We’re moving into modern day apocalypticism. We’re going to talk about 3 main figures: Bo Gritz, Julie Rowe, and John Pontius. Bo was former marine and Mormon convert who ran for president of the United States in 1992, receiving a significant number of votes in Utah.
Christopher: Yes, absolutely. In the 1990s, Bo Gritz is a great representative, as well as guys like Jim Harmston, and others, of a Latter-day Saint who’s become concerned about New World Order conspiracy theories. The United Nations, what role are they going to play in sort of setting up the scene for an anti-Christ figure and certainly our own distrust of the idea of the sort of global government? I just find that really interesting how Latter-day Saints turn in that direction as well. This is a moment where far right conservative, political ideas–John Birch Society is functioning in Utah and sometimes, John Birch Society isn’t far enough for some people in Utah County.
Julie Rowe currently has a YouTube channel where she shares her beliefs. John Pontius has written an influential book called Visions of Glory.
Christopher: John Pontius wrote this book, “Visions of Glory,” which is Spencer’s story of his near death experience. Then there’s Julie Rowe, whose publisher Chad Daybell, helped her write several books about her experiences. Some people have wanted to say, the reason Spencer had so much more influence, particularly amongst mainstream Latter-day Saints, is because he was a man, Julie was a woman. I think that’s related to what’s going on here. But I actually think something else is going on here, because Spencer played the rules. The rules are, you don’t want to become a celebrity, you’re not trying to build a following away from the Church. He makes himself anonymous.
His narrative is about how he actually had this vision and didn’t share it until God told him to. He was friends with an apostle, and that apostle discouraged him from sharing it until he received revelation to do so. His details are so thoroughly–I mean, it’s really a Last Days’ event, that is about the power of the church, like the church coming together. I mean, he plays by all these rules, but the most important rule he does is he doesn’t continue to write. He doesn’t show up in podcasts. He doesn’t have a website you can watch him. You can’t send him money for energy work.
Whereas Julie, and Julie would say, she’s received direction to do this. Part of her message is what she’s going to do. She’s going to be this general in a Last Days’ army, this nine-month war. She needs to prepare camps and gather supplies for individuals. She wrote multiple books. She started a YouTube channel. You can pay her a significant amount of money to have energy work done. I assume she’s doing it for the best of reasons, but she’s an entrepreneur. This is something that most Latter-day Saints would think is a little too close to being a paid preacher, or a little too close to being schismatic. So, I think it’s interesting to piece those two together, and think why would one be prosperous in these stories and one not? Ultimately, it’s interesting to me that these visionaries rise to popularity, and then they rise and fall. So, when one falls another shows up. I trace that most of these are based on near death experiences. So, I think it’s interesting that Betty Eadie, the first major near death experience writer who wrote her own book, was a Latter-day Saint.
Dr. Christopher Blythe will tell us more about these recent figures. Chad Daybell has been in the news over the past year over the suspicious disappearance and deaths of his new wife Lori Vallow’s children and relatives. We’ll talk about their messages of apocalypticism with Dr. Christopher Blythe.
Christopher: In the case of Chad Daybell, it seemed to come up with some terrible results. So, at this point, children have been discovered. Julie [Rowe] has disavowed him, as has the prepper community. We’ll see what happens in court. But it would appear that from interviews around that, Lori, Chad’s new wife had come to believe that her children were zombies. Their term for zombie meant that you’d become possessed so much, that your own spirit couldn’t possess your body again. Your spirit’s stuck out there in sort of limbo and now your body is being used by something evil. So you’re no longer Rick Bennett, you are, fill in the blank.
GT: One of her children had autism. Is that correct?
Christopher: I think that’s right. Yeah, this child, and she saw that his behavior, allegedly, on his last day on earth, his behavior, she claimed, telling her friend Melanie, that he had climbed up onto a ledge and knocked over a picture of Jesus. He was acting bizarre, and she believed this was a sign that he was possessed. We’ll see what’s determined, but usually they would pray. So, every day they would pray to get rid of all the zombies in the world. According to Melanie Gibb, who was a friend at the time, they could then say, “This morning, there was 1000 zombies in the world. But now there’s 940. So we know that our prayers, wiped out 60 zombies,” that sort of thing. But, in this case, it seems like they were more proactive in ridding the world of zombies.
