By Jerald and Sandra Tanner
On January 30, 1981, we received a very encouraging letter from Ronald M. Rees, Manager of Beehive Books in New Zealand. Mr. Rees has given us permission to share extracts from this letter with our readers:
No doubt you have wondered if Beehive Books is an L.D.S. bookshop. Perhaps you may be interested to learn a little about us. Nine years ago my wife Roberta and I established New Zealand’s first privately owned bookshop for Latter-Day Saints. Our venture has met with success, and we now supply Mormons throughout both New Zealand and Australia with their book requirements . . . we also supply the Church owned bookshop at the Visitors’ Centre adjacent to the N.Z. Temple, also many Church units throughout New Zealand and Australia, and a steady flow of members calling at the shop to make their purchases. . . .
Roberta and I are in our early thirties, and we both joined the L.D.S. Church about 17 years ago. Over the years, although we have always been fully active in the Church and have both held responsible leadership positions, we have both at times felt aware of the constant pressures. Also, working with L.D.S. publications, we have been keenly aware and disturbed by the unorthodox views expressed by many of the early Church authorities such as are found in the Journal of Discourses.
In September of last year together we agreed to quietly withdraw our fellowship from the Church. It caused some consternation and surprise amongst local Church leaders when both Roberta and I requested releases from our positions as High Priest’s Group Leader and Spiritual Living Leader in Relief Society, and quietly slipped into what is termed “inactivity” with our three children.
At about this time a non-Member customer told us about your book “Mormonism, Shadow or Reality”—hence our letter to you of October 17. When your catalogue arrived, we noted that “Changing World of Mormonism” was a Moody Press publication, and obtained a copy from their local representatives. After reading this book we feel very relieved to be free from the Mormon Church, and grateful to you for the efforts you and Jerald are making to reveal the untruths, paradoxes, doctrinal conflicts and errors which most Mormons are totally unaware of. We have lent your book to seven of our friends, and all have withdrawn from the Church. These fine people were all faithful and fully active . . .
Now, as to our future . . . We have completely ceased ordering L.D.S. publications, and by the end of March hope to have cleared all stocks. At that stage we intend to formally request that our names and those of our three children be removed from the records of the Church. It is our intention to promote your publications at that time. We have a very extensive mailing list of the many hundreds of Latter-Day Saints who have purchased books from us over the years, and we will be mailing each of these customers a copy of a catalogue of your publications. . . .
Naturally, you will appreciate that our decision to close down the very successful L.D.S. section of our business was a difficult one. However, we find that in conscience we can no longer promote L.D.S. Church literature. . . .
Once again, Sandra and Jerald, may we thank you for the effort and research you both made in publishing “The Changing World of Mormonism.” We always found difficulty complying with the common Mormon attitude of “the thinking has been done,” and with continual access to Church literature we have been troubled by contradictions in doctrine. To read your fully documented and objective appraisal of all these various questions—plus many others which local members are totally unaware of—has been quite a traumatic and shattering experience. However, our family is very happy in our new-found freedom, and reaching out to understand what Christ would have us do. We feel a sense of mission in our future, and are keen to share our newly discovered knowledge with our Mormon friends and customers. We believe that we are in a truly unique position so to do.
By June 12, 1981, Mr. and Mrs. Rees reported that “nearly 70 Mormons” had come out of the Church:
On May 17th we sent to every Mormon Church leader and every Mormon on our mailing list in New Zealand a copy of our mailer . . .
The response has been amazing. . . . The most wonderful thing is that we have been able to assist nearly 70 Mormons out of Mormonism and many of them to the real Lord Jesus Christ. We have a Mormon Bishop, 5 returned missionaries and two stake high councilmen now on our mailing list. Every day some one approaches us and we are able to show them that Mormon claims are false. . . . It really touches us when a returned missionary who has just been shown all the evidence in your books that we have in our shop says with tears in his eyes “The Church is not true and I have wasted two years of my life and all that money for nothing.” Two days later he accepted the Lord and is being baptised at the end of this month. He is helping his mother and aunt out of the church. The aunt rang us earlier this week and we sent her a library copy of “Mormonism Shadow or Reality?” She phoned us back yesterday to say she had read it (must be a speed reader) and she now knows that the church is not true. She is a third generation Mormon!
Some people declare to us after seeing the truth and coming to know that Mormonism is not true . . . “It’s Me getting out of a prison.” One young man who said those exact words has now accepted Christ and was baptised earlier this week.
We are very pleased to learn of these dramatic developments in New Zealand, and we hope that our readers will remember these people in prayer.
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