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May 2013
I have been reading your website for a long time and finally left the Mormon Church in December of this past year. . . . It took me a long time to realize all the problems and out-right lies of Mormonism. I was very upset at having been miss-led so completely.
It’s hard to leave and I was still somewhat insecure about it at the time. However, I have joined a Christian Church which teaches nothing but the Bible, . . . The Minister has even read to us (and explained the native tongue meanings) from Hebrew and Greek Bibles so as to aid in our understating of some of the English Bible passages. . . . This is complete opposite of the shallow depth of knowledge I had seen in the local Stake Presidents and/or Bishops. . . . I have learned more in the past 7 months about the true and in-depth understanding of the Christian Bible than all of 40 years of surface knowledge handed out by the Mormon Church Melchizedek priesthood holders, Bishops, local Presidents, and stake Presidents. . . . Thank you so much for your work. I know you have brought many to Christianity.
May 2013
Your site and books have been an enormous help to me. I was needing a crash course in Mormonism to engage a Mormon friend who was going to spend a week with us in early May. She had given me a BoM earlier, but I had found it extremely difficult to read . . . My friend . . . arrived as scheduled . . . I had formed a handful of questions on basic BoM to ask her and as anything LDS is her favorite subject, getting the conversation going was easy. Is it real history? Translation or transliteration? Anachronisms: chariots, horses, steel etc. Archeological sites? Language, DNA. You get the picture. For each question she had a push button, no nonsense reply and prying about them further produced a strong push back, so I was looking for a different approach when I thought of Sam, Lehi’s son.
When I had first read about Sam in the BoM I remember bursting out laughing. No Israelite would ever name their child “Sam”, cutting off “el”, God.
So I asked her about Sam. And we talked about Hannah, being barren, and why she named her son Samuel – Shema El. ‘God hears.’ And recited the Jewish Shema – “hear o Yisrael.” Then we talked about El. ‘God.’ Beth El. ‘House of God,’ etc. El would never knowingly be omitted from a name. So, knowing that no Israelite would ever name a child simply “Hear,” explain to me how and why Lehi came up with “Sam”? She had not heard that question before, fully understood the logic and therefore the legitimacy of it, and had no answer. It was the first time in the few years I have known [my friend] that she did not have an answer for a BoM question. Stunning. For all her LDS brainwashing she is intellectually honest. One just has to breach the Mormon armor of an auto-answer to find it. When she left a few days later she was still puzzling over “Sam” and promised to get back with me. Inside I was doing handsprings.
The Holy Spirit found a small niche for His truth to rest in the mind of my friend, and I am praying for it to grow and produce a fatal crack in the Mormon lie that has her so bound.
May 2013
Looking back over that time between when I was exiting Mormonism and when God put and established me in Christ, there were a host of other influences that tried to reach out and grab me. I thank God that one counterbalancing influence was you, Sandra, and your books, and the personal time you gave me. I am ever grateful.
May 2013
I know that we are all sons and daughters of God. I have a current Temple recommend Being fast Sunday today I bore my Testimony to the truth fullness of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and of the prophet Joseph Smith and our current prophet pres. Monson.
May 2013
I recently resigned my membership in the LDS Church. I was “born and raised” in the church, rendered lip service to professing a testimony, served on a foreign mission, served as well in a ward bishopric, and was even ordained a High Priest by Thomas Monson—all gratefully repudiated, I might add. . . . My renunciation and denunciation of Mormonism have NOT been difficult—not laden with remorse, guilt, or misgivings. I have never been happier since voluntarily throwing off the trappings of “the church.” It was the appropriate decision when, after 76 years of church membership, I came to the full realization one fine day that the so-called Gospel as taught in my former church was a sham and a lie.
May 2013
After reading your latest newsletter/magazine, I handed it to a Mormon in my housing unit. At first he didn’t want it, but took it in the end. Yesterday he asked me to pray for him as he is now struggling with his Mormon/LDS faith.
June 2013
In search of the truth and my heart hurts but I know that this pain is necessary. Thank you all . . . I’m Former Sunday School President, after 4 years I resigned for the right reasons . . . NOT a Mormon hater but have confirmed that the deceit from the LDS church is not: Christ-like, honest or helpful.
I recently had my Bishop ask me not to baptize my son; this was because I was honest enough to state a small fraction of my concerns in private. I simply focused on Brigham Young’s Adam/God issue since I know it didn’t hit at HIS core values. I was accused of not praying reading scripture enough. NOPE!! Take care, God Bless and more power to you!
July 2013
I do not believe you or your words at all. Go Away!
