Charges Of Suppression Conclusion

Created: 03 August 2009

Last Updated: 03 August 2009

In a previous post I address Mormanity’s poor assessment that the Joseph Smith III blessing was evidence of forthright behavior on the part of Church leadership. Mormanity did not stop with that poor assessment, but built on it, with this even more bizarre assessment. “This has been an important pattern in the Church: we make important documents available, documents like those from Hoffman or the Book of Abraham fragments. We publish them and encourage discussion. We don't run from the truth.”

It is hard to know where to start with such a blatantly bogus statement. LDS faithful have long been discouraged from reading material critical of the Church in the slightest. An interesting tidbit of the Hofmann forgeries is the way in which the Church acquired the Salamander letter. Via back channels, a faithful member of the Church (Christensen) purchased the document with his own money and was then instructed to donate it to the Church. This caused a financial hardship for Christensen and he wrote Hinckley requesting permission to sell the document in order to recover his expenses. His request was denied. His only other option at easing his financial burden was to write a book about the document. He did not because of a statement at the October general conference that appeared to be aim directly at him. The faithful were instructed to neither write or sponsor a book would lead some into disbelief. So much for “encouraging discussion”.

A very interesting fallout of the Hofmann episode is the discovery that the McLellin papers were already in the Church archives and the Church did not even know it. In complying with subpoenas archivist where searching for documents in the church archives that were purchased from Hofmann. During the search the archivists stumble upon the McLellin papers.

Apparently, Joseph F. Smith did the same thing Hinckley did with the Stowell Forgery. He bought the McLellin papers in 1908, put them in the archives and did not tell anyone else about them. When he passed away, knowledge of the McLellin papers whereabouts passed away with him. Even more interesting is the fact that McLellin papers rediscovery was withheld from the Hofmann investigation team (more suppression). It is only because of Hofmann that we know about these attempted suppressions. What else has been suppressed that we do not know about?

http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no83.htm#TURLEY%27S%20BOMBSHELL!!