Rocky,

Thanks for your letter. I doubt I will make much of an impression on you, but I will try to answer a few of your questions.

1. You wrote:

..."you are deliberately telling half truths as you accuse the Mormon leaders of doing (such as every Mormon believes that God has thousands of plural wives, something I myself have never heard). I do believe that God did command plural marriage in modern times just as he did in ancient times. And, because of this I have reason to believe that God does have more than one wife, but again I never heard the "thousands""

Well, Rocky, do the math. There are 6 billion people on the planet right now. Most people conclude that the number of dead is always about equal to the current population of the earth. So let's say that we have, maybe, 12 billion people either inhabiting the earth or having inhabited it. They are all, according to Mormon theology, the spiritual offspring of Eloheim and his plural heavenly wives.

Well, how many wives would have had a million offspring? Twelve billion equals, 12 thousand-million. So if Eloheim had only one thousand wives, they would have had to have borne a million spirit children.

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2. You wrote:

"So, the one big question I have is this; If I continue growing in the church (i.e. maybe become Bishop or Stake President like my father or maybe even higher) when exactly will I be told and by whom, that the church is really not true and I'm going to have to start lying to my family and friends? I believe that there could be some really evil people that could do that, but I see NO way that the prophet with all the apostles (not to mention the many thousands of high leaders) could possibly be telling their wifes, children, and friends nothing but lies and things they know to be false, and still carry those big smiles."

My wife and I argue about how many know it is all lies and how many are confused and deceived. I argue that people in cults can believe ludicrous things without losing their ability to make sense in other areas. Like the engineer my friend confronted about Brigham Young's statement that people lived on the moon (tall and looking like Quakers). "We've been to the moon," my friend said. "And there were no tall Quakers." His pal said, "Well, maybe they live under the surface of the moon."

Recently President Hinckely, when interviewed by Time magazine seemed "confused" by all this. I'll leave it to you to decide if he was lying or simple didn't know what the Church believes about this.

Hinckley 1

Hinckley 2

3. The one place I _did_ say that the Church leadership is lying is on the official web site where they give this definition:

    "What is God like?

    God is perfect. He is all-wise and all-powerfulthe ruler of the universe. He is also merciful, kind, loving, and justyour Heavenly Father. We are created in His own image (Genesis 1:27). "

Obviously that is a lie. As you said in your letter to me. The Mormon God has x-number of plural wives by which he propagated this planet's population. That is certainly not the Judeo/Christian "God of the Universe." Mormonism's Parley P. Pratt said true Mormon doctrine thus:
    "We were begotten by our Father in Heaven; the person of our Father in Heaven was begotten on a previous heavenly world by His Father; and again, He was begotten by a still more ancient Father and so on, from generation to generation, from one heavenly world to another still more ancient, until our minds are wearied and lost in the multiplicity of generations and successive worlds, and as a last resort, we wonder in our mind, how far back the genealogy extends, and how the first world was formed, and how the first Father was begotten"--Orson Pratt, The Seer, Washington D. C., 1854, p. 132.
Mormons are very nice people, by and large. My wife's parents (indeed, her whole family) are true blue Mormons and I love them dearly. But they have believed a fairy tale. Jesus said "I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." (Matt 16:18) But, Joseph Smith said Jesus was wrong. Jesus' Church failed. Fell into total apostasy until Joseph, a man heavily involved in the occult, came along and rescued it. And now, Mormons want to tell us they are "just like us!" Well, what _about_ the apostasy? Why would you want to be like the churches that Joseph said, are "all wrong" and whose creeds are "abominations?"

You tell me who is confused.

Jim