The mark of M2C

Sometimes people are confused by who is saying what.

Here's a short guide.

If you see this mark, it's the mark of M2C.

The mark of M2C is identifiable by the Mayan icon in the upper right. It is used to let people know that anything published under or by this mark will promote M2C (the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory).

There's nothing wrong with M2C. People can believe whatever they want. This mark is actually quite helpful for identifying the editorial position involved.

A process of indoctrination

Another relevant tweet from Thomas Sowell:

Thomas Sowell

@ThomasSowell

In the schools and colleges, the intelligentsia have changed the role of education from equipping students with the knowledge and intellectual skills to weigh issues and make up their own minds into a process of indoctrination with the conclusions already reached by the anointed.

https://twitter.com/ThomasSowell/status/1175757262629068800

September 22, 1828

Today is the 191st anniversary of the day when Joseph obtained the Harmony plates from Moroni for the second time. This was after Martin Harris lost the 116 pages.

Exactly one year previously, Joseph opened the stone box on the Hill Cumorah in western New York and retrieved the abridged plates, the breastplate, and the Urim and Thummim. This was in a department of the hill separate from the depository of Nephite records (Mormon 6:6).

Joseph took the plates to Harmony, Pennsylvania, to translate them. He translated all of them, except a sealed portion, when he was in Harmony. Then, as indicated by D&C 10, he went to Fayette and translated the second set of plates; i.e., the plates of Nephi that the messenger brought to him from the hill Cumorah.

Maybe by the 200th anniversary, in 2027, everyone in the Church will accept what Joseph and Oliver taught about Cumorah in Letter VII.

Actually, I hope that day arrives sooner. Maybe in 2023, the 200th anniversary of the date when Joseph first saw the plates?

Or 2020, the 200th anniversary of the First Vision?

Think of what a difference it would make in the Church and in the world if all of our LDS scholars and educators decided, finally, to embrace what Joseph and Oliver and all of their successors taught?

Closing their eyes

There are many parallels in Church history for the current situation in the Church.

The Seer, a Church magazine from the 1800s, has a relevant article that I've excerpted below.

Right now, we have leading intellectuals in the Church, including those who manage Book of Mormon Central, who, because of their belief in M2C, look down upon and oppress those faithful members who still believe the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah.

Those of us who still believe the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah are happy to have other faithful members believe whatever they want. However, we think every member of the Church should be enabled to make informed decisions about these issues by being fully educated.

We encourage people to read what these intellectuals teach, but we also encourage them to read what the prophets have taught and to learn about the evidence that supports the teachings of the prophets.

We would like to see the New York Cumorah re-correlated, but the prophets have always taught that we should heed the teachings of the prophets, regardless of how intellectuals tell us to think.

The M2C intellectuals take a different approach.

Book of Mormon Central is spending millions of dollars to divert members of the Church away from the teachings of the prophets about Cumorah and toward their own theory that the "real" Cumorah is in southern Mexico (hence M2C: the Mesoamerican/two Cumorahs theory). Their database contains articles that attack those of us who still believe the prophets, and it has been purged of any material that explains why we still believe the prophets.

Book of Mormon Central uses their millions of dollars to:

1. Develop ScripturePlus, the app that teaches M2C exclusively and uses colorful graphics and videos to entice Church members away from the Gospel Library;

2. Promote M2C through social media advertising; and

3. Castigate fellow Church members on social media for still believing the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah.

By now, this is all well known and obvious to everyone who looks at the Book of Mormon website. What is less known is how the practices of the M2C intellectuals follow a pattern we've seen before in Church history.
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While working on another project, I came across this passage from The Seer, Vol. II, No. 1, January 1854. It reminded me of the way the M2C citation cartel treats those who still accept the New York Cumorah.

THE TREATMENT OF THE UNITED STATES TOWARDS THE SAINTS.

Question.—First, In what manner have the people of the United States treated the divine message contained in the Book of Mormon?

Answer.—They have closed their eyes, their ears, their hearts and their doors against it. They have laughed at, ridiculed, derided, and treated it with the utmost contempt. They have scorned, rejected, and hated the servants of God who were sent to bear testimony of it. They have invented the most abominable, wicked and malicious lies, and published the same against it. Their priests have hypocritically and piously read these lies from the pulpit, and warned their congregations from one end of the Union to the other, to neither hear, read, nor investigate it, nor any thing in favor of it. They have denounced it as “a most vile and wicked imposition;” “a horrid blasphemy;” “a soul-destroying and most damnable doctrine, emanating from the bowels of hell.” Their editors have for years reiterated, through the columns of their papers, these abusive unjust denunciations and vile falsehoods, without giving any chance in their columns for a reply or correction of these bare-faced and foul misrepresentations.
(Seer II.1:193 ¶2–3)

So long as Book of Mormon Central continues to push M2C exclusively, while simultaneously criticizing and censoring those faithful Church members who still believe the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah, "without giving any chance in their [web page] for a reply or correction," we will continue to see members of the Church being deprived of the chance to make informed decisions.

highly educated = highly indoctrinated

I saw this tweet and I'm sharing it here because, based on my experience with M2C intellectuals over the last few years, it's more true than I could have imagined before.