July 2013
My wife and I recently resigned from LDS church after 40 years of life-long service and TONS of money donated.
It all started on February 10, 2013, when we were sitting in Gospel Doctrine class and I read D&C 49:16 about having one wife. For some reason the question pricked me . . . if God commanded Joseph in a modern day revelation that we should only have one wife, then why did we ever practice polygamy??
I had recently gotten an iPad with my scriptures on it so I decided to do a quick internet search and see how the church justified that. I’ve never gone outside the scriptures and basic LDS resources to read and study so I was blown away when I pulled up fairmormon.org. I had never heard of that site before, nor had I ever realized there were SO MANY problems the church was dealing with! Within a week of all-consuming research, I lost my testimony of the church. My wife immediately followed and we officially resigned a few months ago.
I’m a successful small business owner with a wife and three great kids. Born and raised in Utah and then moved [out of state] in 2003. We are eternally grateful for people like you who have shed light on the dreary world of Mormonism!! Your website and extensive information is incredible! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!
July 2013
hey i was wondering why you spend these countless hours trying to disprove the church when you could go on living your life. you guys have serious issues you are dealing with here.
July 2013
First off, I want to say thank you so much for your web site. Thank you so much for putting the facts there. . . . I’m 29 years old, born and raised in the LDS Church and very active in it all those years for the most part. . . .
After my divorce I had a few bishops wanting me to go through the temple to get my endowments. I told them I took it very seriously and I just didn’t feel like it was the right time to go through. . . . I went through the . . . Temple [in 2012] for my first time (I did baptisms for the dead when I was in young womens and in institute—lots of times.) . . . They told me to focus on the feeling and just enjoy it. But it was soooo different then I had thought. It was so confusing to me before I even got to the endowment session.
I thought the priesthood, the men, are the ones that have the priesthood so the washing and anointing having the female do it really confused me. I could see on the board the [new] name written and had been erased, when she gave me my secret name it was the same one and I tried not to let that bother me and put it in the back of my mind. It was so much different than I thought it would be. I thought it would be more personable and felt more closer to God but it was different and I left with a head ache. But I told everyone that I loved it and I felt good being in there and it was a good experience. But it really did confuse me and it was so not what I thought it was going to be and I was kind of disappointed!
20 days later at my work I met a guy and we started dating. little by little he would always talk about Joseph Smith, free masonry, the temple and etc. The things he told me did not feel right and I was like no that can’t be true. I was never taught a lot of those things he was telling me. . . . and he even showed me some things in the church history volumes, so he always proved everything he told me.
First I tried to prove him wrong about polygamy and some things from the Bible since that was the only book he believed in. . . . He showed me the similarities to the book of the hebrews and the book of mormon, the stone and the hat, the magical practices and basically the whole translation process. Those hit me hard. (I mean the book of mormon is the cornerstone of the religion!) One day though he told me that he showed me everything he could and that he gave up on me with showing me stuff and get through to me. He told me boy the lds church really has its claws in you! He was right, I was 100 percent all in it and I was happy in it.
One day I prayed to Heavenly Father to guide me to the truth, that I wanted to know the truth no matter the price. That I want to return to him again and I love him and Jesus and if He wants me to stay in the church I will, if he wants me to leave I will, just let me know what is true. I thought I had the truth, but please guide me to it.
Boy did he answer that prayer so fast! I asked the guy I was dating one more time to show me things. So he showed me the information about the stone and the hat etc. I watched a movie on ‘Jesus vs Joseph Smith’ that some Christians put out I think. Everything clicked, it felt like that and everything came pouring out and it just all hit me! Joseph Smith was not what he claimed and the Church leaders are deceiving and lying to the lds people! Then I started doing research on my own, he gave me all the websites and places I needed so I could do deep research. Now all I see when I look at the temple is that it is masonic and not from God. . . .
I had always thought that since Joseph smith got a revelation from god about polygamy that he did practice it, but I don’t think I was ever taught that, they focus on him and emma. So it wasn’t that big of a deal to find out he did have more than one wife, and the 14 year olds he married was gross, but what bugged me even more was the polyandry. I did deep research and that guy helped me a lot.
But the only one who could touch my heart and actually get through to me was God. He answered my prayer and I have never felt closer to him. I came to find out that I can trust the Bible and on mother’s day I started going to a non denominational Christian church. I love it! I am reading the new testament and I have never felt Jesus so close to me. I have never felt so much love for him and from him, comfort and peace! it is amazing! I love Jesus so much! The cross was enough! What my Savior did for me and everyone was enough! He did it all! It is so hard for me with there being no pre-existence and then trying to figure out what really is biblical and true vs what is man made by Joseph Smith and the LDS Church.
