Calm

I suggest starting at 55 minutes. Might change my mind, but he is talking about local leadership and blaming Anderson and others for “giving cover” to pedophiles and traffickers. They just threw in a repentance talk to be sure you know they are the good guys, lol.

Okay, that makes more sense. Halfway through the video and beside the name of the Director and seeing the video of his wife claiming to have talked to Elder Ballard denying he issued a statement (too bad she didn’t record it), I am still waiting for the mass of crucial info I was promised.

He is making a claim that tens of thousands of death cult jihadists were descending on Druze villages, raping and murdering children, throwing them off rooftops. Worse than what Hilter’s group did. He gave a date, July 14th, so I found a report. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgmwp70pwmyo He claims over 3000 killed. Maybe he is including other times? Looking for numbers in media reports now. I need to pay attention to other stuff, so cheated and am using wiki and AI to find the info for now… AI: I would love to know where he got 3,000 from. Maybe he is talking about since 2011? https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/ap-druze-community-in-syrias-idlib-province-on-edge-after-targeted-shooting-kills-3/ AI gets the number closer this time around and brings up ISIS connections. “In July 2025, renewed clashes broke out in the As-Suwayda province between Druze militias and Bedouin tribes, some with ties to ISIS. The violence drew in Syrian government forces, who reportedly sided with the Bedouin and carried out mass executions of Druze civilians. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 1,100 people were killed in the fighting, including hundreds of Druze civilians and fighters. Other instances of violence April 2025 massacre: An ambush by forces affiliated with the Syrian Ministries of Interior and Defense killed 43 Druze fighters traveling to support fellow Druze near Damascus. Ongoing tensions: The Druze have been frequent targets of Sunni extremist groups like ISIS and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which consider them heretics. Targeted shootings: In October 2025, a targeted shooting in Idlib province killed three members of the Druze community.” It still doesn’t come close to 3000.

He has apparently made Troy a good friend, welcomed Troy into his home, etc. Troy believes he knows his heart, that TB is speaking truth when he says over and over he’s been defamed, etc. And Ballard presents himself as ActionMan, out there saving the innocents! In the middle of a war zone, bullets are flying around them as he speaks! Who would not feel good, excited to be able to be part of such a glorious mission, to be called a friend by such a hero. To be considered as part of that in group, contributing to that mission. I can understand the appeal when usually we feel so helpless and ineffectual in trying to reach out and help the most vulnerable in this world. And TB just dumps all this info on what he is doing, with videos as well…at least it feels like a lot, but there wasn’t that much concrete one could grasp onto. There was one pastor (Druze iirc) that was shown, I mean to look him up later. Also TB is making claims about ISIS that I am not sure are accurate (there have been attacks against the Druze this past year, the size and perpetrators seem to be different than what TB is claiming). IOW, if you take TB at face value, he looks pretty credible so far (about halfway through). He is a bit hyper in how he speaks, but that conveys passion and could be investment. (It could also be trying to suppress thinking too much about any one thing by dumping so much at once.)

So there is not much I can fact-check about what he claims to be doing, but he makes a statement about testifying before congress iirc multiple times as if it’s ongoing, but he last testified Sept 14, 2023 according to google around. He makes the claim at 37 minutes. If someone else could check it to make sure I am catching it correctly. I have a very heavy bias against him by now. Speaking of bias, his words seem to be every ego driven to me, he lists all the good things he and and wife are doing to prove they are faithful saints, he is pretty much always at the center of the videos I was watching (some had warnings on them so I just played took notes and didn’t watch those, so I may have thrown off the balance, but it just seems to me he is using these causes as examples of the good he is doing rather than making them front and center. In essence, he’s the only one who can do this work so it’s all threatened if people don’t support him, etc. And it’s all about attacking him so far with the results of what happens to others more of an afterthought. Like I said, big bias against him and likely will be forever unless he effectively deals with the Whiteboard photo that has Elder Ballard as a silent partner while he’s claiming he’s never used Elder Ballard’s name for financial reasons. If anyone has seen him address this issue, which to me amounts to a smoking gun as long as he acts like it doesn’t exist, would love to see it.

He states there are watchmen on the tower not doing their job, that Isaiah calls them drunkards. He says there are infiltrators at the level of watchmen as well as good men. So who are the watchmen?

His wife is claiming that she talked with Elder Ballard and Elder Ballard denied making the statement, so I don’t see her as a steadying influence on him.

I hope the Director he libels sues him for defamation, if it isn’t too problematic for the man and his family (I don’t know if TB has supporters who would go to extremes, but at this point if he does, just making this accusation seems to draw a target on the man’s back). added: watching the video as long as I can manage, apparently Ballard is saying he plans to take the Director to court. I will believe that when I see it.

I am not sure “too honest” should be used for TB even as “a little”.

I feel very bad for his children. I hope they are not tied too tightly to his delusions of grandeur like it appears some of Daybell’s kids were.

Excellent point. He’s talking not only rape, but murder. I can see giving people a chance to repent privately for less grievous sins such as adultery and fornication, but rape and murder needs to be turned over to police.

