If you haven't yet, I recommend you read pjbrownie's excellent paper on the teachings and his experiences with remnant groups which goes into Rob Smith a bit and IIRC touches on Chad Daybell. I don't have a link but I think the link to it has been shared in this thread and I'm sure now that I'm mentioning it someone else will link you to it.Redpilled Mormon wrote: ↑August 19th, 2022, 8:51 pm I'm still playing catch up. I know about Denver Snuffer, Phil Davis, and Pure Revelations, but never heard of Rob Smith or Chad Daybell before. Can someone clarify?
Rob Smith is an interesting convert (I believe, but maybe I'm wrong) to the LDS church who was eventually excommunicated for blogging about taking the teachings in the Book of Mormon literally and casting off false traditions. This is a message that is at odds with LDS orthodoxy which may not take stories and statements about gifts that come from faith so literally and so powerfully. A leader in the LDS church that holds title of prophet, seer or revelator may say they've never seen Christ and that their testimony is simple and sincere and it's enough for their role. Rob would say that's not true. He'd say that true witnesses of Christ in the scriptural sense and in the sense of Joseph Smith have been ministered to by Christ during their mortal lives and he teaches that one may be able to be ministered to by Christ in this life by being committed and exact enough in following Christ, moving upwards spiritually (his blog is upwardthought.blogspot.com), being able to let go of false traditions, etc.
He teaches that he has been ministered to by Christ and that he has been commanded to teach those who will listen.
He sounds quite similar to Denver Snuffer at this point, right? He breaks from Denver Snuffer though in a few key areas. Denver has really written some technically impressive books. Rob's books don't feel put together as professionally as Denver (IMO). I mean Denver has put out The Second Comforter and Passing the Heavenly Gift. Those have become iconic books. I don't feel Rob has made a book as "high quality" as those. That's not to say Rob's claims aren't true and Denver's are. That's not to say that being well-spoken or good at writing books from an academic standard perspective is a sign of a true prophet, I'm just saying Denver became a prolific writer and Rob's way of writing and reaching is different. Rob is trying to blog less and channel his ideas/teachings much more in a series of books. He says the Lord has instructed him that this is the better path for his teachings, rather than his former focus of mainly teaching through shorter blog posts (he still blogs though, just not as much).
Rob breaks with Denver on polygamy. Rob "reset" his blog (I'll get to that in a minute") last fall and years of his blog posts were lost due to that but he used to have some sort of post on polygamy that said something like "generally a bad idea, but not always". I think that sums up his view on polygamy. He thinks it has a place and time but those moments are rare. He believes Joseph was a polygamist.
Rob made a post maybe 5 or so years ago where he became critical of Denver. The post was titled something like "Time for a wake up call for the Snuffer crowd", where he pointed out behavior in Denver's teaching and actions and actions among his supporters that he felt was hypocritical. They see the organizing they do as loose and more of a movement, not a church. He sees them as being a church. They don't feel they have a clear leader. He says it's obvious Denver is their leader and there are other key figures in the movement with a degree of leadership over others.
Pjbrownie puts this better in his paper than I am, but Rob can be very defensive, very critical, and has taught questionable things about women. He made a post once saying women are often at their most attractive in their late teens, I think this may have been in one of his writings defending Joseph and polygamy but I could be wrong. I get what he's saying, I appreciate his candidness, but I also think he's wrong on that being a general rule for women. So many girls blossom in their 20s and "look their best" far after their teen years.
He was a professor at a university and eventually he was "cancelled" for some of the stuff he wrote on his blog (I feel awful for him); viewtopic.php?t=63164
https://upwardthought.blogspot.com/2022 ... y-job.html
When this happened he largely shut down his blog, removing all of his backlog of posts from being able to be accessed. It happened last fall. Since then he has returned to blogging and he is slowly re-posting some of his older stuff but this reset of his blog has completely gotten rid of so much of what he built his name off of. I don't know if he has any intention of bringing back what he would consider the prophetic and inspired material he produced.
