Episode #181: Ensign To The Nations W/Kevin Kraut

0:30 You're listening to the Mormon Renegade podcast. Well, Kevin, how you doing doing? Good. Good man. So dude, you like accomplish something that you've been talking about ever since I've known you probably, you know, 10-15 years ago, right? You got that big book published. Hold that thing up. I think people deserve to see how thick that book is. Woo, that is, might be as thick as the Bible, my man. Yeah, it's 4 1/2 inches thick.

1:13 Wow. This huge. Holy cow. OK, so why don't you tell us what that book is exactly? OK, well let's start with a little story. It's when my dad began this work. It was in 1963. He laid on the couch and Dugway Proving Grounds fell asleep and in the middle of the night, an Angel came through the window, stood about 1 1/2 feet above the ground. And he had a giant book in his hand, big book. And he said it was about the size of the history of Utah by Whitney. And Whitney's book is pretty close to this. When we put it together, it looks we're pretty, we're pretty similar.

2:05 And, and while he was there, the Angel opened it up and he looked inside and turned the pages and the Angel was turning the pages and he saw different subjects, different gospel subjects, you know, United Order, the gathering, you know, re baptism, just subjects that my dad kind of had in his head from, from early days of the church that we've kind of given up a lot of things. And so, and so my dad was looking at it and he was like, wow, this is, this is how I would write. And then he got thinking, maybe I wrote this book. And he looked up at the Angel and the Angel nodded his head. Yep, you know, And then he shut the book. And then out the window he went.

2:50 That's how my dad said out the window he went. And so, so then he, he woke up the next morning and he thought, maybe I'm supposed to write this book. And so he started writing down the subjects that he saw and and a little, you know, it said Ensign to the nations and it had a little flag on it and all this kind of stuff. He wrote it down. And so then that was where he began. And then dad started writing a book called Jesus was Married and Jesus was married was how this whole thing began. And he started writing different gospel subjects, different things that are a little bit maybe controversial in some aspects, but but it was the way it was back in the early days of the church.

3:39 And so, so there's some really beautiful doctrines and, and different things inside the book. That's kind of how. Interesting. And now so is this your dad's like complete works in one book? Is this this what that is? This is everything we could pretty much find. My dad did do a book on astronomy that never got published and we lost the manuscript. I I don't know where it went, but that that was another story. But other than that, that's pretty much everything he we could find on him. And, and I know that this was was something that your dad really was, was passionate about.

4:21 I remember you telling me the stories. So as you kind of take over the, the, the business, if you will, or, or you pick, you kind of pick up your dad's mantle to keep going here. Why? When did you discover, Hey, this is something I have to do, right? Because that was kind of your dad's vision. When, when do you feel like it was impressed upon you that it was yours to finish right? So my dad found out that he had cancer and that it was an aggressive one. And, you know, being at Doug Wade, the many years that he was and around all the nuclear and all the other bad stuff and the inks and chemicals, and, you know, he felt like he did pretty good getting 75.

5:07 You know, he wasn't sure how long he would live. And he came to me and he said, you remember Lundwall? And I said, yeah, I remember Andy Lundwall. He came to our house a lot and different things. And, and one time when I was a kid, I walked in, you know, I, we stayed at Lundwall's house in Salt Lake City and I, I was just, AI didn't even remember how young I was. Had to been four or five or something. And I had these little pajamas on with little swishy feet, you know, and anyway, I, I wanted to get something to, to drink or eat or something. I went into the kitchen and as I walked into his kitchen, it was in the middle of the night.

5:54 There was this Angel standing there and I'm just this little guy looking up and there's this wipe all through the room and, and here's this Angelica being there. He didn't really say anything to me. He just kind of smiled and and then just, you know, out he went, you know, just kind of like my dad and, and I wasn't real scared or anything. I, I knew what had happened, but the next morning I came in and I said, I said, you know, because dad always talked about apostles and seeing Jesus and all this and, and I says, well, you know, it was NB Lundwall like an apostle. And my dad said, well, kind of not, not like, you know, the guys in the church, but I would probably give him that title. You know, he, he probably got him to that point where he'd seen Christ.

6:46 I don't know. But Envy, Envy Lundwall was very aggressive at finding old stories or old records and a lot of things that were in the archives of the church. And, and, and when Envy Lundwall died, he was pretty close to our family. He told my dad, he says, well, Ogden, I'm dying. You're going to have to take over the baton and you're going to have to, you know, keep these things alive as best as you can and printing and whatnot. And Dad had already kind of had the Commission by that time, you know, by this Angel. And so.

7:27 And so then when Dad found out about the cancer, he turned to me. And he said, do you remember that story I told you about the end of the wall and how he handled the baton to me? And I said, yeah. And he said, I'm handing it to you and I want you to do everything you can to print books and other records and keep these things alive. And that's where I think I got the kind of Commission to do what I was doing. He, of course, we got really serious and aggressive about finding out about the big book that needed to be done. And so my dad, he selected the color, had different color plates and he did still selected the color he designed to cover how it would look, his signature, those sort of things kind of came up with all of that.

