Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the Add On Education Network. The podcast where we explore the weekly Come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective.
I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with my friend and this show's producer, Nate Pifer.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: What's up? Hey, Nate.
How are you doing, buddy?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Oh, fantastic. Can I just say I am super excited for this episode.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: You have said that about 10 times before we started recording. So what's another one, two or 10.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: More times, then I'll do it again. All right. I am. In fact, I'll go as far as to say this. I wish that this was the closer for Doctrine and Covenants to talk about Joseph Smith, the end of his life, wrapped this up in such a beautiful way.
It's powerful. I only hope I can do it some justice.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: You always do.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: I try.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: No, you do. You do.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: We've got one more lesson in Doctrine and Covenants after this. Okay, and then we've got the. I believe the proclamations. They're not proclamations.
The official declarations, Proclamation of the world on the family and Christmas, I believe, were the last episodes we have this year that we are rolling into the Old Testament.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Man, that's what I'm looking forward to. That's what I'm excited about.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: Well, before we get there, the death of Joseph Smith.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Okay, I'm ready.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: And one thing, I guess real quick before I dive too far in last week, there's all sorts of stuff I didn't get to. Obviously, we never get to everything we want to. And 134, it didn't quite do it justice, but there was one little thing that I thought was super cool. I thought I'd mention real quick. In verse 46 of Doctrine and Covenants, 133, it says, and it shall be said, who is this that cometh down from God in heaven with dyed garments, yea, from the regions which are not known, clothed in his glorious apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength. And that last little phrase, traveling in the greatness of his strength, that's one thing that's always oppressed me about God. When he comes, it's not like he comes in a spaceship or some technology that's aiding him.
The reference that he comes in the greatness of his own strength, for whatever reason, that just strikes a chord with me and says, wow, that's amazing. What is it like to be a God? To travel, to do things, not because you've invented some mechanism to do it, but by the greatness of your own strength.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: All right, so this is going to take us into 135 is the death of Joseph Smith. 136 is the aftermath as Brigham Young is trying to organize everybody and get them migrated into a safe place. Because I think often, at least for me, when I look at this time period, I tend to oversimplify things and think, you know, after Joseph Smith died, it's like everyone left the saints alone and there was some peace there, but that really wasn't the case as we're going to see and kind of dive into the details, details on this. But first let's go into 135 talk about the death of Joseph Smith.
And the verse I want to start with is verse three where it says, and this is John Taylor, who I guess let's provide a little bit of context to this.
John Taylor was in the room with Joseph Smith when he was shot, along with Willard Richards, Hyrum Smith and Joseph Smith. Those were the four that were there.
Joseph, Hyrum and John Taylor all received four balls each, four bullets each.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Crazy.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Willard escaped unscathed, which was actually a prophecy that Joseph had given him much earlier that said you will live to see bullets flying all around you and yet you will not be scathed.
And he was the only one not shot.
John Taylor, his life may have been saved by Willard Richards. As he was shot, bleeding. Willard dragged him into the next room, covered him in straw and a mattress that helped kind of soak up the blood and stop the bleeding.
And John Taylor is writing this section and he says, Joseph Smith, the prophet and seer of the Lord has done more save Jesus only for the salvation of men in this world than any other man that lived in it.
That's a bold statement.
Do more for the salvation of anyone else that's ever lived here, save Jesus alone.
And so I want to talk about this from two different angles. One, I love the comparison of Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ. And I want to look at that juxtaposition and compare these two guys lives as we look at Joseph Smith and we examine the final details of his life.
And then second, I want to see, is that a fair statement to say that Joseph Smith has done more than anyone else for the salvation of man? Kind of maybe examine that statement a little more in detail.
So when we look at some of the ancient prophets, Moses for example, he's a good example. We talk about types and shadows, meaning that their life sets a pattern, almost a prophecy, that when the Messiah is going to come. You can kind of see some of the snippets of these, of these prophets. It's going to be fulfilled in the life of the Messiah. And the good example with Moses is that when he was an infant, they ordered the death of all the babies and he was saved by being put into a basket. And ironically enough to the Egyptians who save him, the same ones who order his death, Jesus Christ. Thousands of years later, Herod has the death sentence for all babies, but he is saved by going down into Egypt. So you have these types and these shadows that are going to foreplay what is going to happen.
And Joseph Smith, it's not, I don't think, a very fair case to say that he is a type and a shadow of Christ, where he comes after Christ.
But I almost look at his character and see this poetic mirror image or duplication, almost kind of like a chiasmus where you have Christ on one end and he's almost like a great Christ on the other. Not that he is dying for anyone's sins or taking on the role of a savior, but his life fits a pattern that is very similar to Christ and makes history extremely poetic. Makes an art out of history.
I figured you should appreciate that, Nate.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: I love that.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: For anyone that doesn't know Nate, he has a strong appreciation for art and a keen eye to notice some of the artistic things that a lot of people miss.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: So it's why I love the parables. Yeah, seriously. They're my favorite part of the Old.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Testament and there's a lot there that I tend to take things and just drag them out and almost beat them like a dead horse and try to explain it to death. And yet Christ or a lot of the prophets, a lot of the teaching of scriptures had an awesome way of just leaving it to your imagination and letting you come to the discovery. Right.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Did you read Hemingway? Are you a Hemingway fan?
[00:07:27] Speaker B: I am a Hemingway fan.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: He's like my favorite author. But it's for the exact same reason that I love the parables, which is I love the idea that they make you work a little bit to figure out the deeper and deeper and deeper levels of meaning. But as you uncover something profound, it shakes you, you know, like it means more because you had to do the work.
And when the kind of, when the light clicks. It's why I love the temple ceremony because it's a never ending.
