John Dehlin: I guess my first question is did you attempt to do anything online or publish anything prior to the CES Letter? I saw this letter that's attributed to you to Elder Wickman.

Jeremy Runnells: No. It's actually an open letter to Elder Cook.

John: Elder Cook, that's what I meant. Sorry.

Jeremy: Yeah. So, that's interesting.

John: Was that your first time to publish something public?

Jeremy: Yeah, I mean it was more of I just put it on Reddit. I didn't think too much about it. I actually put it on Facebook for an hour before my wife asked me to put it down.

John: When would that have been about? What month and year?

Jeremy: That was in October of 2012. You have to remember my faith crisis happened in February 2012 and then by that summer of 2012 I was like, "I don't believe in this anymore." So, this happened in October of 2012 so I no longer had a testimony at that time. Somebody put an original version of this and I thought it was so cool that I kind of borrowed it and revised a paragraph here and there and then I just put it on Reddit. But basically it relates to Elder Cook's General Conference Address in October 2012 where he was basically talking about if you go and look at sources online. I can't remember exactly what the quote is exactly, but it was basically to the effect that if you look into unapproved sources you're going to risk your testimony and if that's the case to repent. So, I wanted to illustrate that you don't have to go to the Tanners' website or some other anti-Mormon web site. A lot of this stuff is in LDS sources. So, the rock in the hat Book of Mormon translation, you know, Elder Nelson talks about it in his 1993 July Ensign. It's right there. The general discourses with Adam-God and all that. So, I wanted to illustrate how even looking at the Church's own sources can put a wrench into your testimony because when you see this stuff you see how it's not correlating or aligning with the correlative version that you're getting from the Church.

John: It's almost all Church - It's either Church published materials or like Joseph's diary or diaries of people that we revere today. I mean, what are the other sources? It's not like people are looking at the Hurlbut affidavits and that's like where they're basing their disaffection on. It's always like general discourses, the Book of Mormon text itself. Comparing Book of Commandments to the early versions of the Doctrine of the Covenants. Like, what's anti-Mormon about that?

Jeremy: Yeah, exactly.

John: Joseph's own accounts of the First Vision.

Jeremy: Yeah, exactly and that was pretty much the point that I was trying to make in this satire. I was kinda being...um, I was being sarcastic in that letter.

John: It reads a little bit angry, to be honest with you.

Jeremy: Well, of course. I was pissed off. You know? And anybody that tells you that when you leave the Church that you should just leave it alone and don't be angry, don't be the angry apostate. They don't understand the trauma and the process of leaving. There's no such thing as a graceful exit from the Church. There's no, you know, "Thank you for your time and (laughs) your two years, we appreciate it. We wish you the best."

Timestamp: 38:15 - 41:45