Tim Malone has been blogging for over seventeen years. He has published hundreds of essays on LDS topics, many of them controversial. Tim uses his blog as a study tool, focusing on a subject then sharing thoughts, scriptures, quotes and stories from his life as a way of growing and drawing closer to God.
Besides the thousands of comments on his blog, Tim tries to respond to every reader who emails with private questions. He shares his writings as a former member of the LDS Church, having resigned his membership on 13 Sep 2014. The reasons are shared on the post, “Why I resigned from the LDS Church.” You might also be interested in reading “What I Believe” or “My Story,” an interview by Dr. Jana Riess, for additional background.
A life-long Southern Californian (born in Covina), Tim has been happily married to Carol for over 42 years. We have one adult son who lives and works not far from his parents, here in beautiful Camarillo, the home of a former state mental hospital, now the newest state university. Carol and I are pleased our son has chosen to follow in his dad’s footsteps as a network engineer.
Family
Although my parents are both deceased, I will be forever grateful for the influence they wielded in my life. My mother was an educator, with a love of reading, learning, writing and teaching that she passed on to me. My father was a humble, quiet man, a peacemaker who took seriously his duty to provide security and stability for his family. I have four living brothers and sisters (one brother died as an infant) and love each of them. My oldest sister worked for an apostle. My second oldest sister passed away in 2023.
Missionary
I served a mission to Central America (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama and Honduras) from 1976 to 1978 under Joseph C. Muren, later a General Authority. I thoroughly enjoyed my mission experience and am grateful for the solid foundation it has provided for my life. I greatly treasure my mission memories and had some great companions, two of whom have since served as mission presidents.
Church Service
I enjoyed my service in the church, most of it in typical priesthood administrative positions (bishopric, high council, high priest group leader), but my all-time favorite calling was teaching the 11-year old children in Primary. I love teaching and sharing the gospel and miss that. I served as the ward clerk for the young single adult ward in my stake for over five years, then as a Stake auditor for a year and the stake financial clerk for two years before I resigned.
Outlook of faith
I am conservative by nature but love exploring new ideas. I have never doubted my testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ or of the unique role of the LDS Church in these last days. Even though I am no longer a member, I am still convinced The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is being used by the Lord in many ways. I love the Book of Mormon and hold Joseph Smith in high esteem as a powerful prophet of God. I am convinced I have been given the gift of believing and have always appreciated that.
Love of the Savior
It’s easy to say that one loves the Savior but hard to prove that except by kind words and thoughtful deeds. I seek to provide both. I hope the words I share here will be ample evidence that I know who it is that redeems me from death and hell in spite of myself. I also know that it is only because of the atonement of the Savior that I was able to answer yes to that last question in the temple recommend interview.
Love of learning
I love learning and reading other viewpoints on the significance of events in the world around us as we draw closer to the time of the return of the Savior to the world. A large portion of this blog is dedicated to the study of the signs of the times as they unfold. I am grateful to live in this day and age when I can witness the fulfillment of prophecy.
Wannabe Author
I love books and I love writing. I grew up without a television so I developed a love of reading in my youth. I read voraciously, but not much fiction. At one time I proposed to a fellow blogger I would write a work of fiction based on his works. Although I produced tens of thousands of words, I find writing about the prophecies in the scriptures on the last days and signs of the times have become my primary focus these days.
Computer Dude
A long time ago I applied for and landed a job where the official title was computer dude. I have always liked that because it aptly describes what I do for a living. I am an IT generalist, and have held a variety of IT management positions over the years. You can read more at 3tcm.com if you like. I currently work for a telecom equipment manufacturer (we make 4G & 5G switches) close to my home here in Southern California (Chatsworth), then I hope to retire and write full time. I readily acknowledge the Lord has always been very involved in my career and am very grateful.
Healing and Health
Like most everybody who passes through this life, I experienced some traumatic events in my youth that scarred me for a season. As an adult, I searched long and hard for peace and healing from these events and finally found it in a process known as muscle testing. Well, actually muscle testing is simply a modality, a means to question our intelligence to discover hidden stress and distress. Healing is through forgiveness, both of ourselves and others, through our faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ. I have a site dedicated to this.