There's just depths and depths and depths of symbolism and meaning and understanding that I just, I'm fascinated by that stuff.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Well, hopefully we uncover an added depth in the poetic nature of Christ's life and Joseph Smith's life.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Let's do it.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: And for starters, I mean, as I start to go through these, Nate, even as I was driving down to the studio, more and more just kept hitting me. I know this is not an exhaustive list, so if you think of any while we're going, interrupt me. Feel free to share.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: You know, I have no problem interrupting you, Jason.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Perfect.
For starters, both of them have a dad named Joseph. I mean, I mean that's amazing. That's a simple start, but let's do it. But it is pretty amazing, right?
Okay.
Both of them teaching at a young age. So Christ teaching at the temple at a young age when his parents go on without him and realize that they lost him and they have to circle back around and they find him in the temple teaching people. And one thing that I notice is it doesn't tell how his teachings are necessarily received.
And maybe that's why they're like, this guy has got to go later on in his life. Maybe he has a very similar path. But Joseph Smith coming out of Joseph Smith History 12122 Some days after I had this vision ready again. 14 year old boy I happened to be in company with one of the Methodist preachers who was very active in before mentioned religious excitement and conversing with him on the subject of religion. So here's this 14 year old boy conversing with religious preachers, the same type of situation about the sacred experience that he's had. I was greatly surprised at his behavior. He treated my communication not only lightly but with great contempt, saying it was all of the devil and that there's no such things as visions.
But as we skip forward just a little bit, I soon found however, that my telling the story had excited a great deal of prejudice against me among professors of religion and was the cause of great persecution which continued to increase. Though I was an obscure boy only between 14 and 15 years of age, the professors of religion, he had already had some pretty deep conversations with the professors of religion at his time. So I thought that was kind of interesting.
Miracles and healings.
Christ was known for this, going and raising the dead and healing people and all sorts of miracles. Joseph Smith has many documented healings, instances where he cast out demons, where he caused people to rise from their deathbed, and even in one instance where he raised someone from the dead.
Joseph Smith was baptized after John the Baptist came and was involved in his baptism by restoring the Aaronic priesthood. John the Baptist Obviously, the one who baptized Jesus Christ.
You have the continuity with Peter, James and John.
And then on the Mount of Transfiguration, you have Elias and Moses and Elijah and these visitors that come and visit them, much like Joseph Smith in the Kirtland Temple. When you have these visitors come and restore keys to him in this dispensation, all throughout their life. Joseph Smith calls 12 apostles, just as Christ had called 12 apostles. He calls 70 elders to go and teach.
And Christ was very, very strict on only teaching to the Jews and then going to the Gentiles. Joseph Smith many times said, first to the Gentiles and then to the Jews.
Kind of opposite, but still same concept.
There might be more in the life. But let us go into why were they killed and their death. So why was Christ killed?
He was accused of blasphemy, in particular, teaching that God had become a man.
You look at John 5:18. But Jesus answered them, my Father worketh hitherto, and I work therefore. Or in other words, for that reason, the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he said that God was his Father, making himself equal to God.
The thought that God could be his dad, literally, and that he could become God, or that he was God was considered blasphemous. And the reason for them seeking his death. John 8, 15:58, quote, Christ says, before Abraham was I existed.
And they picked up stones to kill him. Stoning was the appropriate sentence for blasphemy.
And so this idea that blasphemy was what Christ was killed for, when the Sanhedrin catches him, and they hold the Inquisition, the council at night, illegally, the illegal counsel, they ask him about these charges. They say, are you the Messiah? If so, say yes.
And Christ says, so say ye, you've said it, and you will see me on the right hand of God.
That's it. That's all we need to know. You think you are God. You think that God can be like man and man can be like God. Therefore blasphemy done.
This is what gets Joseph Smith killed.
And right shortly before his death, Joseph Smith does the King Follett discourse.
And quoting from the King Follett Discourse. And I obviously I'm not going to be able to read the entire discourse. So I'm trying to abbreviate this and shorten it up a little bit. I'll give you the highlights.
It is necessary for us to understand something of God himself.
There are very few that understand the character of God. If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend their Own character.
They do not know. They cannot understand their own relationship to God. I want to ask this congregation, every man, woman and child, to answer this question in their own heart.
What kind of being is God?
Ask yourselves.
I again repeat the question. What kind of being is God?
The apostle says that this is life eternal. Excuse me. This is eternal life. To know the only wise God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, that is eternal life.
I want you all to know God and to be familiar with Him. If I can get you to know Him, I can bring you to Him. And if so, all persecution against me will cease.
This will let you know that I am his servant, for I speak as one having authority and not as a scribe. What kind of being was God in the beginning, before the world? Was first God Himself, who sits enthroned in yonder heavens and is a man like unto one of yourselves?
For Adam was formed in his likeness and created in the very fashion and image of God. I am going to tell you how God came to be God and what sort of being he is. For we have imagined that God was God from the beginning of all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil. So you may see he once was a man like unto one of us.
Here then, is eternal life. To know the only wise and true God, you have got to learn how to make yourselves God in order to save yourselves and to be kings and priests to God. The same as all gods have done.
So his speech, one of the most powerful speeches, unveiling to the world that God is not some mysterious, unknowable person.
He was a man.
And that we can become like God. And that is the entire secret to eternal life.
The idea. And how did Christ become God? He came down and was man and then became God. And this idea that God became man so that man might become God, this was the teaching.
And to me, this is one of the most powerful, amazing teachings. Because what is the atonement worth if it's not to raise us up, if it's not to save us from death, if it is not to cause us to live forever? And what is a God if he is not an immortal being?
That the idea that you can live forever and that God was like us and to give us hope of a greater, more eternal life.
Amazing teaching.
But this.
