Standard of Truth

There's No Shame in "I Don't Know" and the Copyright Act of 1790

 

We are recording in front of a live studio audience in Palmyra in Palmyra, New York 

 

We open with the mailbag: Elder Cook asks how to answer hard historical questions without making things up and we talk matching your response to the difficulty, admitting what you don't know, finding common ground, and pivoting back to Christ. 

 

Then we dig into the 1830 Book of Mormon title page: why "author and proprietor" comes straight from the Copyright Act of 1790, why translators of the era used the same language, and how Abner Cole (alias Obadiah Dogberry) tried to print stolen text in the Palmyra Reflector.

 

If you are interested in joining us in 2027 in Palmyra and Kirtland, August 1st through August 7th, click on the link below and reserve your spot:

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In this episode, we answer a litter's questions who wrote while in "DEEP" labor asking about the lesser-known Pratt brothers and an audio submission from Filer, Idaho about the legend that Joseph of Arimathea brought the teenage Jesus to Cornwall. Gerrit traces the idea to William of Malmesbury's 12th-century history of Glastonbury and its tangle of Arthurian folklore.

 

We close with part three of our King Follett sermon series, where Gerrit warns against apologists who lean on the Thomas Bullock account's apparent mistranscription to claim Joseph taught God was God from all eternity, arguing that you can't play historian with one discrepant source against five consistent ones, and that watering down what Joseph actually taught to appease traditional Christian critics is selling your birthright for a mess of pottage that won't even fill you up.

 

If you are interested in joining us in 2027 in Palmyra and Kirtland, August 1st through August 7th, click on the link below and reserve your spot:

https://pci.jotform.com/form/261567888174171

 

Sign up for our free monthly email: ⁠ ⁠⁠https://standardoftruthpodcast.substack.com⁠⁠

 

If you have any questions or possible topics of discussion for upcoming podcasts, please email us at: ⁠⁠questions@standardoftruthpodcast.com

This episode was recorded 4 1/2 years ago, but was never released. In this episode, Gerrit provides context around the setting of Joseph Smith’s King Follett Sermon.

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This is a rereleased episode from season 1 of Condemned to Repeat It. In this episode, we work through the grievances section of the Declaration of Independence, unpacking how Jefferson methodically built his case against King George III. Gerrit shows how each charge, dissolving colonial legislatures, making judges beholden to the Crown, quartering standing armies, employing Hessian mercenaries, cutting off colonial trade, and asserting the power "to legislate in all cases whatsoever" directly echoes earlier acts of Parliament and the king, with Jefferson cleverly turning the Crown's own language back against it. 

The episode closes with a thoughtful reflection on the Declaration's enduring legacy: while Jefferson and many signers were themselves slaveholders, the document's assertion that all are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights became the very foundation later generations would invoke to dismantle slavery, expand suffrage, and pursue civil rights, proof that, as Lincoln understood at Gettysburg, the arc of history bends slowly but inevitably toward the truths the founders dared to declare.

If you would like to follow what Sweetwater Rescue is doing, specifically our most recent trip to Nairobi Kenya please follow us on Instagram or Facebook. 

 

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This is a rereleased episode from season 1 of Condemned to Repeat It. In this episode, we set the stage for the Declaration of Independence by exploring the deep English political and intellectual history Jefferson drew upon when he sat down to write it. Far from being a spontaneous act of rebellion, the Declaration was the latest entry in a long English tradition of publicly justifying political action, with clear roots in the 1689 Declaration of Right that deposed King James II and the Virginia Declaration of Rights drafted just weeks earlier in June 1776. 

Gerrit walks through the political climate of the Continental Congress, where moderates, realists, and outright loyalists still outnumbered firebrands like John and Samuel Adams, and explains how Richard Henry Lee's June resolution for independence prompted a committee, led by Jefferson, to draft an explanation rather than the act of independence itself. 

The episode traces how Jefferson's opening lines about self-evident truths, equality, and unalienable rights radically inverted centuries of monarchical assumption: rights no longer flowed downward from kings as gracious gifts, but upward from a Creator to the people, who in turn loaned legitimate power to government. The hosts close on a cliffhanger as Jefferson pivots from preamble to grievances, leaving Richard, ever the loyalist sympathizer, still firmly on the side of the Crown.

If you would like to follow what Sweetwater Rescue is doing, specifically our most recent trip to Nairobi Kenya please follow us on Instagram or Facebook. 

 

Sweetwater Rescue Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sweetwaterrescue?igsh=MTd6eHRteG9idzB6bA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

 

Sweetwater Rescue Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/18n8KBA9bz/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Sign up for our free monthly email: ⁠ ⁠https://standardoftruthpodcast.substack.com⁠

If you have any questions or possible topics of discussion for upcoming podcasts, please email us at: ⁠⁠questions@standardoftruthpodcast.com