Mormon urban legends or folklore

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Mormon urban legends and folklore

Frequently Latter-day Saints receive email messages with faith-promoting stories that are difficult or impossible to verify. This article includes examples of these "urban legends," or other bits of LDS historical folklore that are difficult or impossible to verify.

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Topics

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Cain as Bigfoot?

Einstein and James E. Talmage

Frank Graham and hurricane relief

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President Packer: 12 October 2008 talk?

Boyd K. Packer: Youth generals in war in heaven?

Pandemic warning e-mail from Susan Puls - Did the Church's medical coordinator for Humanitarian Emergency Response warn about an impending flu pandemic?]]

Those living in President Hinckley's time will be bowed to?

Prophecy of Catholic Priest?

Paul Allen of Microsoft on the "Mormons"?

Brigham Young's hearse used in Disneyland?

Rome Italy Temple and California Prop 8


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Answer

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Never take faith-promoting stories circulated in chain email messages at face value. Check the sources carefully.

“I would earnestly urge that no such idle gossip be spread abroad without making certain as to whether or not it is true....As I say, it never ceases to amaze me how gullible some of our Church members are in broadcasting these sensational stories, or dreams, or visions, some alleged to have been given to Church leaders, past or present, supposedly from some person's private diary, without first verifying the report with proper Church authorities.” - Harold B. Lee [1]

As early Church historian and member of the Seventy B.H. Roberts noted:

I find my own heart strengthened in the truth by getting rid of the untruth, the spectacular, the bizarre, as soon as I learn that it is based upon worthless testimony.[2]

== Notes ==

  1. [note]  Harold B. Lee, "Admonitions for the Priesthood of God," Ensign (January 1973): 105. off-site
  2. [note]  B.H. Roberts, original letter in Church Archives; see Deseret Evening News (26 June 1926); cited by Truman G. Madsen, Defender of the Faith: The B. H. Roberts Story (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1980), 363. GL direct link

Further reading

External links

  • LDS Hoaxes, Myths, and "Faith Promoting Rumors" at SHIELDS.off-site
  • Snopes (general site for urban legends and email hoaxes)off-site