Jim Harmston

The "TLC Manti" fundamentalist sect has always intrigued me. Perhaps because I run across its material often in my own web searches because of a cross-section of interests. Their leader, Jim Harmston, seems to be a very unique individual. I want here to express a simple theory regarding his current position.

For those who are't familiar (and why would you be? I only learned this a couple days ago...) Jim claims to be the very embodiment of a reincarnated Joseph Smith, Junior. Yes, TLC's version of the MMP doctrine includes Multiple Probations, apparently quite rapidly, on the same earth. (My own view of MMP involves previous and future earths.)

I think I understand why Jim thinks he was Joseph Smith in a past life. It is a very natural outgrowth from the information he would have had to work with, from the beginning. The problem is that Jim has taken a few feelings, recollections, his sense, or gut instinct, which by itself was correct, and he has misattributed it. He perhaps at one time was blessed with a heavenly vision, but he has taken what was opened to his vision and developed a fiction surrounding it. While his particular fiction includes the substance of the vision, it is not the only scenario that would do so.

I may follow up more on this later. Pondering.