they were making the argument to me that Joseph Smith never. None of Joseph Smith's prophecies ever came true, therefore he's not. They didn't say wherefore they did. I'd be like, oh, there we go. You've got a little bit of Book of Mormon language. So therefore he, he's not a prophet. And I, I, you know, I brought up some, and one I brought up was the Civil War prophecy, doctrine covenant, section 87. And they shot right back on that and they were like, well that, that is something that wasn't even published until after the Civil War. And so, you know, you sure that they said that it existed, but they only publish it after the Civil War? And I said, so. So you think the only reason why Doctrine and Covenant Section 87 demonstrates that Joseph Smith predicted with incredible detail the coming of the American Civil War is that it was forged after the Civil War took place and that's why it's so accurate. Yeah, I mean, you can check. It's not in the Doctrine and covenants until 1876. They put it in after the war. And I said, you know what? You are right. You got me. That's not in, it's not in the Doctrine and covenants until 1876. Have you, have you tried tracking down the manuscript copies of it like when it was first written down? Well, no. Okay, well, here are dozens of handwritten manuscript copies of it between 1830, 1832 and 1844, which, you know, simple math, not Newtonian math, will let you know, is before the American Civil War. And even if you want to say, well yeah, all of those are also forged, even though no historian says they are, let me direct you to the Pearl of Great price, published in 1851, which is, you know, 10 years before the American Civil War. And what you'll find in the first edition of the Pearl of Great Price is Doctrine and Covenant Section 87, published to the world a decade before there was an American Civil War. So this person had approached me with, you're wrong about Joseph Smith and I can prove it. And within a few minutes of conversation, it was demonstrated to them that not only did they not know what they were talking about, the source that they had been using to talk about things was in and of itself wrong and easily demonstrated as being wrong in that. I mean, look, that's an embarrassing situation. We've all been in those situations. Maybe not with religion, but. But all of us have been in those situations where we've been adamant about something and then we find out, oh, sure enough, I was wrong. I guess that didn't happen. You're probably thinking, yeah, Garrett, it sounds like every one of your podcasts you've ever done, that's exactly what happens at it. But you would think that that would have rocked his world, that he would have said, wow, whoever I got this line of argument from didn't just lie to me, they lied to me about the lies that they were lying to me about. Instead, he simply shifted right on to the very next topic. And so, Greg, I will say that that does happen a lot, because the real issue isn't whether or not Joseph Smith prophesied of the coming of the Civil War. The real issue is something else, and they're just looking for excuses to prove why they shouldn't have to believe. Now, the question of, has it ever made a difference? I would be lying if I said that most of the time when I meet with people that are experiencing faith crises, that I'm just, like, ridiculously successful. In fact, some of the most painful experiences of my life have been leaving having met with people, trying to help them resolve their concerns and them rejecting what I have to say. I have cried myself to sleep at night. I have bawled in my car on the way home, and I have felt like an absolute failure. Because what difference does having the knowledge that I've gained by study and research, what difference does it make if I can't use it to help someone else come to the truth? Intrusive thoughts that happen. I don't need to tell you, I'm sure everyone has experienced this, that it takes a lot out of you to try to spiritually defend the church and to have your spirit desperately wanting the Holy Spirit to touch someone else's heart and to make a change. And in the end, it's still their choice. And so I've had many more failures, really. You could probably call, if they were to do a biography of my life, the biography of Garrett Dirkmont. Many More Failures than Successes. That would be the subtitle. You know, I've certainly failed many more times than I've ever been successful. But I have been in experiences where someone is angry, where someone is adamant, where it appears that someone does not want to believe at all. And through conversation, the Holy Spirit has entered into that discussion and touched their heart and caused them to change. It is rare, and like all conversions, it is miraculous. I recall once having a conversation with a woman who wanted to have her name removed from the records of the church. And the first hour of our conversation was pretty similar to me talking to the other fellow about Joseph Smith's Civil War prophecy. It legitimately didn't matter what I said. It didn't matter how many things I shot down or how many times I demonstrated that her sources were terrible. She didn't want to believe anymore. And then I felt the Spirit speak to me, that I should shift the focus to what are the things she wants to believe in. As we did that, I felt the Spirit powerfully come into the room. And she felt it too. And she, in that moment, changed from wanting to get out to wanting to believe. I mean, that's the great aspect of the Holy Spirit, right? The great part of the gospel is that someone like Lamoni, who's killing his servants yesterday, is begging God to take his sins away today. The miracle of conversion through the Holy Spirit is something that can transform hearts. I can only try to reduce barriers, right? I try to, you know, if someone's so hung up they won't even read the Book of Mormon, I try to get them less hung up so they'll at least read, because I know there's nothing I can do that will change anyone's mind. Faith is a choice. Belief is something that comes through faith, and it comes because you want to believe. And the Holy Ghost takes testifies to you. You can read every book there is on earth and it won't give you a testimony. You gain a testimony of Jesus and of the Book of Mormon and of the church being true by the Holy Spirit. But I watched her change, and. And so I know that it happens. I also had the experience of many years ago having tried to labor with a couple who was on their way out of the church. And once again, it was. It was a tough one because they had made up their mind. And I couldn't say anything that would change their mind. I could tell they were really good people. And even though each argument they brought up we had a great answer for, they still persisted. And I just. I just think it's too much. I just think I'm gonna have to. We're gonna have to. To leave. And I. It was one of those times I left the church house. We were meeting in the bishop's office with the bishop. It's one of those times where, you know, we'd met several times. When I left, I, I left, I left crying because I, I. It's a strange feeling again. I know most people have had it, but when you feel like you are all that stands between someone having misery for the rest of their life and possibly beyond or re. Embracing the thing that's brought me the most happiness, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, man, you feel a lot of pressure. I mean, even, Even doing this podcast. Richard and I talk about this podcast all the time. Like, when will it end? You're saying that right now just because we're at an hour and eight minutes. But that's not what I mean. I mean, when will it end? When are we going to stop doing it? I mean, obviously we can't do it forever, and obviously you're going to stop listening. Probably yesterday you weren't even listening to this one. But then we get emails from people who say things like, this podcast has helped me maintain my faith. It becomes pretty hard to stop when you're trying so desperately to help people embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ. And anyway, this couple, they did, they left the church. My failure was complete. And then I got an email from a colleague several years later who was serving in a bishopric who said, hey, do you know this couple? And I was like, yes. And he said, well, they have come back to the church, and they told us that the big part of it was they could never get out of their head the feeling that they had when they met with you years ago, and that that was what made them finally feel like they needed to come back. So, yeah, I've had those experiences. I mean, I don't think we ever give up hope. Sure. You know, there's no point in wasting your time with someone who has no desire to believe. You can testify of the truth, you can defend the truth, but there's no point in engaging in conflict. But I do believe that everyone has the ability to change if they want to. That's what the gospel and the atonement of Jesus Christ is all about. Go thy way and sin no more. Right? I mean, you can be at the depths of sin, at the depths of unbelief, and all it takes is one flash of feeling the Holy Spirit tell you this is true. And it transforms who you are. It transforms who you are, it transforms what you want to be. And I say, continue fighting the good fight. Don't let yourself be discouraged by the people who, at least on the surface, say they don't believe because we don't know the end of their story. I'm grateful for the gospel. I'm grateful for the opportunity that I have to share my testimony with you. And I really, truly hope that for those of you who are struggling, that you will hold on, that you will lean into faith rather than into doubt. Because I think in the end, that's where you will find the most happiness. And I know in the end, that's where the truth is. So, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Garrett Dirkmont and Dr. Richard Leduc. If you know of anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. Until next time.