Letters - Dear Hallie, Crooked as a rail fence. Leon.

                                                                                                            Bemidji, Minn., Feb. 13, 1937

Dear Hallie,
Grandpa and Grandpa Whiting joined the church in an early day when it was good and true and lovely, and because it was so good and lovely in their younger says, they couldn’t believe that evil and designing men had gained control and corrupted it, honeycombed it with secretism and secret chamber work until it was no longer the church which they had joined. And so they put in the latter half of their lives grieving because their children couldn’t conscientiously cling to the old wreck.
So Pa and Ma joined the church when it was good and true and lovely, when the new wine was being put into new bottles, which the old bottles could not hold. And now they can’t see that the same corruption of secretism and evil has entered in, and that no one in the ministry can continue in it long without being contaminated.
 
     You girls are clings to the church as it was when we joined it, not I hope and pray, as it is now.
I made my protest against the evils that were entering in, in a right and proper way. I took it up with our branch business meetings, and with unanimous vote of the branch we went to the district conference with our protest. And Lester with his Masonic brethren delayed the opening of the conference meeting for half an hour while they went upstairs and planned how best to prevent our having a chance to present it. There is no avenues open for protest against the iniquities that are increasing—a minister must be under the thumb of someone.

    Look at your Walnut Park pastor (was it Dowker?) who used to speak a little too plain against these evils, and how they framed him and let him down and out. And no one dared to raise a voice in his defense. Let them get away with it. Unless Oakman has plenty of financial backing so that he can fight them in the courts of the land if necessary, that is what will happen to him.

    I have worked right along by the side of three Masons for years, and I know them to be liars and crooks. They will lie like a Catholic (and why shouldn’t they? The father of all lies is the authentic source of both of them.) and are as crooked as a rail fence. And the higher in the social scale they get the crookeder they are. I worker under a Masonic Postmaster for years, and had to fight his crookedness and cussedness clean to Washington and back. I wouldn’t believe a Mason’s oath on a stack of Bibles a mile high, in the church or out. And you church machinery is in charge of Masons from start to finish, from the Presidency down to the outlying branches.

    I well remember when I heard the first suggestion of supreme directional control. It was in Omaha in 1900, and Fred A. Smith was the one that brought it up. Said they must work toward the plan of having the presidents of districts appointed by the Presidency, and the branch presidents also thought the district presidents. And that is the way she is done to-day. It gave me a chill right then, and I wondered if such a castastrophy could possibly occur. It would be nice, if the president were a man like King Mosiah, who would do the right thing himself, and choose only men of like nature. But it is quite a different thing when he is a Mason, and appointing Masons and their sympathizers in districts and branches. I know that a resolution was adopted in 1923 intended to preserve the right of the individual to make nominations; but (unreadable for a bit SSGII) have written the name of those they wanted nominated and given the slips to people in the audience to make the nominations, so that it would appear that the resolution was being honored, when it was in fact being ignored in about the rottenest manner possible.

     But what would you expect? A man who belongs to a secret society is a living lie before the whole community. He appear to be a certain person in his everyday life before his friends, and in secret he is another sort of person living another life. And your church quorums and councils and courts are honeycombed with that sort of people, and they are in control of the machinery of the church, and neither the people who know it, nor God, can have any confidence in them.

    That was what was the matter in 1844 that caused rejection of the quorums (not of the people).
Those leading men could read the Book of Mormon and Bible and Doctrine and Covenants on marriage, and then they could turn right around and interpret it that they were justified in joining the church of the devil, and in marrying ten virgins in order to pass by the angels in glory. To be sure they suspended the practice of polygamy by a manifesto, so if their ten virgin revelation was right, the church is wrong now, and their ministers are under the obligation of going out and presenting a doctrine and covenants that has revelations forbidding plural marriage, a revelation permitting it, and a manifesto suspending it. Would you go out and support that rubbish? Not unless you were seven kinds of fool.

    And the Reorganization is in the same boat so far and the church of the devil is concerned. And after reading the Bible as to how the lords of the Gentile exercise control, “but it shall not be so among you” And “he that is greatest let him be your servant,” and the Book of Mormon that all things should be done by the voice of the people, and the Doctrine and Covenants, “Let all things be done by common consent in the church.” They interpreted that to mean that supreme directional control was permitted to one man over all the affairs of the church, with the right to eliminate and to discipline, and with the quorums and courts arbitrarily reorganized contrary to law, and men put in who upheld that doctrine, would you trust their decisions on any other points of doctrine, or law, or case in court? I wouldn’t. Their minds are so corrupted by Masonic lies that they can not discern the right. Exactly in the same condition that the quorums were in 1844 when they were rejected as quorums; but they went right on, and are still going; reorganized according to man’s ideas, but still going.

    Of course you are woman, and you don’t know all that is going on; but at your last General Conference, solicitors were working among the delegates enticing them to join the Masonic society, and offering cut rates as and enducement.

    Hardly twenty-four hours had elapsed after our conference close, before one of your elders was talking with two of ours and feeling them out on the matter of appointing committees to meet together to find common ground for the union of the factions. And he says, Now that would be a fine thing. There isn’t much between us, and with just a little ironing out we can get together. Take this matter of the Masonic lodge, you people object to that, but really it is a good thing. A mighty good thing. And if your folks would just change your stand on that, then rest would be quite easy. Needless to say he didn’t get an agreement.

    Now just how would you like to go out and present a doctrine and covenants with a revelations saying that all things should be done by common consent, and another one lauding and supporting a document that destroys all common consent, and a conference resolution on record in 1932 that suspends the latter so far as the bishopric is concerned because Curry wouldn’t accept the job until it was suspended? You would be in the same predicament the Brighamite elders are. What good is suspension, if the contradictory revelations are STILL IN THE BOOKS?

    What you have now is not the pure and true and lovely church organization of Father’s day. But a huge Masonic spider in control of the machinery of the church—I should say an octopus, with its tentacles reaching out to and through every district to the farthest branches. And so if a poor little elder dares to say a word against the evils, the president can reach out with a club of silence and tap him on the head, “subject to the adjudication provided for in the law”(See s.d.c. document). And when said little elder wants to take advantage of the adjudication provided for he finds the elders’ courts, the bishops’ court, and the high council loaded with Masons and s.d.c. proponents, the latter council all appointees by the president, who himself presides at the trial, so he is in fact assailant, jury, council, and judge all rolled into one. That is s.d.c.

     The Book of Mormon is now, as it was in 1830, the best means of getting a hearing from the world, and defending the glory of the Restored gospel, but I certainly would die before I would go to the world and tell them what is says about Masonry being the church of the devil, and then tell them that all our church dignitaries are high Masons, belonging to both churches.

     No, Hallie, if you will only be yourself a minute you won’t want me to come back into the church you’re in. It wouldn’t salve your feelings as you think it would at all. The only think I could do would be to say, Quit your hellish business, or get out of the church or I will. And there I would be. I couldn’t work with that bunch of Masons. The Lord has said himself that they could have no part in the building up of Zion. What you want to hang on to their skits for, I don’t know.

     You girls insist that I don’t write on religion, and yet you keep dinging at me. There is nothing else to write about except the snow, so I have had to break your rule again.

                                                                                      With love, Leon