A few years ago, Denver Snuffer delivered what are now referred to as the 10 talks. In each of these talks Denver focuses on a specific aspect of the restoration, in an attempt to clarify it. Several people have recommended the talks to me, and I have wanted to examine them for a while now. This is an analysis of Denver’s first talk which sets the ground for all the subsequent ones.
Overview
Denver’s first talk is rather long at 2 1/2 hours and does honestly contain many good teachings. With such a long talk there are of course many subjects mentioned. However, overall, I would say the talk is misleading, completely wrong in some cases, and frankly spiritually dangerous. With talks like this it is very easy to get caught up in the overall rhetoric and lose sight of the subtle manipulation that he is using. This is especially true since Denver is honestly a good speaker and is a trained lawyer who is good at making an argument. This works especially well for him.
Overall, I would summarize Denver’s talk as, trust in Joseph Smith who is the prophet of the restoration. Of course, Denver mentions God a lot in the talk. However, the talk is designed to bolster someone’s faith in Joseph and reorient them to him as the key player in God’s end time work. Interestingly, the people that Denver mainly appeals to are those that have left the LDS church. These individuals were primarily taught to put their faith in the living prophet, instead of Christ. Denver is now reorienting these same people to now place their faith in Joseph Smith, a dead prophet, instead of Christ.
This shift in focus may seem to make sense at first. However, even if Joseph was an infallible prophet, then putting our faith in him instead of Christ is always going to lead to disappointment. We do however know that Joseph received false revelations, made false prophecies, and generally made understandable mistakes in his ministry. Those that trusted in Joseph more than God were spiritually devastated when they realized the truth. The longer these members took to realize the truth, then the harder it was for them to see it and accept it. This is completely unnecessary. Our faith and trust should be in Christ alone. Men and women will always let us down.
Joseph Smith
In order to illustrate Denver’s overall focus, I want to share just a few quotes from the talk. As was mentioned, this is a pretty long talk, and he does cover a lot of subjects to some degree. However, Denver makes several aside remarks that really underscore the overall purpose he is trying to achieve.
The first of these aside remarks is after a bit of small talk to set the stage for the rest of the talk. Denver mentions:
Tonight I want to introduce some ideas that are essential to salvation coming through the prophet Joseph Smith, which we really need to become reacquainted with.
Denver Snuffer, Talk #1 – Be of Good Cheer, Be of Good Courage
This may have been a slip of the tongue, however even the LDS church doesn’t believe that salvation comes through Joseph Smith. Small remarks like this though, essentially set the mental stage for the overall talk. For instance, if salvation is through Joseph Smith, then the rest of the focus does make sense. However scripturally, like in Mosiah 4, we are told that salvation only comes through the atonement of Christ, which Joseph has nothing to do with. Christ is the one to save us, not someone who acts in the name of Christ like Joseph. Therefore, it really is troubling for anyone to suggest salvation is through Joseph and not Christ.
Denver then makes several remarks about the importance of knowledge. He does this by sharing some very popular quotes from Joseph in order to illustrate the point that studying knowledge, as given by Joseph, should be our primary focus. For instance, in one of the quotes that Denver references, Joseph is quoted as saying, “A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge”. This quote is very popular and really sounds very wise. However, upon inspection it is quite easily disproven.
In the New Testament there are several accounts of evil spirits, that seemingly have far more knowledge than we ever will, yet Christ still mentioned there will come a time for their spiritual destruction. In addition, Christ continually spoke against the Pharisees and Sadducees who both had exceptional knowledge of the law. Yet, this knowledge was actually a great stumbling block to their spiritual advancement. Knowledge of the workings of God is certainly quite important. However, the overall message of Christ was to obey God, by serving others, instead of just amassing raw knowledge.
Denver continues in his appeal that we study the words of Joseph by equating the church with Joseph. He summarizes this by stating that Joseph founded the church so studying Joseph is studying the church. Denver mentions:
Because if you want to know the truth about the Church, you must know the truth about its founding
Denver Snuffer, Talk #1 – Be of Good Cheer, Be of Good Courage
prophet. … Therefore if you want to find the truth, you have to look at Joseph.
Again, this only really makes sense if Joseph becomes more than a servant of God and approaches an idol. Why do we need to look to Joseph to see God more clearly? Isn’t this the problem with the current LDS leadership? They mention that to understand God then we need to study their words more clearly. This is another example of someone standing in the way between us and God. This is completely unnecessary.
A last example of Denver’s excessive focus on Joseph is a mention that we must “seek counsel and authority and blessings under the hand of Joseph”. Denver clarifies that Joseph is the key to our understanding God better and so we must look to him. It is Joseph that we must look to for guidance and not Christ or his words in the scriptures. The words of Christ are seemingly not as important as the words of Joseph. Denver mentions:
The hand of Joseph is still the hand we ought to be looking at if we want to know what God’s word was for our generation.