This is what he got accused of teaching as blasphemous. The same thing that Christ did. When Christ said, I am God and that you will see a man, me becoming a God, and that God is like me. That was Blasphemy. Joseph Smith teaches the same thing in his day. Blasphemy again. So what led to his death was the destruction of the press of the Nauvoo Expositor. You've probably heard that before, right? He gets charged for inciting a riot.
So I went to the Nauvoo Expositor and I pulled up the article they wrote to try to quote from it. And see here how they are accusing him of blasphemy for his teachings. And maybe the most interesting thing about this is how the Nauvoo Expositor begins their message. This might blow you away, Nate. Get ready for this.
As for our acquaintance with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we know no man or set of men can be more thoroughly acquainted with its rise, its organization and its history than we have every reason to believe. We are.
We all verily believe. And many of us know of a surety that the religion of the Latter Day Saints as originally taught by Joseph Smith, which is contained in the Old and New Testaments, Book of Covenants and Book of Mormon, is verily true.
That's how they begin, the Nauvoo Expositor, with a testimony that the gospel is true.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Twist. Okay.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: I mean. Okay, keep going.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: And it is not to say we believe. I mean, many of us, we all verily believe.
And many of us know of a surety that the religion of the Latter Day Saints.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Were they like ex Mormons? They were okay.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Every one of them.
So they believed the Church to be true. Absolutely.
And that the pure principles set forth in those books. And again, they mentioned the Book of Covenants. So the Doctrine Covenants, the Book of Mormon, the pure principles set forth in those books are the immutable and eternal principles of heaven.
And speaks a language which, when spoken in truth and virtue, sinks deep into the heart of every honest man.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Okay. Amen. Okay, bud, I'm ready.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: Its precepts are invigorating and in every sense of the word, tend to dignify and ennoble man's conceptions of God and his attributes.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Amen. Continue.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: It speaks a language which is heard amidst the roar of artillery as well as in the silence of midnight. It speaks a language understood by the incarcerated spirit as well as he who is unfettered and free.
Yet to those who will not see, it is dark, mysterious and secret as the grave.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: Okay. Amen.
But.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: But.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: So, okay, here we go.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Here it comes.
Among the many items of false doctrine that are taught the Church is the doctrine of many Gods.
One of the most direful in its effects that has characterized the world for many centuries. We know not what to call it other than blasphemy.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: They almost got there.
They almost got there.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: We know not what to call it other than blasphemy.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Dang it. They were so close.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: They accused the prophet, who many of them knew of a surety was a prophet of blasphemy for teaching the principle that we can be like God.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: They were so close, they almost made it all the way.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: And it's.
It's interesting to me.
So here you have Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ both being accused of blasphemy.
And interesting enough, when Christ is being accused of blasphemy and he knows it's time for him to die, what happens when he goes into Jerusalem and he looks at the temple and he sees that the money changers are there and they're selling the sacrifices and making a business out of the temple rituals and doing things on sacred ground? The Temple, he destroys it.
And so when they print this article and the Nauvoo Expositor, and I don't have time to read the entire article if you'd like to. It's a very interesting read.
They have problems with the plural marriage.
And they go as far as to say that really all Joseph Smith is doing is sending missionaries to all the corners of the world just to grab the cutest girls that he can find and funnel them into Zion so that he can have his harem, Right? So they've blown this way out.
They make a mockery of the whole idea of the plural gods, if you will, plural marriage.
And they say even more so that Joseph Smith is a tyrant who forces martial law on everyone. And if you don't agree with him, then he's going to punish you. And he's running for President of the United States, where he is going to be a tyrant president. He's going to bring kings back to America. This is not long after the Revolutionary War, but they are saying a lot of inflammatory things to get people excited.
And so the city council meets together after this article is published and says, we just got kicked out of Missouri with no protection from the government, no protection from the law.
If people believe this stuff about what we are teaching now, we are going to get kicked out of Illinois, too.
We're getting kicked out of Iowa. We're going to get.
There's not going to be peace for us. And by the way, remember as we talked about what happened in Missouri, the people that were died.
That were died. The people that were killed, the people that died, the people that were chased out of their homes, that walked in the snow, bloody feet, the horrible things that they had. And they said, we don't want to go through that horribleness again.
And yet this is going to incite that. So what do we do? Do we sit here and let this happen and watch Missouri repeat where we're at, or do we do what we can to quell it? So the council gets together, they hold a vote, and they declare the Nauvoo Expositor as a public nuisance and bring it up to Joseph Smith, who is mayor. Say we voted. We believe this is the public nuisance and that it will cause death and destruction among our people if we let it go unchecked.
So Joseph Smith orders the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor. Not just the newspapers, but the press, stop them from printing. Porter Rockwell goes through and does his job.
And you might look at that and say, okay, this is a problem. This is violation of the freedom of speech. Right here is the thing.
In this time period in 1844, the federal government has to respect the freedom of speech and cannot impinge upon the press.
But the state is not held to any obligation to do so, and neither is the city.
So what he's doing is not violating the Constitution. It's a legal order.
Was it the right order?
We can debate that.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we can debate that. Because still, morally, I believe that the freedom of speech is given by God to every man, like the Constitution says, so is the freedom of press.
And with those things, though, there are natural consequences, though that happen as well. So, you know, I mean, like, that's the moral debate, right?
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: Is that. It's like if you, if you lie about somebody now or if you, if you're, you can sue people for defamation at this point, right.
Back then, I don't know, you know what I mean? Like, back then, if you have somebody basically writing inflammatory, incorrect things about you in order to try to, like, get you killed or hurt or illegally ran out of town, well, maybe morally it's your job to organize and take care of business by yourself. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's what I'm saying.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: It's like, I don't know, it's an interesting time period. And the laws are not what we have today.
And there was a big problem.
The US Constitution promised these rights.
And as you said it, Nate, they're God given rights. It's not the government that says, okay, you can have this right. You can have this right. These are Rights that God has given us, and the government has no right to infringe on them.
