153: Prophetic Infallibility, Pt. 1 – “Follow the Prophet”

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon polygamy. I am looking forward to sharing this episode on the history and development of the phrase follow the prophet, and how that has come to be used so centrally in the church. I’ll also be sharing another document that I think is extremely important, and looking into it has taught me much about the teachings and The character of Joseph Smith, especially in regard to these ideas. This is actually the first episode I will be doing in what has now become a series on our complicated relationship with the idea of prophetic infallibility. I hope you will enjoy this research and this topic as much as I have. I have found it to be extremely fascinating. Again, thank you so much to the Those who help keep this podcast going and help us accomplish the many things we are trying to do with your donations. I so appreciate it. Anybody else who feels like they can do that, it would, it would be deeply appreciated. Also, please go ahead and share and like and subscribe. I usually don’t say those things, but it is very helpful. So with no more being said, let’s take a deep dive into the murky waters of prophetic infallibility. I had actually intended to do one single episode on the topic of prophetic infallibility and loyal dissent, which I think is such a fascinating and important topic. But as so often seems to be the case, as I dug in and started doing the research, it just expanded and expanded. It went so many different directions. So it ended up turning into a bit of a series. And I hope that you will be excited about having, um, episodes on that topic come out. Dispersed with other topics over the next several weeks. I think the information is very important, very relevant, and fascinating. So I think it warrants that much time spent on it. I actually wasn’t planning to do a topic, I, I mean, an episode specifically on Follow the Prophet until I saw this, that, um, this is the primary manual for, um, this year, and I want to specifically show you that. This month, Follow the Prophet. Prophet is one of the songs that the primary children are supposed to learn. That means they’ll be singing it all year, and it will be included in the primary program. So I was excited to see, I was happy and thankful to see this because it gave me an opportunity to talk to my children and remind them of the way in our family, we sing this song, which is, Follow the Savior, he is the way. So I, I feel like that gives them just a little bit different focus than Than this song, which is a hard one for me. And so, because this was in the, um, primary manual for this month, I thought it would be interesting to try to trace out the history and development of this phrase, to try to understand where it came from and how it became so deeply embedded in the cultural context of the church today. And so, since I was already working on these topics, I decided to Add this one to it. So, but I’ll actually only be spending the beginning of this episode on the history of the phrase follow the prophet, because then I want to talk about a source that I have also dug into along these lines that, that, um, contributes to these ideas that has been such an interesting and worthwhile investigation. I think you are really going to like the information that I’ve That I’ll be sharing. I’ve been very thankful that I studied it because among many other things, as I dove into the different applications of this, it has given me so much more understanding of Joseph Smith in a different way and just more admiration for him.

[00:03:46] I, I, people accuse me of just wanting to have him on a pedestal. That actually isn’t the case. I had pretty hard feelings toward him, but the more I study him, The more impressed I am with him, and that this episode will contribute to that. In tracing the development of this, um, of this phrase, follow the prophet, I, I thought it might be useful in this episode to kind of show you some of the research I’ve done or how I’ve done it, just on this topic specifically that I don’t think there’s, for me, there’s not like a pattern that I always do, but people have often asked how I do my research. I thought on this topic, I’ll just kind of walk you through some of it and show you. So first, I started with a Google search or whichever search tool you like. I, um, of the Joseph Smith Papers to see if it shows up. And there are two different ways that I have to search the Joseph Smith Papers, and I have found that it’s important to do both, because I tend to get different hits with each one. I’m not sure why. So, um, first, I do, um, I just Type into a search bar, Josephsmith Papers.org and then put a quotation marks. Follow the profit. We’ll bring up that exact phrase. And for that, I got 0 hits. And I went ahead and did it this other way, and I’ll show you this. This is the Joseph Smith Papers website. Let me see if I can blow it up just a little bit, and you can do the same thing, search follow the prophet in parentheses, search, and Again, zero results for follow the prophet, which I think is interesting. And of course, nothing can be definitive because we don’t have everything that was ever said or written or done in Joseph Smith’s day. But I think this is definitive evidence. I mean, this is conclusive to say that there appears to be no evidence that this phrase follow the prophet was ever used. By Joseph Smith or during his lifetime. So that’s the first important thing to know is to rule out that this in any way ever came from Joseph Smith. And then the next place I think that it’s useful to go is the Journal of Discourses. So this is my favorite site to search the Journal of Discourses. It’s, it’s, um, one of the topics that I will be doing is about our complicated history. With our past, specifically looking at the Journal of Discourses, because one thing I find interesting is that the, the source, the websites or sources that make the Journal of Discourses the most accessible tend not to be produced by the church, but actually tend to be produced by people who are critical of the church. This one specifically is the Mormon Research Ministry that put together this website, and it is For me, the, um, most usable and, um, um, source for the Journal of Discourses, I have found it to be extremely accurate as I have double checked with other other things. So, anyway, so we can go to this. I will have these links below. And,

[00:06:31] um, so if anyone wants to search these things and do the same thing, you can see that I’ve already searched it several times. We can search, Follow the prophet for the entire Journal of Discourses. And you see no results found for Follow the Prophet in the Journal of Discourses. It does give us other ones, other, um, hits that just have one of those words, like a prophet or follow, which of course are found in the Journal of Discourses. But I think that right there is a pretty good indication that the phrase follow the prophet was not part of the church culture. In during the life of Joseph Smith, or even in early Utah, in early Mormonism. And I also did, I won’t take the time to show you here, but I also searched the complete discourses of Brigham Young, all five volumes for this phrase, and also it never showed, it, it, it, it was never used by Brigham Young or by anybody else. Now, I want to clarify, I am definitely not saying. That strict obedience to church leaders was not taught early on in the church, because it absolutely was, specifically, particularly in Utah under Brigham Young. In Utah, the women were taught to follow their priesthood head, meaning their husband, as if he was God, um, because they were taught that he basically was their God, right? That he was the one who would save them. No woman could be. Redeemed or exalted without her husband, and men were supposed to follow their priesthood head, ultimately meaning Brigham Young, or, um, you know, whatever leader it was, that was ahead of them, but they were ultimately supposed to look to Brigham Young as if he was God, right? And so, So these ideas were definitely taught, but not in that terminology. And, um, and that, it’s interesting to see how certain catchphrases have grown up. I do want to point out that even if the phrase follow the prophet had been used during the early church in the Journal of Discourses, it really wouldn’t mean what it means to us today because in the Journal of Discourses, When they talked about the prophet, they almost exclusively were talking about the Prophet Joseph, the Prophet Joseph Smith, right? In fact, um, while follow of the Prophet didn’t show up, just to give a demonstration of this, I went ahead and did a few other searches on the Journal of Discourses site. And, and that was fascinating to kind of verify that this is indeed the case, that the prophet that they were referring to when they referred to the prophet in the early church. Was Joseph Smith. So if you search the Prophet Joseph, you get over 230 results on the Journal of Discourses. It’s actually many, many more than that, but it consolidates them into about 24 pages of hits for the term, the Prophet Joseph. And if you, and I included a couple of different variations like, um, Joseph Smith, the Prophet or Joseph the Prophet, and that brought It to well over 300 hits, if we add those together. And so out of curiosity,