Iirc there was a rumor going around that a retired seventy gave TB a blessing that he would one day both be prophet and president of the US. Sounds too absurd to be true. Surely the host wouldn’t be going to “it was you, Tim Ballard, you were the prophet all along!” (If anyone gets the reference here, I will be shocked and amazed)

I think we need to ask both and probably much more. Looking at someone’s life from only one direction will give us only limited understanding and probably significant misunderstanding. I do see Joseph Smith and Brigham as more involved in politics, by choice as well as being forced by circumstance imo. Not sure about prophets after those two as much less familiar with them until Pres Kimball. I would say since Kimball political involvement has become less in a general sense, I haven’t see any information packets sent out for social ills like we once had on gambling, pornography and two other things I can’t remember now (we had them on the shelf in our Calgary ward but they were out of date by the late 90s I became ward librarian). In college the woman I babysat for was very involved in the ERA issue (she taught at BYU but I can’t remember in what except it wasn’t hard science or engineering; her husband was my psych prof). My attendance ant church these days isn’t substantial enough to be sure issues aren’t brought up at the pulpit on occasion like they once were. Part of this is I believe is because leaders are trying to be consistent across borders, different political climates may need fine tuning of speeches if they deal with specific concrete issues. But there are likely other reasons as well (perhaps a desire to have unity in the upper quorums where political positions can vary).

I wrote a response to this, but disappeared with the submit, so will reconstruct later.

I don’t see it that way, but see it’s a reasonable interpretation.

Except this was followed by pointing to his life (“mortal sojourn”) as the example we should be following: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2025/10/27cook?lang=eng I see a significant push for us to go out into our communities to serve others, this includes providing actual opportunities by funding JustServe as well as local leadership setting up projects, ongoing volunteer opportunities (our stake covers helping out at a local food bank as well as having collection drives throughout the year). Becoming politicians, going to rallies and protests, etc…that side is not encouraged as far as I can see, but that does not imply we are to isolate ourselves from the greater community and only focus on spiritual growth.

Varies for the person I suspect.

If it gives little in return, I would agree with you. Depending on what is does give in abundance, I think it could be a highly reasonable choice (if one were happier, felt more stable and safe, was secure in such so better able to offer help and love to others, etc) or an unreasonable one…created more fear than it quieted, created hate and sense of insecurity) as in good fruit vs bad fruit.

Seems like it is more than that given Helaman:

Lousy for convincing others, I would agree. But if you have had personal experiences that are in your own view best explained by such a description of God and his work, I have found can be it’s a pretty great position to hold practically speaking depending on what you do with that belief (nothing gets me through the senseless days better than my confidence God has a good purpose to all of this, hopefully I am not using it too much as an excuse to avoid responsibilities I should be taking on, I do recognize I use it as a comfort blanket for emotionally charged issues that overwhelm and freeze me).

When you know how that conflict is resolved, please let me know. (I realize it can be resolved by just removing the question by blinking God out of existence, but that feels more like avoiding the question than resolving it as long as we don’t know with certainty that God doesn’t exist.) I don’t think someone is inherently lazy or morally weak because they use crutches when they have a broken leg. Seems more like a sensible, responsible thing to do since it allows them to function more effectively than struggling without the crutch. And a crutch is not inherently a misshapen, nonsensical construction. If can be sensibly and realistically constructed according to the laws of physics to substitute for gaps in our physical abilities, why wouldn’t there be sensible and realistic crutches for our spiritual gaps? Of course, using a crutch when you don’t need it could weaken you or even create problems that didn’t exist before. The question that no one can answer for anyone else imo for when it comes to spiritual crutches is when a crutch is best and when does it hamper growth,

I think there are signs we are heading back to it as a more central teaching and never fully lost it (“Families can be together forever”, temple work, etc).

Could you expand on this? Not following you.

But since LDS theology requires very limited agency for the primal person, it seems to me the primal person’s behaviour is determined by something they have no control over because they did not create themselves at that level. We could use the phrase “born that way” modified for however we would label that primal existence “always were that way” to describe what first determined our behaviour and made us limited moral agents according to God’s laws. But what choice did we have in determining what we were in the beginning? So it seems to me the clean escape is ‘out of the ashes into the fire’ for LDS theology, we just push back the paradox a step or two it seems to me. (I am not fond of the image of ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’, I like the Norwegian version I used here better.)

But was this plan of Lucifer’s about preventing/completely avoiding behaviours that God defines as evil or about removing the accountability for such behaviours entirely by removing any law so that no one would need to be held accountable? Seems like the latter is more consistent with how Satan has operated since the Council, persuading people there is no God and/or no law or that the individual should not be held accountable because fill in the blank. It also appears easier on the surface if one sees the law as imposed by God and not somehow self existent. Though even there all Lucifer would have had to do was make sure everyone’s IQ was low enough or perhaps all were psychopaths (if that actually means people have no awareness of the light of Christ). Or assuming it was physically possible to reproduce even without partaking of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (whatever that actually was/symbolizes), Lucifer could have envisioned a world where that never existed. All of the above defeats the currently defined (based mostly on the BoM) purpose of mortality, but could logically (given the limited info we have of what was required) it seems to me resulted in everyone receiving a body. Also, if one had or assumed the level of the most shallow interpretation of God’s purpose (return to his presence), everyone could ‘qualify’ in these ways for the Celestial Kingdom just as it is interpreted that those who die unaccountable to the law go to the CK without any further need to make choices or change of self.