I find the similarities and contrasts between Rob and Denver to be really fascinating. Denver has a solid amount of followers. Denver has a message explaining his perspective (that he says he believes will end up being shown true at the end of the day) on what went down during Joseph's day and everything following. He has a target for the future. Whether you believe him or not, he has a clear-ish message about what God is doing right now. I don't feel like Rob has a good answer or "story" on Mormonism. He doesn't believe in the LDS church, he has no love for it (he once said it's "like" or worth as much as a menstrual rag is to God) and has really been clear he directs people to leave the Wasatch Front and leave the LDS church behind. He loves and believes in the Book of Mormon. But I don't think he has a great explanation on what was "it" all about (the early Mormon movement)? Where/when did the church go wrong, what is happening now, what should we expect in the future (though he does discuss the future a lot in his writings, he says dark days are coming but something beautiful will eventually arrive). I think Denver offers a more compelling concept of all of these things but I can't write Rob off or write off his views and teachings.
Rob was not a fan of the "academically accepted, historical-professional" verified Joseph Smith photo. He called foul on placing such high faith in what academics decides about Joseph (which I find odd he did that because I feel he typically respects and stands with what historical academia says about Joseph). I respect Rob for being cautious about the validity of this photo.
https://upwardthought.blogspot.com/2022 ... smith.htmlRob Smith wrote: It is interesting to me that, when it comes to finding truth--whatever the domain--the supposed experts tend to be the absolute last place you should look. And, for whatever reason, that property seems to be expanding in how often it is true. But even in Jesus' day, you could get more truth out of a child than you could the Pharisee priests and lawyers, and the richest truths were found from a zealot weirdo in the wilderness and the renegade zealot he claimed was the Son of God. What, exactly, has changed?
I love this from Rob. I think this is so true. I think God's truth will break the lies and beliefs of "the learned" and our establishment upheld by establishment instititons. I just sort of find Rob's take on Joseph's life at odds with this quote of his. IMO, Rob accepts how Joseph's story is painted by establishment historians and establishment LDS/Mormon historians, yet here Rob is saying "why have faith in the establishment and the enforcing of it by those considered learned?". I would say Denver's defiant stance against establishment Mormon history reflects this quote from Rob better than Rob's take on Mormon history (which seems to agree with the establishment, he just thinks the LDS church is absolutely not true and a problematic institution).
This is an old post predicting/prophesying of tribulations but eventually peace that Rob published before he pulled off all his material when he re-set his blog. He republished this after he started blogging again. This is one of his writings that stands out to me.
https://upwardthought.blogspot.com/2021 ... areth.html
One of the most profound things I've learned from anything related to Mormonism was from Rob. I'm paraphrasing him here, but he once said something to the extent of "when considering a spouse, you should ask yourself 'how well can this person receive the positive things that I have to offer'?" Not a direct quote, but that was the general idea. I love that advice.The lion roareth wrote: The perverse degradation of the thin thread of human decency we have mistakenly assumed to be permanent will continue to fray. COVID is not the last or most dangerous plague this generation will see. The civil violence in the US and other places (South Africa now, for example) will increase in intensity, frequency, and duration. Military wars will break out. There will be widespread famines and starvation. In aggregate, billions will die.
I think the Chad Daybell stuff is just tragic and a really dark corner of modern-day Mormon break-offs. I've never dived deeply into it because of the child murder stuff. From what I understand, Chad was teaching people about spiritual gifts. He was part of a super-exclusive forum called another voice of warning (AVOW). He got caught up with a girl (Lori Vallow) and now they're both under investigation for the disappearance of either Chad's kids or Lori's kids. I think maybe the childrens' remains have been identified so now they're under investigation for murder but I'm not certain. I think this is such a stain on alternative-Mormon thinking. Because people will hear about modern-day alternative Mormon thinking and point to this.