[00:09:23] I went and did the same thing for the Prophet Brigham, or Brigham the Prophet, or Brigham Young, the Prophet to see, um, you know, and all of the other variations to try to compare. And there really were only a tiny handful of results. I think there were a total of about 6 of 6 results for anything along the lines of the Prophet Brigham. And that was interesting. I want to share the first, there were only, I think, 3 that were said during Brigham’s lifetime, and 2 of them were both from Hebrew C. Kimball. It was really fun to see him try to sort of float this idea of the Prophet Brigham, at least that’s how I interpreted it. One of them was in July of 1857, and one was in August of 1857, when the church was still in the grips of the Mormon Reformation. In July, um, um, Hebrewy. Kimball referenced the Prophet Joseph several times earlier in the talk. But later in the talk, after making some rather irreverent mocking comments about the, about their enemies, he said, It is not only me, but the Prophet Brigham talks just so. I suppose you will think, what a monstrous fellow he is. So that was an interesting use of it. That’s the first time I see the Prophet Brigham being used. And then just A few weeks later in August, he said it again. And again, he first talked several times about the Prophet Joseph. Then seemingly trying to expand the title to fit, he went on to say, How shall we manifest our faith by our works? I will ask those of you who have been here for, 7, and 8 years past, if they have proved their work if they have proved by their works their faith in the words of the Prophet Brigham. And so those are the two cases, but clearly it didn’t seem to catch on because It didn’t happen anymore. I think there’s one more reference at some point in the 1860s, somebody saying it. But all of the rest of them, the other few were all after Brigham’s death. And I wonder if maybe part of the reason that it didn’t catch on is because the very same month, Heber said, Brigham Young, said that about Brigham Young. Brigham Young himself said, I don’t profess to be such a prophet as were Joseph Smith and Daniel, but I am a Yankee guesser. I think it’s so interesting. That that quote comes right in between um Here’s two attempts to call him Brigham, Brigham the prophet. So I think that does give us very clear evidence of who they were referring to when they said the prophet, so that even if they had said, follow the prophet, it would have been referring, most likely to Joseph Smith. So then there’s another source, because we have kind of a challenge because the Journal of Discourses ends, I want to say, in the 1880s, I think, generally. And then We have a time that that the, um, LDS.org doesn’t include conference talks until beginning in 181971. If I get any of my centuries wrong, please forgive me. I can’t get my brain to remember if I’m in the 1800s, the 1900s, or the 2000s, right? So just please know what I, what I’m trying to say if I say something wrong. But anyway, um, this, this website right here that I want to show you is extremely useful.

[00:12:24] There are other websites that are similar, but this Is LDS-gen-conference.org. And it is a really useful way to search all general conferences from, um, 1851 on up until, it says it goes up right now until October 2024. So it is the most recent conference we have. I really like this website. I’m not certain that it’s 100% accurate, but it looks to be pretty good as I’ve verified things. I think it might miss some sources on occasion. But, um, but it’s a very useful tool to use. So you can see in this one, you don’t use quotation marks. So you search, follow the prophet, and then it will show you how often it was used throughout the decades. Again, I hope that you’re able to see this, but you can see that it was not used at all in the 1850s, 1860s, 1870s. Then it was used once in the 1880s and once in the 191890s in general conference. Those were not included in the Journal of Discourses. And then we go all the way through. Up until it started, it showed up again in the 1840s. I found it very interesting to go through these early uses of it to try to understand if it has any similarity to how we use it today. So, um, so I’ll do that really quickly. So the one in the 1880s was actually by Orson F. Whitney, who some of you will remember, he was the grandson of Newell K. Whitney and Here C. Kimball, and he wrote several of their biographies and added quite a bit to the early church narrative and the polygamy narrative. He’s the one that I think added. Well, was one of the sources where um the sword, the angel’s sword became flaming in Orson F. Whitney’s book. And so, um, he was speaking in a very literal sense when he used the term following the prophet, follow the prophet. He was speaking literally of physically following Joseph and the church and moving to different locations. This is what he said. The command to gather to Kirtland and consecrate of their means to build the Lord’s house was too much for some. The command to gather to Missouri was another test, and many remained in Kirtland, lacking faith to follow the Prophet and the Church of God and to the land of Zion. So you can again see how it was used in a very specific way. I should probably show you this, that this is how you can get, um, the information. If you click on the decade that it tells you, it will give you the context of the talk so you can get the beginning of the quote right there of being used, and then you can click a. Again on overview. Oh, I thought, I thought, oh, yeah, if you, if you click here, it will give you a little bit more of the talk, and you can find out where it’s used, so you can go look that talk up. So this is actually really useful to be able to find out how it was used as well. I should have showed you that before. So that was the one from the 1880s, and then the one from the 1890s is actually Heber J Grant. And he also is speaking of physically moving locations, but this time he is using it about Brigham Young. He said, I know that though, I know that those that lost the Spirit of God, that failed to follow the Prophet Brigham Young have come to not. So he’s talking about anyone who didn’t come to Utah, right? And that is one of the times that, that we get a reference to the Prophet Brigham,

[00:15:32] which didn’t show up there, this one didn’t show up in the Journal of Discourses. So, um, both of those, as I said, were speaking of physically following, and they were they were said decades after the prophet they were speaking about had already died. So those are the first two early uses, and then I showed you it doesn’t show up again until the 1840s. So we’ll go through those really quickly. President Kimball in 1944, well, I guess he would have been Elder Kimball, right? He said, Let us follow the prophet Joshua. So he again is talking about a script he’s using it to talk about the scriptures. He goes on to say, it is one of my favorite passages of Scripture. Choose you this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. That was in 1844, and I mean, 19. If I said 18, I mean 19. And then John H. Anderson in 1946. And this was an interesting one because he was not a general. authority that I can find anywhere. So it was interesting to try to track him down. If anyone has different information, let me know. But this is what he said. There were those who were willing to follow the Prophet Joseph, who were not willing to follow the Prophet Brigham Young. One man said of the Prophet Joseph, I could follow that man to the ends of the world, but I cannot follow Brigham Young. So that’s how he used it about both men, right? And so, um, and actually those were the only 2 in the 1940s. Then we go to the 1950s, and there’s a use by Stephen L. Richards in 1951. That’s fun because I have a nephew named Stephen L. Richards. And, um, he said this about his grandfather, Willard Richards. He said that Willard Richards was discouraged by his superiors to follow the prophet to Carthage jail. So again, a very specific application of physically following in a location. So the phrase itself does seem to have become more common in the 60s, where we have, I believe it’s um 5 uses of it in the 60s, but interestingly, 4 out of 5 of those are still like the uses in the 40s and earlier, where they are talking about a specific, a specific scripture story or some very specific direction and application. But one of them in the 1960s, specifically 1966, is by N Eldon Tanner, is where we get the first use of the term follow the prophet in a way that we would recognize. So N Eldon Tanner in 1966 said, when we begin to choose which of the commandments we will keep and follow, we are taking the law of the Lord into our own hands and become Our own prophets. And believe me, we will be led astray because we are false prophets to ourselves when we do not follow the prophet of God. No, we should never discriminate between the commandments as to those we should and should not keep. Now, that is a very interesting and important development, because that, as I said, is a completely new use of this phrase than we have ever seen before in the history of the church. The source that I’m Going to go over, um, that I think is so interesting fits before that time. So it seems to have really shifted the thinking in some important ways on these ideas and on this topic. And then things start really taking off more in the 70s with 11 uses in the 1970s. I’ll go over just a couple of those

[00:18:45] in, in 1973, and Eldon Tanner, again, he was the one who, who used it this way the first time. So he It really seems that he took this message to heart and wanted to promote it. He said, May we follow the prophet of God who has been chosen and through whom the Lord speaks. And then also in, in 1973, Harold B. Lee said, Well, this is actually different wording, but the same concept. He didn’t say, follow the prophet. He said, follow the leadership of the church. He said, Every Latter-day saint who is keeping the commandments is following the leadership of the church. By that same token, it You find those who are not willing to follow the leadership of the church, you may be sure it is a certainty that they are not keeping the commandments of God 100%. Uh, it’s really, uh, I’m really uncomfortable reading these teachings because I know that there are people who agree with them. And, um, and so I don’t want people to just listen to these teachings and say, see, and then tune out from there because you need to hear the rest of the message to see kind of where these ideas started to really come from. And what church presidents have said about them at, um, at different times. Also, it’s really challenging because, like, in 2020, right, with the flu, and, and, um, we were told to be good global citizens and to, you know, protect society, do our part by getting a shot. And, um, It is so painful to me to think, to think of the division that occurred at that time, that there was the judgment of who is righteous and who is not righteous based on whether they followed the prophet’s counsel in that regard. There are so many other examples that we could go over, but I think we need to not just take this idea and embed it as that’s why we’re going into this series. So we can really critically examine these ideas, because the fact is, many things have been said on both sides of this topic, and it seems that we neglect. The side that opposes this topic too often. So that’s, that’s what I’m hoping to accomplish in this series is bring a little more balance, bring balance to the force, bring balance to follow the prophet. So, um, then let’s go forward. In, um, 1978, we have two more uses. Hartman Rector Jr. said, I bear witness that if we follow the prophet, we will have blessings and numbered. So you can see now is when it starts to really be used. Um, William R. Bradford, he must have been talking. About an area that he was serving in, he said,