8:19 And then we talked a lot about, you know, how the book could be done and if it could be done. And that's, well, probably not right now. We don't have the technologies to do that. But you know, in the day it probably will. And actually it was only about 3 or 4 years ago that well, maybe about five years ago, they had actually invented a machine that has a role that is small, like big old, old printing presses. You know that the newspapers used to have these. They could, they could actually smice sew it, sew it together. So it was really nice all in one thing. You know, it would gather the the signatures and then cut it and then it would send it into the to compile it book. So really it just barely kind of happened. We were going to have our Donnelly do it here in Utah, but during COVID they went out of business and. So.

9:17 And they wanted a lot of money, and now we've kind of got this done a little bit cheaper, but that's kind of how the Commission came for me to do what I'm doing. Got you. And then now putting the book together, you talked about that really the technology to get that big of a book to be able to be mass produced really wasn't around affordably until about 3 or 4 years ago. Is that what I'm understanding? Yeah. OK. And is that kind? Oh, go ahead. Now they can do it without plates and all the old style ink machines and all that. This these type of machines, they just run a roll and it runs through a high tech copy machine and then it just does everything all in one, one roll. Gotcha.

10:07 And so as you as you got, was it that three or four years ago where you were like it just like hit you like, OK, now we're ready, we can do this. Yeah, yeah, It was around that time we, you know, we had compiled the, you can see the the green ones behind. I've worked very hard to make that work so that like all the numbers would go all the way up to 4700, as in, you know, it was all sequential and all in alphabetical order. Yeah. And so that's how we got it all set up. I think the hardest part was getting the indexing done.

10:49 Oddly enough, there was one point where we're trying to get all the indexes together, like in in one book it would be page 5 where a certain subject was found. But then in the big book, it might be 3499. And so you're like, how am I going to tell people where that is? And how do I even know where that is in the big book? I was just stressed. I mean, my mind, I couldn't, I couldn't get past it. But it did find a lady, an indexer who would actually go in and index it. And her specialty happened to be an encyclopedic type. Things just like what we come out. So, and, and that brings me to the next question I had other than the indexing, what kind of what, what kind of challenges did you face putting together a book that big, right? I mean, it's hard enough to get a small book done and done right.

11:46 It's another thing to do something that's that massive, right? Yeah. What what other challenges did you face through this process? Oh. Boy, it just went on and on. I think the biggest challenges were money, finances, trying to get each of these books done, you know, compiling and putting together each book into its own separate type of thing. I mean, these are little small books. We had to put them into an 8 1/2 by 11 format. That was difficult. And so, but we had, so we had to do all of that kind of type of computer work to make it actually happen. There was one point, you know, that was a discouraging part with the indexing because indexing enough was hard enough, I mean really difficult by subject. And there's two index styles in here. 1 is a subject index and then it's a subject and then it gives kind of a little subtitle underneath it or next to it about that particular subject. That's very common one.

13:00 And then there's a word index where the computer went through and found every single place that let's say the subject like Brigham Young, you know, would be every single, you know, page numbers on there. And some of those go 3 or 4 pages long. So it's so the word word is very, very interesting. Gotcha. Where we had a hard time. So that was a discouraging time for me. I actually was about ready to give up. I mean, when we were trying to get this index to work and before I found that indexer, I was just really discouraged. And oddly enough, Denver Snuffer calls. Me. Interesting. Yeah, and I I knew Denver back in the day, and he bought a set of these green ones.

13:45 Well, he did, and a friend of his bought it for him. And then he got it. And he calls me up and he says, he says, you know, Kevin, we obviously have differences of opinion about plural marriage and other things. But but he says your dad's work is very comprehensive. It is very, very good stuff. And we we can't even find these files anymore. A lot of these archives have been shut down a lot of places we can't get to. Some of these references are just, you know, irreplaceable. And so please get your father's work done. Finish those books, finish this thing. And then I hung up the phone and I'm sitting there, the inverse snuffer just called me, told me to get my dad's book done.

14:30 It's like, wow, it must be some sort of symbolic thing. And so I just got to it. And then that's when I found the lady and got the whole thing finished. In the actual process of this, you know, in the in the writing of my dad. Oh, that's another one. I forgot to tell you. So then in the preference of all these, you know, green books, I was right before it, I was trying to find something that I could write about the significance of the Angel or whatever. And I just sat down. I prayed. And then I walked outside, pulled out one of my dad's notebooks, and out, out of the notebook fell this paper right on the ground faced. And I'm like, wow, what's that?

15:13 And I looked down and picked it up and it was the story of the Angel that my dad had typed up. Oh wow. And I mean, what are the chances of that? I I took that and that's where I put it in the frontis of the of the book. That's what that was my next question. You put that in the book. Yeah, that's the type. Excellent, excellent. As you were like trying to put things together. Tell me about some of the the what you would consider some of the miracles that happened as you were trying to get this book put together. Well, one of the ones that that kind of stands out other than like the piece of paper that fell on the ground was was while it was being printed, it got printed and they were trying to do the gold gilding.