But the states are not the federal government. And that's the problem when Joseph Smith went to Martin Van Buren asking for help when they were persecuted in Missouri, and his response is, your cause is just, but there's nothing I can do. It's not a federal issue. That's the state. And the state is not bound by the Constitution. There was a big problem, and it's not until after the Civil war and the 14th amendment is passed that binds the states to the federal law and gives the federal law power to enforce the Constitution at the state's level.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: And I don't know if you realized that you just brought up another really good type or connection with Jesus Christ.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: I'll hear it. Let's hear it.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: Well, you basically had the governor say, look, I don't find anything wrong with you.
Your cause is just. But this is out of my hands. And basically, like Pilate wash his hands and say, well, there's just nothing I can do. But I don't see anything wrong with you.
There's no crime being committed in my eyes.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up, because just as you have the Herod and the pilot that kind of bounced Christ back and forth and said, hey, the mob wants him dead, but legally, what can we do? Right, Right. And kind of bound.
Governor Ford wrote a history of Illinois and giving it the original name of History of Illinois.
[00:28:56] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: In his book, he writes this quote, the author of this history feels degraded by the reflection that the humble governor of an obscure state who would otherwise be forgotten in a few years, stands a fair chance, like Pilate and Herod by their official connection with the true religion of being dragged down to posterity with an immortal name hitched on the memory of a miserable imposter.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: He compares himself to Herod and Pilate.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: I think is. I think that there's something strangely noble about that, that he's at least aware enough to be like, look, I have a bad, bad feeling that I'm going to basically, you know, I mean, like, it's like he kind of said it himself, right?
Oh, man, I have a bad feeling I'm going to be connected with these knuckleheads. Yeah, well, guess what you are, bro.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: A humble governor of an obscure state who would otherwise be forgotten in a few years. You would have been, unfortunately, I'm going to be like Herod and Pilate.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Unfortunately, you are, knucklehead.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: And even though he recognizes that he still refers to him as a miserable imposter.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's because he was still.
That's him just throwing a tantrum about it.
That's him realizing that he is. That's him realizing that he is going to be associated and forever remembered for being.
Some words that I can't say on this podcast.
And by the way, you are sorry, bro. In death, you're just as much of a turd as you were in life.
And then he throws a tantrum at the end and.
And it's shocked that he would be because of some. What he calls an imposter. So good job.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And we're gonna dive into him even more here.
I'm glad you brought this segue in, because first, Christ is accused of blasphemy, which is the same thing that Joseph Smith is being accused of in the Expositor, which leads to the destruction of the press, which we were comparing to Christ coming in and throwing out the tables. Right. Both have these violent reactions shortly before they die. Right.
And this riot, this is not what leads to his arrest in Carthage, by the way. It starts it, but when they do the writ of habeas corpus and say, you know what? They have no reason to hold him on this. This was a legal action. It was just not going to carry this out.
And he declares martial law to protect the city, then they look at it and say, this is treason.
Right. They elevate that. Now the charges are treason. This is what he goes to Carthage jail for. And Christ, when they take him to Pilate, they're not saying, hey, this guy is a blasphemer. They're saying, this guy is pretending to overthrow the government. Yes.
Treason.
This guy is saying, he is the king of the Jews. He is. He is going to challenge your authority, and he is inciting unrest by trying to assert power. Treason.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: The slimiest thing for these freaking dudes also, because they. They knew that that was the only way that they were going to be able to get the Romans on board with this. Right? Like, they knew for sure that the Romans wouldn't care if they're like, hey, this dude's. This dude's saying that he's God. The Romans would be like, I don't care.
And.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Or. Or they'd have to execute a lot of themselves.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: Yeah. They're just, I don't care. And so it's like these Jews, by the way, who hate the Romans and complain and. And have issues with any of their fellow Jews that. That, you know, comply with, you know, their Roman Authorities now they're, they basically suck up to that, to that same authority that they've been complaining about for generations, right? Where now they're going like, oh no, you got to kill him. Because, well, he said he's going to take your powers.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: We're on your side here. So we got to maintain the peace.
[00:33:05] Speaker A: It's so slimy.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: And, and you see the, the Romans trump this up when they, when they put the robe on him, when they put the crown on his head, when they put the title over the cross that says King of the Jews, right?
Joseph Smith is being charged for treason.
And his death is not just an unorganized mob that comes and kills him. Happenstance. This is a political assassination.
And he had spies that would go and attend meetings and report on the meetings and come back and send news to the governor saying, this is what's happening. I need your help.
And so Dr. Southwick was in a meeting and these are the notes that he Sundays. It says Dr. Southwick was in a meeting. Seeing what was going on. He afterwards told Stephen Markham that the purport of the meeting was to take into consideration the best way to stop Joseph Smith's career as his views on government were widely circulated and took like wildfire.
They said if he did not get into the presidential chair this election, he would be sure to the next time.
And if Illinois and Missouri would join together and kill him, they would not be brought to justice for it. There were delegates in said meeting from every state in the Union except three. Governor Ford and Captain Smith were also present in the meeting.
[00:34:38] Speaker A: Cowards.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: You had delegates, you had political representatives from almost every state in the Union conspiring on how to stop Joseph Smith from becoming president.
They feared him and they had good cause to fear him this election. Martin Van Buren was running for re election and he lost the support of the south for opposing the annexation of Texas.
So all of their delegates threw their vote into James Polk, the first dark horse candidate that nobody knew. A no namer won the election and Joseph Smith had a real chance of winning. This fear, this political fear that what would happen and go back to the Expositor and what were they accusing him of being? A religious tyrant who was trying to join church and state and force people back into a situation that they ran from in England.
This was the reason for his assassination. And it wasn't so chaotic and unplanned as what would seem with the idea of a mob just breaking in.
