And the Testing one, two three, testing one, two one two three this is radio free Mormon on the air

Broadcasting behind enemy lines tonight's episode lecture 5 in my 1989 Institute class titled Defending the Faith.

Before I get to this class, I want to make a few pre-catory comments.

First, I am very proud of the fact that the first half of this class deals with the issue of Joseph Smith and Folk Magic.

This is in 1989. Let me give you a little bit of historical background so you can see that really this was an extremely

Controversial subject at the time when I was broaching it in my institute class

I did not want to shy away from the difficult issues and this was

indeed a difficult issue at the time and place. This is something now that the

church has gotten around to in 2019 when I am recording this introduction to admitting on

on its own church website in its church essays that Joseph Smith did practice

folk magic that he did have a seerstone that he used in his earlier years to locate

treasure to locate lost objects and that he used the same seerstone in

translating the Book of Mormon but in the 1980s this was all in a state of flux.

The church had gone from a position where it actively denied Joseph Smith's engagement

in folk magic, his engagement in

in treasure digging and poo-pooed the affidavits of his neighbors

claiming that in fact that is what he did.

These denials and deflections were made in official church publications such as the

Ensign magazine. But in the 1980s all of that began to change. In 1983

Mark Hoffman produced a document later determined to be a forgery in which Joseph Smith allegedly talked about practicing folk magic in order to find treasure. The following year in 1984 Mark Hoffman produced another

document, this one called the Salamander letter which definitively linked magical

practices with the angel Maroni and the coming forth of the Book of

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