16:02 Now gold gilding is, it's the, it's kind of the yellow part on the sides. You can see the yellow on this and that's a gold gilding, they call it. And usually it's done with real gold. And then they heat it up and they stamp it on there and it's, it kind of shine. It's kind of shiny. And, and that's what dad described, that it had some sort of gold gilding. And we tried, they tried to get it to work. They, they actually destroyed about 30 books just trying to figure out how to make it run. You know, the guy was pretty determined. He's like, Nah, I'm going to make it work.

16:44 And so anyway, but he got it going and got them all printed and they were getting ready to get them bound. And then they started trying to Guild him and it just did not work. They were having a real hard time. And it was the, the, the building was coming off, which meant that it didn't stamp right. And, and it was two months trying to delay on that, trying to get that figured out. We just couldn't get anything to work on it. And so I was getting pretty impatient and I didn't know what to do. And so I knelt down and prayed and I said, all right, Lord, you need to send that Angel that brought the book, you know, to my dad.

17:24 We need to have him go over there overseas and get this thing figured out. And the next day I picked up the phone and I called the company and I was about 10 minutes after they close and the phone forwarded or went to another phone and, and a man answered it and he said hello and we started talking and he goes, you're, you're who? And I said, I'm, I'm Kevin with old Pioneer Press over in Utah. And he goes, Oh yes, yes, yes, we're trying. We're we've been working on your book and etcetera. And I said, he goes, how did you get my number? They don't forward this to my number.

18:07 And it was he was really shocked. He goes, that's just really strange that it just went right to me. So here he is the owner and he goes, he goes, let's try something else. Let's spray the gold on. I have a certain type that will it's kind of more of a paint than a than than the gold. And let's try that and see what happens. And so he tried it the next day. Send me a picture of it. I says, hey, it looks great, we'll go with it, you know. So within a week we had it all done. Oh wow. And where? Do you ship? Gotcha As you were compiling the this book, right, it's it's all of your father's work, all of his writings. Did you have to do any other editing or was it more just like, OK, here's Jesus is married. Here's, you know, the book on seer stones, the book on whatever, and just, was it a matter of just dragging and dropping, so to speak, and then sending it to the printer or did it take a little more work than that? A lot of work because now, I mean, you can talk to the editor girls.

19:16 They, they had a hard time getting it all to fit on the sheets. Right now you're going from a small 585 by 8 book to now at 8 1/2 by 11 book. There was a lot of layout problems. You know, they they'd bring it in and then it would all be garbledy, you know, it wouldn't work and they had to find the right way to to bring it in. It was, it was hours figuring it out. But once we had it figured out, then then it would it would come in fairly quickly and then we could we could make it good though. Gotcha. OK. So what? Let's go here. There was a couple of things that you mentioned you really wanted to go over as we talked about this.

19:59 And I'm going to let you start it off. And if as I have questions, I'll let you know. OK, Just just kind of briefly some of the main things that I wanted to bring out as some of the some of the beautiful things and some of the fantastic stories that that my family encountered while working on books. I remember my dad printing certain books like the Sears and Sear stones book. And I've mentioned this before about sear stones. And my dad was printing that book because he there was the anti Mormon guy, Gerald Tanner written some pretty nasty stuff about anybody in any any sear stone at all. And dad's like, well, there were sear stones used, you know, in the temple itself that he thought had, well, sear stones. You know, I mean, there was, there was other Sears ship type stones too.

21:02 And, and there was a, a gentleman in the Dreamline that was listening to dad talk about this new book Sears and sear stones. And he said, well, I have a sear stone. I have Joseph Smith sear stone and he dad said, really? And he says, yeah, I'll bring it. And he brought it and showed it to dad. And he said, you know, dad was giving lectures at BYU and steaks and wards and different things. My dad sold most of these books. He was selling them a Deseret book and he was kind of out producing and outselling Bruce R Mcconkey at that time.

21:42 So he was he was a well known author. Jesus Married was a large, huge hit. I mean, people were really interested in it in that day and and so all the books kind of came out and made a made a pretty big impression. But, but anyway, about the seer stone. So he brought the seer stone and let dad take it around to the lectures and tell the different things in the lectures. And then Dad brought it to me, and, you know, he'd handed it all over and nobody really seemed to understand it or how, you know, that kind of thing works. But he handed it to me. And with my childlike, simplistic faith, I just kind of looked at it and I could see anything I wanted, you know, and that that kind of freaked out. He goes, really, you can see stuff. And I said, yeah, I saw this thing over here. And I found knives and old things that we'd lost and, you know, all kinds of stuff.