They questioned the prisoner, not the prisoner, the captain of the guard at the prison who Instructed his men to load their rifle with blanks to pretend to fire on the mob as they came.
So Joseph Smith, he's in prison and one of the.
See, make sure I get this. All.
All right. One of the guys that was with him. Dan. Now I'm. Now I'm drawing a blank on his last name.
Do you remember his last name?
[00:36:28] Speaker A: Dan.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: Dan.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: Lieutenant Dan.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Not Lieutenant Dan.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Too bad.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Now, it's all right, Dan. We'll figure it out later.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: Dan. Dan Jones.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: Dan Jones.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: Dan Jones.
Dan Jones stayed the night in prison with Joseph Smith. The night before, Joseph offered his arm as a pillow for him to sleep on.
In the morning, Joseph Smith asked him to find out what the commotion was at 5:30am to go ask this, this captain of the guard, what was his name? Frank Worrell. Now, I'm.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: That's all right. That's all right.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: Drawing all sorts of blanks here. Anyways, he went to the guard and asked him what was going on. And he told him, we will kill Joseph Smith. We're going to kill him today.
If you want to survive, if you want to live, you best be getting out of here, or else we'll kill you, too.
So he tells Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith asks him to ride out to the Governor and warn him and do what he can to try to stay it. He goes out, and as he's going, he passes by the group that's eventually going to come.
They have this speech and they're instructing the people, look, we're going to be disbanded and commanded by the Governor to march towards Nauvoo. We'll start heading out that way, but then we're all going to turn back around and head to Carthage, meet up there and kill the Smith brothers.
So he hears this, goes and tells Governor Ford everything he hears. And Governor Ford says, you know what? You have nothing to worry about.
Don't even fret. It's all taken care of. Don't even worry about it. We're good. It just ignored him and sent him on his way.
So he went back to the prison to try to get back to Joseph Smith. He was turned away at bayonet point and not allowed re entry and wasn't there when the prophet was assassinated.
So, yeah, there were some crazy things that were happening with his death. This was not just mob violence at its finest. This. This was a very organized political hit, if you will.
[00:38:38] Speaker A: Assassination.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: You used the right word, assassination.
For.
For fear that he was going to be the king, if you will, this tyrant for treason, essentially, for Treason.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Well, treason's like the Jews.
Treason is kind of how they were able to justify it with themselves. Bottom line is they were cowards and they needed to convince themselves. They needed to find a way to convince themselves that what they were doing was just.
They knew deep down it wasn't. But we get that that's what they told themselves.
Cowards.
[00:39:15] Speaker B: And you look at Christ's life, you look at the Sanhedrin and the unfair trial, and you look at the trial, the mock trials that Joseph Smith has been through, it's the same. Right. And we.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: Even the mob, even the mob that came to get him that day, wasn't it, Wasn't it like a good like portion of it funded by ex members of the church?
I, I'm not sure I'd read somewhere that, I had read somewhere that, that even, even within the mob itself.
And I can, I can find that and go back and make sure that that's right, but that even in the mob itself were a lot of bitter ex members of the church, which would actually make sense too in the. Again, drawing the symbolisms between the death of Joseph Smith and Christ, that the same people that were putting palm leaves at his feet as he was coming in were unfortunately the same people chanting crucify him a few days later.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: And I thought I'd read that too, somewhere in the Journal of Discourse. I was searching for that reference all week to try to find it. Someone had said that there were people in that mob that had earlier received their endowments that.
But I couldn't find the reference to be able to.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's. We probably should make sure, you know, obviously, just because we do try to be, as we try to separate the, the legend from, from any evidence that we can find. But, but if that is the case, which again would make sense considering that it was a mob from the. That area and that area was populated by members of the church and ex members of the church.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: And even if they weren't present in the mob, at the very least that the Nauvoo Expositor and what the meetings that they held, they were. Yes, very. An active part of pushing for the death of the prophet.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Absolutely. Let's keep going.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: You've got the Judas Iscariot character where Judas betrays Christ leading to his arrest for 30 pieces of silver. And then you have George Hinkle who makes a deal with the state militia to turn Joseph Smith in, betray him in order to kick the Smiths out of their home that night, repossess it, sell Joseph Smith Sell his horse, sell his saddlebags, sell all that he had for a little bit of money. He sold the profit out.
Right.
We talked about our Herod Pontius Pilate example.
Both of them were survived by their mothers.
Their dads weren't really part of the story, but their mom survived to see their death.
And something else that fascinates me as I look at these two characters, is the movement that they started. You look at the early Christians and the amount of persecution that they went through, and maybe it's not even fair to compare the early persecutions of the Latter Day Saints with what the early Christians had and being put in the Coliseum with being lit on fire or. Or the things that they went through. But both groups of people were severely persecuted for their religious beliefs. And these early fundamental periods that started both Christ and Joseph Smith were killed at a very young age, not long into their ministry.
And something that fascinates me, go back to, well, what is the largest religion today?
[00:42:48] Speaker A: Is it Islam or Catholicism?
[00:42:49] Speaker B: Christianity? No, Christianity.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Well, I guess Christianity in general, because.
[00:42:55] Speaker B: You'Re right when we start talking about specific sects. Right. Catholicism is a large sect, but if you talk about more in general, Christianity is the largest world religion today.
Right.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: And you look at it and say, here's something that I think bothered a lot of people. I've thought about it a lot. If this is the church of Jesus Christ it purports to be, why are there so few members?
Isn't the gospel for everyone?
Why are there only a handful? You look at what, 16 million people compared to the 7 billion on Earth?
What's the deal? How can God be so selective? And I don't think it's that God's being selective. You look at the first official proclamation. Know this. All you kings, all you rulers, everyone in the world, the gospel is here. The kingdom of God has been restored. Look at the missionary efforts, look at the scattering. I don't think it's because God hasn't spoken, but. But it may be because people haven't listened to.