[00:21:05] the missionaries in Chile love to follow the prophet. And then the next year, 1976, Rex De Pinnegersi said, We must follow the prophet’s lead. And then Von J Featherstone, that same year, speaking of food storage, he gave a big talk on food storage, he said, Follow the prophet. He has counseled us to plant a garden and fruit trees. So we could say that are people who, for example, don’t take, you know, don’t know how to find time or in Interest to plant a garden and fruit trees, are they not righteous 100%? Are they not following the commandments? My dear friend, who is just the salt of the earth, has terrible hay fever, and they live in an area where she can barely stand to be outside. So is she not righteous because she has never succeeded in having a garden, even though she has wanted to? Anyway, there are so many examples. But also in 1976, Lauren C. Dunn said, the only thing left to be done is to follow the prophet after he’s given a series of how we accomplish righteousness and exaltation. Then Elaine A. Cannon, I’m glad to have a woman on the list, um, included in general conference. In, um, 1978, she was speaking of the female general leaders and the wives of the general authorities, so kind of the, um, you know, the important women of the church who were sitting on the stand with her, and she described them as this distinguished group of of women whom we all would do well to emulate. Among her praises of them, she included, they follow the prophet implicitly. And so, um, let’s see. Oh, yeah, and then going forward, for some reason, at least on this website, it seems to have become less common in the 80s, with only 4 uses recorded on this website from General Conference in the 1980s. But there are some important developments at this time that we’re going to talk about. So first, let me share just a couple of the relevant sources from the 1980s. Lawrence C. Dunn again in 1983, um, he talked about when he and his wife were serving as mission presidents. And President Kimball told them to lengthen their strides, so they worked harder and had more success. And he said, I don’t think the progress was so much because of us, but because of our desire to follow the prophet. And then we have another woman, Barbara W. Winder, in 1985. She told of a young couple who, quote, determined that they would follow the prophet’s advice and have a garden. So we’ll remember President Kimball really taught the people to have a garden, which is advice I take very seriously. I really feel strongly about trying to learn to garden. I spent a lot of time on it. Then we have Micheline Grassley, the primary president, speaking of the Young Women and Relief Society presidents. She said, they follow the Savior and they followed the prophet. And by doing so, they have learned what God’s plan is for them. And then is where we have the important development that we need to talk about that really helps us understand how we got the follow the prophet mantra

[00:23:57] in the church. Often I’m asked to speak to groups about how I wrote the song Follow the Prophet. This is an abbreviated version of what I tell them. Back in 1987, I got a call from the Church Music Committee, and they said we’re putting together a primary songbook, a new one. We’d like to have you write a song for it and we want 3 things. We want, we want it to be about the Old Testament prophets. We want it to sound like a Jewish folk song. And we want it to be a happy song, so the children will enjoy singing it. That is so interesting to me, to see what it was that they asked for compared to what they got when he wrote the song, right? Because the, like, it was kind of an innocent request, right? Of course, it would be so fun to have a Jewish folk song teaching about the Old Testament prophets that the children would love to sing. That’s what they asked for. And he goes on to tell his story of, um, the struggles he was Facing in his life, and the, um, idea he had for the song that, again, was referring to a physical story of someone physically having the, trying to have the strength to keep going and watching the prophet ahead of them and deciding to follow the prophet, right? And so he turned it into this song that, that really changed a lot of the zeitgeist of the church. So the song was added to the new Primary children’s songbook in, um, I think they requested it in 1987, and this was published in 1989 with the song, Follow the Prophet, and things have developed from there. It’s fascinating to see how this was almost an accidental progression. I don’t think anyone intended for this to become such a central focus of the church where we hear. Follow the prophet so often now. But that really is what’s happened in large part because of that simple request and how it was interpreted, and the very catchy song that became part of the church culture. And from that point on, it really was just off to the races. We get immediately, and I think that this was 1989, we get Glenn L. Pace, Follow the Prophet. And then we get another talk the following year, Follow the prophet, and another one, follow the prophets, and it now is to where if you search LDS.org for that phrase, there are so many hits, I couldn’t possibly even begin. To go all of, uh, to go over even a small fraction of them, it really has become a ubiquitous part of the church culture today, this phrase of follow the prophet. And while I can’t go into many things, I just want to show two quick examples that have been Um, interesting to see how far this phrase and this idea has been taken. So I’ll first share this video clip that some of you will remember. So are you telling us that it’s important to follow the prophet?

[00:27:09] Why? Um, it’s important to follow the prophet because if we didn’t follow the prophet, we could start to like stray away from the church and not do as many things to like read the scriptures every day. If we stopped reading the scriptures, we would stop really thinking about the church and uh any other time about the church, and it would just become kind of like annoying to go to the church and you might eventually even stop. That wouldn’t be good, would it? It’s so interesting. I, I, this poor little girl that’s being used in this video and these children growing up, we can just see what they’re being taught and how they’re taught to conflate all of these ideas. The only reason anyone can do anything good is because they follow the prophet, right? It’s just an interesting perspective that didn’t always exist in our church. Any other thoughts? Why do you follow the prophet? Why is that important? Yes, Nathan. Um, so it’s important because you can follow him, and if you follow him, you can like live in the celestial kingdom and you’ll be happy with your families and you’ll be super happy and you can live forever. President Nelson, would you ever lead anyone astray? Oh no, that’s not what prophets do, is it? And it goes on from there. And one of the things I find challenging about this clip, and, and interesting about this phrase, if you search the scriptures for the phrase, follow the prophet, it does not show up. But there is someone we are often told to follow, and it is the savior. And it’s been a little interesting to see how the focus of how we are saved, how we do good, how we, you know, can have inspir. and have the blessings of the gospel seems to be, have been shifted off of the savior too much, in my opinion, and onto the prophet. And I, I don’t think that that’s necessarily been intentional. It’s just kind of grown up in this culture. And, and, you know, I, I think people producing this media aren’t intending to have it read this way. It just kind of happens when we’re, when we’re trying to do good things, but not a theme. Thinking about it in careful ways, I think. And so I do find this to be, to be quite interesting and potentially quite troubling. But let me go ahead and share. I, um, I do still like the LDS scripture search tool, although it’s not as good as it used to be, but it did bring up several examples of, of what we get when we search, follow, I’m trying to blow the screen up again to show you. And Without even going to the guides, we can just look. Second Nephi 31, it says, Men must follow Christ, be baptized, receive the Holy Ghost,

[00:29:56] and endured to the end to be saved. Then we go on Matthew 4, and he said, sayeth unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Um, Joseph Smith, Matthew 16 is what it brings up, and it says, what it brings up next, and it says, and Take up his cross and follow me. And I’m going on, it just goes on and on. Let him deny. If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Luke 18 is the story of the rich young man, and it says, so all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come follow me. And it goes on and on and on from there. And then, of course, we can refer back to the story of Le Hai’s dream, right? Where he followed a man in white, and he followed him and followed him and followed him until he realized he was in a barren wasteland, and there was nothing he could do but to fall down and plead to the Lord to save him from From having gotten nowhere by following another man. And that’s when the, the vision opened with a straight and narrow path and the iron rod leading to the tree of life, right? The message does seem to be quite strong of who we actually are to follow, and it’s very explicit and very clear. So I think in our investigations, we absolutely need to take that into consideration as we are trying to understand the development of this phrase and how It’s been used and how it’s being used. So, I want to play one more example that I just think, um, quite well demonstrates the extent to which this teaching has been taken in our church. So let me go ahead and add this to the screen. Near the end of the lunch, I was surprised to hear a loud crunching noise. And when I looked up, I saw that President Nelson had stood his plastic water bottle straight up, and then flattened it. And replace the lid. President Dallen H. Oaks then asked the question I wanted to ask. President Nelson, why did you flatten your plastic water bottle? He replied, it makes it easier for those who are handling recyclable materials because it doesn’t take up as much space in the recycling container. While pondering that response, I heard the same crunching sound again. And I looked to my right and President Oakes had flattened his plastic water bottle just like President Nelson. And then I heard some noise to my left, and President Eyring was flattening his plastic water bottle, although he had adopted a different strategy by doing it while it was horizontal, which took more effort than with the bottle straight up and noticing this, President Nelson kindly showed him the bottle straight up technique to more easily flatten the bottle. At that point, I leaned over to President Oakes and I asked, is flattening your plastic water bottle a new recycling requirement of the cafeteria? And President Oakes responded with a smile on his face. Well, Alan, you need to follow the prophet. Now, I’m confident that President Nelson was not declaring some new recycling-based doctrine in the cafeteria that day. But we can learn from the prompt response of President Oakes and President Eyring to President Nelson’s example. And President Nelson’s attentiveness to help teach those involved a better way. I think that is so interesting to see how it is applied that, um, the culture is