It’s a sad, terrible story.
Many people have heard about the White Horse Prophecy, but few people understand the details. Did you know it has been disavowed by LDS Leaders? In our next conversation with Dr. Christopher Blythe, we’ll dive in deep to this well-known but misunderstood prophecy and discuss the ties to Mitt Romney.
Christopher: So, the story of the White Horse prophecy is recorded in 1902. It’s largely based on the Civil War Prophecy. It has an idea that the Gentiles are going to attack the Saints. actually, all sorts of wars are occurring here. It begins with this reference that says there’ll be a terrible revolution in the land that leaves the United States without any supreme government. So, great, wild moment’s going to happen. Ultimately, the Constitution is going to hang by a thread. In the White Horse Prophecy, it’s not a politician that saves it either. The Red Horse, the Native Americans align with the White Horse, the Mormons are going to join together, and they’re going to preserve the Constitution. Anyways, the White Horse prophecy was very prevalent for about 20 years and even into the 50s. I mean, the White Horse Prophecy is very popular.
GT: So just quickly, he wrote it down in 1902, but, supposedly, this had happened decades earlier.
Christopher: Yes, and this would make sense. I mean, in 1840, Joseph Smith did make a prophecy with the Constitution. Every other element of the White Horse Prophecy document he wrote, you could find somewhere else. Some of the specifics like an invasion from China on the West Coast, the same time there’s an invasion from European forces on the east coast.
What are your thoughts about these modern-day apocalypticists? Did you know the White Horse prophecy had been disavowed? Were you aware of all of the details about the prophecy?
By the way, here is a link to Dr. Blythe’s book, Terrible Revolution. It’s currently over 60% off, here’s your chance to get a good deal! https://amzn.to/35hud6K
Wheat & Tares 
It’s hard to know what to make of these sort of fringe Mormons. On the one hand, they’re clearly “out there” and believe a lot of crazy stuff. On the other hand, some of that crazy stuff is a lot like the run-of-the-mill crazy stuff that is embraced by mainstream members (aka “folk doctrine”) as well as the crazy stuff found in LDS talks and manuals. I think the average Catholic or Evangelical would be a bit befuddled by an average Mormon distancing themself from such fringe Mormons by claiming “they believe crazy stuff.” That’s pretty much how most Christians and most secularists think of all Mormons.
There are plenty of crazy evangelicals too, Dave. Think David Koresh & Branch Davidians, and the Hale Bop comet group in California a white back. Even Jonestown shows some strange apocalyptic groups that aren’t limited to Mormons.
The existence of weirdos and extremists in Mormonism is largely a product of the mainstream Church’s failures to reign them in or thoroughly disavow them. The Church has already shown that it is quite skilled at punishing and removing unorthodox members on the liberal/progressive side. Why couldn’t they do the same for the preppers/fundamentalists/miscellaneous assorted nutjobs? These people are a much bigger liability for the Church than feminists or LGBTQ advocates. In my very typical American suburban ward, no one would bat an eye if I started talking about doomsday prophecies in Elders Quorum. But if I started in about women’s ordination, I would very quickly get shouted down and/or get summoned to the bishop’s office.
There are also failures at the local levels of the Church. Whenever I hear of another heartbreaking story like that of the Daybell/Vallow children (sadly, there are plenty in contemporary Mormon history) I wonder about how many bishops, stake presidents and other Church members in their circles might have known something fishy was going on but stayed silent–that maybe these tragedies could have been prevented if a bishop had spoken up earlier.
Sometimes I can be hard on my fellow Mormons when I see folks like the ones mentioned above. And then I remind myself that all groups have extreme crazy types. Heck, look at the Republican and Democrat parties. So I don’t necessarily blame the Church for the crazies within the Church.
