Good evening, everybody, and welcome to Mormonism Live. This is Radio Free Mormon. My compadre over there is Bill Real.

Tonight's show is called We Told You So. Boy, do we tell you so. What am I talking about that we told you so? LDS church membership. Thanks. We have been saying this all along.

For as long as I've been podcasting, I don't know about you, Bill,

but it has been obvious ever since in 2010,

that 16 years ago, 2010, when the church historian,

Marlon Jensen said publicly that the church has not been losing

more members in its history than it did, than it is now, since 1837 in Curtland, which was

famous for people fleeing the church. So all I thought was if the church historian, who sounds like he might be in a position

to know a thing or two, says that publicly, I can believe him.

And so that's where I started, is if he's going to say this, then it's probably true.

And I will echo his sentiment. Not with joy,

not with sadness. It touches me not whether the church grows or shrinks. I don't think it has anything to do with its truth claims, whether it grows or shrinks. All I'm saying is that it is

remarkable what has happened since.

Because at the same time that the church has made,

change after change after change after change after change,

which have obviously had the effect of making the church function on a smaller level,

getting rid of things, allowing other things to be done. We'll talk about some of those tonight.

One of the most obvious of those,

one of the biggest, and it was kind of early on

was when they got rid of the high priest group

in every ward and consolidated them with the elders quorum.

And we're going, why are they doing that?

...