[00:33:39] that no matter what it is, we have to be exactly like the leader, right? Follow, follow the leader to that extent is where this seems to have gone, at least in some cases. And so, again, there are so many more things that we could talk about in the, um, in regards to the idea of follow the prophet. I did think it was interesting to chase, to trace the history. That’s really what the focus was. But now I want to talk about something that is not related to Follow the Prophet. I’ll let people do their their own, um, investigation if they want to learn more about how this is used today, because it really is everywhere. If you search on LDS.org, it’s just the, um, the talks, the lessons, the manuals, the activities, the media, the, um, videos that have been made about it, and On and on and on. It’s just everywhere, everywhere in the church culture today. And so that, that’s kind of, I think it really did explode from this point going forward until it’s become more and more and more embedded. And I’m curious to see if this is a permanent state of affairs or if it’s going to start, you know, if it’s kind of something that will gradually, um, die back a little bit, which I think wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world because of the reasons that I’ve talked about. But now I want to talk about something that, um, seems to be, well, it doesn’t use the phrase follow the prophet, it seems to be very important in how these ideas did continue to be developed through the 20th century. This is a magazine called The Improvement Era, which was the official magazine of the church for quite a while. It wasn’t, it did turn into, well, you know, things change over time, and the new era was developed out of this as a youth magazine. This wasn’t a youth magazine. This was for the church. And it is so interesting. This, this is the June 1945 edition. It has Heber J. Grant on the cover because he had just passed away. The month before. But I wanted to just, it’s fun to look into history and just get a taste of how different things were. It is so interesting to look through this and see how on every single page, there are all of these ads, just like a modern magazine. It goes to this one section that doesn’t have ads, but then if we go to the end, you can see, well, not even the end, there’s just one small section that doesn’t. But then on every single Page, interspersed with words of the prophet, like, here’s a tribute and,

[00:36:00] um, words by Heber J. Grant, surrounded by all of these advertisements. It also was during World War II, and so we get a lot of the, um, feeling of the culture and the things going on at that time in not just the world, but in Utah and the church. Isn’t that so interesting? So this is a fun source to look at, but this The specific reason I’m looking at it isn’t because of just the culture. It is because of this, this important page that is in this magazine. This lesson is called Word Teaching. And I’ll go ahead and zoom in on it. Um, you can see that this is the word teaching message for June 1945 that was supposed to be taught in every word, as you can see there. And I’m, I want to zoom in on it and Read through it so that, because I, I do think it’s very helpful to help us see the development of these ideas. You’ll recall that this phrase follow the prophet was used once or twice in the 40s, not in a way that we would recognize, but a little while after this message, as the culture grew up around it, as this was taught, we start to see by specifically in in Eldon Tanner, that idea. Centrally taught of follow the prophet. So even though this doesn’t have the exact language, I have to think that in some ways, it, the ideas taught in this manual sort of played in. But again, as I’m going through this, please know that you have got to hear the rest of the story, because I know there are people in the church today who still, in my opinion, unfortunately agree with the ideas in this word teaching lesson. And they really need to hear what the president of the church said about it, and then do a, uh, we’re going to look into a comparison to look at the quote that it claims that, um, Joseph Smith said, and to learn what we can about that. So please, as I’m going through this manual, don’t say, See, I told you so, understand that there is more to be understood about it. So, here we go. Let’s go ahead and read through it. It starts by saying that, explaining that no member is forced. To raise their hand to sustain their leaders, and then it goes on to make this claim. It says, however, there is in the there is the principle of honor involved in the member’s choice. When a person raises his hand to sustain church leaders as prophets, seers, and revelators, it is the same as a promise and a covenant to follow their leadership and to abide by their counsel as the living oracles of God. Consequently, any subsequent act or word of mouth, which is at variance with the will of the Lord as taught by the leaders of the church, places the sincerity of such person in serious doubt. One could scarcely have claim upon complete integrity if he raises his hand to sustain the authorities of the church, and then proceeds and then proceeds in opposition to their counsel. So I want to pause and talk. About this part for a minute. Now, I am going to share some of my thoughts on this source, but please know, my thoughts actually aren’t that important. What’s much more important are the thoughts of the two men we’re going to talk about after we finish reading this source. That’s what you really have to listen for.

[00:39:17] But I do just have to say, I so strongly disagree with what this says here. I think it is a terrible idea. The idea that you only get to vote once, right? And if You sustain someone, you therefore forfeit the right to have any thoughts or opinions or ideas about what they, what, what is being done. And I, I want to point out that we sustain everybody in our church. We sustain everybody in every ward calling. So why wouldn’t this hold true for them? If I sustain, I’ve shared before the story about the, um, primary chorister who, who had a hard time with one of my children, and I was just so strongly told that I needed to keep my children home. Because I was their mother, it was my responsibility to protect them. And, um, and so if, since I voted to sustain her, that means I can’t disagree with the way she’s treating one of my children, right? And I, I handled that well. I didn’t complain to anybody. I just followed what the inspiration to me and kept my children home. The only person I talked to about it was the primary president. Who I explained what I was doing and why, right? And just so that she wouldn’t wonder why my children weren’t there. But this idea that everybody in any calling that we ever sustained, therefore, we lose any ability to have any thoughts or opinions or to give any feedback, does not hold up to anything I can read anywhere in the church or any logic. I can compare it to, like, I sustain my husband, right? I completely, massively honor and appreciate him. That doesn’t mean that I always agree with him or that I need to or should forfeit my right to speak up when I disagree. I, he sustains me, and the same goes. I would not, I don’t think either of us would want to be in a marriage where one of us was taught to just keep sweet and never say anything, right? That doesn’t help you be your best when people don’t give you. feedback. And so for for every reason, this just does not hold up the idea that if someone is sustained, therefore they become completely beyond reproach. They could become completely infallible, all knowing, incorruptible, and that no one could ever have any feedback to give them just does not stand up, and I find it to be Just a a very problematic idea that I hope that we don’t try to hold to. And again, I will ask, why is it different for the general leaders of the church than for our local leaders or just our fellows who we sustain, those of us who are in calling, we’re all in callings, we’re all sustained in the church, right? Where’s the line where this begins to apply, where we’re not allowed to think about what somebody’s Say, does, or teaches. Of course, we should try to support everybody in their callings and their responsibilities. And in general, we should just treat each other with appreciation, gratitude for the service and the work and the good that they do. We should, as a rule, be careful and slow to find fault or criticize, right? That’s just a good way to be a Christ-like person, I think. But the idea That we just need to blindly get in line and follow whatever is done by anybody who has been sustained or who we have sustained, or we,

[00:42:20] therefore don’t have integrity. I, uh, I think it’s a harmful idea, especially when we know that there have been and sometimes are people in callings who do actual harm, who sometimes are actually abusive. We have, unfortunately, some Some instances of that happening in our church. And this idea, it should be taught the opposite. It should be, I, we sustain them, and we are going to pray for them, um, try to be peacemakers, not be critics, but also hold people accountable in their callings. People in their callings should be the most accountable to serve the people well. I’m talking more about This one part of this manual than I will about any of the other. But I just want to bring up, again, this great conversation I had with Colleen Rogers, who had an experience with this where she did just follow the counsel of what her leader told her to do in her calling, even though she knew it was wrong. And she, she tells that painful experience of how she’s Suffered as a result of that, knowing she did the wrong thing and feeling like she did not take care of the girls who were in her stewardship because she just followed the counsel of the leader above her instead of following what she knew to be true. And that, that’s not the right way to approach this. So that’s just, I hope anyone who hasn’t watched that episode will go back and watch it. I think it was a wonderful one. And I think these are the things we need to keep in mind as we are. When anybody would want to pass on these ideas, they need to really think about the implications. We’ll go on to read more of this lesson. It continues and says, Any latter-day saint who denounces or opposes, whether actively or Or otherwise. And I had to really wonder what that means. What does it mean, like, to, to denounce or oppose actively or otherwise. So does that mean if you just simply disagree with it and you don’t even say anything about it? Right? Anyone who Who even just disagrees or thinks that something isn’t quite right. Any plan or doctrine advocated by the prophets and revelators is of the church is cultivating the spirit of apostasy. One cannot speak evil of the Lord’s anointed and retain. the Holy Spirit in his heart. I again, I have to just talk about these ideas a little bit because again, it’s such there it’s so highly problematic. It really is sloppy thinking that we need to be careful of, to conflate things like this does, to conflate. The the idea that disagreeing with something that somebody in the church does, some leader or somebody else, either something they do or something they say, to claim that that is the same as evil speaking of the Lord’s Anointed, is really a stretch that would need to be backed up much better than it is, cause I don’t see the connection, or at least, you cannot say that those are equivalent. But, um, I do want to say that the evil speaking of the Lord’s Anointed, I had wanted to go into that in this episode as well, but it got to be too much. So that’s how these ideas keep expanding. But that is another very important phrase that has an, an interesting story to talk about and a lot of conversation to be had. So that’s something else we will be talking about in this series. But again, the idea that if we just Agree with something that is said or done