Philosophical Views
My philosophy of life is centered on the idea of divine revelation as a source of knowledge. Yet I am a rationalist in that I embrace reasoning as an important part of deciding truth. But I am also an empiricist because I believe the same steps I take to obtain knowledge can be followed by others and should produce the same or similar results. I am not a skeptic. I am convinced that true knowledge is not only possible but is our divine right. I am not an existentialist. I do not believe that truth is subjective. I am a pragmatist. I look for truth in shared human experience.
Political Views
Lifelong Republican, but only because that is where my conservative views find some common ground. I am not a right-winger in the sense that I do not espouse radical views, but enjoy reading and listening to those with whom I share common conservative views. Lately, I find that I have become more of a libertarian but feel more comfortable defining it as being a constitutionalist. By the way, I think the pandemic is bullshit and agree with whoever it was who originally said, it’s nothing more than the common flu.
News Junkie
I spend way too much time on various Internet news sites during the day. My purpose is simply to be informed about current events. I frequent sites like spaceweather.com and space.com to keep an eye on the sun and the planets because events that will be happening there are part of the signs of the last days. I used to spend a lot of time on Facebook keeping up with family and friends but found it to be too much of a time waste.
First Amendment
I appreciate the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment of Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of the Press and peaceable assembly. I exercise the first three every day in this blog and the fourth whenever I get together with a worship group. I hope we never take these freedoms for granted. In spite of the political and economic upheaval of the times in which we live, I am extremely grateful to live in the United States of America where I can enjoy these freedoms.
Second Amendment
Although I do not own any firearms today, I see having a weapon as a deterrent. I am convinced that the day will come when a man will need to protect his home and family because of the degradation of society. I am not a member of the NRA but I can appreciate what the group is trying to do. I suppose this relates to my belief in the ongoing decline and eventual loss of peaceful civilization and society, which I am witnessing firsthand.
Political issues
Even though it is now the law, I am opposed to gay marriage. I have written a lot about the subject over the years. I supported Proposition 8 in the Nov 2008 election. I believe it is a moral issue and not a civil right. I voted for McCain in the 2008 election, but would have preferred to vote for Romney. I am pro-life, and believe abortion is close to murder. I voted for Romney in the 2012 election (he wasn’t a RINO then) and Trump in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections. Biden was a joke and Harris was a loser (although she gave a good concession speech). Here is my voting history, which has always been straight Republican:
1976 – Ford (lost to Carter)
1980 – Reagan (won over Carter)
1984 – Reagan (won over Mondale)
1988 – George HW Bush (won over Dukakis)
1992 – George HW Bush (lost to Clinton)
1996 – Dole (lost to Clinton)
2000 – George W Bush (won over Gore)
2004 – George W Bush (won over Kerry)
2008 – McCain (lost to Obama)
2012 – Romney (lost to Obama)
2016 – Trump (won over Hillary)
2020 – Trump (lost to Biden)
2024 – Trump (won over Kamala)
Other issues
While I do believe we are in for some cataclysmic changes in the earth, I do not believe mankind has caused global warming. When scientists first postulated aerosols caused the hole in the ozone layer I felt it was BS. I think Al Gore is an opportunist playing up natural events for political and financial gain.
I think there are many theories in the scientific world, especially in astronomy and cosmology, that are taken as fact. I espouse alternative viewpoints of Immanuel Velikovsky, Dave Talbot, Wal Thornhill, Anthony Perrat and Anthony Larson known collectively as the Electric Universe.
Same-sex attraction
Just like I was born with an unwanted physical weakness of asthma in my body, I believe people can be born with same-sex attraction. What they do with it is one of their major tests in life. We are all subject to God’s command to control our sexual urges.
You can read more about my stand on various political / social / moral issues here.
Contact me:
You can reach me at tmalonemcse at gmail.com or tim @ 3tcm.net
Camarillo CA 93010
818-257-0513 (text first)
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September 16, 2013
Tim Malone
Latter-day Commentary
Dear Brother Malone,
I discovered your blog several days ago and have browsed a bit in it, finding it interesting and presumably helpful to many of your readers. I wish you well in your continued efforts.
In scanning your biographical sketch, I note that we share mission-field backgrounds. I served in the Central American Mission under the first and second presidents, Romney and Wagner, from fall 1954 to spring 1957. That was back in the days of the 2½ year missions. I served in San Marcos, Quetzaltenango and Huehuetenango, Guatemala, then in the Canal Zone in Panama, then back to Guatemala City in the mission office.
