Lucifer's Lantern

An email sent to members of the Orem Utah Lakeview Stake on July 19, 2026, informed congregants that an individual carrying a firearm was observed inside the stake center earlier that morning, prompting an immediate evacuation of the building. According to the message, the incident occurred at approximately 10:45 a.m. The individual was reportedly sitting on a sofa in the foyer with a gun beside him. Orem police responded to the scene, took the individual into custody, and planned to have him undergo a mental health evaluation. One portion of the email warrants particular attention. Members were instructed "to not post information online regarding the incident and allow the Church to manage the public information." While organizations often try to ensure accurate communication during emergencies, critics may question whether asking members to refrain from discussing a public safety incident places institutional message control ahead of transparency. Lucifer's Lantern rec...

A video from an LDS sacrament meeting in Martinsburg, West Virginia is once again making the rounds on social media. The footage shows two mothers interrupting a testimony meeting to warn fellow members that, in their view, local Church leaders had failed to protect children from a convicted child molester within their own congregation. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brett Henry (@beardedrealtorutah) This event came after years of criminal proceedings, civil litigation, and allegations that Church leaders ignored warning signs while children continued to be abused. The case centered on Christopher Michael Jensen, who was sentenced in 2013 to 35 to 75 years in prison for sexually abusing two children, ages three and four. Court records also show that allegations against Jensen stretched back to 2004, when, at just 13 years old, he was arrested and charged with two felony counts involving the sexual abuse of two girls at his middle school. According...

On a recent livestream, Shane Baldwin of Zion Media publicly recounted what he describes as one of the defining events of his life. According to Baldwin, he was visited by none other than John the Beloved while serving time in the Salt Lake County Jail where he was serving time for committing investment fraud . According to LDS belief, John remains alive today, continuing his ministry on the earth until the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The belief comes primarily from an interpretation of John 21:20-23 and is expanded in the Mormon scripture of Doctrine and Covenants 7, which teaches that John requested the privilege of remaining on the earth to continue bringing souls to Christ until the Second Coming.  But John is not alone. The Book of Mormon also describes three disciples, commonly known as the Three Nephites, who were granted the same blessing. Together, these figures have become central to a long tradition of Mormon faith-promoting stories involving mysterious strangers who ...

  When most people think about Mormon missionary work, they picture young men in white shirts and ties, or young women with missionary name tags. That image exists for a reason. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints operates the largest missionary program in the world. But missionaries are only one part of the church's outreach. For decades, the church has also invested heavily in television, radio, and internet advertising, developing a style that has evolved dramatically over time. During the 1980s and 1990s, many LDS television commercials felt more like public service announcements than traditional advertisements. Rather than directly asking viewers to join the church, these commercials usually told short stories. Children often found themselves in situations where they had to choose between honesty and dishonesty or learn lessons about kindness, responsibility, and family relationships. Because family is such a central part of LDS theology, many advertisements emphas...

I think we can all agree that the Book of Mormon is probably one of the most controversial publications ever produced. Every single aspect of it is debated. You have apologists who firmly believe the Book of Mormon is the word of God, that it is an ancient record of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas, and that it was given to Joseph Smith by an ancient American prophet named Moroni, who appeared as an angel. Or you have critics like myself who firmly believe that the Book of Mormon is a 19th century publication. But even beyond that, there are countless debates about the actual content of the book itself. One of the biggest is its historical setting. Where was the Book of Mormon actually supposed to take place? Some apologists and critics believe the narrative largely unfolded in North America , in places that would eventually become the United States. Others argue that it took place in S outh America or Central America. Historically, the LDS Church has even presented evidence t...

