The Three Degrees of Glory in Mormon Heaven - John Turner Pt. 11 | Ep. 2050

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2025

⏱️ 113 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We are back again with historian Dr. John Turner to explore Chapter Eleven of his new book Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet. The chapter is titled “Pure Language” and covers the years 1831-1832 in Kirtland, Ohio. Turner discusses the stories of healing on the part of Joseph Smith, the controversy surrounding the publishing of the Book of Commandments as well as some of the members questioning Joseph Smith’s revelations. Dr. Turner also discusses Joseph Smith’s revelation on the three degrees of heaven and the possible connections to Emanual Swedenborg (as well as the fact that Hitler is in Mormon heaven!)

We also tackle some big questions:

-Is John Turner’s book just another hagiography idealizing his subject?

-Why did Alexander Campbell oppose Mormonism so vehemently?

-What are we to make of these stories of healing?

-Was the tar and feathering of Joseph Smith having to do with sexual impropriety?

You won’t want to miss this important episode in the Joseph Smith Podcast series!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone, and welcome to another additional Mormon stories podcast, Joseph Smith edition.
0:05.9	I'm your host, John DeLinn. It is August 11th, 2025.
0:10.4	And today is part 11 of our series covering this new book, Joseph Smith, The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet by George Mason Professor John Turner.
0:23.2	This series is best consumed in sequence.
0:28.1	So if you're just stumbling on this episode for the first time, go to the Mormon Stories Q or the Joseph Smith podcast,
0:36.3	Q or the Joseph Smith podcast playlist on YouTube, go back to the first
0:40.8	episode, watch them in sequence, and you'll get the most out of them this way. Thanks to the
0:47.2	generous support of you, our listeners, we are able to fund this series. We've already done 10 episodes.
0:55.8	This is the 11th episode. We're covering today, Chapter 11 in this book, called Pure Language, 1831 to 1832.
1:03.4	We're now in the Curtland, Ohio time frame with Joseph Smith, and we've got a lot to cover today.
1:10.4	I will just say really quickly again that we couldn't do
1:14.3	this episode without the generous donations of you, our viewers and listeners. Our core Mormon
1:19.4	Stories audience kind of helped bootstrap this issue, the series, but we did open up a link
1:25.8	for anyone who wants to donate to this series to keep it going.
1:29.7	The link is donorbox.org slash Joseph Smith.
1:34.5	I'm happy to announce, and this will be new news to my guest for today, John Turner,
1:40.1	that we've now raised $10,636, which funds us up through, I think, if I got my count right,
1:49.9	22 episodes.
1:51.1	So we've almost got the full 31, 32 episodes funded if we're able to receive another, I don't know, three, four, five grand more.
2:04.6	We can definitely see this series all the way to its finale. So we want to thank everyone who's
2:10.0	donated so far to make this possible. If you want to see us make it all the way through
2:14.7	the polygamy chapters into Navu and even Joseph's
	...

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