I recently wrote an article on an excerpt from Helen Mar Kimball’s autobiography in which I highlighted the parallels between Kimball’s odd passage and the practices of the LDS Church of Satan described by the Hamblin sisters in their Victims Statements. Specifically, I outlined the following:
-first, the groups meet in private residences, and seek private revelations centered around supernatural experiences;
-second, the groups characterize the power of Heavenly Father, Christ, and the Devil as equal, which is clearly blasphemous as seen in Mark 3:11, when the unclean spirits fell down before Christ and acknowledged him as the Son of God;
-third, the groups believe in exchange rather than grace for a desired result or outcome;
-finally, the groups believe in exchanges with spiritual entities that reach extremes well beyond scriptural limits, up to and including child sacrifice. This is explicitly cited in the Old Testament as grounds for God’s wrath against Israel for sacrificing their children to foreign gods such as Molech.1
I then utilized Scripture to argue against certain points in the excerpt. As a result, certain individuals quoted the article, and the those individuals are apparently within and without the Church, utilizing what I wrote to recruit currently active Saints to leave the Church. That is not my intent.
I have been clear with my position: I want to clean up the problem of ritual abuse and apostasy within the Church, at which point I get to go home to the Church that meant everything to me and continues to be the source of inspiration for the work I do. I am not a dissident arguing for doctrinal changes with regards to marriage, homosexuality, abortion, or the biblical standard for the roles of man and woman, husbands and wives. I am not John Dehlin. I have been clear in my opposition to gay marriage, and my opposition to attempts to reclassify biblically identified sin as righteousness or normalized behavior. I have never endorsed abortion, or alternative modes of marriage beyond the traditional concept of marriage as established by God between a biological man and a biological woman.
I believe in the Book of Mormon, which condemns polygamy as whoredom. I don’t mince words in my position on the Book of Mormon’s primacy on the issue of polygamy, or my position that polygamy remained whoredom after it was officially endorsed by the leadership in 1852. By 1890, the Church had officially taken my position with its rejection of polygamy. That is why I consider the issue settled, and why I continue to deny the validity of polygamy as a construct. What Heavenly Father ordains cannot be torn asunder by the United States government or any other temporal power, and the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.
The reality is that the continued fruits of polygamy as practiced by polygamist groups and individuals like David Lee Hamblin are obvious: incestuous relationships that encompass child rape and horrific physical abuse. Such practices are not of the Holy Spirit; they are of the Adversary. When these groups are exposed for what they are, the reality that is revealed is satanic: they are raping children, and they are obsessed with sexual depravity on a level that is deviant. Polygamy is about sex, and it is about power.
The Atonement is sufficient to ensure our salvation. Salvation does not require polygamy as a condition to sanctification or exaltation. Hebrews 9 makes it abundantly clear that the blood of Christ purges our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. There is no condition on that statement, there is no more offering for sin beyond the Atonement as Hebrews 10:18, because Christ was the final remission of sin. Those who have received the knowledge of the truth do not willfully sin without consequence, in the disruption of our communion with our Heavenly Father. We are chastised because we are loved, and He has claimed us as His own.
We who are renewed in the Atonement hunger after the works of the spirit, not of the flesh. As it pertains to the Church, I have decided to fight for the Restored Church against those apostates who have infiltrated it to work all manner of darkness and depravity. Those who would prioritize an institution to the exclusion of addressing the rank and putrid behavior of men like David Lee Hamblin with immediate excommunication are wrong. We who keep our covenants should not be the ones leaving the Restored Church. We should be driving those who do not keep the covenants out, without hesitation, fear, or reservation.
This corruption has existed within the Church for far too long. Those who sexually abuse children or other adults are apostates, and Heavenly Father gives us the discernment to look at the scientific literature and know that there has never been a single documented instance of a rehabilitated pedophile or rapist. Those who reject Heavenly Father and His Truth to the point where they can rape, molest, and murder innocent people are servants of perdition. They should be excommunicated without delay, and denied re-entry as the wolves of the Adversary that they are, the predators that they function as within the flock.
I did not highlight Helen Mar Kimball’s writing to argue for a departure from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or to endorse a lowering of doctrinal standards to accommodate a moral liberalized stance on any core doctrine. I highlighted it because I believed it was wrong, and because it provided an example of the same behavioral patterns present in the Church of Satan and other ritual abuse groups I have studied. There is a reason the Church is structured in a hierarchy that provides guidance against independent home Bible studies that are a cover for apostasy, with temple ordinances conducted in private residences for the purpose of supernatural experiences such as communion with the dead. That hierarchy is there to protect us from apostasy and apostates or false teachers, but far too often it has been utilized to prioritize an institutional tendency weighing against exposing and outing sexual abuse.
I believe the structure of the Church is valid, even if that structure is not being utilized for biblical purposes. Those who pervert the Restored Church will face Heavenly Father, and they will face those of us who are raised by Heavenly Father to say in a stentorian chorus that we will not tolerate cover ups of sexual abuse or impropriety in the name of a public relations facade. Sin is intolerable. We are to have no association with unrighteousness. We are commanded to cast it out of our lives and out of our Church, and those who do not want to play by the club’s rules should leave and form their own club.
However, that is not the nature of Adversary’s operations. Instead, he seeks to infiltrate the Restored Church to water down its doctrines and practices to accommodate rancidity, to reclassify sin as righteousness. I stand opposed.
I believe in the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and Joseph Smith without reservation. Nothing I write or post on this Substack should be interpreted as endorsing a departure from that position, or a surrender to the Adversary and his followers who have contaminated the Restored Church. War is the answer. They should leave, and those of us who are faithful and orthodox Saints, including those who were raped and abused, should be able to return home to our Church after the abusers and apostates are driven out.
Can I just give you the biggest thank you for this! I have been praying so hard for help and this has strengthened me. Those of us who have been abused by a man who would profess to be a Latter-day Saint priesthood holder are blessed to have
someone with this perspective and testimony. We need someone with a clear picture and testimony because we get so confused but don't want to be confused. Thanks for fighting. I want to help as much as I can even if it is just praying for you.
I stumbled on this in my scripture study this morning:
2 Nephi 15:20
Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
21 Wo unto the wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight!
22 Wo unto the mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink;
23 Who justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!