[00:45:42] by a church leader means that we cannot feel the spirit. That is also patently false. There are way too many examples to go into to prove this. I’ll just give a couple. When Brigham Young and Orson Pratt were disagreeing intensely over Adam God theory, I guess, was it Orson Pratt who was devoid of the spirit, even though subsequent prophets agreed with him. And officially disavowed and condemned the Adam God doctrine that Brigham Young had been so, um, committed to, right? Like, how do we make sense of that? And then I guess Lester E. Bush and Eugene England were devoid of the spirit when they studied the history of the priesthood ban and wrote their remark essays in the 1973 issue of, um, I think it was in the spring issue of the dialogue journal in 1973. I love that issue. I, I will also link that below for anyone who wants to read those articles, which really were Hugely instrumental in the ban finally being lifted just a few years later. We have evidence that President Kimball actually read through those articles, and I love what dialogue wrote in the introduction to that edition. This is what it said. While some may question whether a discussion such as this is appropriate, whether it’s appropriate to study and talk about the history of the racist ban. It goes on to say, Hugh Nibley reminds us that research and thinking are a necessary prelude to spiritual knowledge and confirmation. We are to exercise our own wits to the fullest, so that there can be a place for the fullest discussion and explanation in the light of the scriptures or any other relevant information. I love that. That’s so true. And so, again, we can’t just make these claims that the church leaders, every single one of them is always Right. And anyone who thinks differently is not only wrong, but is on the high road to apostasy, is evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed and is devoid of the Spirit. Right? And so I want to add this next slide, because now, this has gone even farther where the church now admits that the ban was never of God, but was a tragic mistake due to the limited views of some, some leaders of the church who had racist ideas. And so, uh, So again, we would have to say that, um, all of these people who have brought out this history to teach us this are devoid of the spirit because they disagreed with what a president of the church at one time said. It just does not stand up to reason at all. So, let’s go back to the article. It continues and says, it should be remembered that Lucifer has a very cunning way of convincing unsuspecting souls that the general authorities of the church are as likely. To be wrong as they are to be right. Again, terrible, sloppy thinking there to claim that disagreeing with something means that you’re saying that they have nothing of value to offer, right? If I disagree with something specific that a certain leader said or did, that doesn’t mean that I’m saying that we can throw out the leaders of the church. I, like, as a parent, I, I certainly want my children to tell me what they if they disagree with a decision I’m making. But I don’t think that If they do that, it means that they have no respect for my insights or my wisdom or my parenting skills, right? That’s just not, this is, these are, these are real,

[00:49:01] it’s a really problematic article, article with all of the claims it makes. And it helps me understand a little better, getting into the thinking of people who make these claims, cause it seems to be based on a lot of the same kind of sloppy, not careful thinking. It goes on to say, this sort of game is Satan’s favorite pastime. It’s Satan, right? Um, and he He has practiced it on believing souls since Adam. He wins a great victory when he can get members of the church to speak against their leaders and quote, do their own thinking. This is amazing. I would strongly argue that the adversary actually wins a great victory when he can get the people to turn their minds and spirits off and put their entire trust in the arm of flesh, which is exactly what our own scriptures tell us we should not do. I’ll continue on. He specializes in suggesting that our leaders are in error while he plays the blinding rays of apostasy in the eyes of those whom he thus beguiles. This is another just very bad claim. The idea that disagreeing with something in the church is the same as apostasy is a very bad and destructive idea that I hope People will stop making, that people will stop saying that. I, I have so much to say about this, but I don’t want to spend too much time on it. I just want to refer us to President Ogdorf’s plea to the people who, who have struggles and questions. He asks us to doubt our doubts before we doubt our faith, right? He is certainly not saying, if you disagree with something, if there’s something that you struggle with or doubt or that feels wrong to you, therefore, you are in the grips of apostasy. And you need to leave the church, right? That is just a terrible approach. Do we really want to tell people who disagree with the church that that’s what they need to do? They need to leave the church because they don’t have integrity. In fact, I just, I guess I do have a little more to say about this. I’m sorry to spend so much time on it, but I just, this last week, I had some interactions on Facebook with someone who was messaging me, telling me these things, saying, Don’t you need, like, how can you have any integrity claim? to be a member of the church when you disagree with something as central as polygamy. And I was, again, I was like, Are you really wanting to tell me to leave the church? I was shocked when I found out that this kid was a missionary. This was a missionary, and he wasn’t fully on his mission yet. He was in that doing MTC, but it was a missionary, getting ready to go out on a mission, telling me that I need to leave the church. I, and also just so, so unbelievably disrespectful. I I was so disappointed by that and so sad that that is the attitude that kids this young. Have to say to an adult with a family, you need to leave the church, because you have no integrity, especially someone going out on a missionary. We really need to stop this. We need to instead be helping people understand why having differences of opinion, having things that you struggle with or strongly disagree with does not mean that you need to leave the church. I do not think it benefits the church to have anybody who disagrees with anything that has happened at any point. To have them leave. That does not benefit the church. I think that for many people,

[00:52:14] if not most people, leaving the church doesn’t benefit them individually or benefit their family. It really is the church provides so much for us that it’s easy to take for granted if we just leave. So I think that the idea that anyone who disagrees with any of these Difficult issues. Like, we could talk about anyone who’s troubled by the priesthood then or how long it took to end it, or the fact that the church still hasn’t really apologized, or if they struggle with mountain meadow Meadows massacre and with the attempts to cover it up. And again, being so slow to accept any actual responsibility. or apologize, or the people who were deeply upset with the 2015 policy that children of gay parents couldn’t be blessed and couldn’t be baptized in the church. I, I spent so long trying to help people stay in the church throughout the years before that. That was such a hard ordeal and trying to Stay myself and trying to encourage other people to stay. It is painful to me to have people so flippantly, a, a young missionary saying, you need to leave the church with so little understanding of what they are actually saying. This is a terrible claim, and then we can jump forward to 2020, right? If anyone’s troubled by how the church handled that entire situation, do they need to leave the church? And then we could look at if people have troubles with the, the Things that have been, um, exposed about the financial dealings of the church. Do they all need to leave, right? Or can we recognize that leadership is tricky? Things are challenging, right? We, we have a lot to navigate, and God can tell us how to deal with things and where to be and what is in our best interest and best for us and our families. That has been my experience. I’m not just ignoring anything or saying it doesn’t matter. I am saying that God is the one. Who has repeatedly told me to stay in the church, and I have seen the importance of that in my own life and in my family’s life. And I really, really hope that members of the church, leaders of the church, whoever they are, missionaries, anybody, will stop passing along the message that if you disagree with something, that means that you are an apostate. I can we please stop doing that? So, OK, I told you I wouldn’t go off on this mountain. You will, but I guess I am. So let’s go on and just go ahead and finish it. It goes on to say, what cunning. And to think that some of our members are deceived by this trickery, man, I could turn that right around and say the exact thing in reverse. And then it goes on to say this about a quote from Joseph Smith. It says, the following words of the Prophet Joseph Smith should be memorized by every Latter-day saint and repeated often enough to ensure They are never forgotten. And this is the quote of Joseph Smith that it includes. It says, I will give you one of the keys of the mysteries of the kingdom. It is an eternal principle that has existed with God from all eternity. That man who rises up to condemn others, finding fault with the church, saying they are out of the way while he, while he himself is righteous, then know assuredly that that man is on the high road to apostasy. And if he does not repent, he He will apostatize as God lives. OK, this is a quote that we are going to look into in depth.

