I Was a Mormon: Joey Ferguson

Why I Left the Mormon Church After 25 years

I had been a faithful member of the Mormon Church and never thought I would leave. It is ironic that my desire to find something that would convince my husband and other family members to join the Mormon Church was what sent me running.

I prayerfully set out to find something that God would show me to get everyone baptized. I was intent on finding God’s words spoken by His prophets in Church documents. I was looking at Church sites and searched out the Journal of Discourses for inspiration and good solid knowledge that would convince my family to become Mormon with me. The shock I got was tremendous. I could not speak of what I was seeing. It was not what I expected to find at all.

I found out that it had been taught that Adam was God. It also was recorded that Heavenly Father came and had sex with Mary. It was written that Brigham Young stated that the black people of the world would never hold the priesthood and would serve in the Celestial kingdom forever as servants.
I read with disbelief Joseph Smith’s bragging about how he had been able to do more to keep a church together, and how not even Jesus had been able to do it. Brigham Young also said that my husband would have to call me from the grave and let me into the Celestial Kingdom. It was also in there that Joseph Smith would judge me, not Jesus.

Then I went on to find a lot of false prophecies that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young had made. I found out that the Kinderhook plates were tried out on Joseph Smith and he fell for it. He went ahead and translated a hoax that the men of the area had cooked up for him.

As I was trying to process all this information, a show came on about the Masonic temple ceremony. There was the Mormon temple ceremony for the entire world to see. There were a few differences between them, but I later learned that the more bloody and violent gestures had been removed from the Mormon temple ceremony as a lot of people were offended by them. I came to find out that Joseph Smith was a Mason. It was as though a mirror had shattered and I could see through to the other side. I had been lied to!!!

I had been to the temple a lot and wondered why I was putting on an apron when Satan himself was wearing this apron that was “a sign of his power and priesthood.” Satan doesn’t have a power or priesthood. Satan is a fallen angel and will be in hell for eternity. He is not the brother of Christ as the Mormon Church teaches.

Science has caught up with the Book of Mormon story. DNA has shown that the people that I had been taught were Lamanites were actually of Asian decent, that the Hill Cumorah showed no archeological evidence of a large battle as is recorded in the Book of Mormon.

Joseph Smith did not translate the Bible at all. He took up a King James Version of the Bible, changed a few words, and then added a prophecy of himself in Genesis. To translate something you need the original documents and work from them. I could pick up War and Peace and change it around to my heart’s content, but I am not translating it.

Years later, Mark Hoffman would deceive the Mormon leaders with his forgeries as these leaders bought them up at great cost. I could never understand how the prophets could be deceived by a liar and murderer like Hoffman.

There is more and more as I go along and I am still hurt and upset when I read more of the things the early Church leaders did and said. How about those Danites?! I had never heard of them until I started to come to some Ex-Mormon pages. I continually get surprises and nasty shocks when I learn the history of the Mormon Church and its leaders.

It was plain to see that God had answered my prayer, but not as I had expected Him to. I am now in a Bible teaching church where Amazing Grace is sung and Praise to the Man or Hie to Kolob are foreign concepts, and where I can ask questions and I am not told, "When our leader has spoken, the questions are answered." I can think for myself and question our pastor and get Bible based answers without fear of being told that the thinking has been done for me.

I ask those that read this to understand that I loved and believed in the Mormon Church, raised my children there, and hoped and prayed for a temple marriage. It was my prayer to God, asking Him to guide me that showed me the truth of the Mormon Church.

I read a wonderful quote that said, "We need to fit ourselves to the Bible, not fit the Bible to us".

Sincerely,

JoAnne (Joey) Ferguson


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