22:40 It was very interesting. And so the Sears of Sears Stone book kind of meant a lot to me, and I wish people would read it more. You know, it's just very valuable. I know you and I did a podcast on that one specifically 'cause I was kind of interested in that. Yeah, so. So that was a big one. The Three Nephites was a big one. I remember when it was being printed and Dad telling stories, that the fascination of Dad was his storytelling, you know, telling stories about people who had episodes with the three Nephites and, and all the beauty of of that. It was really, really interesting. Fascinating.

23:22 OK, so as, as let's, let's talk about that a little bit, right 'cause I, I think that this is well before we go there, what was the other thing you wanted to cover? Let's do that. You know, the other thing I, I did cover in another one was I think this is important because it says a lot about with my dad and, and some of the people who had respect for him. You and Edley once told this thing because I was asking about dad being excommunicated and all this. And oh, your dad can be saved. And he said, you know, people would come to me asking about Adam God and, and they wondered, you know, about the church and they were starting to lose their testimony.

24:07 And, and and the problem with the Adam God doctrine was Bruce Mcconkey said, well, Joe Brigham, nobody ever taught it back then. And then the anti Mormons came and then they would show all the hundreds of places where it was taught and talked about. And so dad was really upset with that because it's OK to say in history that, you know, we don't believe in that doctrine or we don't, we don't that want to shoot anymore and you know, it was an old thing or whatever or we don't, we just don't believe it's doctrinal. That's different than trying to change history and say that they never, never said it, because then it made them out to be liars, you know? Right.

24:53 But it was a really big deal and caused a lot of confusion. And so he would just say, go down to the library, get Ogden Pratt's book on Adam. God read it and then come talk to me, 'cause I can't answer those questions in my position. And so they'd go down and read, come back and he said, ah, they every single time they'd go, well, I got it figured out, OK, thank you, you. And, and then they'd go back to doing their church work and whatever. And he said it was just, it was phenomenal. It was just really an important thing. That's fascinating as as you've done this now, right?

25:34 You've got this and, and look, you still have work in front of you. I don't want to make it seem like, OK, you're done now you can close up shop and be done, right? That's not the case. You still got stuff to do. But with that said, what do you hope people take away from this book? Well, my biggest thing is that when you, when you look at all, let's just say we're all going to head to the wilderness or we're going to go back to Jackson County or, or you want to have one book, you live in an apartment and you don't want to have the whole journal with discourses. You don't want to have the whole millennial star. I mean, you know, this and just some of the journals could add up forever. You know, I mean, Wolfram Woodard's journal is huge, you know, and, and so, so, so if you could take all those and then put them in subjects, each subject and then take all that, those references and all those things. And one of the things I want to emphasize about my dad, when he wrote his books like Reincarnation or other ones, he would, he would give both sides of the view. He'd give.

26:44 This side and give this side, and then he'd give this side and let you make up your mind. He told me a story once where he didn't know what to do because he was trying to teach the old ways of how we did it in the church so that people would know. And he was this big teacher in the stake. And so he got up and he would just say, now in the old days, this is how they did it. He'd teach all the fundamentalist ways and all the old stuff. And they'd say, now this is how we teach it today and this is what we do and This is why we do it. And you know, and this, you know, blah, blah, blah. And he'd say he'd have people come up who he knew liked the old ways and they'd say, that was the best talk I've ever heard.

27:28 Yeah, that was great. And then there were those who, you know, believed in the modern view. And then they'd walk in, they'd say, oh, that was the best talk I've ever heard, you know, because because he got both sides and they saw by kind of only. But that was that was how that was done. So. So that's that's a big, huge one. But just for all the simplified ways to see the old religion that was started by Joseph Smith, I think this is just an invaluable work. Right, right. Absolutely. So with it. Oh, go ahead.

28:10 Just one quick thought. In United Order, my father teaches about tithing and how tithing was not done the way it is today and how you had to have a United Order started before you even paid Titan. That's how it is in the Book of Mormon. This, this, this, all things in common, things going on. And then Titan came. And so that explains all of that in the United Order and how it worked. And it worked very well. It wasn't, it wasn't like everybody paying 10%. Well, they kind of did, but they had to do it as a United Order and it was on the increase of each year.

28:51 So if you didn't increase any in a year, there's no tithing paid. Right. Wow, holy cow. And then in this process of, of printing this work, did you gain like any new appreciation for for what your dad had done? Just sitting down and looking at the complexity of how he could honestly do this without a computer, I will never understand. And he did it because he had a photograph of him. Other than that, he wouldn't. I mean, you know, Anne came in and was talking to him one day about, about the gift of dreams and, and dad said there was a picture that I want to put in here and it was in this book and it was printed this and and it has this picture.

29:51 And it's a story about this man who had a dream. He was working on the sewing machine and he could never figure out how to make it work, you know, how to loop it and how to have it come through. And then he had a dream and these little natives were coming up with these Spears and they were going to kill him and their little, the little points on the end had a hole in the tip of the sphere. And then he got up and he went, Oh my heck, if I put the hole instead of at the end at the tip, then at the tip, it could go down and capture the other sewing.

