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FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Many critics have argued that the Spirit was confirming a lie during these times. Similar criticism is applied to a situation with Elder Jeffrey R. Holland in 2017. The first point that should be made is that no documented evidence has appeared of a faithful member receiving some spiritual confirmation that these stories from Dunn were true. There are several testimonies from former members of such that they say happened while they were faithful members [1], but nothing from members of the Church today or faithful members of the time.
We do have one case that has been claimed as an example of faithful members receiving a spiritual witness of one of Elder Dunn's claimed false/exaggerated stories. Elder Dunn gave a talk at the October 1976 General Conference of the Church entitled "Follow It!". In the talk, Elder Dunn, as a means of illustrating a point of being an upstanding Latter-day Saint and for standing what's right, shared a story of a young man named Jimmy Daniels who, before a baseball playoff game for the state championship at Dunn's high school, was caught with a nicotine stain on his finger and Elder Dunn was made his replacement. At the conclusion of the Conference, Elder Kimball stated that:
The New Era published an adaptation of the talk given by Elder Dunn called "The Game of Life". A missionary serving in the England Leeds Mission wrote:
However, as author Lynn Packer pointed out in Sunstone Magazine:
There is no Jimmy Daniels listed on the baseball roster [at Dunn’s HS]. Perhaps Dunn was using a pseudonym for Daniels without disclosing it. That hardly matters, because no one on the team was in a playoff game: Hollywood High finished next to last in 1941 and third in 1942.[2]
So, did anyone receive a spiritual confirmation that this fabricated story was true? We might say the following:
Thus this example doesn't work for establishing the validity of the criticism. There's nothing substantial to move forward the discussion with.
Latter-day Saints understand that a testimony of the Gospel is not based, as one reviewer humorously put it, on "grandpa stories".[3] Latter-day Saints base their testimony on a dynamic influence of the Holy Ghost as sought for by revelation. This revelatory experience that is sought out comes from study and prayer (D&C 9:7-9) through the use of all our faculties (D&C 88:15; Alma 32:27).
This dynamic influence is contrasted with a more passive influence, where one feels the Spirit while in the presence of good things. This is how the vast majority of Latter-day Saints view (or would view) such feelings towards Elder Dunn today. We are to seek after all virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy things (Articles of Faith 1:13) because all good things come from God (Moroni 7:12) and they can inspire us to serve him (Moroni 7:13). We may also simply be feeling the Spirit that is promised to always be with us as we live up to our baptismal covenants (Moroni 4:3; 5:2). That doesn't mean, however, that we have received some sort of dynamic, revelatory witness of the truthfulness of these "grandpa stories". Since our bodies and spirits are connected (D&C 88:15), it is easy to see why a warm feeling or a heart murmur may be over-interpreted as spiritual stimuli. Moroni tells us that we have the ability to judge that which is of God and that which is not of God (Moroni 7:14; See also D&C 8:2). The key to discernment is simply to pay close attention to both our mind and heart (D&C 8:2) and "prove all things and hold fast to that which is good" (1 Thess 5:21; See also JS-Matthew 1:37; Moroni 7:20-25) by studying something out in our mind sincerely and meaningfully and seeking revelation through the dynamic influence of the Holy Ghost for confirmation of the validity of any given proposition (D&C 9:7-9).
Notes
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