On the other hand, the Church tends to breed and attract certain kinds of crazies. Remember Mr. “Emanual” who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart? You think he got his ideas all by himself? And what about Warren Jeffs? Didn’t we (Mormons) create the structure that allowed guys like him to run wild? And today, what do you make of the anti-mask subculture in Utah county? You don’t think their LDS affiliation has anything to do with their anti-government anti-mask mentality?
Maybe one reason I’ve backed away from the Church is because there are too many crazies out there who justify their actions by referencing the scriptures and early Church teachings. I don’t blame the Church for that, but I don’t pretend like these guys were created in a vacuum either.
The church has excommunicated Julie Rowe (as I mentioned in interview), Denver Snuffer, and other religious extremists. They don’t get the publicity on the bloggernacle that people like John Dehlin and Kate Kelly get but the Church routinely removes right wingers. The bloggernacle cares less about these people so it Is incorrect to assert that they don’t do the same for “assorted nutjobs.”
@Rick B I agree – the Church is definitely concerned about the fundamentalists and excommunicates them as it does progressives. That said, I also agree with @Jack Hughes that people can get away with all sorts of crazy fundamentalist talk in church and no one would bat an eye compared to someone talking about progressive issues.
I grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of Bo Gritz signs … and a lot of families who moved to Idaho to prepare for the end of the world … and one 12 yr old boy who shared his own prophesy about the end of the world during testimony meeting. Weird times!
I will be looking forward to what you have to say about Romney and the White Horse Prophecy. Denied or not, it was in the air in 2012 and Mormons voted for him en masse. But, as we’ve seen, his fall from Mormon grace when he opposed Trump has been nearly as universal.
As far as I know, the Bundys and their associates have not been disciplined by the Church at all (if anyone knows otherwise, please provide correction) despite the fact that they have publicly and repeatedly engaged in conduct that exceeds the bar for excommunication. The ones they do excommunicate (Snuffer, Rowe) usually don’t get booted until after they develop a large following, so they just take their followers with them and continue building their extremist organizations and ideologies. And the Church generally takes a hands-off approach to dealing with Mormon-heritage polygamous sects. The Church clearly is not willing to police one end of the extreme belief spectrum as much as they do the other.
I believe that the Bundys, Chad Daybell, Julie Rowe and many like them would never have become what they are today if, years earlier, they each had a diligent bishop or stake president that could spot the beginnings of extremism in their beliefs or practices and nip them in the bud–either by gently ushering them back to a moderate middle way, or by kicking them out long before they have a chance to achieve any notoriety, build a following or commit murder.
The Mormon church keeps saying that “by their fruits ye shall know them,” as if that is a positive reflection on the church. These crazy fringe groups, like Daybell’s, are the fruit of Joseph Smith’s church and teachings.
Gritz was in the Army, not the Marine Corps.
From FairMormon’s response to Visions of Glory:
“ The Saints should always be seeking for further light and knowledge. Experience has shown, however, that an anxious interest in such light and knowledge can lead to being deceived, misled, and manipulated if we are not sufficiently grounded in true principles relating to revelation and learning.”
I do not envy the church’s position here. Enough people are of the opinion that members with “normal” beliefs are “deceived, misled, and manipulated.” Absent the repeatability of the scientific method, who’s to say what the “true principles of revelation and learning” are? You can claim authority all you want but when your claims to authority are supposed to be backed up by the very process of personal revelation that’s producing these fringe voices… It’s tricky, to say the least.
Thanks Truckers Atlas, I fixed the post to shows Bo was an army officer rather than marine.
While I agree that the Church could be more moderate in its approach towards “right-wingers”, I think some here like to cast stones unfairly. Any organization with millions of members is going to have extremists on both ends of the spectrum, and I think many stone-throwers fail to recognize that fact.
A personal experience I had reinforces Jack Hughes’ assertion that the Church tends to be tolerant of its right-wing and doomsday crackpots.
