Jan Moon spent her life searching for the “one true church.” She was involved in a variety of religions before converting to the Restoration Movement in 2004. It was when she began the research for a novel she was writing that she started having doubts about Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon and especially the RLDS priesthood. After the JCRB/CRE conference in the spring of 2007, she made a prayerful investigation of Joseph Smith’s priesthood system comparing it with the Bible. What she found led her out of the RLDS Church and to the Jesus Christ of the Bible. This is her testimony.

When I was invited to share my testimony I got a little nervous because I have a “conversion” testimony which has been floating around among Restorationist friends and acquaintances for several years. I have never quite gotten a grip on the rule that says be careful what you say and/or write; it can come back and haunt you. You can’t unwrite it.

Having been brought up in a solid Bible teaching Baptist church, which I attended for the first twenty-five years of my life, I decided to try my wings and began exploring the myriad institutions out there that call themselves “the answer.” I floated from Catholic to Unity School of Christianity, dabbled in Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, Agnosticism, then settled back into Catholicism. I have a tendency to “follow the leader,” which is a very dangerous thing to do. Believe me when I say there are legions of charismatic leaders out there who are more than willing to suck you dry if you so much as say hello.

When I met my husband in 1983, he told me about the RLDS Church of which he has been a member since the mid 60’s. We were married in 1984, three months after women in the priesthood became approved at the World Conference. It meant nothing to me because I knew nothing of the church and was not in the least interested in finding out about it. For twenty years, while I wallowed around in various groups, my husband remained true to the orthodox RLDS even though he seldom had a church to attend. We moved to Las Vegas in 1999 and he began attending a Restoration group that met in the living room of an old friend. Four years later I had an “experience” when I attended for the first time. I still had very little knowledge of the church aside from Inez Smith Davis’ book The Story of the Church and the book published by Cumorah titled The Restoration Story . I had skimmed them both a time or two.

The experience that I had on that particular Sunday morning consisted of an emotional overload which probably had little to do with a revelation and everything to do with a need to belong. I’d been let down by the Catholic Church and knew that one of the main reasons I’d stuck with it had been the ritual, pomp and ceremony. When we moved to Las Vegas, however, the Sunday morning mass reminded me of a lounge act on the strip. That, coupled with the disillusionment of watching priest after priest falling from their pedestals in the wake of accusations of every kind of sexual abuse imaginable, caused me to stay home on Sunday with increasing frequency. Granted, a bad priest does not a bad church make. However, the incidents caused me to take a closer look at the church I had embraced for so long, and what I found didn’t quite line up with the church of my childhood. So I was ready for something to speak to the emptiness the Catholic Church had left.

In November, 2003, I felt moved by the little service that took place in the living room of close friends. They are all devout people and love the Lord. Of that I am certain. Some of that devotion obviously rubbed off on me that morning, and the spiritual fallout overcame me. Truth had nothing to do with it. Emotion had everything to do with it. And therein lies the problem. I’m not asserting that emotion or “burning in the bosom” is the exclusive property of a Joseph Smith church. But I do know now that without high drama, visions, dreams, revelations and tears, most of the Smith ideas and doctrines are but dandelion fluff in the wind, because there’s precious little scripture to back up any of these phenomena.

So there I was with my experience, which I managed to translate into a sign from God that the Book of Mormon was true, and that I should stick around these people because they possessed THE TRUTH and would be more than happy to have me on board. Well, of course. The group consisted of my husband, bless his heart, and about ten good and loving friends. I floated around on a pink cloud, got myself my very own Doctrine and Covenants, received a Restored Covenant Edition of the Book of Mormon from one of those friends, and began reading it.

The following Sunday we were gathered in the aforementioned living room and the presiding elder gave me a scripture to look up. I had my old Scofield KJV Bible and I can clearly remember not being able to find the scripture in the Book of Genesis. I was shocked. I had not known that Joseph Smith not only brought the world the Book of Mormon and the Book of Commandments/D & C, but that he rewrote the Bible! But before long I had my very own Inspired version and basked in the knowledge that I was about to become a member of the Only True Church. I was baptized in January, 2004.

In March of  2004, we relocated to Verona, Missouri. Not quite The Center Place, but close enough. We began attending a small church about forty miles from home and life was good. By then I had read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover, had been indoctrinated in many of the beliefs and traditions, and attended a women’s retreat in Kansas with the pastor’s wife. I delighted in sharing my testimony that weekend. I’ll admit, though, that when I casually mentioned I’d read the Book of Mormon in its entirety several of the women expressed surprise, saying they had never really read it through. I thought everybody had. Looking back now, I wonder how many people have actually read it. Maybe not as many as we think.

