Chapter 10

 James E. Talmage and The Great Apostasy --

The LDS plan to supersede the Roman Catholic Church?

What was the nature and purpose of the book The Great Apostasy when it was first published in 1909 by James E Talmage? One might think that, simply by reading the full title, the answer would be easy. That full title is: The Great Apostasy Considered in The Light of Scriptural and Secular History. One might reasonably expect to read a textbook blow-by-blow account of how the great apostasy happened, as the original church which Christ restored gradually degenerated into the highly corrupt Roman Catholic Church, perhaps indicating the exact point at which the ability to pass on legitimate priesthood authority was lost, and pointing out the errors that were made so that they could be avoided during the next restoration process.

But, as it turns out, one would be quite disappointed if that was the expectation. After a lifetime of study on my part, it now becomes clear that what was left out of that book is far more significant than what was included.

As a young missionary I read the book and noted the conclusions Talmage reached, but was not wise enough myself to realize all that had been left out, all of the actual history of the apostasy and the steps that the church went through in those days. My very limited take-away was that the original apostles were all killed, and that caused the church to quickly deteriorate. Of course, that was the impression that I was supposed to take from the book, even though that was very far from the actual truth. A more accurate title might have read something like "The Great Apostasy Considered in The Light of Limited Elements of Scriptural and Secular History Carefully Cherry-Picked for Polemical Purposes."

Even the credentials which Talmage presents as his qualifications for writing the book are confusing and perhaps questionable, perhaps intentionally so. Perhaps there is a complete explanation for what is presented, but I am unable to put it together. One might reasonably expect that someone writing about theology and the history of religion in a way that was intended to change the entire world of religion would be well-qualified in that field. Perhaps the term "D. Sc. D." might mistakenly be read by the casual reader as being the equivalent of a Dr. of Divinity (DD), perhaps acquired through lengthy study at Harvard or Oxford or some other such famous school. But, as far as I can tell, the two terms "D. Sc. D." and "Ph. D." mean exactly the same thing, that is, terminal or doctoral level studies in a scientific field. In other words, Talmage seems to be claiming to have the equivalent of two PhD's. Whether it is for the same set of science studies, which consisted of chemistry and geology, that he managed to get two degrees, or whether he actually earned two completely separate doctoral degrees in science is not clear. But that is not the sort of thing which should be left open to speculation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Divinity

The last part of the string of qualifications "F. R. S. E." refers to his being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judges to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This society had received a royal charter in 1783, allowing for its expansion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_of_Edinburgh

That final professional title amounts to a recognition of his educational attainments, so that one might conclude that he is claiming something like the equivalent of three different PhD's, all for the same work, none of which had anything to do with theology and religious history. Obviously, he was a very bright fellow, having written the book Jesus the Christ (1915) by church assignment after writing The Great Apostasy (1909), but the reader should not assume that any of his advanced studies in formal institutions had anything to do with theology or church history. In one sense, that was a good thing, because he could then say anything he wanted to without worrying about going against anything contrary he may have learned in formal studies. But, at the same time, the results of his studies should be considered to be his own private work without reliance on or reference to the vast knowledge located at any particular religious University.

The nature of the book is more clearly explained in the preface than one might expect for a book of polemics and apologetics, such as it is, but one would have to be much more sophisticated than a typical high school graduate, as I was, to immediately grasp the nuances of what was being said. One might reasonably expect that, as a religious work, it would contain "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," as opposed to being a highly partisan work of polemics, carefully selecting the materials it contained based on the "spin" one wants to put on things. These days, in the world of political discourse, we even have such things as "spin rooms" where highly partisan political issues are discussed in highly partisan ways and everyone fully expects that they are only going to hear a tiny part of the real truth, if there is, indeed, any truth at all contained in any statements made. That is not the sort of presentation one would expect when one is proclaiming the gospel to the world, but that is what we have here.

What follows is the preface material:

Press of Zion's Printing and Publishing Company

Independence, Jackson County, Missouri.

Published by the Missions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints in America

BUREAU OF INFORMATION—Temple Block, Salt Lake City, Utah.

CALIFORNIA MISSION—153 W. Adams St., Los Angeles, Calif.

CANADIAN MISSION—36 Ferndale Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

CENTRAL STATES MISSION—302 S. Pleasant St., Independence, Mo.

EASTERN STATES MISSION—273 Gates Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.

HAWAIIAN MISSION—P. O. Box 3228, Honolulu, Hawaii.

MEXICAN MISSION—3531 Fort Blvd., El Paso, Texas, U. S. A.

NORTHERN STATES MISSION—2555 N. Sawyer Ave., Chicago, Ill.

NORTHCENTRAL STATES MISSION—2725 3d Ave.S., Minneapolis, Minn.

NORTHWESTERN STATES MISSION—264 East 25th St., Portland, Ore.

SOUTHERN STATES MISSION—371 E. North Ave., Atlanta. Ga.

WESTERN STATES MISSION—538 East 7th Ave., Denver, Colo.

PREFACE.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaims the restoration of the Gospel and the re-establishment of the Church as of old, in this, the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times. Such restoration and re-establishment, with the modern bestowal of the Holy Priesthood, would be unnecessary and indeed impossible had the Church of Christ continued among men with unbroken succession of Priesthood and power, since the "meridian of time."

The restored Church affirms that a general apostasy developed during and after the apostolic period, and that the primitive Church lost its power, authority, and graces as a divine institution, and degenerated into an earthly organization only. The significance and importance of the great apostasy, as a condition precedent to the re-establishment of the Church in modern times, is obvious. If the alleged apostasy of the primitive Church was not a reality, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not the divine institution its name proclaims.

The evidence of the decline and final extinction of the primitive Church among men is found in scriptural record and in secular history. In the following pages the author has undertaken to present a summary of the most important of these evidences. In so doing he has drawn liberally from many sources of information, with due acknowledgment of all citations. This little work has been written in the hope that it may prove of service to our missionary elders in the field, to classes and quorum organizations engaged in the study of theological subjects at home, and to earnest investigators of the teachings and claims of the restored Church of Jesus Christ.

Salt Lake City, Utah, James E. Talmage.

    November 1, 1909.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The first edition of "The Great Apostasy" was issued by the Deseret News, Salt Lake City, in November, 1909, and comprised ten thousand copies. The author has learned, with a pleasure that is perhaps pardonable, of the favorable reception accorded the little work by the missionary elders of the Church, and by the people among whom these devoted servants are called to labor. The present issue of twenty thousand copies constitutes the second edition, and is published primarily for use in the missionary field. The text of the second edition is practically identical with that of the first.

Salt Lake City, Utah, James E. Talmage.

    February, 1910.

Incidentally, it is hard to imagine that there was actually a church publishing and printing office physically located in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri at the time of this printing, as set forth and claimed in the preface. This sounds to me like a history-based affectation that only adds more whimsy to this entire document. The preface to the second edition seems to clarify this situational detail: "The first edition of 'The Great Apostasy' was issued by the Deseret News, Salt Lake City, in November, 1909, and comprised ten thousand copies," indicating that this was really a Salt Lake City publication, as one might have expected.

So, what is missing from the book? As the reader might notice, the materials presented in earlier chapters of this present book -- the early writings of Selden, Pearson, and Clark, as summarized by Hevener -- give a brief introduction to the large body of historical knowledge and writings on the subject of church history, especially focusing on the issue of tithing as it appeared throughout the centuries of gradual disintegration of the original church which Christ restored. As far as I can tell, none of this important material was known by Talmage, or at least it was not referred to by him in any way.

In other words, we can say with some confidence, that James E Talmage actually had no idea about the various steps the church went through in its process of gradual disintegration, or at least he demonstrated a high level of incuriousness about many important issues relating to the apostasy of the original Christian church. All he was really focused on in his argument was the desired end result which is that the Roman Catholic Church had lost the "mandate of heaven" somewhere along the way before the LDS church was restored. That was all that mattered to him, and all that ought to matter to anyone else, he would probably assert. One might say that he merely assumed and asserted or declared the final desired answer, and then went about to put together some related but not dispositive information.

By closely reviewing the preface material from the Talmage book, we can see that this was very explicitly written as a missionary tract with the message that the ancient Roman Catholic Church was now defunct, and that the time was ripe for its replacement to come forward, that replacement being the LDS church.

Unfortunately, to be completely candid, Talmage would have needed to reveal that the new church of Christ had already decided to follow the exact same path which had been followed by the Roman Catholic Church as it began its intertwined processes of both earthly empire-building and doctrinal deterioration and had already taken or was planning several important steps down that path. The leaders of the LDS church had already decided to try to create an international religious empire on the scale of the old Roman Catholic Church, using the exact same means for the exact same purpose. That is, where it had taken over 300 years for the original church of Christ to start abandoning the concept of individual charity and embracing the concept of doctrinally-required tithing payments to the explicitly empire-building central church, the relatively new LDS church, seemingly a little drunk on its new-found religious organizational momentum and power, had only waited 66 years before it made that critical decision in about 1896 which began the inexorable decline of the church to something functionally equivalent to the Roman Catholic Church.

It is somewhat speculative to say this, of course, but it appears that in 2019, about 110 years after what we might call the "Talmage manifesto" to the world in the form of his book The Great Apostasy, the LDS church seems to feel that it has finally arrived at the point where it can directly challenge the Roman Catholic Church as its full worldwide replacement by spending perhaps as much as $5 billion to create its own basilica in Rome to compete in grandeur and artistic excellence and extravagance with the Baroque architecture of that city and other cities. The following article tells us that the architecture for the Rome temple was inspired by San Carlino, a Roman Catholic church in Rome. The article also gives a partial description of the expensive extravagance of the temple:

14 January 2019 - Rome, Italy News Release

Rome Italy Temple to Begin Public Tours

Ancient Italian architecture reflected in edifice design

Public tours begin this month for the Rome Italy Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Italy, the Church’s 162nd operating temple in the world.

“It is beautiful,” said Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who serves as chairman of the Temple and Family History Department. “The craftmanship is expert and perfect.”

After years of construction, Italy’s first Latter-day Saint temple will be open for a free public open house from Monday, January 28, 2019, to Saturday, February 16, 2019, excluding Sundays.

The Rome Italy Temple is in northeast Rome near the village of La Cinquina Bufalotta. The temple’s architecture was inspired by ancient Rome. Its exterior is constructed from Bianco Sardo granite.

Design

“This had to be one that when you walked onto this site, every person should feel like they were on an Italian site,” said architect Niels Valentiner. “They would recognize it because of the materials, because of the design, and because of the surrounding.”

Valentiner said the temple’s design was inspired by San Carlino, a Roman Catholic church in Rome. “The curved ceilings, the curved walls, the expression of the colonnades and columns. And that started this very early concept of a curved church, a curved temple and temple building both on the exterior as well as on the interior.”

The Rome Italy Temple is part of a 15-acre religious and cultural center that includes a multifunctional meetinghouse, a visitors’ center, a family history center and housing for visitors.

Interior

At the temple’s entrance, a floor-to-ceiling stained-glass wall depicts a scene from the life of the Savior Jesus Christ. Stained-glass windows are inspired by the olive tree.

Warm earth tones and blue, bronze and gold hues can be seen throughout the interior. Top artisans and craftsmen have installed the high-quality materials, which includes Perlato Svevo stone flooring quarried in northern Tuscany; Cenia marble from Spain; deep reddish brown Sapele, burl and cherry wood millwork; and Murano glass fixtures from Venice.

“We use the finest materials because it is the house of the Lord,” said Elder Bednar. “The temple is an expression of our love and devotion to the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing is too good for the Lord.”

“We hold our craftsmen to the highest possible standards,” explained Bret Woods, project supervisor.

Woods said the temple’s grand lobby staircase is an engineering feat. “It’s connected just at the top and the bottom, so it’s essentially a free-floating staircase — and of course, an elliptical shape.” The oval design of the staircase is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio masterpiece near Capitoline Hill in Rome.

Original paintings hang in all areas of the temple, reminding temple guests of Jesus Christ and His teachings to follow Him. A picture in the baptistry depicts the Savior’s baptism by John the Baptist.

The baptistry’s purpose is in keeping with the Savior’s example to enter the waters of baptism and His commandment that all must be baptized. In the temple, patrons can act on behalf of those who did not have the chance to be baptized in this life.

The oval motif continues in the baptistry, where inlaid stone wraps around an elliptical font adorned with Roman-style acanthus leaves. The font is held up by 12 oxen representing the 12 tribes of Israel.

In the instruction room where Church members learn about God’s love, the creation and the purpose of life, a mural reveals a magnificent setting depicting Italy’s landscape ranging from the hills to the sea.

The Baroque-era feel of the bridal room is enhanced by the crystalline sconces and hand-painted chairs.

A seemingly endless reflection from the mirrors in the sealing rooms symbolizes eternity. In those rooms, Latter-day Saint faithful participate in sacred ceremonies that join families together forever.

An exquisite chandelier containing thousands of crystal prisms serves as the centerpiece of the celestial room, a space that represents the progression of reaching heaven. The room is also filled with elegant furnishings made by Italian artisans.

Visitors’ Center

In the visitors’ center, a life-size statue of the Christus accompanied by the original Twelve Apostles faces the temple through full-length windows. The statues are replicas of sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen’s works displayed in the Church of Our Lady in Denmark, except the Judas Iscariot figure has been replaced by a statue of the Apostle Paul. Special permission was received from the Lutheran Church to digitally scan the original figures. Carrara marble for the three-quarter scale statues was taken from the same quarry in Tuscany as the marble for Michelangelo’s David.

“When I saw the statues of the Savior, the Christus, and the Twelve Apostles, it was just a spiritually stunning moment for me,” said Elder Bednar.

The statues are complimented by an original mural of olive trees in an Italian countryside that serves as a backdrop.

Piazza

The visitors’ center, temple patron housing and a meetinghouse connect to the temple through an Italian-style piazza or square constructed from native travertine.

“These artisan stone layers have been working for seven generations,” said Alberto Malara, senior assistant of Temple Facilities Management, who said the master stone layers spend 400 hours in the classroom.

The Church also salvaged 110-year-old Basalt cobblestones from the streets of Rome for the temple roundabout.

“If you look closely at some of these stones, you can see the grooves worn in by the passage of old wagon wheels,” described Malara.

Open House and Dedication

Church leaders will meet with the media and take them on tours of the Rome Italy Temple on Monday, January 14, 2019. VIP tours for leaders of government, business, legal, interfaith and humanitarian organizations will be held at the temple from Tuesday, January 15, through Tuesday, January 22, before the public open house begins on Monday, January 28.

Reservations for the public temple open house can be made online at templeopenhouse.lds.org.

The temple will be formally dedicated Sunday, March 10, 2019, through Tuesday, March 12.

Members will be able to perform ordinances in the new temple beginning Tuesday, March 19.

Background

Construction began on the three-story, 40,000-square-foot temple on October 23, 2010, two years after the Rome Italy Temple was announced by Church President Thomas S. Monson. He and local Church and community leaders participated in the groundbreaking ceremony.

“It’s difficult to explain my feeling,” expressed Christian Bruno, a former Latter-day Saint missionary. “The Spirit was all around us. It was a great day for me, for my family and for all the Saints in Italy.”

Latter-day Saints and other Christians consider Rome to be one of the most historic locations in the world, a biblical city where the ancient apostles Peter and Paul preached the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In 1997, the Church purchased the temple site, an abandoned 15-acre farm, which included a villa, small olive orchard and outside pizza oven.

“I used to come here as a youth, and we used to organize small soccer games,” said Stephano Mosco, a local Latter-day Saint. “And there was a stone over there where we used to cook pizzas.”

Trees

Olive trees from the old farm were preserved, and ancient olive trees from northern Italy, ranging in age from 400 to 500 years old, are planted in the piazza.

“There’s tremendous symbolism in olives and in olive trees,” said Elder Bednar, who said the trees’ roots sink deep into the ground. “Whenever you cut the roots of an olive tree, they’ll sprout. They don’t die; they will continue to sprout. Some have suggested that perhaps that’s symbolic of the hope of the resurrection.”

The Church also preserved Italian stone pine trees on the property that line the stairs leading to the temple.

Temples

The temple will serve over 23,000 Church members living in Italy and in neighboring countries. Currently there are more than 160 operating temples worldwide, including 12 in Europe.

“In our holy temples, available are the most sacred and important sacrament or ordinances that we receive as members of our Church,” taught Elder Bednar. “And those ordinances bring peace. They bring purpose. They’re a source of remarkable joy.”

The Latter-day Saint apostle continued: “All temples are significant because a temple is a point of intersection between the earth and heaven. A temple is the house of the Lord. It’s His house where we learn about Him, and we worship Him.”

Latter-day Saint temples differ from churches where members meet for Sunday worship services. Temples are considered “houses of the Lord” where the teachings of Jesus Christ are reaffirmed through marriage, baptism and other ceremonies that unite families for eternity.

When we hear President Russell M. Nelson speak of a positive "hinge point" in the church's growth, as a direct result of this extravagant temple complex in Rome, it is perfectly reasonable to wonder whether the unstated purpose of the church is as I suggest here. Obviously, I have no access to any inside information about the church's thinking on these matters, and can only speculate based on what I see and hear publicly. But, as we saw when we discussed the "95 Theses" of Martin Luther, the church today has exactly the same policies in place that Martin Luther was complaining about that were being sponsored and supported by the Catholic Church of his time. It should not be too outrageous to speculate that it is time for a "Protestant Reformation" within the LDS church for all the same reasons expressed by Martin Luther. A near-total abandonment of the concept of charity and caring for the poor, in favor of a mandatory sending of all of those resources to be consumed by church bureaucracies and building projects was the problem then, and we have the exact same problem today.

if the church had made a legislative-style presentation to its membership, asking whether that particular $5 billion in tithing funds ought to be spent on an outrageously expensive remote temple project which would likely never be of any practical value to any of the people who involuntarily funded it and would likely never even see it except in press releases (as the German poor and middle class had their money sent to Rome for the construction of the basilica, which they would likely never use or even see) as opposed to a long list of projects that might be done using that $5 billion to take care of the needs of the LDS poor or to improve the lives and especially the education of millions of desperate people in US cities, what do you suppose the members would choose? They would likely see the Rome temple project as an act of ultimate pridefulness on the part of the church leaders, drunk on the wealth provided them by the members with no strings attached and no responsibility for the value of the results, the leaders having taken to themselves the unbridled power to do as they whimsically wished with those consecrated resources.

Only the top church leaders would ever be able use it or even see it in person, making its construction an act of pure self-centeredness, creating a far-away monument to themselves. Are they planning to move the church headquarters to Rome, leaving behind the dilapidated and old-fashioned 120-year-old Salt Lake City temple which they may now view with disdain as not being worthy to house their exalted selves? Do they move to Rome while the Salt Lake temple is updated?

Their actual thought processes are a mystery of course, but some of the elements I suggest may in fact exist. Otherwise, why would such an expensive and extravagant temple complex be built in such a remote and inaccessible location to serve only 23,000 members directly? Why wouldn't they choose to build it somewhere in Utah where so many members are located, or at least build it somewhere in the United States, perhaps in Jackson County were Zion is to be built? (Are the Utah members not worthy enough for the temple to be built there, even though they paid for it?) Did someone decide that ALL the old prophecies and goals for the church have suddenly been canceled and replaced, including where Zion is to be built, and some version of the old Roman Empire is to be rekindled again in the Mediterranean area, with Rome as its capital? Whatever the answer is, it is probably equally as bizarre as anything I have imagined here. Perhaps they would have built the new temple in the Jerusalem area to replace the old temple of Herod if that had been politically possible. Perhaps Rome was as close as they could arrange for at the current time.

The worldview and philosophy of James E Talmage

It is difficult to know the actual thinking processes of historical figures such as James Talmage, but one can sometimes infer their pattern of thinking by their actions and the causes they espouse. At least we can say that Talmage did not completely accept all the teachings of Christ, and had moved part way along the ideological path toward Nimrod who defied God and oversaw the building of the tower of Babel, which we might see as man's attempt to declare himself independent of God. Talmage appears to have accepted some of the teachings of men (who are always influenced by Satan), including some atheism and some humanism, even though he was, at the same time, holding the office of an apostle of Jesus Christ. It is likely that most of his cohort of church leaders agreed with him on many issues.

Talmage accepted atheistic organic evolution, which competes directly with the concept that God created the world and everything on it including his human offspring. This is atheism versus theism in its starkest form. I know of no good way to fully reconcile the two opposite positions.

During the three temptations of Christ, Christ definitively rejected Satan's offers of earthly wealth and fame. (Strangely enough, the earth and its inhabitants were his already as long as he didn't make that direct claim during his life.) Christ also rejected any form of paid earthly bureaucracy as part of his central church organization. Christ's directions to his followers were to spend nothing on temples or chapels or a paid ministry and to devote all of their resources to caring for each other and for the poor. In contrast, Talmage was willing to be part of a paid ministry which was working to build up an earthly empire including a large central bureaucracy and, in order to fund these ambitions, charge fees for priesthood ordinances which were intended to be free in Christ's church.

It may seem strange for anyone to teach of Christ as a part of a process of self-aggrandizement, but millions have managed to make their fortune by appearing to defer to and worship Christ when they are really just thinking of themselves. We have a new category of people known as televangelists who have turned this form of priestcraft into an art form. That is basically what the LDS church has done, although they have managed to appear to maintain a better sense of decorum and solemnity. I don't believe Christ would accept any of these forms of priestcraft, but many of his self-proclaimed followers join in gladly.

In summary, James E Talmage seems to think that the priests of the Roman Catholic Church had the right solution to what an earthly church should look like, and he is willing to simply declare the LDS church as the Roman Catholic Church Version 2.0, with a few added Scriptures to make it seem like the new church is better supported by revelation and therefore more legitimate. The truth, of course, is that this new form of the LDS church does indeed have extra Scripture, but it consciously ignores some of the most important principles taught in those Scriptures. The Scriptures become more like a valuable religious relic, like the finger bones of some long-dead apostle, then a source of knowledge for teaching us to live the gospel correctly.