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PODCAST

Church History Matters

Scripture Central

The Church History Matters Podcast features in-depth conversations between Scott and Casey where they dive deep into both the challenges and beauty of Latter-day Saint Church History

religion & spirituality christianity

All Episodes

01:32:36

097 The First Vision - Come Follow Me - E3 - Jan 13-19

Church History Matters ·

2025/01/07

Welcome to Church History Matters Come Follow Me Edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025! In this episode Scott and Casey cover Joseph Smith—History 1:1-26, which covers Joseph Smith's First Vision, and offer their insights into the context, content, controversies, and consequences of this important history.

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01:09:27

093 What Was Brigham Young's Role in the Mountain...

Church History Matters ·

2024/12/10

The unjustified slaughter of around 120 men, women, and children emigrants in Mountain Meadows Utah on September 11, 1857, was an unspeakable tragedy. For Latter-day Saints then and now, one of the many painful details about this event is that it was instigated under the direction of local LDS leaders in Iron County who served simultaneously as ecclesiastical, civil, and military leaders. On this episode of Church History Matters, we continue our discussion about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, with

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01:01:58

087 Does Religion Make People More Violent?

Church History Matters ·

2024/10/29

Did you know that one of the best selling books in Latter-day Saint history on Amazon.com was not written by a Latter-day Saint or a historian? It was a controversial book written by atheist Jon Krakauer in 2003 titled, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which still tops the Amazon charts (in Kindle releases) in the category “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” And an adaptation of the book was released as a mini-series in 2022.One of the major premises of the book is

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59:38

086 Why Does God Guide Those Not of His Church?...

Church History Matters ·

2024/10/22

From our brief survey of some of the various branches of the Restoration in this series, a few things have become apparent. First, it’s clear that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do not have a monopoly on a love of the Book of Mormon. Many of our Restoration cousins also deeply revere this sacred text, have their faith in Christ strengthened because of it, and draw near to God by abiding by its precepts. Second, and perhaps more puzzling to some Latter-day Saints, it’s

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01:04:16

085 Mormon Fundamentalism (w/Dr. Brian Hales)

Church History Matters ·

2024/10/15

Most of the main branches of the Restoration were formed within roughly two decades of the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith. One clear exception, however, is the Mormon Fundamentalist movement. Here’s a little backstory: In 1890 President Wilford Woodruff issued a manifesto announcing the Church’s intention to submit to those laws recently passed and declared constitutional by the US Supreme Court forbidding plural marriage. Then in 1904, as a result of the Reed Smoot hearings before the US

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01:03:56

084 A Deep-Dive Into the Community of Christ (w/...

Church History Matters ·

2024/10/08

Among many of those Nauvoo Saints who did not choose to follow Brigham Young and the Twelve Apostles into the mountains of Utah, there was an emerging hope that someone from the Smith family would step forward and begin a reorganization of the Church Joseph Smith Jr. had established. In 1851 a soft reorganization began and built up to that culminating moment of 1860 when the eldest son of Joseph and Emma Smith, Joseph Smith III, stepped forward at the age of 28 and was ordained president of what

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01:05:30

083 A Deep-Dive Into the "Bickertonite" Movement...

Church History Matters ·

2024/10/01

Following the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844, Sidney Rigdon, who had been Joseph’s 1st Counselor, made the claim to Church members in Nauvoo that he was the rightful successor to lead the Church as its guardian. After his falling out with the Twelve apostles, Sidney left Nauvoo and travelled to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania where he built up a church there separate and apart from the Church Brigham Young and the Twelve led to Utah. And, today, the only branch of the Restoration that claims its

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01:01:08

082 A Deep-Dive Into the LDS Strangite Movement (w/...

Church History Matters ·

2024/09/24

Who was James J. Strang? And why were his claims so appealing to so many of those Latter-day Saints who did not follow Brigham Young and Twelve after the succession crisis of 1844? Why did his movement experience so much initial success but then dissipate so quickly? Some have made strong comparisons between James Strang and Joseph Smith, but how accurate are these comparisons really? On this episode of Church History Matters, we sit down with Dr. Kyle Beshears, a friend and expert researcher on

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01:14:12

081 Who Are the Strangites, the Josephites, and the...

Church History Matters ·

2024/09/17

After the succession crisis of 1844, not every member of the Church chose to sustain and follow Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. And many of these members eventually formed or joined alternative restoration movements which became separate, distinct, and independent churches from one another. In fact, over the last 180 years there have actually been hundreds of Churches that have branched off from the same Joseph Smith-era restoration trunk. Today on Church History Matters, for

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56:15

080 What If All the Apostles Died At Once? Succession...

Church History Matters ·

2024/09/10

In the unlikely event that the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve all died simultaneously, how would that affect succession? In this hypothetical worst-case scenario, would the keys of the kingdom be lost? And, if an apostle came down with a debilitating health problem, is there any precedent for making him an emeritus apostle? And speaking of apostles, is there a set procedure in calling them, or does the method vary from Church president to president? Also, sometimes in the Church people