I was a brand-new missionary in Taiwan in 1977, and my trainer companion often taught our Mandarin-speaking investigators that Christ would come again in the year 2000. Even though I was brand new, I unfortunately understood exactly what he was saying, because I was already fluent in Chinese, before I started my mission. At the time, I lacked the confidence to tell him to knock off teaching his own speculations as doctrine. I mentioned this problem in a Mission President interview I had during Zone Conference, and the MP just smiled at me and told me to not worry about it, to just try and make my trainer companion the best missionary possible. The trainer companion eventually went on to be a SP and MP, himself. The thing is, Chinese culture views end-day prophecies very negatively, having dealt with many dangerous doomsday Buddhist cults throughout Chinese history. My trainer companion and I really sowed a lot of tares.
Kinda hard to rein in the wing nuts when so many of them ARE your leaders. Zealots often are called to leadership positions. I have had Bishops and SPs who were JBS members.
After that missionary experience, and still junior, I fortunately developed enough courage to tell my second senior companion to knock off engaging in Bible bashes with evangelical Christians we encountered (there are actually a lot in Taiwan), which he enjoyed doing.
Okay, Rick, but (honest question here, even if it sounds like snark) who do you consider left-wing extremists in Mormonism? Are we talking John Dehlin, Kate Kelly and Sam Young?
@jaredsbrother agree. I get that there are left wing zealots (Antifa?) but I don’t know a single person like that in the Church whereas there are lots of examples of the opposite.
I agree we can’t 100% blame the church for producing these people / groups but there is something in our environment that fosters it (and Trumpism and conspiracy theories) in a way that simply does not hold for the left.
I’m uncomfortable with the terms “crackpots, wing nuts, and left wing zealots” that have been thrown around in this conversation. They are pejorative terms and I strive to be non-polemical as much as possible.
If we’re going to call people like Julie Rowe, Chad Daybell, and Bo Gritz these pejorative terms, then I suppose that people like John Dehlin, Kate Kelly, Jeremy Runnells, Bill Reel, and Sam Young are indeed “crackpots, wing nuts, and left wing zealots.” Like I said, some of you are way too loose with these terms, and to be fair, I know John and Bill, and I don’t consider them to be left wing zealots, but they are every bit as zealous for their causes as Julie Rowe or Bo Gritz. So if we’re going to be consistent, I guess those are equivalences, since they have both been excommunicated. You’ll hear these left wing zealots spoken of with derision by orthodox members. I know I have. But I don’t like the terms and that is what I was getting at by people casting stones. I would prefer that you didn’t refer to John or Julie as crackpots.
And if we’re going to start sharing anecdotes about right-wingers getting away with stuff, I’ll share a few people who don’t get the publicity but didn’t get away with stuff. Anne Wilde was exed sometime after the 2002 Olympics for her advocacy of polygamy. (She elected not to publicize it, unlike John and Kate.) Her husband Ogden Kraut was excommunicated decades before she was. W&T Blogger Mary Ann has shared less well-known seminary teachers Mike Stroud and Robert Norman who have been excommunicated. Unless you are an avid reader of W&T, I’ll bet most of you had no idea who they were before Mary Ann’s posts. (I didn’t.) See https://wheatandtares.org/2019/02/27/another-podcaster-excommunicated-but-maybe-not-for-the-reason-you-think/ and https://wheatandtares.org/2017/09/16/what-do-you-get-when-you-combine-denver-snuffer-and-robert-norman-mike-stroud/
I will share another story. About a year ago, I met with a listener who had an amazing story. He went to the LTM (pre-cursor to MTC) and shared some of his personal beliefs with fellow missionaries, which were fundamentalist in nature. He was not only sent home from the LTM, but soon excommunicated and treated like he was radioactive by people in his stake. He didn’t state directly to me which beliefs were in question, but I’m pretty sure it was for beliefs about Adam-God and polygamy. He has always been a staunch believer and still is He is not famous at all. You wouldn’t know him. But there are lots of people like him. I don’t share his beliefs, but I empathize with him.