30:33 And that's how he was invented. And that was by a gift of dreams. And so that's that. I, I want to have that article. And so he told her what magazine and where to go and about what page and what the picture looked like. And she went and found this thing and she came back and she was, how many years ago did you see this? And he goes, I don't know, about 30 years ago. And she's 30 years ago. You you remember the page numbers and the the the very what the book looked like and everything so. Wow. Yeah, yeah. So he definitely had some gifts to get this all done without the gift of technology. Right.

31:15 Who? So if if someone wants to get a hold of that book, Kevin, where? Where can they get it from? OK, so we have a website calledaugmentcrowd.com. It's just his name. And then and then on it, when you first go in, it'll have the book itself, what it's about. It'll have the list of other, the actual number of books that's in it. The actual number of books that's in it is about 70 different books, so there's the list. Holy Cow 72. Books 70 or 72 anyway, and this is what it kind of looks like on the website, OK, And then different things there.

32:02 And then at the bottom of the page, there's the QR code. There's also the sale price. And then you can punch on the blue and then that takes you to buy now. And so you can buy it with a credit card and we'll shoot it out. Nice. Now I can edit this part out if this isn't the case, but we had talked back on Monday about maybe putting it on 1830 mercantile.org. Is that something you wanted to pursue? Absolutely. Yeah. All right, So yeah, you can go to 1830 Mercantile and and find it there. But I do. I just feel like everybody needs a copy of this, right? Like I just, we look, we, there's money we have to spend out in Babylon right now.

32:51 And I get that. But man, I think this book is going to be invaluable, right? Because if there's one thing that I could always respect about your dad's writings, and you kind of alluded to this beforehand, right? It was he was just going to give you the facts and kind of let you decide for yourself. He didn't pontificate a whole lot in his works. There were certain subjects that he definitely gave his opinion on. But by and large, your dad was was more or less just a collector of documents and then allowed those documents to be seen in a in a certain format. You know what I mean? Right. And do you? Do you think your dad knew what he was doing there, or do you think that was just his default style?

33:34 Some of both, you know, and, and, and some of the, some of the style of his writing. I mean, it was so inspired. One time I went to his print shop and it got late and, and I was truck driving at the time and I just said, I'm tired, I'm going to go sleep in my trash. And he says, you can sleep in here, you know, And so I slept on the sofa there. And, and he says, now be careful because sometimes I get inspiration to come in and I type things on my computer in the middle of the night. And I said, that's OK. So, you know, sure enough, two or three in the morning, he comes stumbling in, turns on the light, starts typing a bunch of stuff on the computer, and then, you know, went back and stumbled out and went to bed. And I thought, that's interesting. And so I got up the next morning and I went in and I said, so Dad, tell me a little bit about what you wrote last night. He said, I don't write anything last night. And I said, no, you got up and went in and typed up a whole bunch of stuff.

34:36 I, I don't remember that. I don't think I did that, you know, and so he went in and looked on his computer and here was this whole beautiful laid out. He said, this is like the masterpiece that I've ever done. And he said and and how he said it was well, we'll go see how the what the Lord had to say about this or, or something. And and so it was so inspired. You don't even remember. It was just, you know, working right off the spirit. Wow, wow. I I have another question for you and, and it's a little off topic for the book, but it's something I've wondered from time to time. What year did your dad pass away?

35:17 2002. 2002, so that's 23 years ago. Yeah. If you think back to what fundamentalism was like 23 years ago and compare it to today, what do you think your dad would think of the state of the religion now? Well, he always said that it would be scattered and shattered, that there's vomit on all the tables, you know, that there's problems. But, you know, he used to always say, I just don't know how it can get any worse. It's just the words got to come. I just don't see it. And then, you know, the next year would be even worse. And, you know, and so I, I think he kind of expected things to be out of order and the mess.

36:04 And, you know, that's about how our world is right now, you know, and the, the sad part to me, or the hard part, hard part for me to see is that our children are not coming up in the ways of Lord. They're not understanding these big book details and we're losing it very quickly. Why do you think that is, Kevin? Satan. Well, right, But I mean, what's he doing specifically to you? Know from that there was a, you know, just kind of going off subject here. There's all these different fundamentalist groups. The church is kind of going more Babylon. There were all these things going on. And I have kind of an autistic kid, and I asked him when he was younger.

36:52 I said, you know, it's kind of explaining to him all the problems that's happening in some of the groups and some of the things that's going on and how people are kind of, you know, moving into more different groups and smaller groups and, you know, just all over the place. And my son looked kind of up in the air and he said, oh, Dad, I see Satan. And I said, do you see Satan, like right now? And he goes, yeah, I see Satan. And I said, wow, what's going on? And he says, well, Dad, Satan scattered the flock.

