About a week ago, the Daily Wire posted an article on their site titled “7 Reasons Joseph Smith Was a False Prophet” by Matt Fradd. This article was adapted from some exclusive content on Matt Fradd’s DW channel and released under the Daily Wire banner. Needless to say, it caused quit a commotion among DW’s Latter-day Saint subscribers.
This is not the first time the Daily Wire has shown a surprising degree of antipathy toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. About a year ago, Phil Cabot, one of DW’s producers, posted on his personal X account that Mormons aren’t Christians, and got into some heated online arguments about that. A couple months ago, shortly after Matt Fradd joined the Daily Wire as a host, he interviewed Joe Heschmeyer, an anti-Mormon who bizarrely argued that Mormonism is a “species of atheism.” And when the mass shooting at the church in Michigan happened last year, the Daily Wire’s coverage went out of the way to avoid using the full name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, only editing the article after receiving backlash for it.
But all of these things were relatively minor. Phil Cabot is entitled to express his personal opinions on his own X feed. Matt Fradd can interview whoever he wants on his own show. And lots of news outlets fail to mention the full name of the church, intentionally and otherwise. However, this recent article—which was posted under the Daily Wire banner, not Matt Fradd’s channel—crosses the line. It demonstrates that the Daily Wire, as a company, has chosen to oppose the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and post openly anti-Mormon content. Which means that if you subscribe to the Daily Wire, your money will fund anti-Mormon content.
Andrew Klavan, my personal favorite Daily Wire host, took some heat for his take on the whole controversy. His response was basically “come on guys, can’t you take a joke?” Which is an incoherent thing to say, considering that the 7 Reasons article wasn’t intended as joke at all. But Klavan’s response makes sense when you realize he saw The Book of Mormon Musical over the weekend, and probably didn’t read Matt Fradd’s article at all. His explanation makes a lot more sense.
With that said, I didn’t cancel my family’s DW membership in a fit of outrage. I canceled it because the Daily Wire has clearly become an anti-Mormon channel, and I simply don’t want my money to fund that sort of content.
The question here for Latter-day Saints is this: is your religion more important to you than your politics, or do your politics come before your religion? This is the position the Daily Wire has placed us in. If you continue to keep your DW membership because you want to support their reporting and their conservative political activism—both of which are very good—know that you are doing so at the expense of your faith.
With all of that said, I actually don’t think it’s stupid of the Daily Wire to do this. With the collapse of the woke left and the ongoing cultural shift toward Christian revival, the next big fight in the culture wars is going to be a relitigation of all the old sectarian divisions within Christianity. Which means that the conservative Christian right is going to need a new enemy to hold them all together. The last time we had a major national revival, that enemy was the Catholics, which is how we ended up with Prohibition and immigration restrictions targeting (among other groups) the Irish and Italians. But all the Christian denominations hate the Mormons, partly out of how they see us as uniquely heretical, and partly because of how threatened they feel because of our church’s success.
The Daily Wire has been struggling a lot recently, and it appears that they are desperate to find a new brand of outrage bait to fill the hole that has been made by the collapse of the woke left. If it’s stupid of them to turn on the Mormons, it’s because they’re doing it too early. But ultimately, this is the cultural direction the conservative right is going to take. The Daily Wire is just ahead of the curve.
That’s why I canceled our DW membership. I encourage all my fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to do the same.
I don’t usually post long-form podcasts on Sunday, but this one seemed appropriate (though I wouldn’t recommend listening to it if little children are around).
Ward Radio has been doing a lot of deep dives into the apocrypha & pseudopigrapha, and this one was particularly interesting, since the Bible barely touches on the sin of the antediluvians that was so terrible that God decided to send the flood. “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
(As a companion episode, it’s also worth listening to this one where they talked about the true meaning of “nephilim” in Genesis, which is usually translated as “giants.” It’s probably not what you think!)
Ward Radio is a Latter-day Saint podcast that tackles all aspects of Mormonism, from rebutting anti-Mormon arguments and debating various models of Book of Mormon geography to running deep dives on ancient apocryphal texts and fringe scientific theories. They also tackle cultural issues too, and in these two podcasts, they specifically look at the depopulation crisis from a Latter-day Saint point of view. The first one is all the main co-hosts of the podcast, and the second one is the main host’s wife and a bunch of her friends / guests from other LDS podcasts.