So yes, church culture tolerates right-wingers more than left-wingers, but they have also gone after lots of John Birch supporters, polygamists, and these people never make the news like left-wingers John and Kate. Right-wingers who get exed are likely more numerous than you think. Even Denver Snuffer supporters know they have to keep quiet at church or they will be outed and exed, just like left-wingers. You all notice the left-wingers because they often don’t go quietly and are famous here on the bloggernacle. You rarely call people like John crackpots, but are free to do it with Bo Gritz and his crowd. The right-wingers are generally quieter about getting exed than left wingers. DezNat is a notable exception to being quiet, but they comment anonymously because I think they know the church will come after them if they used their real names.
I also don’t think the Church has a monopoly on so-called crazies. Evangelicals have killed doctors in the name of abortion. The Atlanta Olympic Bomber had strong religious beliefs about abortion. The Westboro Baptist church routinely pickets funerals. There are Shia and Sunni extremists who kill in the name of God. Mormons like Chad Daybell are much less prevalent than Muslim extremists. There were bombs in Northern Ireland for decades in the name of religion. LDS are tame by comparison. I think some of us are so inward-focusing, we can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s a big forest.
This popped on my Facebook feed just after I Posted the last comment. It’s for those who don’t recognize the evangelical “crazies.”
Agreed, Rick. Thanks for spelling out. Your taxonomic approach, it seems, would not lump together fundamentalists/conservatives with people I would consider unwell. It shouldn’t. I don’t see people who retain fundamentalist beliefs (or whatever you want to call it) but a grip on reality as related to those like Lori and Chad who seem to be ungrounded and dangerous. The LeBarons and the Laffertys were not “conservatives”; they were psychopaths using Mormonism to justify heinous behavior. Crazy is a pejorative term, but Julie is clearly either playing a part for recognition and money or not mentally sound. The point being that the ground occupied by Anne Wild/Ogden Kraut/etc. and Lori/Chad/Julie (maybe not fair because Julie isn’t accused of murder) does not overlap; there is no Venn diagram for branches of right-wing belief in Mormonism.
It’s just my opinion, but I think the church uses excommunication as a tool far too often. If information about polygamy and Adam/God is available, and if people learn that the founding prophet and his successor taught these and other concepts, then studious people are going to wonder why these teachings fell by the wayside. The church’s task is to explain why, and I’m not sure the Gospel Topics essays do so well enough. A good-faith effort to grapple with troubling issues might permit the church to retain conservative members AND identify the unstable before they act out. The liberals are going to keep pushing for change and mostly fall away anyway because of the role of women, LGBTQ rights, the continued push for tithing money when the church is fabulously wealth, etc.
@Rick B those are fair points and I think you are right to resist zealots / crackpots / etc. language and helpful to put into perspective some of those people / issues on the right who aren’t as well known.
That said, I wouldn’t in a million years put John Dehlin in the same category as Bo Gritz and Chad Daybell. That may because I sympathize and agree way more with him so perhaps that’s just my bias but if you’re going to make an “extremism” spectrum I think those guys are way, way further right than John is left. In fact, I don’t even think John is all that far left. He just doesn’t take truth claims at face value if they don’t have evidence and has been open about that. I’m not sure how that makes someone super left?
I’ll grant you that Kate Kelly is very far left (more so now than at the time she was excommunicated). But she still didn’t kill anybody or set up a militia or try to take over government property as far as I know … so again, I’m hard pressed to find equivalence here and I still maintain that the people on the right that the church has produced are more extreme than any of the examples on the left.
And while there is plenty of this in other churches (I don’t think anyone is saying Mormons have a monopoly on extremism) that doesn’t excuse us from looking at ours.
If you want to separate out “crazies” as those who have committed murder, I think that is a reasonable distinction. The only left-wing crazy is Mark Hofmann that I can think of. There are definitely more right-wing crazies. But it seems that many people had a broader definition than murder in the comments above.