But you look at the spread of Christianity and how popular it is in the world today and say, well, if Christianity is that popular and taken on, how could this movement, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith, the restoration of the Gospel, how could that be just this small little thing? But Christianity was extremely small back in the time.
And Joseph Smith restores the gospel in 1830. We're about 200 years from the time that he restored the gospel, almost 2030. Not quite right in those 200 years, the church of Jesus Christ has risen to about 16 million members. So I wanted to know, how does that compare to the original Church of Jesus Christ and its growth and its spread to get to where it is the largest religion in the world Today at the 200 year mark, there was, oh, I should have written this down, approximately 200,000 members, which is a fair amount, right?
But 200,000 is significantly less than 16 million.
And then you might look at it and say, well, the difference in world population between the 7 billion and what it was in 200 AD, maybe it was a larger percentage. So I looked at the world population and you've got estimates from 246 million to 253 million somewhere in there. But if you take the average of the estimates and then you take the population of the church divided by the world population at the time 200 years since the coming of Christ, you are talking about less than 1% of the world population, far less than 1%.
And then you take that same number of members of the Church of Jesus Christ Today, almost 200 years after the restoration of the Gospel, and compare that to the global world population of 7 billion, and we are more than 8 times higher in world percentage population than the Church of Jesus Christ was back then.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: Crazy.
[00:46:14] Speaker B: So what it tells me is that these things take time to grow.
Christianity has benefited from a thousand years, two thousand years of growth.
What is the reputation of Joseph Smith and the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ going to look like a thousand years from now when the growth of the church is exponentially higher than what the original church of Jesus Christ was?
It makes you think, and what was the key event that caused Christianity to spread like wildfire is when the emperor, the Roman Emperor Constantine, embraces the gospel and forces it throughout his kingdom. Now it becomes an empire type deal, a political religion, not just a religious religion.
And I can't help but think in these last days, not long from now, Christ will come in his glory and the church will go from just being a religion to being a kingdom, a political force that will spread the gospel across the globe like wildfire. And compare that to then and see the trajectory and the paths. And you look at that early church and Jesus Christ and you look at his late church and it's like Christ patterned Joseph Smith after himself. The same mold, the same cast, the same, this poetic repetition, not of a savior, but of the gospel restoration and this church and the kingdom and how it unfolds in the last days. Because there could only be one savior, right? Jesus Christ. But looking at from the church perspective, if you want to recognize my church, look to me because you'll see it all play out just like it did the first time.
[00:48:13] Speaker A: Love it.
[00:48:16] Speaker B: I'm talking about talking about the guys that killed Joseph Smith.
It's interesting, I.
In almost every account you read about how they marked their faces.
In doctrine and Covenants 133, it talks about how they painted their faces black in the court trials, the testimony. What they did is they wet their hands and they rubbed it on their faces with gunpowder and blackened their faces.
And it might just seem like this innocent deal. I think the whole point of it was the guard at the prison that we had already talked about, he was called in as a witness at the trial, and they asked him if the people that were standing trial were part of the mob. And he says, I didn't see them because their faces are disguised.
[00:49:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: It gives him an out so he doesn't have to indict anybody.
And as they're marking their faces, I wanted to read from Alma, chapter three, verse 13.
Now we will return again to the Amlicites. For they also had a mark set upon them. Yea, they set the mark upon themselves, Yea, even a mark of red upon their foreheads. Thus the word of the Lord is fulfilled. Now, the Amlicites knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God when they began to mark themselves in their foreheads.
And here I think these guys, in trying to destroy the prophet and trying to destroy the Church, knew not that they were setting a mark upon themselves and acting in a similar way to these apostates who had done this before and hear this act of sealing his testimony in blood to the truth of the Book of Mormon, to the Gospel. And yet they are filling out the same words in that book that they are opposed to. And they knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God as they came in and killed the prophet.
And in one testimony, when Joseph Smith goes to leap out of the window, he hangs from the seal for a while. And I thought of the imagery as Christ dies hanging on a cross and Joseph Smith hanging from the wood of the window before he dies, killed by the mob, shot with four balls. Christ, who's got the four marks in his hands, his feet. And if the feet, if you've got them stacked on top of each other, or if you've got it driven through the. I don't know, but then you've got the spear mark. But maybe that's a stretch. Maybe it's taking it Too far. But it's fascinating to me to see kind of how these play out hand in hand.
Next, the guy in the prison that does so much to orchestrate this.
And by the way, let's just go through the aftermath, a little bit of this.
The state indicts nine people for the assassination of Joseph Smith.
Three of which it's an open and shut case.
Because what happens is Joseph Smith has two different visitors on two different times that smuggle firearms into the jail.
One smuggles in just a single shot pistol. The other one smuggles in a six shooter. Joseph gives the single shotgun, the single shot pistol to his brother Hyrum, and he keeps the six shooter himself.
When they hear the shots and the people storming the jail, they rush to the door. Willard Richards and John Taylor are using their canes to smack the guns down and keep them from coming in the door as Joseph and Hyrum. Joseph is going to push the door shut, to brace against it. Hyrum pulls his pistol out of his pocket and a shot goes right through the door, hits him on the side of his nose. And he gets shot three more times, says, I am a dead man. One of the shots severs his spine. He falls down to the ground dead, never gets a shot off. Joseph rushes to Hiram, filled with anguish and grief, seeing the death of his brother.
Runs for his gun, goes back to the door, sticks his hand out the door and shoots all six rounds.
Three of the chambers misfire, three of them do fire, and he ends up hitting three people, one of the ones that hit him.
So three people leave Carthage wounded.
It is an open and shut case.
They came in, they were seen going in, and they were seen going out wounded.