[00:55:29] It’s very important. But this article just goes on to interpret that quote for us. And in what has become the most infamous part of the entire lesson, it claims to tell us what it means, what Joseph Smith meant by it. It says, when our leaders speak, they think has been done. When they propose a plan, it is God’s plan. When they point the way, there is no other which is safe. When they give direction, it should mark the end of controversy. God works in no other way. To think otherwise without immediate repentance may cost one his faith, may destroy his testimony, and may leave him a stranger to the kingdom of God. OK. That is the lesson that the entire church was taught in June of 1945. I think that is an important thing to pay attention to, to see how this cultural shift really turned into growing into this idea of follow the prophet. I do. I have so much more I would want to say about this, but I do want to say for Anyone who finds themselves liking these ideas or agreeing with the ideas taught in this lesson, I want to go on to this next source that we really need to talk about. These are two amazing letters that are in special connections at the Marriott Library at the University of Utah, and I want to sincerely thank the Marriott Library for, um, sending these. To me, they are wonderful, and they did it very quickly. And so I can, I can show these to you in this episode. This first letter was written November 16, 1945 by President George to President George Albert Smith, the president of the Mormon Church, by Dr. J. Raymond Cope, the minister of the First Unitarian Society in Salt Lake City, Utah. And this is, this letter is so good and worthwhile. I think it is worth reading in whole. He writes, Dear President Smith, it has been one of the great privileges of my life to have lived for the past 4 years in the Salt Lake City and to have become personally acquainted with many of the leaders of the LDS Church. From then, from them, I have learned many things, and the spirit of friendliness, which is found in our relationship is the source of unending delight to me. I love the way he approaches this. This just sounds like such a good guy who I want to always emulate this, this way of approaching something. It is because I have found you and the other leaders so very charitable and sympathetic that I make so bold as to write you this letter. May I first assure you of my goodwill that there is not one note of hostility in attitude. I am confident that you will understand. Why I write, and that we have a common interest in the problem. Last June, there was delivered to my door a short religious editorial prepared by one of your leaders entitled Sustaining the General Authorities of the Church. So note that he thinks it was prepared by one of the leaders. I want to draw your attention to that so you can hear what George Albert Smith says about that. Its message amazed me a great deal, and with the passing of weeks, my disturbance has become my disturbance became very acute. It might have passed, except that several members of your church have come to me to discuss the subject. The most recent was a prominent doctor who, because of this tract,

[00:58:56] he affirms is losing his religious, is losing his religious faith. He is a large man, and I became impressed with his deep sincerity as he broke down and wept like a boy. I am convinced that he is undergoing a very dangerous experience. Boy, so many people can relate to that, right? Having something that troubles you so deeply. Permit me to quote the passages which seem to be brought most in question. He, Lucifer, wins a great victory when, when he can get members of the church to speak against their leaders and to quote, do their own thinking. That’s one, and I don’t think these are the only things that he is saying are problematic. I think he’s just pointing them out as the examples of the most problematic parts. He goes on, When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done. When they propose a plan, it is God’s plan. When they point the way, there is no other way which is safe. When they give direction, it should mark the end of controversy and on. I do not know who is responsible for this statement, but I am sure it is doing inestimable harm to many who have No no other reason to question the integrity of the church leaders. Many people are suffering because of this. My reply to each of those who have spoken to me is, Please do not become disturbed, for this cannot be the position of the true leaders. And from my knowledge of the early writings of your leaders, I must assume this to be non-representative. And I love the work he does here. Several years ago, when I first became acquainted with the LDA. Church, I read extensively in the texts, and there are many passages which may be used to give better expression to the vision and genius of your faith. I cite but one, although there may be many others which are familiar to you, quoting from the discourses of Brigham Young as selected and arranged by John A. Widso in the chapter on the priesthood, I am more afraid that these people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by Him. I am fearful that they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation and weaken that influence they could give their leaders. Did they know for themselves by the revelations of Jesus that they are led in the right way. Let every man and woman know by the whisperings of the Spirit of God to themselves whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates or not. This quotation from Brigham Young is a wonderful passage, and it has been on the basis of such freedom that persons like myself have grown to have a deep feeling of kinship with the LDS Church. It is in keeping with the high traditions of my Unitarian background, that the gains made by my fellow workers are seen as gains for us all. It is a source of regret to all, to all of us when one stone is discovered. To bar the to the way to deeper faith within any soul, with an assurance of my continued goodwill and friendliness, most cordially yours, J. Raymond Cope. Isn’t that an amazing letter? And we actually also have George Albert Smith’s reply. He writes back, My dear Dr. Cope, I have read with interest and deep concern your letter of November 1619. 45, in which you make special comment on, quote, a short religious editorial prepared by one of our leaders entitled Sustaining the General Authorities of the Church. You say that you read the message with amazement and that you have since been disturbed because of its effect upon members of the church. I am gratified with the spirit of friendliness that pervades your letter, and thank you for having taken the time to write to me. The leaflet to You refer and from which you quote in your letter, was not prepared by one of our leaders. So that’s interesting right there. He’s already starts out by disavowing it. However, one or more of them inadvertently permitted the paragraph to pass uncensored. By their doing, not a few members of the church have been upset in their feelings, and general authorities have been embarrassed. I am pleased It is to assure you that you are right in your attitude, that the passage quoted under this is underlined, does not express the true position of the church, even to imply that members of the church are not to do their

[01:03:16] own thinking as grossly to misrepresent the true ideal of the church, which is that every individual must obtain for himself a testimony of the truth of the gospel, must, through the redemption of Jesus Christ, work out his own salvation. And is personally responsible to his Maker for his individual acts. The Lord Himself does not attempt coercion in his desire and effort to give peace and salvation to his children. He gives the principle of life and true and true progress, but leaves every person free to choose or to reject his teachings. This plan the authorities of the church tried to follow. The prophet Joseph Smith. Once said, I want liberty of thinking and believing as I please. I love that he adds other quotes of Joseph Smith here. This liberty, he and his successors in their leadership of the church have granted to every other member thereof. On another occasion, in answer to the question by a by a prominent visitor, how he governed his people, the prophet said, I teach them correct principles, and they govern. Themselves. Again, as recorded in the history of the church, volume 5, page 498, Joseph Smith said further, If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No, I will lift them up and in their own way too. If I cannot persuade them, my way is better, and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way. I cite these few quotations from many that might be given merely to confirm your good and true opinion that the church gives every man his free agency and admonishes him him always to use the reason and good judgment with which God has blessed him. In the advocacy of this principle, leaders of the church not only join congregations in singing, but quote, frequently the following. Know this, that every soul is free to choose his life and what He’ll be, for this eternal truth is given that God will force no man to heaven. Again, I thank you for your manifest friendliness and for your expressed willingness to cooperate in every way to establish goodwill and harmony among the people with whom we are jointly laboring to bring brotherhood and tolerance. Faithfully yours, signed George Albert Smith. OK. Is that not amazing? I love this story. I, I have to, I will link below the dialogue, um, journal where these three were first published. They didn’t do any editorializing. They just published the, um, they printed the lesson in the 18, 1945 word teaching lesson, and then the, the two letters back and. And I will include that below for anyone who wants to look at them further. And I just want to repeat a few of George Albert Smith’s words responding to this article for anybody who may be inclined to like these ideas. And unfortunately, when, like, my experience has been that people who really like these ideas and view the church this way, they don’t, they tend to not only imply that to themselves, but they Use these ideas to try to censor others, to bash other people over the head with them, right? As I have experienced time and time again. So I want to read the the the response of the president of the church, so anybody liking this can take it into consideration. George Albert Smith wrote, The leaflet was not prepared by one of the leaders of the church. It was inadvertently permitted to pass.