If current demographic trends continue, then a hundred years from now, the world population will be under 1 billion, and about 200-250 million of them will be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Another 50-100 million will be Amish, and maybe another 50-100 million will be Jewish. The Latter-day Saints will absolutely love the Jews and the Amish, to the point of annoying everyone else around them, and the Jews and the Amish will grudgingly tolerate the Latter-day Saints.
So it’s November 6th, 2024, the day after election day. President Trump has won an astonishing election victory, marking the greatest political comeback in US history. For those of us who feel like we’ve been gaslit and abused for the last four years, it really does feel like things are starting to look up for the country.
At least, for most of us, that is the case. For others of us, the black pill has been so bitter that we’re almost scared to hope again. Last night, I was up until 2am, just because I didn’t want a repeat of 2020, where we all went to bed convinced that Trump had a lock on the election, only to wake up to burst pipes, boxes of uncounted ballots, voting machines behaving strangely, windows and doors boarded up against Republican observers, and other sorts of “election fortification.” So frankly, I don’t blame anyone for being on pins and needles until Trump actually puts his hand on the Bible and is officially sworn in as the 47th (or possibly 48th) President.
I’m seeing that reflected right now in my blog stats, where in the last 24 hours, I’ve seen hundreds of hits on my old post This Scenario Would Fulfill Ezra’s Eagle, which I wrote several years ago. For some strange reason, that post is now the #2 Google search result for the query “Ezra’s Eagle,” which makes me feel like it’s my duty to offer periodic updates to the situation.
But first, a quick explanation of the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy:
This video is a very good explanation of the prophecy, as interpreted by Michael B. Rush. The part I find most compelling about it is the sequence of rulers, which really does line up uncannily well with our last 16 presidents. Whenever Biblical prophecies start going into numerology, I always raise my eyebrows a bit, because there are lots of ways to twist numbers to make them appear to fit your own personal interpretation. But if you read the original source material in 2 Esdras 11 and 12, it actually lines up very well with what has (so far) transpired.
However, it’s where we get to Rush’s interpretation of the last two short feathers and the lion that I tend to think it goes off the rails. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I am not convinced that there will be a singular Anti-Christ figure in the end times. I know that a lot of Evangelical eschatology revolves around this figure, but the way they get there is through a rather selective reading of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation that leaves me scratching my head. When I read the Bible, I see a lot of passages talking about a spirit of Anti-Christ, but not a singular figure—and certainly not one with Godlike powers.
But the big thing is the lion, which Rush connects (correctly, I believe—assuming of course that the prophecy is true, which it may very well not be) with the remnant of Jacob in 3 Nephi 20 and 21. Latter-day Saint eschatology draws not only from Daniel (where we get the stone cut out of the mountain without hands), Ezekiel (where we get the stick of Joseph), and Revelation, but also from Isaiah, which goes into great depth about the scattering and gathering of Israel, and the return of the lost 10 tribes. There are also several other prophecies in the Book of Mormon that describe the latter-day gathering of Israel, which is central to the Latter-day Saint understanding of the end times.
Regarding the lost 10 tribes, within the Latter-day Saint tradition there are basically three possible views about what happened to them and where they are now.
The first is that they were taken to the north pole and currently live under the polar ice. This view was very popular in the 19th century, but almost no one believes it seriously now.
The second is that they were taken into space, and currently reside on another planet or in another dimension. While this may sound crazy, it does resonate with the scriptures we have that talk about how Enoch was taken into heaven, with the original city of Zion. This is the view that Michael B. Rush espouses, and he believes that the prophecies in 3 Nephi (as well as Ezra’s Eagle) will be fulfilled when the ten tribes come back down from space and liberate us from the Anti-Christ.
If that sounds a little too science fictional to you, you’re not the only one. Personally, I would love to read a novel where that’s how things turned out, but I don’t think those prophecies are actually going to be fulfilled that way—and here’s why.
The third view is that after the ten tribes passed out of our historical records, they migrated to the northern reaches of the Eurasian landmass, probably in what is now Siberia. There, they established a civilization, which was apparently still extant when the resurrected Christ visited the Americas, because He referred to them explicitly in 3 Nephi 17:
4 But now I go unto the Father, and also to show myself unto the lost tribes of Israel, for they are not lost unto the Father, for he knoweth whither he hath taken them.