And Joseph had shot them. They know who they were.
So knowing that they were going to get in trouble, they flee the county and avoid arrest. And they are never hunted down, never arrested, never stand trial.
One other guy flees with them. So four out of the nine never stand trial. The five that do stand trial as they go in. The problem is their star witness for the prosecution, who was not a member of the church, but he had joined with the militia not long before they all went towards Carthage. And he kind of went to see what was going on.
And he witnessed the death of the Prophet Joseph Smith. And he sees something miraculous.
So he's watching from the yard. He sees the prophet come out of the window. He sees the group go kind of surrounding him. And one guy is running up to the Prophet and he sees a blinding flash of light in his hand. And whether or not anyone sees it, he doesn't know. But for him, just seeing that light was enough that he ended up joining the church.
So he's their star witness and he's got a lot of attention on him because he was a witness to what happened. And he tells somebody else the events surrounding the death and the guy sensationalizes his story and publishes it before it goes to trial.
And so now all of a sudden you get the story where. How do you describe this flash of light in his hand?
So he describes that the guy that's embellishing the story says, you know what? It was a bowie knife that he pulled out. He was going to cut the prophet's head off, but an angel of God stopped him and everybody ran away. So now all of a sudden it goes from just a flash of light that he sees and he's not sure anyone else sees or not, which is a powerful witness for him that ends up taking him on this road of conversion to this other story that an angel came and stopped him from cutting off the prophet's head. So the story gets embellished and published and becomes a major tool for the defense to discredit the witness from the lead witness that the prosecution has.
[00:55:24] Speaker A: Sounds like Paul's conversion.
[00:55:27] Speaker B: It does.
[00:55:29] Speaker A: A lot.
[00:55:30] Speaker B: And John Taylor discourages any of the saints from being witnesses.
He says, don't do it. The state can't protect you.
It's not a good idea.
So you don't have a lot of people stepping up. John Taylor is not going to be a witness, even though he lived through the events and saw everything that happened.
The whole thing is kind of a sham that way.
And the other thing is you had about half the jury that were members of the Church of Jesus Christ.
The prosecution moves to get them all dismissed so that you get instead a jury stacked with anti, anti Mormons at the time.
So it goes, it goes through. The lead witness is kind of tainted and it doesn't get a lot of credibility because a lot of the things that were published in the book that, by the way, the guy published it under the witness's name rather than his own name to try to make it even. Yeah.
So a lot of at the end of the deal, the five are acquitted for the death of Joseph Smith.
Next they go to stand trial for the death of Hyrum Smith. And then for this trial, the prosecution doesn't even show up, in which case it's all dismissed. And by the way, two of the five guys, legislators and senators, that were involved in the death of Joseph Smith and the three that were wounded never get arrested, never stand trial. No one is ever held accountable. And the prison guard that had orchestrated this, that had this all set up, that was plotting it, he does end up getting his in the end.
[00:57:21] Speaker A: So, I mean, they all got theirs in the end. Well, not in this life.
[00:57:25] Speaker B: Maybe not in this life.
[00:57:26] Speaker A: We can probably take a wild assumption that they probably still got what they had coming to them.
[00:57:35] Speaker B: Well, so this takes us into 136, when we're talking about Brigham Young organizing the church and getting them to head west. And this takes us to Far West. So we got a letter from a couple up there.
[00:57:51] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, we got an email.
[00:57:52] Speaker B: Yeah, email from. From. From Elder and Sister. I want to say.
[00:57:55] Speaker A: Armstrong sounds right. I'm pulling up real quick. Yeah, it was a nice letter. Yeah, nice little email.
[00:58:02] Speaker B: They. They gave a shout out to Far West. They're up there.
Yeah, Far West. No, it's not Far West, Nate.
[00:58:11] Speaker A: Hold on, hold on, hold on.
[00:58:14] Speaker B: On track. Winter quarters.
[00:58:16] Speaker A: Yeah, there we go. Armstrong. Elder. Elder and Sister Armstrong. Thank you for the. Thank you for the nice.
Thank you for the nice email. Winter quarters.
[00:58:28] Speaker B: Winter quarters. This. This is where winter quarters becomes a pertinent part of. Of the story as Brigham Young is trying to organize the people, pull them together, and head out and organize the companies. This is where Doctrine Covenants 136 comes in.
So I'm planning on visiting winter quarters when I head out there next year.
A lot of history, a lot of cool things that were happening there.
Here's the thing with what the fallout was. As we get to doctrine and Covenants 136, the persecution doesn't stop.
In fact, the same guys that were responsible for the death of Joseph and Hyrum now start to hunt the Saints that are. Any. Anyone that can find. They call it kind of a.
What are they? What do they call it? Like a wolf.
Now I'm just sputtering. They would just go and pick off any unprotected Saints that they could find. They were burning farms. They were burning homesteads. They were killing people. It was Missouri all over again.
And Brigham Young, seeing that all this was happening, calls for the Nauvoo Legion to organize and go and protect the Saints to go and protect these homesteads.
And that's when the state of Missouri decides to try to accuse Brigham Young of treason for pulling the Nauvoo Legion together. And so now he is going to be held on charges of treason, just like Joseph Smith. This is where Governor Ford steps in and Says, no, we can't try him for treason because if we do, then the Saints won't have anybody to get them out of our state. And we don't want him. We don't want them here a day longer. They need someone to get them out. So let's drop charges. Let's leave them alone. Let's do whatever we can to get them out. But the governor, not all bad, also wants to put an end to the violence that's happening to give them a chance to peaceably move out.
So he calls for a posse to be organized.
[01:00:38] Speaker A: Okay, A posse? Yeah.
[01:00:42] Speaker B: And you've got the county sheriff, Backenstoss, who's in charge of the posse. And Backenstos gets Porter Rockwell and Gilbert Belknap, some of the Prophet's bodyguards, as part of his posse.