     For generations, Utah has lived with a peculiar countdown. Along the western edge of the Wasatch Mountains lies the Wasatch Fault , an active fault system stretching roughly 240 miles through the state's most densely populated corridor. Scientists can't predict when the next major earthquake will occur, but they agree that another large event is inevitable.      The Utah Geological Survey estimates there is a 43% chance of a magnitude 6.75 or greater earthquake somewhere along the Wasatch Front within the next 50 years, and better than a 50% chance of a magnitude 6.5 or greater earthquake during that same period. A magnitude 7.0 earthquake on the Salt Lake City segment alone is projected to cause thousands of fatalities, tens of thousands of injuries, and billions of dollars in damage. In Utah, "The Big One" isn't viewed as a matter of if, but when . It's the disaster everyone is encouraged to prepare for, even if nobody knows whether it will happen t...

For decades, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who received their temple endowment on the same calendar day were given the same "new name." Since January 1, 1965, the name assigned to a patron has been determined almost entirely by two factors: their gender and the day of the month. A man endowed on the 12th of any month, for example, would receive the same name as every other man endowed on the 12th, regardless of the temple or country.  That system quietly changed in June 2026. According to the independently maintained Temple Name Oracle database , the Church has retained the same list of male and female names, but it no longer assigns them to fixed calendar dates. Instead, the names now follow a rotating sequence that changes each month. Male and female name pairs remain linked together, but the pair assigned on one date in June may appear on a different date in July.  The change means that simply knowing a person's endowment date is no longer ...

In April 2026, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its intellectual property arm, Intellectual Reserve, filed a federal lawsuit against the Open Stories Foundation and John Dehlin. The complaint alleges trademark infringement, copyright infringement, and consumer confusion arising from the use of the name Mormon Stories, its branding, and its use of Church-related images.      The Church portrays the case as a straightforward effort to protect its trademarks and prevent confusion among people seeking information about the faith. Mormon Stories sees the case very differently. In its response and counterclaim , the organization argues that the Church is attempting to claim ownership over a word that belongs to an entire religious movement while using intellectual property law against one of its most visible critics. Here are the major arguments at the center of the dispute.

At first glance, The First Book of Napoleon: The Tyrant of the Earth  (1809) by Eliakim the Scribe (likely a pseudonym of Michael Linning) appears to be nothing more than a biblical retelling of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. However... although The First Book of Napoleon and the Book of Mormon describe vastly different peoples, places, and historical events, both books present a remarkably similar explanation for the rise and fall of civilizations.  One of the most recognizable themes in the Book of Mormon is commonly call the " pride cycle ." Throughout the Nephite record, societies prosper when they are faithful to God. Prosperity eventually leads to complacency, complacency gives rise to pride, pride produces wickedness, and wickedness brings suffering and destruction. Affliction humbles the people, leading to repentance and a return to righteousness before the cycle begins again. Eliakim the Scribe similarly argues that political collapse is m...

The U.S. Department of Defense recently found itself at the center of an unexpected religious controversy after restructuring the way it categorizes faith groups within the military. In an effort to simplify its system, the Pentagon reduced more than 200 religious affiliation codes to just 31 broader categories. The initial version of the new list grouped many denominations under explicitly Christian classifications, including Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Orthodox Christians, and Jehovah's Witnesses. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, however, appeared outside those Christian categories. miltary.com The reaction from many Latter-day Saints was immediate. ABC4 Utah Utah politicians publicly criticized the change, church members voiced their frustration online, and critics of Mormonism pointed to the classification as evidence that even the federal government did not view the faith as Christian. Facing mounting criticism, the Department of ...

I recently started putting together xmormon.org , a sister site to luciferslantern.com. The focus of the site is pretty straightforward: collecting the stories of ex-Mormons throughout history and building a resource center for people who have left the church. The basic premise is that people have been leaving Mormonism since the earliest days of the church. If you’ve left, or you’re in the middle of figuring out what leaving means for you, you’re not the first person to walk that road. You won’t be the last either. Because I'm impatient and want to get this ball rolling, I’m using Wikipedia’s Creative Commons license to get initial articls poated. This license allows existing articles to be copied and adapted as long as the license requirements are followed. From there, I’m giving each article a more standard format, then adding context, cleanup, and workikg to add original material over time. I’m just one guy, so this seemed like the most realistic way to start building the site ...