Well... but did Linus have an ulterior motive, like JS did?
Linus faced and accepted ridicule & scorn for his faith in the Great Pumpkin, and gained nothing in return except for the certainty of his own beliefs.
JS gained honor, power, riches, and access to many women by preaching his tales of deception. And will we “gentiles”, or will sceptical Mormons, ever know whether or not JS came to be deceived by his own deceptions, or was he cynically exploiting them for his own gain up to the moment of his death in a gun battle?
By way of illustration, whenever the History Channel gets dubbed the `Hitler Channel’ for its coverage of WWII, they often show footage of Benito Mussolini addressing mass rallies in Rome. One amazing closeup shows Il Duce shouting and exhorting, then he pauses, folds his arms, and looks around at the crowd with cynical disbelief as he thinks “I can’t believe these people are actually buying this garbage!”
Anyway, I still want the animators to show a grinning Great Pumpkin in actual flight with toys streaming from his pack!
;^)
Let's see what I can do...