The following comments were made at the Top of the Mountains conference held near Stanley, Idaho on June 29, 2024.

Before I start, I want to note that, unlike other faiths/groups/religions/people, everything we do requires that there be sacrifices made, and when someone decides that they’re gonna do a conference like this, it imposes a phenomenal burden on the person that’s gonna undertake the enterprise. Doug (who was just up here) and Tonia, his wife—the Atwoods—have made a tremendous sacrifice in getting all of this setup. And then, in addition to having the tent set up, the covering that we’ve got on the ground was made possible by a bunch of people volunteering to scrape and flatten out and then put down the ground cover that we’ve got in here, and set up all the chairs. I mean, this was a tremendous amount of work, and I want to particularly note and thank Doug and Tonia for doing that. 

Also, Rock Waterman asked me at the outset of my talk to thank those who have been praying on behalf of Connie—because the prayers have had remarkably good effect on her behalf, and despite the broken leg, she is now back home and in Rock’s care instead of being trusted to others. 

I want to thank the other speakers who have gone before me and note that this conference began on the 180th anniversary of the death of Joseph Smith, which got acknowledged at that opening session. 

There was an extravagant waste of Joseph Smith, an incalculably foolish waste of what Joseph Smith represented. He had an opportunity to accomplish a great deal more than was accomplished while we had him here. Instead, it was neglect and doubts, opposition and infighting, sycophants, aspiring and jealous men, ignorance and traditions that blinded that bogged down what it was that Joseph could have done on our behalf and that resulted in, essentially, an aborted restoration at the outset. It didn’t need to be that way, but in fact, that’s how it turned out. 

Like Peter before him, Joseph Smith’s name has now been used as a magic talisman to claim that Joseph Smith stands as the foundational route from which corrupt religious institutions derive their authority and their power, and none of them are anything like the Prophet Joseph Smith; none of them bear any of the imprint of what one would expect from a prophet of God. All of them are profiteering. All of them are practicing priestcraft. All of them are looking for the honors of men. All of them are looking for wealth. And none of them do what this group of people do—and that is sacrifice. 

Every person here has had to pay their own way, myself included. Everyone here has had to take time off of what they do in their daily life, myself included, in order to be here/in order to participate. And there are people here who have come long distances at some personal inconvenience—because conferences that get called by us happen when people are willing to make the sacrifice to make a facility/a venue and organize an event for our benefit. Other religions hire, pay, or own facilities. And Peter’s continuing lamentation from behind the veil about how his name has been abused could be echoed by the Prophet Joseph Smith because of corrupt institutions, likewise, using his name for their benefit. 

People generally crave order, government, and rules that they can enforce against others. I’ve resisted that, but I am not ignorant of the desire or the impulse or the many advantages that come from imposing governmental rule upon others. I’m not at all ignorant of that. But I’m deliberately not going to adopt any model that has already failed. Why would we do it again? Why would we shuttle ourselves into a trap that can be waylaid merely by the acquisition of central control by corrupt, aspiring, and evil men? And make no mistake about it: They ARE evil because they are not serving the Lord and pursuing the Lord’s will, desires, and following His principles. You have to control your desire to follow traditions that have only (in the past and at present) given power to our adversary. We’re not going to do that. I’m not going to do that. Be patient. Let what the Lord is doing unfold. He knows exactly what He’s doing, and it will unfold. 

In 2017, we got a revelation as part of a covenant conference, in which the Lord instituted the covenant because of Scriptures that He had allowed us to recover. The condemnation that was originally given in 1832 about the corruption, He undid. The Lord declared the following, referring to the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Book of Mormon: The records you have gathered as scriptures yet lack many of my words [and] have errors throughout…[they’ve] not been maintained or guarded against the cunning plans of false brethren… 

When the Scripture project was done, because we were leaving behind what the Lord had criticized, they were given new names: The Old Covenants, The New Covenants, the Teachings and Commandments. These names were given to them because they were, in fact, new volumes of Scripture. The Lord said, 

…many parts were discarded and other parts were altered… Conspiracies have corrupted the records, beginning among the Jews, and again following the time of my apostles, and yet again following the time of Joseph and Hyrum. As [you’ve] labored with the records [you’ve] witnessed the alterations and insertions, and your effort to recover them pleases me and is of great worth… 

Then we were told: 

You are permitted to…update language to select a current vocabulary, but take care not to change meaning — and if you cannot resolve the meaning, either petition me again or retain the former words. (T&C 157:12-15) 

The work of recovering the Scriptures took a group of volunteers years before the work was completed in 2017. 

But I want to remind you of earlier history: The Book of Mormon was published BEFORE The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized. It belongs to the entire Christian world and not a single denomination. When the text was recovered for the Scripture project in 2017, the earliest surviving portion of the translation and the printer’s copy were used. The printer’s copy was a hand-copied version of the translation given to E.B. Grandin’s print shop for use in typesetting. That copying of the original into the printer’s copy resulted in numerous transcription errors. Joseph Smith was attempting to correct those errors in 1842 for a later edition of the Book of Mormon. Not all of those errors were corrected, and the 2017 project attempted to finish recovering the earliest, most correct text. 

But the Book of Mormon (in the form that it existed when it was translated by Joseph Smith and then typeset) was translated in what has been referred to as Elizabethan or Shakespearian English that is most correctly called “Early Modern English,” and it was the language that was in common use between 1485 and 1714. It wasn’t in use in common vernacular in 1830 when the Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith. Many of the words were in common usage before the creation of the King James Bible in 1611. Accordingly, when the Book of Mormon first appeared in 1830, its formal language was already outdated and hadn’t been in common usage for more than a century (and it went back as much as four centuries earlier). Instead of the early 19th-century American English, the initial translation was awkward—yet, sometimes poetic—English language that dated from the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Because of this, relying on Noah Webster’s 1828 first edition of An American Dictionary of the English Language as a reference to understand the text is going to be inadequate. It’s not the language the book was translated into! 

Seven years ago, the Scriptures were approved by a conference that accepted the corrected, updated, recovered, and more complete texts at a conference in Boise, Idaho, and were adopted at that time as scripture. Since 2017, work has continued on the Book of Mormon following the approved process and confining the work to the Lord’s direction: …you are permitted to proceed to the end with your plan to update language, to select a current vocabulary, but take care not to change meaning (ibid. 15, emphasis added). Seven years of effort have resulted in a new version of the Book of Mormon in modern English. 

When the recovered Scriptures were presented to and accepted by the Lord in 2017, He offered a covenant to believers and asked of us to receive the scriptures approved by the Lord as a standard to govern you in your daily walk in life, to accept the obligations established by the Book of Mormon as a covenant, and to use the scriptures to correct yourselves and to guide your words, thoughts, and deeds (T&C 158:3, emphasis added). For this reason, as the project to restate the Book of Mormon in modern English neared completion, the Lord gave it a new title. It’s now titled: Covenant of Christ.

That new title is the direct result of the Lord’s 2017 covenant; the updated language is essential for those who accept the 2017 covenant. During the final stage of the project, the Lord declared the original Book of Mormon translation was to get THAT generation to be willing to accept it as Scripture. They needed it to mimic the King James Version language. But this has a different purpose. This is to help a new generation understand the content to help with the Lord’s return. There is as much divine attention and assistance in getting this new version completed as before. Inspiration from the Lord has assisted throughout