I’ve served in quite a few Church callings over the years. At present I’m serving as a counselor to the temple president and the recorder of the Asunción Paraguay Temple. This is my sixth mission for the Church.
As you know, I’m the author of a good number of LDS books, and I see that you briefly reviewed my book Life Everlasting in your February 12, 2013 blog posting. Thanks for the review, though I didn’t think too highly of your comment “No matter what you think of Duane Crowther’s books, . . .” That left me feeling a bit of an “ouch.”
What led me to your blog was an unfortunate coincidence, of which I suspect you’re unaware. I rarely check my name on the internet, but I happened to “Google” my name the other day and one of the first bold listings that confronted me was “Duane S. Crowther Excommunicated.”
Since I’ve never been excommunicated, nor have there ever been grounds for that to take place, that listing immediately drew my attention. Obviously, such a misleading listing can be very harmful to one’s reputation. In tracking down the source of the listing the Google linking led back to one of your blogs. I obviously felt I should communicate with you about it.
It apparently arises from your February 12, 2013 blog in which you combined two articles: “Excommunicated for Priestcraft” and then a review of about a dozen books dealing with life beyond the veil of death. Clearly, you never say anything in your blog asserting that I’ve been excommunicated, and I see no evidence that you intended to do so. But apparently the computer has somehow managed to link my name with the term excommunication because of your two articles being released at the same time.
I’d deeply appreciate it if you would do whatever is necessary to remedy the situation, somehow getting my name out of that combined-article situation and linking. I’m not asking for any publicity or apology from you since I suspect the problem is coincidental and you don’t know it exists. I just want to get rid of that computer-generated problem. Please do whatever you think is best to resolve the issue and then let me know what was done.
Concerning my book Life Everlasting: It preceded all those other books on the subject that you listed by a decade or more, and clearly was a forerunner that set the stage for LDS acceptance of life-after-death information. When it was first published in 1967 it saw immediate acceptance, and it had already sold more than 100,000 books before those other books came into the marketplace.
When Bookcraft was sold to Deseret Book, they returned the copyrights on a lot of their earlier books so I received the publishing rights to Life Everlasting in 1997. As the owner and President of Horizon Publishers and Distributors, Inc., I enjoyed the opportunity to add about 175 pages to the book. Those pages contained many of the additional life-after-death patterns I’d discovered during the preceding 30 years.
Most of the authors of the other books you reviewed have managed to “discover” many of the NDE experiences I’d previously discovered and to incorporate them into their own books. Such is life in the publishing field. Sales of Life Everlasting continue, and both Prophecy–Key to the Future and Life Everlasting have moved into the 500,000-copies-in-print realms.
Again, I wish you well in your endeavors. All I ask of you is that you do whatever is necessary to break the link between my book and your excommunication article so the computer won’t link me with it and convey a harmful false impression to others.
Best wishes,
Duane S. Crowther
Dear Brother Crowther,
First, let me say I have nothing but the utmost of respect for you and your work. I read your books, Prophecy – Key to the Future and Life Everlasting when I was young in the gospel, in my teens. They helped form the basis for two themes that have dominated my life and writings for many years: 1) the Spirit World and 2) the Last Days, both of which I write about extensively.
May I comment on your “ouch” response to my short review of Life Everlasting. Although I cannot pinpoint the exact source at the moment, I recall several reviewers of your books on Goodreads or Amazon stating that books edited by Duane Crowther had a predictable and formulistic structure to them. The critics always mentioned your books were full of lists.
One in particular said that the editing got in the way of the story. I think he was referring to the publication of I Saw Heaven by Lawrence E. Tooley, Horizon, 1997. Personally, I like your editing style and have many of your books in my personal library either authored or edited by you over the years. You have contributed a wonderful legacy to the world of LDS Publishing.
So my comment, “No matter what you think of Duane Crowther’s books…” was not reflecting my feelings but those of your critics. We all have critics. I was hoping with my comment to persuade even those who do not normally like to read your material to put those feelings aside long enough to read what I consider to be one of your best and endearing books, even to this day.
An example of that list-style book in my library that I particularly enjoyed and took with me on my mission is Come Unto Christ, A Scripture Guide. It’s a wonderful compilation of scriptures listed by subject. I can’t tell you how many times I referred to that and another little book entitled Missionary Pal by Keith Marston and A Guide to Effective Scripture Study, a Crowther special.