July 2013
I am a former LDS member and a Biblical Christian. Actually, I have not officially resigned from the LDS church . . . but my husband and I physically left the church about 15 years ago and have been members of a couple of solid Christian churches since then. There were many things that the Lord used in the beginning to show us there was a problem in the LDS teaching, by the way, and we did end up looking at some of the Tanners’ material. We’re grateful for your work and that you seek to represent the church accurately because we agree it does Christians and Mormons a great disservice to do otherwise.
July 2013
Thank you for the prompt processing of my order [digital PDF copy of Mormonism—Shadow or Reality?]. I’ve been examining your work for the last hour or so. I am nothing but impressed so far! . . .
I am especially grateful for the photo of Jerald and Sandra at the end of the book. It helps to buttress my representations to my still-LDS-believing family members that the book was NOT written by demons but by extremely intelligent, spiritual, compassionate, and hard-working human beings who care about truth.
July 2013
Dear sister in Christ, i just wanted you to know that i am so grateful for your service. Thank so much dear, dear sister.
About month ago i found out information about history of the mormon church. It was really hard time in my life because i was a faithful member of this church about 11 years, served my mission and now i know the truth. i am sorry for my poor english, but my poor english helped me to understand most of information.
I still wondering about how this church is manmade and fake religion and has awful history. It’s still hard for me . . . and i stopped attending their worship. And all my friends in Russia they are mormons . . . i feel so bad because they was deceived and many of them just ignoring information about history of the church. . . . i loosing my friends and my family . . . But now i know the real Christ. And it worth it. I feel his love for me, but i still feel lonely with my new reality. I reading the Bible every day and sometime it’s hard to understand things because of the doctrine of mormonism in which i believed. . . . It is more harder for Russians to know the real situation of things, you know, because we have no translated books and have no church libraries where you can find information. . . . well, Sandra, because of your ministry now i know the truth and i was born again and i want to follow the Jesus till the end. I now preparing my paper for resignation from the church.
July 2013
This article [www.utlm.org] helped me a lot. the way u have explained and have put jesus’s saying before any other person. . . . I loved it. . . . I’m thinking of joining the lds church and when researched a little about lds and joseph smith I found out about his wives . . . and this ruined everything . . . but this article helped me see that no matter what people teach we can always chose whether to accept it or not . . . God has given us free will. . . . thank u for reminding me. . . . actually recently my boyfriend became a member of the lds church and just went for serving a mission. The thing is I found out all this after so long I mean I’ve to wait till he comes back. For me to explain to him.
July 2013
I have a meeting w/ my Bishop coming up . . . I prepared in part for this meeting thru the books from UTM [www. utlm.org]. . . . I resigned from my Sunday school president position in January. The genesis was that I saw the church manuals for what they are managed and at the “George Washington chopped down the cherry tree level.” I started my own research and WOW! I was mislead, lied to and have been rebuked for stating the truth.
July 2013
My story of finding Jesus! Those of you who have known me for a long time are probably wondering why I left the Mormon Church. I want to share my story with you . . . I was born and raised in the Mormon faith. It completely defined who I was. I met my husband just as he was coming home from serving a 2 year mission for the Mormon Church. We were married in the temple.
Those of you who knew me when I was Mormon knew I lived it. Down to every last detail the prophets laid out for me. No rated R movies, living the word of wisdom fully, no extra piercings, etc. . . I was attending the temple with my husband at least once a month or even more frequently. I had a calling in the Mormon church and was serving faithfully in my calling. I one hundred percent lived and believed in Mormonism, I was all in.
One day my husband sat me down to have a talk. He said he had been reading the Bible and he didn’t feel the Mormon Church was the right way to follow Jesus. I was floored. What? How could this be? He proceeded to show me multiple places in the Bible that contradicted Mormon doctrine.
He also began to show me that the history of the Mormon Church that I had been taught my whole life was not the whole truth. The history taught by the Mormon Church has many important details left out and many lies are told. (If you are interested in knowing these things I am more than happy to share them with you, also at Deseret Book you can buy a book called “Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling” it is a book about the history of Joseph Smith written by a historian for the Mormon church.) I was shocked by these things but I remained in a place of faith.
I had believed my whole life that this was the only true church, so I was going to continue to cling to it. Over the next couple years our marriage struggled in a major way. My husband left the Mormon Church completely and told me he wouldn’t be going back. I had family members (who are Mormon) telling me that my husband must be cheating on me and others telling me I should leave him so I could be with a “priesthood holder”. I even had thoughts of ending the marriage, but since we had our sweet 2 year old _______ I couldn’t bear the thought of splitting up his parents.