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01:09:35

077 The Two Orsons and the Question of Succession

Church History Matters ·

2024/08/20

Who is next in line to become the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Today this is not a difficult question. It is well understood that whoever is the next most senior apostle to the current Church president will be the next president, should he live long enough. The singular issue is seniority. It all boils down to seniority. So, what determines seniority among the apostles? Again, today there is a ready answer to this question. But it was not always so. In fact, in this

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01:17:17

076 The Contested Reorganization of the First...

Church History Matters ·

2024/08/13

Shortly after the Nauvoo Saints voted on August 8, 1844 to sustain the Twelve Apostles as the new leaders of Church, Sidney Rigdon was excommunicated (for reasons we will discuss in this episode). Then for more than three years, between 1844 and 1847, Brigham Young and the Twelve led the Church as a group of equals. Together they oversaw the completion of the Nauvoo temple and organized an exodus out of the United States. Yet after leading a vanguard company to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Brigham

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01:15:49

Six Days in August

Church History Matters ·

2024/08/06

Aside from a small handful of events, like the First Vision, the translation of the Book of Mormon, and the restoration of priesthood keys, it is possible that what happened in Nauvoo on August 8th, 1844 was the most critical, pivotal moment in our history forever shaping the trajectory of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This was the day Church members in Nauvoo voted on who would lead the Church following the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. And the stakes could not have been

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01:07

New Series Announcement!

Church History Matters ·

2024/07/16

We are excited to announce our next series—beginning next week on Tuesday—where we will be dealing with the history surrounding succession in Church leadership, beginning with the crisis of 1844 which grew out of the immediate aftermath of the tragic murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. In next week’s first episode, Casey and I will walk through no less than 8 possible succession paths that were either explicitly laid out by Joseph Smith or were viewed as entirely plausible based on certain

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54:26

“Carthage CSI” with Sam Weston

Church History Matters ·

2024/07/09

Welcome to our final episode in this series where we’ve been exploring all things related to the history of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Today on Church History Matters Casey sits down with Sam Weston, a docent at the Church History Museum who has been seriously researching the martyrdom at Carthage Jail in meticulous detail for the last 15 years. They discuss the event of the attack at Carthage from something of a forensic crime scene investigation perspective—both challenging and

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55:45

The Carthage Decision: Why Joseph and Hyrum Chose to Go

Church History Matters ·

2024/06/11

In the wake of Joseph Smith and the Nauvoo City Council’s fateful decision to destroy the Nauvoo Expositor press several things unfolded in rapid succession. Charges were pressed against them for riot, brazen calls to violence against them were published in Tom Sharp’s Warsaw Signal, and Missourians began eagerly gathering to Illinois with a vow to exterminate the “Mormons;” meanwhile, Joseph wrote urgent letters to Illinois Governor Thomas Ford and US President John Tyler outlining what was

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55:27

The Nauvoo Expositor: the Spark That Lit the Fuse

Church History Matters ·

2024/06/04

The first and only publication of the Nauvoo Expositor was issued on June 7, 1844. It was an expose sheet published by seven recently excommunicated dissenters of the church in which they lay bare their grievances against Joseph Smith as a prophet and politician in the most blistering, malignant, exaggerated, and provocative ways they could invent. This move was a calculated trap set to force the hand of Joseph and those close to him to take action against the Expositor’s printing press, which would

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01:09:00

"A Judas In Our Midst"

Church History Matters ·

2024/05/28

Six months before his death the prophet Joseph said to a group of trusted friends, “I am exposed to far greater danger from traitors among ourselves than from enemies without, … and if I can escape from the ungrateful treachery of assassins I can live as Caesar might have lived were it not for a right hand Brutus…. All the enemies upon the face of the earth may roar and exert all their power to bring about my death; but they can accomplish nothing, unless some who are among us, enjoying our society,

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01:04:05

Temple Work Without Temples

Church History Matters ·

2024/04/30

Beginning in 1846, thousands of Latter-day Saints left Nauvoo, Illinois and trekked over one thousand miles west to the Salt Lake Valley. Having, of necessity, abandoned the Nauvoo Temple for which they had worked so hard and sacrificed so much, they were now a temple-centered people without a temple. Now they certainly would go on to build more temples—the first of which was the Saint George Temple, completed in 1877—but how would the saints do temple related work in the meantime?In this episode

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01:05:50

Discontinued/Obscure Temple Rituals

Church History Matters ·

2024/04/23

During the last years of his life, the prophet Joseph Smith gave multiple public sermons dealing with 2 Peter 1, wherein the apostle Peter encourages his readers to “give diligence to make your calling and election sure” (vs. 10). Commenting on this phrase the prophet explained that to have one’s “calling and election” made sure meant to “obtain a promise from God for yourselves that you shall have eternal life.” And he explained that such a promise could be mediated through the keys restored by

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