I mean no disrespect. Your writing and editing style is known and unique. Some like it and some don’t. I happen to like it because of my computer background. It’s very methodical. The point is there are those out there who find it distracting. I was speaking to them directly, asking them to put aside their bias for a few days, long enough to read your wonderful book, Life Everlasting.
Although you said you did not feel the need for an apology, I’ll offer one for that little remark and ask your forgiveness. I did not intend to insult you or cause you to feel belittled. It truly was intended to have the opposite effect – to entice others to read a great book – one I know is close to your heart as it involves personal loss, causing you to ponder and write on the spirit world.
Please allow me to now address the primary purpose of your letter. You asked me to disassociate your name from the word “excommunicated” in a Google search. You noted how I posted a two part series of reviews of books devoted to the subject of Near-Death Experiences in late January and early February of this year. Your book, Life Everlasting, was included as the earliest in that list.
Then, a few weeks later, in mid-February of this year (2013), I posted a heart-felt story I felt led to include in my blog concerning the excommunication of a fellow author, Mel Fish. I had not intended on telling the story of his excommunication, but of getting some background material for his book, From Darkness Into Light. After prayer, I felt to post the story of his excommunication.
I wish there was something I could do to persuade Google to change their algorithm. It is their search program and database that causes a concatenation of my telling Mel’s excommunication story with the reviews of the NDE books – including yours – from a few weeks earlier. In short, I have no control how ‘excommunication’ appears after Duane S. Crowther in a Google search.
I’ll give you another unfortunate example. Do a Google search on Gerald Lund and see what word follows his name. The word is “obituary.” As far as I know Gerald Lund is alive and well, enjoying the latter years of his life writing yet more bestselling books. Someone please explain to me how that happened. Why does “obituary” appear after his name when he is not yet dead?
The same thing happened to Denver Snuffer. Denver was excommunicated about a week ago. Yet, for the last year and a half, every time someone did a Google search on Denver Snuffer, the very next word to appear behind his name was “excommunication.” Although it has now come to pass, it was not true then and was most unfortunate to see. It’s just the way Google works.
Here’s another example to illustrate the point: My friend and fellow blogger Connor Boyack has not been excommunicated but if you do a search for his name and include “excommunicated,” Google will return a plethora of excerpts from his blog associating excommunication with his name. It happens because he has used the word in a number of his posts referring to others.
I could go on and on with examples of General Authorities, other LDS authors and well-known LDS bloggers who have the word excommunicated somehow associated with their name in the Google database. Google shows excerpts and concatenates strings from articles to make it look like someone said the individual being searched for has been excommunicated. It’s not good.
I wish there was something I could do to comply with your request to “do whatever is necessary to break the link between [your] book and my excommunication article [on Mel Fish].” Perhaps there are other computer-savvy people out there who can advise us how we can convince Google to make that change. I suspect the link will go away automatically with the passage of time.
I am sorry this has happened. You are correct. I did not know about it and thank you for bringing it to my attention. It is an unfortunate coincidence. Sadly, it is simply out of my control. I write a blog post, Google puts it in their index and people find it. I happen to be high on the Google search pages because of unintentional SEO – the word excommunication in my articles.
I am open to any suggestion you have and will do anything you suggest within my means to make this link that Google has created go away. I understand how valuable one’s reputation is. This is how rumors get started. I apologize for the discomfort and distress this has caused. Please know I hold you in the highest of esteem and respect, especially for your many good books.
Sincerely,
Tim Malone
Latter-day Commentary
Excellent talk from President Ezra Taft Benson:
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1989/04/beware-of-pride?lang=eng
As an odd aside, I just entered “Tim Malone ” and was suggested “Tim Malone Excommunicated.” Which I assume is likewise untrue.
LOL. See – word association – it’s what search engines are built on. If you do a search on the word in my search box you’ll get fifteen or more posts. Hmmm…maybe that’s a sign I need to change what I write about.
“Hmmm…maybe that’s a sign I need to change what I write about.”
Yeah, Tim, there is that. *grin*
Brother Malone,
I was hoping to send you an email asking you a question. Would you be able to provide it? Thanks.
Hi Tom,
You can reach me at tmalonemcse@gmail.com
Tim
Thank you for sharing that with me. I would really enjoy se of you past writings if they are anything like this one.