37:33 And so this is what's happened is divide and conquer, which is what he's doing. And I see that a lot. And so instead of finding similarities and working with each other, we're all by our native instincts are dividing. And that's, that's the scattered and shattered that was prophesied. He would have had to have been been somewhat pleased with the way things are going a little bit though, right? I mean, there's never been a time where we could be more open as a people, right? Right, that's true. And and so I think that's that's might be, I guess I look at it and I guess maybe I'm maybe a little too optimistic and that that might be my issue.

38:22 But I guess I look at it now and look, there's one fundamentalist temple that has been built. There's another one that's about to start getting built. There are, you know, fundamentalists are becoming kind of more mainstream, for lack of a better word, right? We're out there a little bit more. We're more in your in, in, in public discourse. So I think those are good things, right? Is, is everything perfect? But no. But I do think we're on to some good things, right? I don't know if your dad would have saw it that way, but that's not my general sense. You always thought the good and bad in things, you know, and, and one of the things that he felt very strongly of is that a lot of people would start leaving the church, he says.

39:12 They're just going to leave in droves, Kevin. They're going to leave in droves. And it's our job to fill in the blanks and teach them these old principles. Amen. And, and they're hungry, they're starving for information because, you know, after so many years of gospel fluff, you know, we want, we want some meat here. You know, we're tired of drinking the milk. And, and, and this is where I think my dad shined. This is what this was all about is to teach them those basic principles and what they are. There's a lot deeper fundamentalists to offer. There's a lot more things that are that I've got books here that that go into real depth and they're not for the mild hearted, you know, and, and so, but that's what God did with this book. He made it easy to understand.

40:07 He, he wasn't like James Tambridge where, you know, he used big words. He worked very hard to make things in a layman's term where people could understand it. It wasn't complex. It wasn't, you know, overly complex. He had. He had volumes, I can't remember which book it was, but he had, he had probably 20 or 30 notebooks. And I looked at them all and I said, Dad, there's, there's got to be, you know, 2000 pages here, you know, and he goes, yeah, and I've got to simplify that all down to about 300 pages. And so he, he would go off to to Wendover or Vegas or whatever and he'd get a room and they'd just sit down and go through all that stuff for hours and hours and hours where there wasn't phone calls, there wasn't interruptions and just, you know, get it simplified down easily. You know, we, I look at guys like your dad who sometimes I look back at those times as, you know, especially, you know, the, the 40s through the, through really the, the early 2000s is kind of the dark times, right, Where you have to be a little, you have to be quiet, you have to keep your head down because you do not want to raise those animosities. And I think one of the genius things that your father did, and I think it's reflected in that book you just showed, was as time goes along, it gets really

41:41 easy to lose things, right? Really easy to lose things. And so as, as you try to put the picture back together, right, you have to be able to find the documentation to do it. And I think that's, that was the mission that I think your dad fulfilled so well was being able to give people the resources to put the puzzle pieces back in place, right? To be able to say, look, this goes here, this goes here, you know, this, this fits with that and and kind of put it all back together again, you know what I mean? Yeah. So with, with that said, I feel like now is, is the time that we need to kind of reap the rewards of his hard work, right. I look at that book and I'm like, I think that needs to be in every Mormon's home.

42:30 I really do 'cause I think, I think, I think because that that allows us to see the fuller picture. And again, it's a, it's largely an unbiased picture. He's just going to say, here's what I found. Now it's up to you for you to decide where you think it fits or not fits right. And I, I think that's hugely, hugely important in this, in this work here. So, but dude, I, I can't wait for, for this book. Have you sold many yet? Yeah, so quite a few, it's, we've only had it for, you know, 3 or 4 weeks. So it's not good and people are grasping it. They're starting to see it. A lot of people said the very same thing as you said, everybody should have this just like the family Bible should be sitting in their house.

43:19 And and because then they can get references, they can just look it up in the index. They can find whatever they're looking for. Look, we're not going to have computers in the future. I mean, the first thing that, you know, during a certain time, can't remember his name now, he was on Fox, Tucker Carlson, Tucker, first thing Tucker Carlson said after he got kind of canned, he came on and he goes, everybody needs to get the hard copies of everything. You. Know if you have something important, Print it out, put it aside, get it off the computers. You can't rely on the computers. Right.

44:01 Yeah, No, that's that's true. You know, it's interesting as, as the temple here in Missouri was, was being close to being finished, there's one gentleman out here who said something very profound. And he said we this had to get done right now or else we as fundamentalists would lose the importance of temples. And I, he said, I think we were just one generation away, right? And I look at some of these teachings your dad preserved and I think it's right there, right? We're, we're one generation away from losing some of this. And you alluded to this, that we're having a hard time getting our kids to pick up, pick up the, the, the, the torch and, and keep running with it. And I just see this as one more tool to put in our arsenal as parents to just be able to do that. So, but well, Kevin, what anything else you want to go over before we wrap this up?

45:07 Well, yeah, I would urge every family in the church out of the church. A lot of people are leaving the church. You know, a lot of devastation kind of happened when Nelson told people to kind of get the shot. A lot of people. That in a negative way, it was not a thus saith the Lord. And he certainly didn't do it over the pulpit. So there's a lot of a lot of controversy there. The big thing people need to understand that is in 1890 there was a covenant made with Wolfel Woodruff and the conspirators. And during that time we gave up a lot of these principles.

