Warren Jeffs’ one-time bodyguard has turned on the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and is now testifying against him in federal court.
Burly and middle-aged with a mop of brown hair, Jessop spent more than a decade as security chief and spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous sect that split from the mainstream Mormon church at the turn of the last century. As head of the “God Squad,” he was perhaps the highest profile FLDS member — with the exception of its prophet, Warren Jeffs.
For a while Jeffs occupied the same row as Osama bin Laden and Whitey Bulger on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Jessop admits on the witness stand that he once helped the fugitive prophet run from authorities. He describes one scheme in which Jeffs dodged a raid on the FLDS meeting house: While others rode out on four-wheelers as decoys, Jeffs and Jessop rode out in another direction on Honda motorcycles packed with cash and fake IDs. They raced up a dry creek bed to the airport.
As everyone knows, Mormonism was founded by a 19th-century con man named Joseph Smith. That Smith was nothing but an ordinary criminal with a knack for exploiting the sort of fools who gravitate toward mystical claptrap is well-documented in courthouses all across the country.
Smith quickly discovered that lots of women are really attracted to thuggish, self-absorbed prophets and, luckily for him, was soon instructed by Our Invisible Friend that he was meant to marry and sleep with all of them. Things continued in this happy way until Utah wanted to join the Union, which refused to admit the territory unless polygamy was outlawed.
Well … what do you know? The then-Prophet of the church received a message from the Creator of the Whole Big Universe that it was no longer His Will that Mormon men have umpteen wives, the practice was outlawed, and the Utah Territory became a state.
Pure Mormons loyal to the faith of their fathers just continued having lots of wives, because everybody with two eyeballs could see that the new revelation was just a political accommodation and a heresy. They became what is knows as the FLDS and, since their Pure Mormon practices are unlawful, they are even more cult-like than the original version invented by Smith.
Jessop’s apostasy is very nearly unknown — and good for him.
Joseph Smith was a self-serving criminal; the matter is simply not susceptible of any serious-minded dispute. And, yet, Mormonism flourishes, and inspires successive generations of followers of modern-day criminals like Jeffs. Why does it persist? And what does it tell us about the founding of other religions?
Consider this: No Christian will deny that Islam and Mormonism and Scientology were founded by criminal gangs, and most — at least when they’re off-duty — will admit that Abraham was probably not somebody you’d want for a neighbor.
I’m here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that Christianity was founded by an identical pack of conniving, amoral, self-serving criminals, and the Gospels were written by the same smarmy, self-serving and -aggrandizing pack of liars that today write for World Net Daily. Christians have merely been gulled by a different con-artist — and that’s the only real difference.
And the only thing that can end the con is reason, recognizing that faith — belief without evidence, belief in spite of evidence — is a moral evil.