[01:06:46] uncensored, and as a result, members of the church were upset in their feelings, and the general authorities were embarrassed. It does not express the true position of the church, and it grossly misrepresents the true ideal of the church. That is amazing. That is a very strong denunciation that George Albert Smith made about this lesson. The problem is, it seems to be that while George Albert Smith disavowed this message so strongly for the good Reverend, I haven’t yet found where he did the same for his own people. And it’s entirely possible that I’ve just missed it. So if anybody finds any sort of a retraction or correction for this, please let me know, cause I would really like to know about that. But from what I’ve seen, um, this was in taught, and it really did seem to become part of the church idea, uh, um, the, the ideas of the church, to at least some extent, because these ideas have continued to persist today. Like, I did hear a seminary teacher say, when the prophet speaks, the thinking has been done, right? And And, and that God tells the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost tells Jesus or God tells Jesus, Jesus tells the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost tells the prophet, and the prophet tells us these ideas that that that this is the exact way things work and that we don’t do our own thinking. I, I, I really think that it is good to pay more attention to what the president of the church said about. This magazine. So that right there could just about put all of this to rest and say, OK, these ideas are not true. They were disavowed disavowed by the president of the church. But we do still have that quote from Joseph Smith to talk about and try to understand, um, whether it supports the ideas that were taught in this lesson, or if it was being misapplied. So digging into the source for this quote has been Complicated and fascinating. The source, the Improvement era lesson cites is the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, but that’s not very helpful because those, that wasn’t an original source, those were all taken from other sources. So we can go ahead and look at what the church cites, what source it cites when it uses this quote, as it did in this lesson, beware the bitter fruits of apostasy, and if you’ll Let me scroll down. I went a little too far right here on this section of teachings of Joseph Smith losing confidence in Church leaders is where it uses this quote. You can read it right here. And if we look at the citation, it takes us to the history of the church, which also is not terribly helpful because that, again, is not an original source, but it cites Wilfred Woodruff and Willard Richards, which is very interesting and something we are definitely going to need to talk about. So I’ll share with you what I was able to find as the original sources for this talk. We actually have two sources where this talk was recorded. The first is Joseph Smith’s journal. This talk is recorded July 2, 1839, when there was this meeting, and this is Joseph Smith’s journal, kept at this time by James Mulholland,

[01:09:55] and he kept a version of this talk. And then we actually have two versions from Willard Richards. This first one is Willard Richards’s diary, where he wrote notes of this talk, and then he kept a second book called The Book of Revelations, where he also made a version of this talk. So this is very interesting. We have a lot to talk about with this. First, I’ll show the details of the meeting from the two journals that we have. Both Joseph’s and Wilford’s journals record that this meeting on July 2, 1830. 9 was a meeting with several of the 12 and at least 170 who were being sent abroad on missions and with some of their wives and the first presidency. The first presidency blessed the new, the two newly called apostles, Wilfred Woodruff and George A. Smith, who were, who were replacing some of the four apostles who had been excommunicated, including Thomas B. Marsh, and one apostle who had been killed. Both journalists say that Joseph blessed both the departing missionaries and their Wives, who they were leaving behind. Woodruff wrote, he blessed them that if we were faithful, we had the promise of again returning to the bosom of our families. I could not help but compare this with the sermon that Brigham Young gave in 1852, August of 1852, when he was sending out the missionaries, the care that Joseph, um, and the the other men there, Joseph and Hiram, specifically, gave to To these couples, right? And how they talked about them as couples compared to some of the things Brigham Young said. Here are just a couple of quotes from that August 2028, 1852 sermon from Brigham Young. He said, Don’t carry your wives or your children in your hearts or in your affections with you one rod. He also said, You must feel if they live all right, if they die, all right. If I die, all right, if I live, all right, for we are the Lord, and we shall soon meet again. And he also said, when you leave, understand it. You have neither wife nor children. There’s much more in this sermon. I just read another sermon that, um, Brigham Young gave in 1860 again, to departing elders, and again, very challenging to read. So it is this a, a stark difference between how these leaders seemed to think about marriage in a lot of ways. Um, and then after that, um, the Hiram. Spoke and told them to practice prudence and humility and teach nothing but repentance and the first principles of the gospel. That was a common theme that Hiram seemed to talk about a lot, to just keep it simple. Then Joseph addressed them and also focused on humility. So here is the record of Joseph’s talk in in his journal by James Mulholland. It said, he gave much instruction, calculated to guard them against self. Efficiency, self-righteousness, and self-importance, touching upon many subjects of importance and value to all who wish to walk humbly before the Lord, but especially teaching them to observe charity, wisdom, and fellow feeling with love one towards another

[01:12:54] in all things and under all circumstances. So that’s our first record of this talk. And now we need to go to the two from Wilfred Woodruff. And as I said, this was his journal. And when I first looked at it on the will For Woodruff pages, it looks like it’s a big book, especially with how much writing there is on each page. But according to the Joseph Smith Papers editors, this is actually a small book. It’s less than 4 inches by 7 inches, and it’s only 3/4 of an inch thick. So less than 1 inch thick. When you see how small it is, you can see how tiny the writing is in it. He really kept an amazing record in this tiny book. And these 3 pages that I’m showing you are the 3 that Talk about this meeting and this sermon. But as I said, he also kept this other book of Revelations. This is also a small book. It’s 6 inches by 4 inches by 3/8 of an inch. So about the same size, but he writes much bigger on it. And this is how the Joseph Smith editors editors describe it. They call it, they say it is a notebook in which he copied Joseph Smith’s revelations and discourses. And so here you can see that he spends several pages, I think 6 pages, recording Joseph Smith’s sermon in this book. This wouldn’t be very interesting at all if he had simply copied the sermon twice. But the fascinating and inexplicable thing is, is that these two records, both recorded at very nearly the same time by the same person from the same notes, are not the same. This is wild. It it is really common for versions of sermons to vary when they are being recorded by different people. Like, for example, Joseph Smith’s journal is different from Wilfred Woodruff’s. It, it has the same message, but, you know, they have different recordings, and we see that, for example, in Joseph Smith’s July 16, 1843 sermon where he teaches about eternal marriage. That’s not uncommon. But it does seem much less common to see one man making two different versions of a sermon from his notes and having them be so different. It’s very strange also because some of them are word for word, and it’s hard to see which one of these is like is an improvement over the other. I can’t decide which was copied first. We’ll talk about that in a minute and go into it. But another really strange thing is that the dates are different. The journal gets the date correctly as July 2nd, but the Book of Revelation dates at July 1st, which is something we’ll talk about as well. And again, it would be easy to understand two versions of the sermon if one were sort of a very concise summary of the servant, a shortened version that he had put to take with him. But that doesn’t seem to be the case either. I can’t make heads or tails of it, of, of why these two versions are so different. Throughout most of the sermon, they’re quite similar. As I said, there are, there’s a lot of the same language with just little changes here and there, one in one direction or the other, but when we get to the end of the sermon, it is very different. And the reason we’re going into it is because that is where this quote from Joseph Smith is. It really is a beautiful and very touching sermon that I would love to read in full. Instead, I’ll link it below. I’ll link the two versions of it below. But, um, I, I do want to at least talk about it because it’s, it’s, it’s been very touching, this whole investigation. Joseph says,

[01:16:14] to be humble, merciful, and faithful, I’m just going to summarize it, and to forgive others even before they ask. He tells them not to compete with one another, but pray for each other and build one another up. Joseph laments that so many of the 12 have left. This is a quote from it. Must the new one that are chosen to fill the places of those that are fallen of the quorum of the 12 begin to exalt themselves until they get so high, exalt. Oh, so I’ll I’ll read the two versions. The the original says, until they get so high, and the Book of Revelation says, until they exalt themselves so high that they will tumble over, that they will tumble over or that they will soon tumble over and have a great fall and go wallowing through the mud, mire, and darkness. Judas-like to the buffetings of Satan as several of Um, and then it’s either several of the quorum of the 12 or several of the 12 have done, or will they learn wisdom and be wise? Oh God, give them wisdom and keep them humble, I pray. So you can hear the sentiments that Joseph is teaching and also the slight differences between the two versions. And I do want to say, Joseph’s statements here are especially poignant when put in context of what was happening at the time. Joseph, along with Hirum and Sydney, the 3 members of the first presidency there at this meeting, and 3 others, had just spent a miserable 4 months in the dead of winter in the dungeon-like Liberty Jail, while his people suffered all of the mobbings and brutality in Missouri. Testimonies of former associates and church leaders had contributed. To all of that. WW Phelps had testified against them at the trial and had contributed directly to their incarceration. Thomas B. Marsh, an apostle, had written an affidavit that Joseph described as all the vilest colonies, aspersions, lies, and slanders toward myself and the church that his wicked heart could could could invent. Marsh later acknowledged that he had been wrong. Orson Hyde, another apostle, had signed the affidavit, which was an important part of the evidence presented to the Missouri officials that was used against them in the trials when Missouri was deciding what deciding what to do. Wilfred Woodruff recorded in the same journal less. A week before this meeting about the, um, he was writing about Orson Hyde’s deep remorse and and his forgiveness by Joseph Smith at the church and the church. And this is what he wrote. In the time of the persecution in Zion or far west, he, Orson Hyde, departed the cause, denied the faith, and betrayed his brethren. And assisted Thomas B. Marsh, the president of the 12 apostles, in jeopardizing the lives of Joseph and his counsel, and the whole of the church in Zion and the blood of the whole of them would have been shed if they had not been spared by the immediate hand of God. Orson High. And Thomas B. Marsh jeopardized the church by bearing false testimony against the presidency and the church before the authorities of the state of Missouri, which was a leading cause of the governor’s calling out 30,000 of the militia against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They had only been able to escape from the jail 3 months earlier, so this was very recent history on on their minds. Then, in addition to that, William Smith, Joseph’s brother, and another apostle who Joseph had already had much difficulty with, we’re going to talk about that a little later on. was disfellowshipped and admitted back at the same time as Orson Hyde. In addition, apostles Lyman and Luke Johnson had also been excommunicated the previous year. Luke eventually returned to the church.

