The CES Letter is an attempt to create an alternate narrative for the truth claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I watched the early creation of the CES Letter in 2013 as the author scoured the internet crowdsourcing other like-minded people to contribute questions that they would like to see answered. It has been published online and in book fashion and translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Japanese, German, and they are working on Finish and other languages.

It has become a proselyting tool in attempts to draw people away from the Church and it has been very successful.

Some in the former Latter-day Saint community have posted pictures of writing the link to the document into Book of Mormons in Churches, Marriott Hotels, in Hymn books, and other locations. In April 2014 it was spam emailed to hundreds of students at the LDS business college in Salt Lake City.[1]

It even showed up on Spiderman in a Marvel comic.

Pass-along cards have been created to spread the news.

Many have gone to great lengths to spread the gospel of the CES letter. While it isn’t the first publication to take a long list of old criticisms of the Church and present is as if it is new, it has become the one with the most unified backing behind it. I hear from people on a regular basis that they have been asked to read this book from their disaffected spouse, child or friend. I must say that disaffected members seem to be much more excited about passing out this book, then some faithful members seem to be in passing out copies of the Book of Mormon.

The CES Letter is 13 chapters long with a conclusion at the end. I count 77 official listed questions in the letter although some branch off into other side questions and some of them are repeats.

The book challenges the reader to have answers to the long list of questions right now. But most normal people won’t have a list of answers at their fingertips that counter the list of claims. Each one of the questions requires research and time that most people simply don’t have.

This is one talk that will last less than one hour. I can’t possibly cover the entire subject so I would like to refer you to other resources on the CES Letter list on this PowerPoint slide.

Much ink has been spent on replying to this book. I reread all of those responses in preparing the talk. I also reread the response given by the author of the CES letter regarding the criticisms of his letter.

So, what does the Letter itself say? What is it that people read that brings them out of the Church? And to get to the heart of the matter, is the CES Letter proof the Church is false, or is it just propaganda?

The theme of the Book is that the Church has lied to you about its history, and about Joseph Smith as a translator and prophet, so there is no way it can be true.