A modern apostle repudiates the teachings of the prophets!

Jonathan Neville has recently published a series of blog posts that explicitly reject the historical claim that Joseph Smith ever used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon. (These blog posts are, apparently, a prelude to a book that he plans to publish on the translation of the Book of Mormon.)

Neville claims that the idea that Joseph Smith used a seer stone, which he placed into a hat, in the translation process was a fabrication created by the 1834 anti-Mormon book Mormonism Unvailed and repeated by early Mormon apostate William McLellin. He rejects the testimonies of participants and eyewitnesses to the translation process—including Martin Harris, David Whitmer, and Emma Smith—as being confused by Joseph’s use of a stone “to demonstrate how the translation worked,” while he actually only translated with the Urim and Thummim (also called the Nephite Interpreters).

Neville goes even further to claim that Church historians, teachers, and employees who have written recent histories, magazine articles, and curriculum published by the Church have “embraced the old, discredited peep stone narrative over the accounts [of the translation process] by Joseph and Oliver” and “created a false historical narrative present to justify their interpretation.”

(Notice how, without a shred of awareness of his own hypocrisy, Neville refers to Joseph’s seer stone by the anti-Mormon pejorative “peep stone”?)

All of this, Neville argues, illegitimately “overrides the teachings of the prophets,” as he understands them. Neville alone stands against the tide by proclaiming these heretical teachings to be false and a betrayal of the testimonies of the Prophet Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery.

But I’m curious to know how Neville explains this statement from Elder Quinten L. Cook, whom I’m fairly certain he sustains as a “prophet, seer, and revelator”:

I recently viewed a first edition of the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith completed the translation when he was 23 years old. We know something of the process and instruments he used in that translation. In that first 1830 printing, Joseph included a short preface and simply and clearly declared it was translated “by the gift and power of God.” What about the aids to translation—the Urim and Thummim, the seer stones? Were they essential, or were they like the training wheels on a bicycle until Joseph could exercise the faith necessary to receive more direct revelation? Just as repetition and consistent effort are required to gain physical or mental capacity, the same is true in spiritual matters.

(Quentin L. Cook, “Foundations of Faith,” April 2017 General Conference; emphasis added)

Has Elder Cook “embraced the old, discredited peep stone narrative” and accepted the “false historical narrative” of the “peep stone”? Has Elder Cook “overridden the teachings of the prophets”? Is Elder Cook falling into error and siding with discredited anti-Mormon sources?

Furthermore, how does Neville explain the teaching by modern apostles Russell M. Nelson (in 1992) and Neal A. Maxwell (in 1997) that Joseph used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon? Was Elder Maxwell led down the path into error? Has President Russell M. Nelson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, bought into the “false historical narrative”?

This is why I’m entirely serious when I claim that Jonathan Neville prefers the teachings of dead prophets over living prophets. He is doing exactly what then-Elder Dallin H. Oaks warned the students at BYU about in 1992:

A desire to follow a prophet is surely a great and appropriate strength, but even this has its potentially dangerous manifestations. I have heard of more than one group who are so intent on following the words of a dead prophet that they have rejected the teachings and counsel of the living ones.… Following the prophet is a great strength, but it needs to be consistent and current lest it lead to the spiritual downfall that comes from rejecting continuous revelation. Under that principle, the most important difference between dead prophets and living ones is that those who are dead are not here to receive and declare the Lord’s latest words to his people. If they were, there would be no differences among the messages of the prophets.

(emphasis added)

Jonathan Neville’s teachings result in confusion and, ultimately, rejection of the words of those whom the Lord has called to lead the Saints today. They should be renounced by all members of the Church.

—Peter Pan