Good evening, everybody. I'd like to welcome you once again to Mormonism live. Right now, I'm the only person showing on this screen. I'm not exactly sure why there we go. There's somebody else. And it's the the observant among you will notice. That is not Bill real. This is someone else in town.

Someone else entirely. In fact, we have a name underneath it. It's Jonathan Streeter. John Streeter. Did you have you don't have to read that name to figure out what I was. We've been talking about this all week. Yes, we have. We have been talking about this all week. Bill real could not be here tonight because of another engagement that he had his dad's in town. I think he's taking him back to the airport this evening. I found out last Sunday from bill that that was the case. He regrettably was not going to be able to be here. He suggested maybe I don't know.

I could scatter around here. I could find somebody else to fill his shoes. And I immediately thought of Jonathan Streeter because Jonathan Streeter. It also goes by thinker of thoughts and stuff. It's not thinker of things and stuff. On YouTube, it's thinker thoughts. The blog as it exists is thoughts on things and stuff. And there's a Facebook page for thoughts on things and stuff. Okay. That's why I was confused. Well, I was elated to get your call because I listened to your last episode where you were talking about the grand landscape of miracles in

Mormonism as depicted by the Blessed Elder Bednar. Anytime I hear anyone talk about Mormon miracles, then the question immediately comes to my mind. Well, what was the first miracle of the restoration? Because it's such a dramatic lead in and then it has such a remarkable answer. But before we get to that, there was some introductory stuff that you wanted to get through and then we're going to dive right into that. There actually was. There's some last week we did talk about Elder Bednar's discussion of miracles in the eight statements he made. We had some wonderful comments from listeners. I was going to

go into those now. I'm going to have to save those for next week because actually there's so much stuff and research that Jonathan has done on this subject in the last, I think, like three days, the time you had to prepare. And he's done it extensively. He's amazing. And don't talk enough too much. Come on. Okay. He's he's competent. Okay. So so let's continue this thing. So so what's going to handle? I got to say yes, it's a catalyst. Okay, go ahead.

This is this is dueling host. You see, I'm used to doing radio free Mormon where I'm the show. And Jonathan Swedish used to doing thicker thoughts and stuff where he's the show. And now we both think that we have to be the entire show. And the only one of us is right. No, we have to be able to.

This podcast isn't big enough for the both of us, Jonathan. The title tonight's podcast is don't tell me demonic possession, exorcism and Mormonism. So we're going to be talking about very interesting things.

And as they relate specifically to Mormonism because the title of the show is Mormonism live. Now, you've done a lot of research. You've done some about the background of exorcism and demonic possession.

In Christianity, what you wanted to give a thumbnail discussion of.

Yeah. Well, I think I don't want to take really any credit for this because like a lot of content producers, all we do is kind of collect stuff together and then put it out in this new format that is these podcasts.

And really a lot of this information, I want to immediately give credit to a couple of people. So there is a podcast by the Maxwell Institute of all people that came out, I think Chris or Halloween of a last year or a couple of years ago.

And it's called Mormonism, exorcism lore. And it's mainly an exposition in kind of a dramatic style of stories of Mormon exorcism as collected by professor Stephen Tassum, who is a scholar of religion.

And what we'll do is in the show notes, we'll put some links to these things so that you can see them.

Stephen Tassum has put together an article that was published in one of the sociology journals about religion where he kind of outlined the background of the concept of exorcism in Mormonism.

And that is the answer to that remarkable question of what was the first miracle of the restoration and the answer in the.

I know what it is. Joseph Smith turning water into wine. No, that's the first miracle. Jesus is ministry. I'm sorry.

No, yeah, exactly. Okay. It's, it's, it's, it's a, it's actually, and you did. That's okay. It's an exorcism.

And so when I first learned that, I'm like, wait a second, you know, the exorcist, that's like a movie, that's like a Catholic thing.

Mormons don't have this concept of exorcism. Well, when you go back and you study the history, particularly understanding that the origin of Mormonism is steeped in folk mysticism,

spiritualism, much of which is derived from Catholic mysticism that came over with the colonies from Europe. And so it's always just really interesting to dive into that.

And so I spent some time going through both that podcast and the article by Stephen Tassum. And I think it's important when we get to that point where we're going to listen to an account of that first miracle, just to understand a little bit of the context.

Now, when you observe or study exorcism itself, there's always this question of like, is it real to the participants believe or is it fake? And there's a confederate involved in it.

...