If they are highly educated.. Chances are they are extremely indoctrinated. They don't question and they don't think outside the box. They follow, because they've been following for years to become highly educated. Highly educated = Highly indoctrinated

It remains puzzling to me why so many faithful LDS intellectuals reject the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah (and the translation of the plates with the Urim and Thummim that accompanied them). But this tweet explains it pretty well.
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The M2C intellectuals at Book of Mormon Central justify their position by saying that only the "dead prophets" taught the New York Cumorah, but they follow the "living prophets."

President Ivins

By this reasoning, they were bound by President Anthony W. Ivins' unequivocal teaching of the New York Cumorah until his death in 1934. 

But then other prophets reiterated the New York Cumorah, so they were bound again. For example, they were bound by President Marion G. Romney's unequivocal teaching of the New York Cumorah, but President Romney's death in 1988 liberated them to pursue their own theory of Cumorah in southern Mexico.

It's an irrational approach that engenders confusion, but this is what passes for faithful scholarship today.

Besides, not a single prophet or apostle has ever repudiated the New York Cumorah. This includes the living prophets today as well as the "dead" prophets.

A better approach might be to accept the consistent and persistent teachings of the prophets unless and until the living prophets specifically repudiate those teachings.
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These intellectuals have "outgrown" the teachings of the prophets and want everyone else in the Church to follow them instead.

Years ago, Elder Neal A. Maxwell made this observation:

No wonder, therefore, “to be learned is good if [we] hearken unto the counsels of God” instead of setting them aside as if we have somehow outgrown them (2 Nephi 9:29).

Our M2C intellectuals have "set aside" the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah. The intellectual ancestry of M2C demonstrates that it requires indoctrination to set aside these teachings in favor of M2C. 

This is how the academic cycle works.

Your daily Jonathan Edwards

I've started a new blog that offers a daily reading from Jonathan Edwards. Many readers already know why; I'll explain it more generally soon.

https://dailyjonathanedwards.blogspot.com/

Here is an example from his book The Great Awakening:

And as such an extraordinary time as this does especially require of us the exercise of a great deal of forbearance, one towards another; so there is peculiarly requisite in God's people the exercise of great patience, in waiting on God, under any special difficulties and disadvantages they may be under, as to the means of grace. 

The beginning of a revival of religion will naturally and necessarily be attended with a great many difficulties of this nature; many parts of the reviving church will, for a while, be under great disadvantages, by reason of what remains of the old disease of a general corruption of the visible church. 

We can't expect that after a long time of degeneracy and depravity in the state of things in the church, things should all come to rights at once; it must be a work of time: and for God's people to be overhasty and violent in such a case, being resolved to have everything rectified at once, or else forcibly to deliver themselves by breaches and separations, is the way to hinder things coming to rights as they otherwise would, and to keep 'em back, and the way to break all in pieces. 

Not but that the case may be such, the difficulty may be so intolerable, as to allow of no delay, and God's people can't continue in the state wherein they were without violations of absolute commands of God. But otherwise, though the difficulty may be very great, another course should be taken. 

God's people should have their recourse directly to the throne of grace, to represent their difficulties before the great Shepherd of the sheep, that has the care of all the affairs of his church; and when they have done, they should wait patiently upon him. If they do so, they may expect that in his time, he will appear for their deliverance: but if instead of that, they are impatient, and take the work into their own hands, they will bewray their want of faith, and will dishonor God, and can't have such reason to hope that Christ will appear for them, as they have desired, but have reason to fear that he will leave 'em to manage their affairs for themselves as well as they can: when otherwise, if they had waited on Christ patiently continuing still instant in prayer, they might have had him appearing for them, much more effectually to deliver them. "He that believeth shall not make haste" [Isaiah 28:16]; and 'tis for those that are found patiently waiting on the Lord, under difficulties, he will especially appear, when he comes to do great things for his church, as is evident by Isaiah 30:18 and chap. Isaiah 40 at the latter end, and Isaiah 49:23, and Psalms 37:9, and many other places.

