PBS special on The Mormons is on tonight

Last night was the first two hours of a four hour documentary about the Mormons, the past history of the church and it's prophet Joseph Smith. For those of you who missed the first part, it was very revealing about some of the hidden aspects of the religion, such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Haun's Mill Massacre, Joseph Smith's treasure digging practices, the use of seer stones to find lost objects and divine future events, the introduction of polygamy, the assassination of Joseph Smith at Carthage Jail, and the rise of Brigham Young to power in the church. You can see the first part of the documentary on the PBS website here.

Overall, I feel it is pretty balanced. There are opportunities for authorities in the church and apologists to make their statements and lead into explanations about certain events. They explain things from the perspective that this is a revealed doctrine, and that they have continuing revelation through a succession of prophets from Joseph Smith to Brigham Young and so on down through the church history. I was impressed that after many years of denial, that there finally was an admission of Mormon involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, (something I have been trying to get some members of the church to know about their church, but have been met with complete denial about any such event ever occurring at all).

I also noticed that for the first time, many members are learning that there were many versions of the "first vision" story floating about until the official one was adopted and added to the Mormon scriptures in 1842. Also, the true process of Joseph's translation abilities was brought out and discussed, with Dan Peterson---one of the busiest and most influential apologist that FAIR has working for them---actually admitting that Joseph used his personal seer stone, which he placed in the bottom of a hat and covered with his face to block out the light, so that the spiritual light from the stone could be seen. This was taken from eyewitness accounts from his scribes, Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery, and his own wife Emma, who acted as his scribe for a short time. I for one, can't believe they actually admitted it, since it runs completely contrary to the official version of Joseph Smith's 'seer' abilities.

Also the admission that Joseph Smith was the first to introduce polygamy, and NOT Brigham Young, AND that he had 33 wives, some of whom were only teenagers, AND that 10 of them had husbands already, was probably one of my favorite parts. I have half a mind to order the DVD and send it out to some people......

Anyway, tune in tonight for the conclusion of the series, it will start up again at 7 pm EST, (8 pm CST) and last for two hours. Tonight there will be more in depth about the temple ceremonies, (I hope they finally admit the Masonic connection) and go into things like Blacks being denied the priesthood until 1978, and what happens to members who become too "intellectual".

Oh, I know I promised to talk about Joseph Smith's Jupiter Talisman today, but I will be putting that off for a while, until the documentary is over. Until then, here's a picture of it: