A Call to the Institutional Church

When the Lord
asks us to repent,
he means all of us.

A message to the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from a community of faithful believers who have not stopped hoping.

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The Voice of a Believer

This is not written
by an enemy of the Church.

This call comes from a convert of 33 years, baptized at 15 after a transformative encounter with the Book of Mormon, who served a mission baptizing nearly 50 souls, taught at the MTC for three years, piloted Preach My Gospel before publication, served in two bishoprics, and married in the Timpanogos Temple on December 21st, 2000.

It comes from a man who read the scriptures daily, who received direct revelation, who wept for joy at what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. A man who still believes. A man who, on Easter Sunday, felt the Lord ask him to step away from a corrupted institution, not from Christ.

He and a small community now hold sacrament meetings in their home, read the scriptures daily, pray together, tithe to the poor, and share the doctrine of Christ. They have not left the gospel. They grieve that the gospel has been obscured.

"Read the books, not the books about the books."

Counsel given to a young convert wrestling with hard questions

The questions that follow are not born of cynicism. They are born of love: love for the restoration, love for the scriptures, love for the Savior whose church this is supposed to be. They deserve answers.

For Every Member Who Has Wondered

You are not alone
in your questions.

Hundreds of thousands of members have placed these questions on the proverbial shelf. Returning missionaries are leaving. Youth are leaving. Not because they stopped believing in Christ, but because the institution's answers, when they come at all, do not satisfy the soul shaped by the Book of Mormon. These are your questions too.

01

Why do we follow a living prophet even when he contradicts the dispensation head Joseph Smith, or Christ himself?

Joseph Smith explicitly warned against depending on the prophet rather than receiving personal revelation. The current doctrine of prophetic infallibility has no scriptural basis and no counterbalancing mechanism of correction or accountability.

02

If the 1978 priesthood revelation was from God, what does that tell us about the decades of exclusion that preceded it? Who bears responsibility for that harm?

We cannot have it both ways: either previous prophets erred grievously on a matter of eternal salvation for millions of souls, or the 1978 change was not from God. Either answer demands a serious institutional response that has never come.

03

How can ordinances "instituted in the heavens before the foundation of the world" be repeatedly altered by committees and correlation?

Joseph Smith taught that salvific ordinances were fixed before the earth was formed. The endowment has been substantially changed multiple times in living memory. No revelation has been offered to justify this. Isaiah 24:5 identifies changed ordinances as a mark of apostasy.

04

The 2015 policy barring children of gay couples from baptism was called a revelation. Its 2019 reversal: what was that?

When the November 2015 policy was disclosed, Elder Christofferson stated it came through revelation. When it was reversed in 2019, no explanation was given. If a revelation can be reversed without comment within four years, what does the word revelation mean to the institution?

05

Where is our Mother in Heaven? Why have sustained prophets, seers, and revelators not sought and received an answer to offer the Church?

The existence of a Heavenly Mother is one of the most beautiful and distinctive doctrines to emerge from the restoration. Yet members are discouraged from praying to her, no revelation about her nature has been received, and her role in our salvation remains entirely unexplored. The silence is not sacred. It is an abdication of prophetic responsibility.

06

The Church has amassed extraordinary wealth in auxiliary entities. How does this square with the poor whose tithing funds it?

In 2023 the SEC fined the Church $5 million for using shell companies to obscure its estimated $100 billion investment portfolio from public view. Members sacrifice a tenth of their income believing it serves the Kingdom of God and the poor. This accumulation has never been transparently justified.

07

When was the last canonized, content-laden revelation added to our scriptures? Why has more than a century passed in silence?

The Doctrine and Covenants was a living record of divine communication through the early restoration. Since the early 20th century no new revelation has been added to our canon. If God speaks today as He did to Joseph, where is the record of it?

08

Joseph Smith warned: the people "were depending on the prophet hence were darkened in their minds." Are we that people?

The phrase "follow the prophet" has become the defining creed of modern Latter-day Saint culture. It is found nowhere in scripture. Joseph warned in 1842 that this very dependence produces spiritual darkness. The correlation program has systematically replaced personal revelation with institutional obedience.

"All truth should fit into a complete framework. Any contradictions were likely due to our misunderstanding."

A conviction held for 33 years, now tested by the institution itself
The Words of Jesus Christ in 3 Nephi

He saw this day.
He offered a way out.

The Savior was not silent about what would happen to the Gentile church in the latter days. He spoke plainly. He said when, not if. And he offered a path of return.

3 Nephi 16:10

"At that day when the Gentiles shall sin against my gospel, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, and shall be lifted up in the pride of their hearts above all nations... and shall be filled with all manner of lyings, and of deceits, and of mischiefs, and all manner of hypocrisy, and murders, and priestcrafts, and whoredoms, and of secret abominations... behold, saith the Father, I will bring the fulness of my gospel from among them."

The word is when, not if. The Lord anticipated this. The question is whether the institution will recognize itself in the mirror of prophecy.

3 Nephi 16:13

"But if the Gentiles will repent and return unto me, saith the Father, behold they shall be numbered among my people, O house of Israel."

The door is not closed. Repentance is available to institutions, not only to individuals. The Lord is quick to forgive when we repent.

Isaiah 24:5

"The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant."

Changing immutable ordinances is not a small administrative matter. The prophets of Israel saw it as defilement. So did Joseph Smith, who warned that ordinances "are not to be altered or changed."

Joseph Smith, May 26, 1842

"The people should each one stand for himself and depend on no man or men... they were depending on the prophet hence were darkened in their minds from neglect of themselves."

The dispensation head warned us. The phrase "follow the prophet" does not appear in scripture. The over-reliance on prophetic authority that Joseph identified as darkness is the very doctrine now taught as salvation.

A Partial Record of Unanswered Concerns

What has been
changed, denied, or obscured.

These are not anti-Mormon talking points. They are documented matters of Church history and policy, each with primary sources. They deserve a response worthy of a church that claims to be led by living revelation.

01 The succession crisis of 1844 and the mythologized account of Brigham Young's transfiguration becoming institutional narrative When Joseph Smith was martyred, there was no clear successor. Multiple claimants arose. The later story that Brigham Young was transfigured to look and sound like Joseph is not supported by contemporaneous accounts. Many witnesses did not record this event at the time. This narrative, presented as miraculous confirmation, became foundational to succession claims that have never been honestly re-examined by the institution. +
02 Brigham Young teaching Adam-God doctrine in the temple and general conference, later denounced as a deadly heresy by Bruce R. McConkie Brigham Young taught publicly and in the temple endowment that Adam was God the Father. He stated this came from Joseph Smith. For over two decades this was institutional doctrine. In 1976, Elder Bruce R. McConkie called it one of the "seven deadly heresies." The Church has never explained how a sustained prophet taught heresy as binding doctrine, nor what this means for the divine mandate of prophetic succession. +
03 The priesthood and temple ban for men of African descent, introduced in 1852 and reversed in 1978, with no full institutional apology offered Under Joseph Smith, men of African descent were ordained to the priesthood. Under Brigham Young, beginning around 1852, Black members were barred from the priesthood and temple ordinances. This policy was defended for over a century as divine will. The 1978 reversal came without a full accounting of the harm caused. The Gospel Topics Essay acknowledges the ban was rooted in racism but stops short of a formal apology. +
04 Joseph and Emma Smith's documented opposition to polygamy, and the posthumous imposition of "the principle" as required for exaltation by Brigham Young Joseph Smith publicly and repeatedly denied practicing or teaching plural marriage. Emma Smith denied it to her dying day. The Voice of Innocence, a document Emma helped craft in 1844, explicitly condemned the practice. Yet Section 132 of the D&C, canonized years after Joseph's death and not in his handwriting, makes plural marriage a requirement for the highest exaltation. +
05 The continued practice of eternal polygamy in modern sealing, in tension with Christ's own teachings on marriage A widowed man may be sealed to a second wife after the death of his first, meaning he holds two living eternal sealings simultaneously. A widowed woman may not do the same without canceling her first sealing. This disparity is current practice. The continued implicit endorsement of polygamy in sealing practice is never addressed from the pulpit, never explained, never justified by revelation. +
06 The removal of the Lectures on Faith from the Doctrine & Covenants in 1921 by an uninspired committee without common consent The Lectures on Faith were included in the original 1835 Doctrine and Covenants as the "doctrine" portion of that volume. In 1921, a committee removed them without a sustaining vote of the general membership. The Lectures contain teachings about the Godhead that differ from later institutional theology. Their removal was never explained as revelation, and common consent as a governing principle was bypassed entirely. +
07 Repeated alterations to temple ordinances in 1921, 1990, 2005, and since, with no prophetic justification offered to the membership The temple endowment has been altered multiple times. In 1990, penalties involving throat-slitting and disembowelment were removed, as were portions of the ceremony referencing Protestant ministers. More recent changes have altered language and ritual in significant ways. No revelation has been published explaining these changes. Joseph Smith warned that ordinances instituted before the world's foundation were not to be altered. +
08 Section 132 added to the D&C nearly 32 years after Joseph's martyrdom, in a document not in any known scribe's handwriting Section 132 was purportedly recorded on July 12, 1843, but was not publicly disclosed until 1852 in Utah, nearly a decade after Joseph's death. The document is not in the handwriting of any of Joseph's known scribes. Textual analysis has identified anachronisms and stylistic inconsistencies with other authenticated Joseph Smith revelations. Its authenticity has never been subjected to serious institutional scrutiny. +
09 Mountain Meadows Massacre: 120 men, women, and children murdered, with no full institutional reckoning to this day On September 11, 1857, a wagon train of emigrants was attacked by a militia of Latter-day Saints acting under local Church leadership. After several days of siege, the settlers were lured out under a flag of truce and systematically murdered. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever tried and executed for the crime, decades later. The Church has offered expressions of sorrow but no formal apology, no full accounting of leadership responsibility, and no reparations to the families of the dead. +
10 The documented practice of "lying for the Lord," from 19th-century denials of polygamy to present-day authorized misdirection Joseph Smith and other early leaders publicly denied practicing polygamy while doing so. In the 20th century, local leaders were instructed to deny Church involvement in managing members' political conduct when it clearly did occur. This pattern of theologically justified deception is not a relic. It is a structural feature of institutional culture that must be named, repented of, and dismantled. +
11 The accumulation of tens of billions in investment assets while members believe their tithing funds the poor and the mission of Christ A 2019 whistleblower complaint to the IRS alleged that Ensign Peak Advisors had accumulated over $100 billion in assets, with funds rarely used for charitable purposes. In 2023, the SEC fined the Church $5 million for using shell companies to conceal the size of its investment portfolio. Full financial transparency, as practiced by many other Christian denominations, has never been offered to the membership whose sacrifices fund these assets. +
12 The destruction of the Presiding Patriarch as an office: a prophetic legacy ending with Eldred G. Smith, unremarked and unlamented by institutional leadership The office of Presiding Patriarch was established by Joseph Smith as a hereditary prophetic office with prophetic, seer, and revelator status. Eldred G. Smith was given "emeritus" status in 1979, effectively removing him from active function. He lived until 2013, the longest-serving general authority in Church history, but the office was never filled after him. Its quiet extinction, without vote, without revelation, without explanation, speaks to the broader pattern of institutional contraction of the original restoration design. +
What We Are Asking

A church that can repent
can become true and living.

This is not a demand for the Church's dissolution. It is the opposite. It is a plea for the Church to become what it claims to be: the body of Christ, a light to the nations, a house of truth. Institutions, like individuals, can repent. And when they do, the Lord is quick to forgive.

"Could we become a 'true and living church' with which the Lord would be pleased collectively? This was always His hope for us. That we would abide in Him and He in us."

Peter Morkel, Mapleton, Utah, March 2026
The Promise

The Lord's door
is still open.

People are leaving in droves, not because the gospel is false, but because they learned to love the gospel and the institution no longer reflects it. They leave because the Book of Mormon taught them what Christ looks like, and they do not see Him in the institution's legalism, wealth, and silence.

But "if the Gentiles will repent and return unto me" -- those words were written for this moment. The promise is real. The harvest is still possible. The Lord has not given up on His church. We have not given up on His church.

Would Brother Joseph be welcome if he preached in a modern sacrament meeting? That is the question this generation must answer.

"We can preserve the restoration and repent and return to the pure teachings the Lord gave to Joseph Smith. We can embrace the Book of Mormon and overcome the condemnation from the beginning of this dispensation."

3 Nephi 16:13  |  D&C 84:54-58  |  A letter to Presidents Oaks, Eyring, and Christofferson, March 2026
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