This civilization probably continued for a while, perhaps for several centuries after the resurrection of Christ, but it eventually fell, probably due to a combination of the changing global climate (which was much warmer during Roman times, but went into a little ice age during the medieval era) and political upheaval on the Eurasian steppes. When China fell apart after the Three Kingdoms period, there was a massive depopulation as the survivors of those wars migrated westward onto the steppes, creating a cascade of violent displacement that ultimately culminated in the rise of the Hunnic confederacy and the migration period in Europe, which brought about the fall of the western Roman Empire. The ten tribes could easily have been conquered during this period, and their survivors assimilated into the Hunnic or Turkish tribes. Or perhaps they survived this era, only to be conquered by the Mongols in the 1200s. Either way, their culture was wiped out, and their descendants were assimilated into the cultures that conquered them and settled on their lands.
There’s quite a bit of evidence for this theory, including DNA evidence. There’s also some spiritual evidence from the patriarchal blessings of people from this region, where most of the people are have been blessed to belong to one of the ten tribes. The guys at Ward Radio discuss this at length in the episode above—Jonah Barnes actually served his mission in Siberia, so he has firsthand experience with this. Also, there is some pretty solid scriptural evidence in Jacob 5 and the allegory of the olive tree. When the branches of the natural tree are first scattered throughout the vinyard, there is a location that is mentioned once in verse 24, and never mentioned again. If this represents the lands of the lost ten tribes during Christ’s time, that makes sense, since their culture had not yet been wiped out—but after it was wiped out, and the survivors assimilated into the culture that conquered them, they were no longer a “branch” within the context of the allegory.
So how does this relate to Ezra’s Eagle? If the ten tribes are actually among us, and not in space as Michael Rush believes—indeed, if the descendants of the lost tribes are currently being gathered into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, through the missionary work currently happening in central Asia—then the “remnant of Jacob” that will go forth as a lion is the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who gather to the New Jerusalem, either to build it or to migrate there after it has been built. Third Nephi 20 and 21 go into great depth about this.
But what does it mean that they will tread down their enemies among the gentiles? Does it mean that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will go all nationalistic, organize a militia, and go to war directly against the United States? Almost certainly not. After all, the twelfth article of faith states: “we believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”
But I could see a scenario where the United States collapses and becomes a failed state on the national level, with cartels, gangs, and local warlords stepping into the power vacuum under the veneer of what’s left of our democratic republic. Under that scenario, the church would step into the gap and help its members to organize and develop a strong, self-reliant community that could not only survive in such a post-collapse world, but actually thrive in it. In many ways, we’re already set up to do exactly that. And if the call comes during this time of chaos to build up the New Jerusalem, I could see us making a modern pioneer trek to Missouri, and prevailing over the gangs and warlords who try to stand in our way.
Under this scenario, the last two feathers of Ezra’s Eagle aren’t the Anti-Christ and the Beast, but the last two presidents of the United States, who attempt to restore the nation after the catastrophic fall of the deep state (represented by the three eagle heads) but who ultimately fail to do so. This is when the nation collapses, and we become a failed state on the federal level. Then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rises up to fill in the gap, standing against the gangs and warlords in the ensuing power vacuum, until we are called to build the New Jerusalem and fulfill the end-times prophecies contained in 3 Nephi.
To me, this is a much more plausible interpretation of Ezra’s Eagle than Rush’s view that the lost ten tribes will liberate us in some sort of extraterrestrial invasion of our planet, while a godlike Anti-Christ rules the whole world. But frankly, I don’t think any of this is going to happen—at least, not on the timeline of Ezra’s Eagle. President Trump won the election with a clear mandate, and I believe he will become our 47th president. With the way things are currently unfolding, I no longer believe that the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy is true in a literal sense. It may have been an authentic vision of a possible series of events, but I do not believe we are on that timeline. After all, there is a reason why Joseph Smith never translated the Apocrypha—or canonized it, for that matter.
But I guess we’ll find out soon. After all, if anything happens to Trump between now and January 20th… let’s just pray for our country during this very uncertain time.
(And for the record, if the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy is true, I still totally believe that Janet Yellen is the first eagle’s head.)
