Handy List of Links to Important Church Essays

I'm really excited about the Church's release of many new essays that appear to address some of the difficult questions my anti-Mormon friends and family typically bring up.  The essays are all published on the Church's web site. However, I've noticed that they can sometimes be difficult to find, so I've compiled a list here both for my own use and in the hopes that others will also find it useful.

Interestingly, I've noticed that many of the essays actually acknowledge things that I was always taught were untrue for most of my life. I'm also not completely sure if it was the prophet, the apostles, Church employees, other general authorities, or some other group who has authored these. So I still find some of them a little confusing and am "ponderizing" and "studying them out in my mind".  I've found that following the footnotes is usually quite revealing and interesting. Take a look and see what you think.

List of Church Gospel Topics Essays

• Joseph Smith gave progressively more elaborate accounts of the First Vision    Learn More
• Book of Mormon Translation didn't use the plates or the urim and thummim     Learn More
• Turns out Brigham Young was just a racist                                                        Learn More
• Polygamy was not just to take care of widows of men murdered by the mobs   
• Polygamy originated with Joseph in Kirtland, OH, to house maid, Fanny Alger. Emma Unaware
• Note: Footnotes on this are very interesting                                      Learn More
• Purpose of polygamy was to "raise up seed unto the Lord"                       
• Lord capitulates to Congressional demands, changes mind on polygamy  Learn More
• "Translated the Book of Abraham Papyrus" actually means "Channeled it"       Learn More
• In spite of the teachings of generations of previous prophets and apostles, the Lamanites have been absorbed in the vast indigenous-American gene pool                                  Learn More

Has LDS.org been hacked?

Oh. My. Gosh! Will the persecution never end?

This unsigned LDS.org essay asserts that polygamy actually was practiced in Nauvoo and Kirtland. 

Learn More About this Essay Here

And this additional essay found on LDS.org even tries to convince us that Joseph Smith married some thirty to forty wives and that many were already married to other men!  It even goes so far as to say that Joseph married some teenage girls.

Learn More About this Essay Here

Nice try, anti-Mormon hackers!  I won't believe your anti-Mormon lies, even if you do post them on the official church web site!  I know from my 46 years of Mormon upbringing that it was really just a few desperate pioneers that practiced polygamy... "because all the men of the church had been killed off during the persecution and they needed someone to take care of the women".  That story must be true because it is was what I was taught all my life and it is what I and the other missionaries taught all those people while serving a mission for the church.