https://www.thechurchnews.com/history/2 ... conferenceWith completion of the Joseph Smith Papers project on June 27, the Church is now ready to effectively tell the story of the Prophet of the Restoration, said President Oaks.
“We announce today that the First Presidency has commissioned a new biography of the Church’s founding Prophet, to be titled ‘Joseph the Prophet,’” President Oaks said to hundreds of attendees in the Conference Center Theater in Salt Lake City.
Really?
So not really. It's a whitewashed history of Joseph Smith that removes all the things the Church isn't comfortable about people knowing. They're essentially trying to mitigate the exposes of the Joseph Smith Papers in this new piece of 'Joseph Smith' propaganda.The new biography will be written by Richard E. Turley Jr., former assistant Church historian and recorder, with help from teams of historians and other professionals at Church headquarters, Brigham Young University and elsewhere.
“The Joseph Smith Papers project has laid a firm foundation on which we can now build a biography of the Prophet Joseph Smith unlike any that has previously been written,” Turley said. “This book will focus on Joseph Smith’s role as a Prophet, which will distinguish it from other recent biographies that focus on other aspects of his life.”
As a slight aside. You'd imagine that the multi billion dollar hedge fund masquerading as a church could fund such an enterprise as The Joseph Smith Papers project. Well think again...
Not to mention the City Creek Mall. Which Oaks decided not to mention.President Oaks said three things were needed to fulfill the ambitious project:
“The first was Joseph Smith’s papers, which were scattered in institutional and private collections but principally located in the Church Historical Department.”
“The second was scholars with subject-matter expertise on Joseph Smith and the time period in which he lived.”
“The third, and perhaps most intractable matter, was substantial funding.”
Bringing in a team of scholars and other staff, as well as providing salaries, benefits and budgets for travel, equipment and other costs, amounted to millions of dollars. Yes, the Church had substantial resources, but those resources were being focused in the 1990s and early 2000s on doubling the number of operating temples and taking the gospel worldwide, President Oaks said.
Despite having eye watering sums of tithing sat there doing nothing but gaining compound interest, the Church conned the Millers into paying for it. Oaks has no shame. I wonder how the Millers felt when they heard the news that...Enter the Larry H. and Gail Miller family, Utah business owners and philanthropists.
It was a generous couple willing to heed spiritual promptings that provided the key to catapulting the project forward on a grand scale,” President Oaks said.
With the Millers’ financial support, Joseph Smith Papers launched in 2001. In the following years, the Church hired more professional historians than ever before and devoted resources to build the state-of-art Church History Library.
https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-35The SEC’s order finds that, from 1997 through 2019, Ensign Peak failed to file Forms 13F, the forms on which investment managers are required to disclose the value of certain securities they manage. According to the order, the Church was concerned that disclosure of its portfolio, which by 2018 grew to approximately $32 billion, would lead to negative consequences.
aid.
I guess when you're profiting and benefitting handsomely by a multi-hundred billion dollar real estate corporation masquerading as a 'church' unbeknownst to most of the members of the religion, you gotta convince those members that the whole thing is legit.