Denver Snuffer, Talk #1 – Be of Good Cheer, Be of Good Courage
I do agree that we can learn from Joseph. However, looking to Joseph for our salvation, authority, and blessings seems a little bit excessive to me. Is Joseph now a replacement for Christ as far as Mormonism is concerned? I am sure some people feel this way, however didn’t Christ come to fulfill the law and set us free? It seems though, that Denver feels that Christ came to give us Joseph as our guide and the giver of our new law.
History
The next major part of Denver’s talk is a review of Joseph’s 1838 history. Denver spends about 3/4 of the talk going through Joseph’s history and discussing every major detail of it. Denver begins this section by denigrating everyone that came out against Joseph or the church during the Kirtland era.
If we look at the history of that time, then we can see that in 1837, the Kirtland Safety Society had failed which is something that according to Joseph wasn’t supposed to happen. Joseph had prophesied that the bank was the will of God and would take over the world. Many of the members had invested their savings and in some cases everything they had into the bank. They believed Joseph’s words as a prophecy from God’s prophet.
After the failure of the bank, there was a lot of negativity inside and outside of the church with many prominent people openly speaking against Joseph and the church. In response to the negativity, Joseph began to write an 1838 account of his history. This account was largely to set the record straight and act as an official history for the church since many people were publishing a lot of unflattering things about the church.
In Denver’s extensive use of Joseph’s 1838 history, Denver fails to notice that the 1838 account was essentially propaganda for the church. Many things in the 1838 account of the First Vision were embellished, misleading, invented, or highly biased towards Joseph and the church.
For instance, in the 1838 account Joseph describes a great revival in 1820 as precipitating his spiritual awakening. However, this revival didn’t happen until 4 years later and couldn’t have been Joseph’s spiritual impetus in 1820. The account also described how Joseph told others of the First Vision which caused significant persecution against him. We have extensive records during that time period and there is not a single mention of Joseph’s vision or persecution against him. This also includes personal journals from family and friends. It seems that if people were upset at Joseph then no one seemed to be upset enough to write about it.
In addition, several aspects of the vision itself appear to be embellished and significantly different from the earlier accounts. For instance, in Joseph’s 1832 account Joseph mentioned that he knew that all churches had apostatized from the truth, and he wanted to approach God for a forgiveness of sins. The 1835 account mentions essentially the same things.
However, the 1838 account now has Joseph as approaching God to ask God which church to join because he wasn’t sure. The 1838 account also has a vivid description of Satan as trying to stop Joseph from praying, while the earlier accounts do not. Lastly, the 1838 account has extensive information about Moroni’s visit, the gold plates, Joseph’s work on translating, and the priesthood. There are in fact many things in the 1838 account which are faith promoting and serve as a buffer against the anti-Mormon sentiment in 1838. Almost all of these things are different from the earlier accounts or entirely missing.
It is completely understandable why Joseph would want to establish this version as the true history of the church instead of the other versions which disaffected members were trying to establish instead. Of course, just because someone wrote this in 1838 doesn’t make it true. It also doesn’t mean it should be used as a way to promote faith in Joseph and the church.
Denver however warns his listeners that if they don’t value the words of Joseph enough, which includes Joseph’s 1838 history, then Christ will be ashamed to acknowledge them before the Father. This is actually pretty substantial because it sounds like Denver is elevating the words of Joseph even above the words of Christ. Denver mentions:
If you are ashamed to own the words that come to us by the hand of Joseph, your shame is not toward Joseph but your shame is towards Him who taught Joseph the words to speak. Of those who are ashamed to acknowledge these are the Lord’s words shall the Son of Man be ashamed.
Denver Snuffer, Talk #1 – Be of Good Cheer, Be of Good Courage
According to Denver then, if we acknowledge and treasure Joseph’s words then Christ will acknowledge and treasure us. However, if we don’t fully treasure or agree with Joseph then we will be shunned by Christ before the Father. This is complete nonsense. However it does serve to further elevate Joseph and his teachings above everything else. In Denver’s talk it truly seems like Joseph is more important than Christ himself. To many in Mormonism today, this is actually true.
Conclusion
Denver is a good speaker and has a lot of good points to share about the gospel and restoration. However, his overall message is incredibly dangerous as we have seen. Of course, there are many good things we can learn from Joseph Smith and his work in the early church. However, anyone that puts their faith or trust in Joseph instead of Christ is going to have problems when they uncover unpleasant things that Joseph did or said.
This is the same problem people have today when their faith is centered in the LDS church instead of Christ. When they discover unpleasant things about the church itself, then their testimony of God and his end time work is unnecessarily threatened. Denver wants our faith and trust to be in Joseph, when it should only be in Christ.
Christ will not be ashamed to own us if we don’t acknowledge all of Joseph’s words. This is Joseph worship to even begin to think this concept. Joseph also is not required for our salvation as Denver seems to think. This is another false idea that sets Joseph up as an idol in people’s minds. There is only one person that we need to concern ourselves with if we are worried about our salvation. That person is Jesus, not Denver, and definitely not Joseph.
