note:  Brother Andersen's books are
no longer available

Elder H. Verlan Andersen

One of the most popular books in our bookstore is The Book of Mormon and the Constitution.   Its author, H. Verlan Andersen, who succumbed to cancer in 1992, is a long-time, close friend of Ezra Taft Benson.  When President Benson was called as Prophet, he called Brother Anderson as a Seventy in the very next Conference.  At the end of his five-year call, Brother Andersen stood at the pulpit in the October 1991 Conference and said, "I go now to spend my full time in the Andersen area of the Church, a calling from which I pray I shall never be released."

I have admired Brother Andersen because years ago he cared enough about his posterity to start a private school (which still exists) in Pleasant Grove, Utah.   When our family first moved to Utah our children attended that school, and Sister Shirley Andersen was our oldest daughter's first grade teacher.

Brother Anderson taught at in the Business College at BYU. His son records that "the first day of class he would give his students an ungraded questionnaire of 25-30 questions to get their beliefs regarding the proper role of government. Unknown to the students, the questions included the famous 10 points of Marx's Communist Manifesto of 1848. To his surprise, the students, on average, accepted 2/3's of Marx's plans to destroy a capitalist society."

Brother Andersen feared that the Church of the Devil has gathered in many members who do not even know they are a part of it.

A couple of years after her husbands death, Sister Andersen told me that the last time Elder Andersen and President Benson had met was in the temple. They embraced, neither said a word, but tears filled their eyes. I have to wonder if besides their deep friendship they shared great sorrow over the future of our country and over the lack of the Saints to study and preserve our Constitution.

Brother Andersen is a man of courage, a man of wisdom, a patriot, and a true Saint. I'm sure he is at work in the "Andersen area of the church" and I hope he is also at work in the home school area of the church. -JK

(A frequently quoted story about Brother Anderson appears in President Monson's
First Presidency Message in the October 2004 Ensign.)

When Daddy was young, in Northern Utah, in the bitter cold winters his parents would not send him to school, but kept him home, where he was taught to read out of what became his favorite book the rest of his life, The Book of Mormon.  His parents couldn't afford a lot of reading materials, but they did have the scriptures. When Daddy did go to school, it was in a class where one teacher taught all grades, and he found he could learn what was being taught the older grades, as well as what was being taught the younger grades.  Since they all were in one classroom the opportunity to listen and learn was available to all in the room. 

Daddy did not marry until he was 28.  Between schooling, helping support his mother after their father died, and helping support other children on missions, he had many responsibilities, as all the children did.  Shortly after marrying, he and mama went to Stanford, and later Harvard Law School.  Daddy said it was not until after law school that he asked himself what the Lord thought about law and government.  He had always been taught to obey the law, and that the Constitution was inspired, but applying that to individual laws, and establishing a way to evaluate individual laws was a new idea to him.

He believed the scriptures hold the answer to all problems we face in life, so he went to them to seek his answer.  He observed in the Old Testament that all the prophets attributed the blessings or problems of the nation to obedience to God's laws. This is true in our individual lives, as well as in our families. As he studied the scriptures, he focused his attention on D&C 121, and came to believe that many of us are called to receive the priesthood of God in this life, but few of us will retain it in the next. He wrote a book titled, Many Are Called, But Few Are Chosen. He was concerned that he, his children, and others be among the few, not the many. He read that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men to exercise unrighteous control, dominion, and compulsion on one another, hence, may are called but few are chosen.  He asked himself where you and I exercise unrighteous dominion on other men.  He concluded this took place through government.   In a government of self-ruling people, we will all be individually accountable for our beliefs regarding government.

Those political laws we favor in this life will determine our friends and our place in the eternities.  In the pre-existence, the battle wasn't over whether we would be like God or not.   That was the given goal of both plans presented.  The battle was over agency.

As Daddy studied the prophets and the scriptures, his concern became more heightened.  As he grew older his concerns and fears didn't mellow, they deepened.  He came to believe that the most diabolical plan of Satan was to teach falsehoods to the children of men.  He believed this was done most effectively through the public school system, where false beliefs, false goals, false values and false evaluations of one's status were taught to children.  They are godless.  Worse yet, children are compelled to attend them, and parents are compelled to pay for the false educational ideals being taught their own children.

Daddy identified public schools with priestcraft.  If President McKay's statement that the greatest satanical threat on earth was communism, and public education was in the Communist Manifesto, there wasn't much value in discussing the two sides of public education.  There was only one side.  When he read about priestcraft in its different settings in the scriptures, in his eyes, public schools most closely paralleled that evil.  Because it is so pervasive today, he believed it would be the issue that would someday hurt the Church and lead to anger and   divisions.  Public schools are enforced priestcraft.

Initially, Daddy had his own children attending public schools.  I recall a sixth grade teacher teaching me evolution.  He had a long picture showing the ocean, the squiggly coming out of the ocean, getting legs, eventually standing, changing form to look like a monkey, an ape and then a man.  As he got part way through his explanation, I raised my hand.  He called on me, and I said, "That's not true." He changed the subject a few minutes, then went back to it again.   Again I raised my hand, and again he called on me.  Again I said, "That's not true." He folded it up and never taught us evolution again.  Proper teaching puts an edge on children, but some tact doesn't hurt either.  Daddy had always taught us that if we were to get into a disagreement with anyone, if we got angry, we were on the wrong side, no matter which side we were on.

Later he put us in private schools.  As we children started having children, he pushed us to teach our own children at every opportunity, or to use private schools which wouldn't destroy testimonies.  Almost all of his children have been or are currently involved with homeschooling.  If children learn history without being taught about God's hand in a nation's rise and fall, history will, in an eternal sense be at best, of no value.  An education without God is priestcraft and will prove far more hurtful than helpful.

His greatest concern was with children before the age of eight.  He taught us that before the age of accountability Stan had no influence on a child.  Before that age was the time to teach our children about Christ, faith and repentance.  Hundreds of hours spent then would save tens of thousands of hours teaching, preaching, and mourning later.

Daddy felt his principles, his faith, and his beliefs were the most important things he could leave us.  When he wrote The Great and Abominable Church of the Devil he wanted to share his concerns with others, but again his greatest concern was to teach his own children.  I recall one teacher from school who we all enjoyed, but who didn't think the way Daddy did on political and economic issues.  We had invited him to wedding receptions over the years because he was a friend of the family.  At one of the later receptions, he came up to Daddy and said they never had a chance with his children.  Daddy asked him what he meant.  He said Daddy's children didn't come to school to learn, but to compare what Daddy had taught them with what the teachers tried to teach.  Can a greater compliment be given a parent?