During the summer of 2006 I felt “led” to write a book for teenagers. My husband was taking a trip to Alaska and I had three weeks on my hands—enough to get a good start. Little did I suspect how much research I would have to do and just where that research would eventually lead. I was able to borrow books from the church library and was lucky enough to find second hand books on Amazon. I also purchased some new books by a variety of Mormon and non-Mormon writers. It was the beginning of an awakening that I never expected, wasn’t prepared for, and handled very badly from the outset. I learned that there are more than nine accounts of the first vision of Joseph Smith, Jr. I learned that the Book of Mormon was not translated using the Urim and Thummim, but rather was dictated by Joseph Smith, who sat with his face buried in his hat using a “peep stone”. I also found out that he and his family had a history of occult practices including the use of seer stones, animal sacrifice and treasure hunting, all of which were against the law.

In the fall of that year I was invited to join a class taught by one of the ladies of my congregation. I attended two of the classes, where the veneration of Joseph Smith was openly practiced and the doctrine of Baptism for the Dead was openly taught. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, this was the beginning of the end. However, I finished writing the book and published it in February of 2007. I took it to the Spring conference of the CRE (Conference of Restoration Elders) and JCRB (Joint Conference of Restoration Branches) in the hopes of selling it. The atmosphere I encountered there was rank with hostility and suspicion between the two factions. I had a fly-on-the-wall’s opportunity to watch the hierarchy in action. It wasn’t pretty. The only “spirit” I felt there was the spirit of mistrust and animosity. One of the elders went from table to the table asking all the vendors to “be polite” to the JCRB that week.

Soon after that I began an earnest, prayerful investigation into the hierarchy, particularly the biblical basis of the priesthood. Striving to keep an open mind, I read everything I could find on the history, reasoning and emergence of Joseph Smith’s priesthood in his restored church. I even started a blog (Zion Beckons) for the express purpose of airing out some of my frustrations with the strong arm tactics of the hierarchy. My rather straightforward comments on the Center place Message board had been met with less-than-welcome reactions from the inhabitants and I needed to vent without fear of censure or censor.

I began researching the priesthood that was set up by Joseph Smith, comparing it with scripture, and it was then that my carefully built belief system began to erode like a sand castle in a rising tide. I located some some dear, godly and patient people who have been through it themselves, and who operate websites that speak to RLDS and not Mormons, I began to see the flaws in the vast hierarchy that dominates the Restoration today.  I simply couldn’t reconcile the cumbersome priesthood which evolved from the early church with the priesthood held by a risen Christ as laid out by the writer of Hebrews. He is our high priest after the order of Melchizedek! (Hebrews 5:6) (ed. note: RLDS/CoC church uses Melchisedec) The old, Levitical priesthood was imperfect and became obsolete with Christ’s sacrifice. (Chap.7) Not only that, but we as believers, because of the vicarious suffering of Christ, are all members of a royal priesthood.  (I Peter 2:9)

Coincidentally, while all this was going on, my husband and I attended a weekend meeting of a gathering of orthodox saints we had met through my temporary high visibility on the Internet. While we were there I approached one of the elders and expressed my concern with the history and doctrine of the church. I told him I’d started reading about Joseph Smith’s early days and he advised me to stop reading. I didn’t understand why he would discourage me from seeking the truth. I was reading everything I could get my hands on. One day, out of the blue, the word “narcissism” popped into my head while I was thinking about Joseph Smith. I googled his name with the term and received an astonishing number of hits. One of the hits led me to the book Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith by Robert D. Anderson. (Signature Books; Salt Lake City; 1999) I ordered it and read it, and although a lot of it may be reaching, as far as blaming everything on Smith’s childhood trauma, a gem within the text jumped out at me and allowed everything to fall into place. Anderson says, “The Book of Mormon is not a book of love, but of terror, hatred and destruction.” That was what had bothered me about the Book of Mormon from the beginning! The Bible is the story of forgiveness, redemption and hope; the Book of Mormon is the story of blood, revenge and despair. No wonder those ladies I met at the retreat had never read the Book of Mormon all the way through!

Sometime in September of 2007, with the gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit, I crossed over to the Jesus Christ of the Bible. It was not a Big Dramatic Moment, but rather a quiet, blessed assurance that Jesus is my savior and that He had never left, but had been patiently waiting for me to come back to Him. I began attending a Bible teaching church near my home. One Sunday I learned what it really means to be saved, and that our works are the result of our salvation. I had spent decades laboring under the delusion that my works determined whether or not I was going to heaven. I had accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior back in the seventies but I never truly understood it until that Sunday morning in October. My years in the Catholic Church had left me with the certainty that if I died between the sin and the confessional I was going straight to hell. My years in the Restored Church were spent trying to pile up good works so that I could eventually strive for one of Joseph Smith’s three glories. John 3:16 tells us that what we need to “do” is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s it. Salvation through faith.

Thanks to the Holy Spirit leading me to LifeLine Ministries to RLDS and Refiner’s Fire websites, I have been extricated from the oppression of Joseph Smith’s cult and can now bask in the glory of a risen Savior. Praise God! My prayer is for freedom for the thousands who remain bound to a false prophet, a false doctrine and a false savior. I love them dearly. May God deliver them from evil.