45:54 And that's why Denver Snuffer and other people and Nibbly and others said this is so valuable is because these cover the principles before 1890, After 1890, everything started going down in the church. And then the problem with people today is they start saying, well, you know, my Bishop's corrupt, my Stig president's corrupt, BYU is corrupt. The president of the church told us to do terrible things, so the whole gospel is bad and let's just throw the whole thing out. And this is where we've got to pick up the reins and say, no, this was told, it was foretold that the the drunkards of Ephraim and Isaiah would make a covenant with death and hell.

46:40 And so the church did make that covenant. And the Lord's still with the church, He's still trying to get things to go. The missionary programs, it was all foretold by a lot of the people in the old days. Even in the Desiah Hancock Journal, there's a whole recording about what Joseph Smith said. He said in the last days that, you know, that there'd be doctors and lawyers and businessmen that would run the church, that that was a horrible thing to be one of those back in the day. And, and so, you know, they and they, they wouldn't know what's happening. They, they would do things that are, you know, kind of messed up. Brigham Young even made a quote and it was even said, I fear lest in the last days that this people, you know, the people that run the church will lead our people even unto the brink of hell.

47:37 And so here we are. We're, we're in Babylon. It was a terrible thing to be part of Babylon in those days. the United order and being together and working in unison. Those were really high priorities of the people. Our ancestors, my my ancestors walked the planes. And my great, great grandfather, you know, Robert McBride, he actually died. He was one that carried the women and children across the plane, you know, across the river and, and they froze to death. And, and so, you know, we made a lot of sacrifice to, for this religion. And, and, and so I urge people to get the books. I urge them to read them.

48:21 There are some online that people can read. There's some Youtubes out there. I'm on a YouTube. You're, you have some other Youtubes that talk about this, you know, let's get educated, understand why they live what they did. And then one more thing. There is a, a website out there that I, I'm very fond of and it's called early mormonism.com. And I want people to reference to that because there's all the different journals of the, of The Pioneers on there. There's just hundreds of them. And my dad used to say that these journals, Joseph Smith said, you people write down these experiences because these will be almost quoted as scripture.

49:08 Your journals will almost be quoted as scriptures by your posterity. And so now we're seeing a lot of that fulfilled. One of the reasons why my father not only did this type of work, but he preserved a lot of journals, 50 to 100 journals. And what I heard him say was that there was a man in the archives of the of this church who if they had anything spiritual or a little controversial or he didn't like or whatever reason, he'd take the journal, take it out and back, throw it in the dumpster. Or we also heard it may have been a 55 gallon barrel, you know, and throw it in the barrel and light it on fire and burn.

49:54 It up. And the dad would get the journal and he would copy the journal or take photos of it, you know, because he had his little spy cameras. He worked for the and then he would reprint the journals and then bring them into that guy and hand them to him and say, OK, I've got 500 copies out there. So even if you burn it up, it's not going to do any good. And I was working for a Tyler and he was doing tile work. And I told him that story and he knew my dad and we knew, we knew him. And he, his name was Mike. I won't tell his last name, but Mike told me.

50:36 He says, I know the very person that that that did that. And so I just want you to know that that was one of the major things that was happening. Amy. Yeah. So so he he verified that story that that actually happened. So we want people to understand the journals and the histories of those people. I just heard one the other night and it was my dad had it recorded. It was a journal about Lorenzo Snow coming and giving this girl a blessing. And this girl she she actually went to bed and she said in the morning at 10:00, they're coming to get me.

51:22 They're going to I'm going to die. So sure enough, at 10:00 sharp, poof, she dead and Lorenzo Snow comes in and inviting man do this and he goes, I don't she's not supposed to go. I think she's supposed to be here. She has a mission. She needs to come back. And so he he went in and it's been about an hour that she was dead or something, an hour or two or something anyway. And he lays his hands on her heads and she says, he says, come back, come back, come back. And then he gives her this blessing and then he leaves. He's out of there because he knows she doesn't want to come back. And and then it was a little while after that. Then she comes back to life and she's looking around the room. She says, where's where's brother Snow? And she was pretty upset that she wanted to chew him out and he wasn't there.

52:19 He's gone. And and so it was a pretty fantastic story. And you think about, you know, there's so much controversy. There's so many things that people say bad about Brigham Young and and John Taylor and Lorenzo Snow. All those people say are bad. Everything after Joseph was evil and terrible and all these horrible things. And, and I've got stories about Brigham Young. Yeah, he made a lot of mistakes. John Taylor and him didn't get along, and there were some real issues with Brigham, but Brigham had some inspiration. Absolutely he did. You know, tons of things that he prophesied that have come true, tons of things that he did. One story was really fascinating.