So they ride into Carthage.
Not Carthage, Warsaw. They ride into Warsaw to try to calm things down. And when they get there, Warsaw is waiting for them, armed with knives, bowie knives, rifles, pistols and everything, and chase the posse off.
And at the head of this group is the prison guard worl that played a key role in the death of Joseph Smith.
And as he is riding, chasing the posse out, Porter Rockwell, from his horse, turns and shoots him dead, right off his horse.
And so the guy that kind of orchestrated this from the prison and testified to acquit the people that were on trial that was very much responsible for the death of Joseph Smith, in the end, bites a bullet from Porter Rockwell. Nice shot, Porter chasing the posse down.
[01:02:03] Speaker A: Nice shot, Porter, as always.
[01:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And so this, this, this becomes when the Saints move back into Utah, Brigham Young is concerned because some of the Saints are still getting a lot of persecution and a lot of heat and a lot of problems over here.
And so he tells Porter, go back and stand trial for the death of the warl guy that you shot while he was chasing you in the posse. I promise nothing's going to happen to you, but it'll take heat off the Saints. So Porter goes back, makes a big scene, causes kind of a riot. They grab him, arrest him, take him in, and then they take him to trial. And in the end of the day, he's acquitted because it was self defense.
He was a deputation.
He was. What do you deputize?
[01:02:49] Speaker A: Deputized marshal.
[01:02:50] Speaker B: Yeah, he was a deputized marshal acting in law, being chased by people that were not respecting the law, that were shooting at him. He turned and shot the guy. Open shut case. He's acquitted. But it took a lot of the heat off the Saints. And Brigham Young's prophecy comes true.
[01:03:07] Speaker A: Cool.
[01:03:08] Speaker B: Kind of a cool little deal there.
Yeah. So just.
It wasn't all peaceful and easy for the Saints even afterwards.
A lot of weird things going on there.
But it does take us maybe to one last comparison between Christ and Joseph Smith. As you look at the Christians in Jerusalem and what happens, they are warned to flee Jerusalem, and as they flee the area, the Romans come through and annihilate it.
Just wipe everything out. Right. And you look over here, the Saints, as they gather and they pull out of this land and move over to the west, and they are saved from the civil war and the violence and the things that tear the nation apart soon thereafter.
[01:04:03] Speaker A: Were the Romans the one that burnt the temple?
[01:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yep.
[01:04:11] Speaker A: Because was it the. It wasn't the Kirtland temple that got burned, was it.
Was it. Was it the Nauvoo Temple?
What was the temple. What was the temple that.
[01:04:23] Speaker B: That I'm trying to remember, because there was one that was destroyed. There's probably the Kirtland Temple that was initially destroyed.
[01:04:33] Speaker A: Some. Some parallels there.
[01:04:35] Speaker B: The temple being destroyed, the temple getting knocked out.
[01:04:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:04:40] Speaker B: They had to abandon the temple, too.
[01:04:42] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:04:44] Speaker B: Awesome stuff. One. One. One last story.
[01:04:47] Speaker A: Okay. One last story, but we're.
[01:04:48] Speaker B: We're. We're out of time. This. This one, as you're talking about doing this for. For saving other people, talk about Christ, right?
[01:04:57] Speaker A: He.
[01:05:00] Speaker B: He could have saved himself, but he went through this to save us.
And one story that breaks my heart about Joseph Smith is when they cross the river coming out of Nauvoo, they get together, and he's there with Hyrum, and he says, I got it.
He says, they're after me. They're after Hyrum.
We can head west to the Rocky Mountains and the Saints can come and join us. And I promise that if we leave, they will leave you alone. Everyone will be fine. But you can come back and join us in the west in the Rocky Mountains and bring everybody safely there and create our Zion there. He says, I've got it. This is the solution.
And as they went back and carried his word to Nauvoo, there's a lot of people that said, what kind of shepherd is this? That when the wolves enter the flock, the shepherd leaves and leaves the sheep to be destroyed.
And again, you have this Christ comparison of the sheep and the good shepherd.
And when the word gets back to Joseph Smith, he says, if my life is of no value to my friends, then it is of none to myself.
And he goes and Turns himself in, who, like a lamb to the slaughter, is headed to die. And Hyrum Smith, before he goes, opens the Book of Mormon to the story where it says, mormon Moroni praying about the Gentiles in the last days and pleading with God that he would bless them with charity.
And the Lord says, if they don't have charity, it doesn't matter to you.
It's kind of a sad scripture.
He's begging, may they have charity, May they have this love.
And Hyrum reads this and marks the page before he heads into the jail.
And as they're sitting in that prison that night, when Dan Jones is laying on Joseph Smith's arm as a pillow, and they're talking Joseph and Hyrum, and they are talking about how they are going to die and what death is going to be like.
And Dan starts to talk, well, am I ready for death, or what's this going to be like for me? And Joseph stops him and says, you are not going to die. You will live to fill your mission in wells, and that prophecy is fulfilled. But he was like the Savior. He was a shepherd.
He was a good shepherd, and he cared more about his people than his own life. Ultimately, even as the Savior did, he wasn't the Savior. He didn't die for our sins.
But I see so much beauty and significance looking at his life and what he did and how he lived it, and comparing the historical accounts to that of the Savior himself as he established his church originally here on the earth when he was here.
[01:08:02] Speaker A: Amen, my man.
[01:08:04] Speaker B: Thanks, Nate, for.
[01:08:05] Speaker A: It's great stuff today, hanging with me. I love doing it. That was great, great stuff today.
All right. We already kind of talked about what the next few weeks look like, so let's wrap it up until next week.
[01:08:16] Speaker B: See ya.
[01:08:26] Speaker A: Sam.