I have somewhere, not long since, met with an exposition of those words of the spouse that we have several times repeated in the Book of Canticles, "I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please," which is the only satisfying exposition that ever I met with; which was to this purpose, viz. that when the church of God is under great difficulties and in distress, and Christ don't appear for her help but seems to neglect her as though he were asleep, God's people, or the daughters of Jerusalem, in such a case should not shew an hasty spirit; and not having patience to wait for Christ to awake for their help till his time comes, take indirect courses for their own deliverance and use violent means for their escape, before Christ appears to open the door for them; and so as it were, stir up and awake Christ before his time. 

When the church is in distress, and God seems not to appear for her in his providence, he is very often represented in Scripture as being asleep; as Christ was asleep in the ship, when the disciples were tossed by the storm, and the ship covered with waves [Matthew 8:23–27]: and God's appearing afterwards for his people's help is represented as his awaking out of sleep. Psalms 7:6, and Psalms 35:23, and Psalms 44:23, and Psalms 59:4, and Psalms 73:20. 

Christ has an appointed time for his thus awaking out of sleep: and his people ought to wait upon him; and not, in an impatient fit, stir him up before his time. 

'Tis worthy to be observed how strict this charge is, given to the daughters of Jerusalem, which is repeated three times over in the Book of Canticles, chap. Canticles 2:7, and Canticles 3:5, and Canticles 8:4. In the Canticles 2 chapter and six first verses, is represented the supports Christ gives his church while she is in a suffering state, as the lily among thorns: in the Canticles 2:7 verse is represented her patience in waiting for Christ to appear for her deliverance, when she charges the daughters of Jerusalem not to stir up nor awake her love till he please, by the roes and the hinds of the field; which are creatures of a gentle, harmless nature, are not beasts of prey, do not devour one another, don't fight with their enemies, but fly from them; and are of a pleasant, loving nature, Proverbs 5:19. In the next verse [Canticles 2:8], we see the church's success, in this way of waiting under sufferings with meekness and patience; Christ soon awakes, speedily appears, and swiftly comes. "The voice of my beloved! Behold, he cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills!"

Inventing M2C

People wonder why intellectuals invented M2C. I'll be discussing the intellectual ancestry of M2C in a couple of weeks, but there's another factor to consider.

M2C was developed to fill a void, a lack of information that was intolerable to many believers in the Book of Mormon.

Long ago, Hugh Nibley pointed out this psychological reality:

The penalty we pay for starving our minds is a phenomenon that is only too conspicuous at the BYU: Aristotle pointed out long ago that a shortage of knowledge is an intolerable state and so the mind will do anything to escape it; in particular, it will invent knowledge if it has to. 

Experimenters have found that "lack of information quickly breeds insecurity in a situation where any information is regarded as better than none." (11) In that atmosphere, false information flourishes and subjects in tests are "eager to listen to and believe any sort of preposterous nonsense.'' (12)

http://emp.byui.edu/ANDERSONKC/Zeal%20Without%20Knowledge.pdf

The early hemispheric model created by the Pratt Brothers, Benjamin Winchester, William Smith, etc., filled a gap in knowledge. Even after Joseph Smith tried to clarify the situation in the Wentworth letter, his associates insisted the ruins in Central America had to originate with the Nephites.

The anonymous articles in the 1842 Times and Seasons were absurd on their face, and in hindsight they are even worse because they describe ruins that postdated Book of Mormon time frames. Nevertheless, they constituted a "hook in the sky" upon which certain intellectuals, first in the RLDS church and then in the LDS church, could hang M2C.

By now, the M2C intellectuals have invented all kinds of knowledge about the Nephites that originated with Mesoamerican studies but not the text of the Book of Mormon. And their zeal knows no bounds; they'll spend every penny they raise from members of the Church and the Church itself to promote M2C to the world.

Just watch what happens with ScripturePlus as it replaces Gospel Library.

Watch all the internet ads.

And watch how the 2020 Come Follow Me curriculum fits like a glove over the hand of Book of Mormon Central.
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The tragedy of all of this is a little more patience would have let the intellectuals satisfy their thirst for knowledge by focusing on all the archaeological information coming out of the Midwestern United States.
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Brother Nibley made another insightful comment:

True knowledge never shuts the door on more knowledge, but zeal often does. One thinks of the dictum: "We are not seeking for truth at the BYU; we have the truth!" So did Adam and Abraham have the truth, far greater and more truth than what we have, and yet the particular genius of each was that he was constantly "seeking for greater light and knowledge."