53:01 I'll close this up, but I'm just trying to emphasize. Yeah. No, you're good. And how important it was, you know, there was up, up one of the canyons here, I think was Little Cottonwood Canyon. And they built a mill. Now in the old days in the mill, they had this, this water. And then it ran everything, you know, it run power tools, it ran things. And they had this big sawmill and they'd cut the logs and cut them into pieces. And, you know, it was quite a thing. And they're all run by water and these guys are out there and every time they turn around, their tools were missing and they got kind of mad at each other and they blame, you stole my tool. No, I didn't steal it. You stole mine, you know, And they going back and forth and having this problem and, and we'll, we'll, you know, we just have to find out what's going on. And Brigham came up up there and see how things were going. And they told him about this story. And Brigham walks around and he looks up in the sky and kind of prays a little bit about it and walks around a little bit more. And then he comes back and he says, brethren, he said this very spot is now being commanded by the Gadians from the other side.

54:12 And as it said in the Book of Mormon, that your treasures will become slippery, they're stealing your tools. And so these so these beings from the other side are taking this. And he said, so the only way we're going to get away from this is to tear down the whole mill, take it upstream and on the other side of the the river. And then we'll place it there and we'll never have a problem again. And I'll send, I'll send the crew up to help. So they came up and tore this whole thing down, moved it across the river, set it on the other side and never had a problem after that.

54:53 Wow. You know people are hard on those early brethren, right? And I want to say this, if you're looking for a perfect man to be a prophet, you're going to look for a long, long time and never find it, right? And I look in the Scriptures and I don't see anywhere that tells me that prophets are infallible, right? Moses kills a man. Isaiah has unclean lips. Jonah runs from God. Peter denies the Christ, right? Go on and on and on. And we have a lot of grace and a lot of forgiveness for those guys. But for some reason, those early restoration leaders, we don't, right? People tend to really want to just come down hard on them. I, I, I imagine it's probably because they're closer to us in the proximity of time than those, than those Old Testament and New Testament prophets, right? But nonetheless, despite their flaws, in my opinion, up in this, just my opinion, up to Joseph F Smith, all those guys were still prophets doing the best they could in some really horrific circumstances, right?

56:09 And you know, I, I've done plenty of podcasts that illustrate that even Wilford Woodruff, he signed the manifesto, but he also kept the principal alive, right? He made sure that that guys like Howie, John W Taylor kept going. And I think that's something hugely important to remember, especially I'm, I'm not a fan of, of trashing the ancestors, so to speak, right? I'm sure it's someday, you know, if it goes that long, our great, great grandkids will look back on us and go, those people were savage, right?

56:51 And and, and I think we need to keep that in mind, right? Is that be gentle with them. They did the best they could and quite frankly, they left us a heck of a legacy to stand on. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Jon Taylor, I don't. I can't even account how many times he had claim of, of seeing the savior and having these experiences. And it just breaks my heart. You know, I had a guy come in here the other day and he's talking about this Joseph Smith movie who killed Joseph and, and them shooting at the, the actual watch, you know, and how that was all a lie 'cause they shot it at this angle and all that. And I, I, so I just typed in the Internet, you know, being saved by objects and there's hundreds of people in World War 2 that had.

57:38 Those little bubbles. And the little Bible had a bullet stuck in it and and stopwatches there was a German soldier that you know, he was up there. It was an officer and he got shot and it got hit and hit the hit this pocket watch just same as John Taylor saved his life. Who's to say that doesn't happen? But we don't see it the way because we want to see something fault wise with the church. We want to see something fault wise with these men and and when you get in that fault finding mode, instead of looking at the good or the beauty of what they had done and what I mean, Lorenzo Snow saw the Savior walking down the steps of the temple.

58:19 I mean, you know, this is, this is how close these men were to God and to this beautiful concept and for us to trash that or trash our ancestors or talk bad about what they went through. I mean, they went through tremendous things that we could never go through. Absolutely. Really, really tough. Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more, you know, and, and I think that's part of your father's legacy too, right? It's it's just preserving this for us, right. And, and I look at those early brethren in church leadership and, and I see something similar there. So, well, ma'am, that's good stuff. Kevin.

59:04 I'm, I'm, I'm super excited to, to get this up. So, yeah, go check out augenkraut.com to get the book. Or you can go to 1830 mercantile.org. It's all right there. We're going to put all of Kevin's books up there for him. So just one place you can go where you can find them all at the same time. Kevin, I'm excited to see what, what, what you're going to work on next. Any ideas? Well, we're going into Mormon history with these journals, awesome complete compilations of journals, and finishing up all of my dad's smaller work to make sure all those books are available. I don't know, everybody's really searching right now and it's a beautiful time to get into this type of subject and study it out.

59:54 Absolutely. Furthermore, you give your local fundamentalist podcaster more fuel to talk about, so that's always good too. So. But anyway, Kevin, dude, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, man. Thank you. All right, we'll do it again soon. All right. OK, hang out for just 5 minutes. Bye everybody. You're listening to the Mormon Renegade podcast.