Chris Nemelka: Meet the Reincarnation of Hyrum Smith

[nelliebelle1197]

Has anyone heard of this guy? I came across his name looking through the Brown family wreath.

 

He is a Mormon who leads a small group of followers. I gather they sometimes practice polygamy. He claims he is the reincarnation of Hyrum Smith and has even gotten a descendent of Smith's hooked. That little lady gave Chris her burial plot near Hyrum so he can put up a tombstone for himself and Hyrum- since they are the same person.

 

Nemelka claims that he has unsealed the sealed portion of Joseph Smith's revelations. He is/was a polygamist, con artist and scammer, likely mentally unstable. I can't get a read on how many followers he has. Most of the critics I am finding are regular old Mormons who think he is perverting their religion. I don't see a lot of non-LDS info on him out there.

 

Here's a start:

chrisnemelka.com/timeline-2/

 

More info:

chrisnemelka.com/category/lies-deceit/

 

http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/sealed-f ... lText=true

[gustava]

Fascinating!!! L. Ron Hubbard meets Joseph Smith.

[nelliebelle1197]

I cannot even begin to get my head around this guy. And I want to know if he has a following but cannot find anything substantial on that

[breadprincess]

Sanjiv Bhattacharya wrote a good bit about him in his book Secrets and Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy, and there's an episode of the Feminist Mormon Housewives Year of Polygamy podcast partially devoted to him from a few weeks ago. He didn't just "inherit" the Smith family burial plot from Ida Smith (who sadly died last week), but he put his WEBSITE ADDRESS on aa tombstone there. He's crazy bananas. He used to prowl LDS YSA (young single adult) dances for vulnerable women, start dating them, and then only after they'd already fallen in love with him tell them that they would have to be plural wives. He published what he claimed was the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon (the 116 pages that were lost due to Joseph's unrighteousness during the beginning of his translation of the Book of Mormon), but he actually wrote it all himself and did it as a way to build a cult, L Ron Hubbard style, and then wrote a book about how he systematically built this cult and deceived people- but he STILL has followers who honestly believe he's the reincarnation of Hyrum Smith, unsealed the sealed portion, etc. He grew up LDS and served a mission, and then worked at Temple Square as a security guard and started all of this craziness because working for the Church full time made him disillusioned with it and made him see it more as a corporation and less as the living Church of Christ.

[ADoyle90815]

I haven't heard of this guy, but he sounds really crazy, most likely even crazier than Warren Jeffs is. My guess is that the reason there isn't a lot of non-LDS info about him is that his cult only seems to have attracted Mormons due to his alleged connection to Joesph Smith, Jr.

[Burris]

I've just started looking at Chris Nemelka's "Sealed Portion."

On the download page, Nemelka condemns the Bible as a destructive book for which the Book of Mormon and this new text are correctives.

Just as the Book of Mormon does, however, this material owes an obvious stylistic debt to the King James Version of the Bible. Moreover, the fact Nemelka has organized his own writing by chapter and verse suggests he doesn't understand the "books" of the Bible originally appeared as single items - letters, law documents, poetry, etc. - rather than as parts of a larger whole; that those divisions into chapters and verses were later innovations designed to make Biblical passages easier to cite.

Nemelka makes it plain everywhere that his material is copyrighted. He even attempts to restrict people from printing his book because he has hard copies for sale.

Even the recurring phrase "Marvelous Work and a Wonder" - that is the name of the website, and I assume it is supposed to be some kind of sacred term - is followed by the ® symbol all through the site.

This should be really "interesting."

ETA: Is boredom a curse? If so, then Nemelka's promise to curse those who don't believe his writing seems to be true for me.

One interesting aspect of this text, however, is that Nemelka basically makes the same offer to readers as the Serpent made to Eve in the Genesis story. On page 3 of his main text, Nemelka promises those who believe in the veracity of his writing "will know the mysteries of God in full" - a parallel to the Serpent's promise that, by eating the forbidden fruit, "...ye shall be as gods..." (Gen. 3:5).

I really don't want to devote more time to this thing; it's simply tedious - and that's one of its better qualities.

[Burris]

The following is taken from the Salt Lake City Weekly article:

In a scathing Aug. 1, 2007, decision, 3rd District Court Judge Stephen Henroid contrasted Nemelka’s aspiration “to be among the working poor†with the situation of the nine children he fathered with four women. “Respondent has a history of living off the support of others and apparently thinks his example is good enough for his children,†Henroid wrote in his ruling. He concluded, “His failure to pay even the nominal child support he owes, and condemning his children to live in poverty, is reprehensible.†While Nemelka disputes he is responsible for nine children, citing four having been adopted and two who were emancipated, he declares that “no judge, no state, no government official has the right to tell me what job I have to do. If I want to raise my kids in povertyâ€â€”as part of their education, he adds—“that’s my choice.â€

Wow. What a stand-up guy.