So I began praying to God to tell me what to do. I got a very sure answer that God did NOT want me to split up my family. So I stayed and slowly through reading and studying I began realizing the true character of Joseph Smith. For a man who claimed he “saw God”, he did not act like one. I realized the things he did and the lies he told were not anything God would condone or allow for one of His prophets. That testified to me that he was not ever a true prophet of God. Once I came to that realization I was pretty sure that the Mormon Church wasn’t true. So I took it one step further and asked God if the Mormon Church was true. I got a very sure and quick answer and it shocked even me. God was telling me that Mormonism was false.
During this time of questioning we were introduced to a non-denominational church. We began going occasionally. It was there that I was introduced to a new concept. It was that: Jesus died for us on the cross and there is nothing we can do on our own to go to heaven, all we can do is accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior and His sacrifice for us and we will be saved (Romans 10:9-10, Acts 4: 10-12). I was amazed that I felt the Holy Spirit so strong when they were saying these things. It was stronger than I had ever felt it in my life. One Sunday during the church service, it hit me. I realized I never knew this Jesus they were talking about. Yes I was taught of a Jesus in the Mormon Church, but it wasn’t this Jesus they were telling me about.
When I was Mormon I was told that in order to go to heaven (their “highest degree of Glory”) I had to do things. I had to be baptized, and I had to make and keep covenants in the temple. I now know that Jesus meant it when he said “It is finished”. He died and was raised from the dead and when we accept Him we are saved. To think that there is anything you can do to get to heaven is complete blasphemy (Isaiah 64:6). You cannot earn your spot in heaven (Ephesians 2: 8-10, Titus 3: 5-7). Jesus paid it all, period! Either you are going to accept and trust in God’s sacrifice fully or you are going to trust in yourself. When we stand before God on the judgment day it will go one of two ways. Jesus will come forward for you and say “She/he is mine, I died for her/him” or you will be judged according to your own works. I can tell you right now your works will never be enough (Galatians 2:16). Accept God at His word (John 3:16) and stop relying on yourself.
It isn’t about belonging to a specific church or a joining a specific religion. It’s all about Jesus. I left the Mormon Church for a personal relationship with Jesus. I challenge anyone who is Mormon or in any other religion to take a good look at what you believe in. Do you trust in God? Or are you relying on your own works? It can’t be both! If your Church is teaching you that there are any works you can do of yourself to get to Heaven, then it is false. Don’t discount what Jesus did for you any longer. Accept Him into your heart and into your life and be saved.
August 2013
Have you received a witness from God that your efforts are “on track” with His will? Do what is right.
August 2013
I too have been raised in the LDS church. I believe that I am one of the few [in my extended family] who have recognized the deceit of the church. My direct GG grandfather knew JS personally and was there with the polygamy revelation. In fact JS married two of my [ancestors]. I believe that my family is the largest in the church. My nephew is currently on a mission and my heart is breaking.
August 2013
I love your ministry. I was going to convert to Mormonism but after doing research I said. . . . NO WAY!! Thank u for your ministry.
August 2013
It’s really sad that you have a group that bashes the LDS church. You hate the church I get it. I really feel sorry for you and the others. You have no faith and never had a testimony. I know that God is my father and I am not adopted. That I am a daughter of God. That Jesus Christ died for my sins and yours. I know that my father in heaven loves me and answers my prayers. And so grateful that he told me this [LDS] is the true church. . . . I watch some of your videos I feel sad for you. I see a person trying so hard to see the bad in the LDS church.
August 2013
I am a Christ follower, I was born and raised in the Mormon church and my mother’s maiden name is Young. My great-great-grand father is Brigham Young. I heard of you . . . and was surprised to hear that someone else is a Christ follower and being related to you know who. It is real awesome to know that I am not alone in the fight to bring home those who believe in Mormonism.
August 2013
So, what do you feel your mission is? Do what is right.
August 2013
My daughter and I . . . recently left Mormonism after 35 years of my life. I served a mission and was married in the Temple. We are a mixed faith household. God called myself and my 10 year old out but my husband is still in the Bishopric and my 12 year old son is 2nd counselor in the deacons presidency. Please pray. This is so hard. We are attending a Baptist Church and everything seems like a foreign language to me.
Originally appeared in:
“Excerpts from Letters and Emails,” Salt Lake City Messenger, no. 121, October 2013, 20-22.