[01:19:53] Ad has had apostle William McClellan and David and John Whitmer and Oliver Cowdry. That is just a partial list. This had been an especially fraught time. Um. Not all those who turned against the church had been apostles, but there had been many apostles and others in high church leadership positions who had all been very close to Joseph Smith. So whatever perspective people have on Joseph Smith, it should at least be easy to understand why he would have felt concerned about the possibility of newly called church leaders eventually turning on him. Understanding all of this again, makes what he goes on to say about forgiveness in this sermon so, so meaningful. He says, ever keep and exercise the principles of mercy and be ready to forgive our brother on the first intimations of repentance and asking forgiveness. And should we even forgive our brother or our enemy before they ask it up before they ask it, our heavenly Father would be equally as merciful unto us. It’s amazing. And, and he, um, taught this before, and he goes on to forgive more people just after this. I think the next year is when WW Phelps apologizes and comes back. Yes, he had been personally instrumental in the arrest and captivity captivity in Liberty Jail, as I said, But, um, Joseph’s forgiveness of him is famous from the letter that he wrote. Here’s just a portion of it. He said, It is true that we have suffered much in consequence of your behavior. The cup of gall, already full enough for mortals to drink, was indeed fulfilled to overflowing when you turned against us. Had it been an enemy, we could have borne it. However, the cup has been drunk. The will of the Father has been done, and we are yet alive. for which we thank the Lord, believing your confession to be real and your repentance genuine, I shall be happy once again to give you the right hand of fellowship and rejoice over the returning prodigal. Come on, dear brother, since the war is passed for friends at first, are friends again at last, signed yours as ever, Joseph Smith Jr. For me, Joseph’s words about humility take on a new depth when I under And more about how fully he put those, those concepts into practice. He continued on in the sermon, still talking about humility. This is the same in both versions. He said, Be care he told them to be careful that they are humble and ascribe the praise and glory to God. He asked, What art thou, O man, but dust, and from whom dost thou receive thy power and blessing but from God? And then he gives them some keys, and this is really an important part of the story. This is the first key that he gives them, and you can see how it’s drawn in both records of, of both of Wilfred Woodruff’s records of this sermon. And for this first key, he says, Then, O ye 12, notice this key and be wise for Christ’s sake and your own soul’s sake. Ye are not set out, sent out to taught, but to teach. Let every man be sober, be vigilant, and let All his words be seasoned with grace. And, uh, the, the other version is, let every word be seasoned with grace, be vigilant, be sober. So you could see how they’re just slightly different. The journal says,

[01:23:06] and keep in mind that the Book of Revelation omits that, and it goes on to say, it is a day of warning and not of many words. And then it gives more advice that’s identical in both in both sermons, and then he goes on to give a second key and You can see another key drawn into both sermons, but this is where things start getting different. So much of the second key is the same, but the end, one sermon ends after the second key, and the other one continues on. So I’m going to show you, I know this is very small writing. I just tried to make a little brief chart of some of the differences between the two, and I’ll let you look at this so I don’t have to go into all of it. But, um, the second key is that in all your trials, troubles, and temptations, afflictions, bonds, imprisonment and death, see to it that you do not betray heaven, that you do not betray Jesus Christ, that you do not betray your brethren, and that you do not betray the revelations of God, whether in the Bible, Book of Mormon, or doctrine and covenants, or any other word of God. The Book of Revelation goes on and adds to that. Um, or any that ever was or will be given. And and revealed unto man in this world or that which is to come. So I guess it’s anticipating, um, I, I, I tend to attribute some of this to Wilfred Woodruff, that he’s making an addition. And this one is my reading of it. I’ll talk about that more. But that’s interesting that there are, we are to expect more revelation in the next life, right? And then this is where it’s interesting, because right here on, on the left, you can see is the journal, and this is the end of the sermon in the journal. And it says, and all your kicking and floundering, see to it that you do not do this thing, lest instant blood be found in your skirts and you go down to hell. We may ever know by this sign that there is danger of our being led to a fall and apostasy when we give way to the devil so as to neglect the first duty, but whatever you do, do not betray your friend. And that’s a beautiful end to this talk in this poignant time. So again, we can see that there are, there’s, um, A little bit added to the second portion in the Book of Revelation. But here is the important thing. The Book of Revelation goes on to include an entirely different key. We have a 3rd key in the Book of Revelation that is not recorded in the journal. You can see it up there in very strange, elaborate brackets, and then that is where we get this quote. A final key delivered by Joseph in the fall. language. I will give you one of the keys of the mysteries of the kingdom, and it goes on to do this quote that a man is on the way to apostasy when he starts to criticize his, um, the, the church leaders, right? Isn’t that interesting? And that is the quote. So I’ll show you again so you can read through it if you want to. That is the quote that’s included in the lesson. Isn’t this fascinating? I feel like, what is going on here? How can we understand

[01:25:58] an entire new part, a key in those fancy brackets being written in this version of the sermon that’s not included in the other one. It’s so interesting. So I’ll go over really quickly and show you. This is the journal version of the sermon where we have the two keys, and you can see that they are both there. And then these are those same two keys in the Book of Revelation version. And then here is that final key, that 3rd key that’s included. This version that isn’t in the journal. I’ll read to you what the Joseph Smith Papers says about about this. It says, Woodruff also copied the discourse into his 1839 journal. In the journal account, which Woodruff apparently made, this is what the Joseph Smith papers say, which Woodruff apparently made some time after he wrote the Book of Revelation’s account, Woodruff expanded on and reorganized the content of the earlier account. That is actually not correct. That is a pretty big error that the Joseph Smith Papers makes right here. The Book of Revelation account is actually the expanded account, right? It’s the one that adds little clarifying words or seems to edit little words, and it’s the one that has the third additional key. And so, uh, so if we’re trying to find out which one was written first, My instinct was to say that the journal was written first. So, out of curiosity, I did a, um, copy and paste of both versions and put it into Chat GPT to ask which version, version he likely recorded first. And Chat GBT spit out at me now. Some people use chat GPT as automatically authoritative. I don’t think it’s useful in that way, but it is useful in this way to get these insights. So Chat GBT responded, the journal version was likely recorded first. Here’s why. And then it gives us 4 reasons. First, expanded ideas in the Book of Revelation’s version, and it gives some examples of that, just as I had said, simpler, less refined language in the journal version. So he says that the journal version has some repetitive words that are edited out of the later version. And then it also has personal reflection in the journal version. And that’s interesting. I don’t know if I necessarily saw that myself, but that’s, that’s what it said. And then the then the fourth reason is the final key, just as I’m saying, the Book of Revelation version includes a concluding key attributed to Joseph Smith about condemning others and seeking signs, indicating it was compiled or recorded after. Further reflection or after additional teaching were delivered is how Chat GBT says it, we know that that’s not the case because it’s attributed to be just in this very sermon. So the summary of Chat GBT is likely sequence. The journal version seems to be an earlier, less formal account, possibly a personal record or preliminary draft of Joseph Smith’s sermon. I think Chat GBT is taking this too far. It’s definitely not a preliminary draft in a later draft in, in, in that way. But then it says, the Book of Revelation version appears to be a later, more polished, I’d say slightly more polished iteration, perhaps intended for wider distribution or as an official compilation. And that I will agree with that the Book of Revelations, we can know that it goes on to be distributed more while the journal might be more personal for Wilfred Woodruff. So, as I said, I do very much tend to agree with GPT in this case, that it seems very likely that the journal version was written first, and then the Book of Revelation version after. But I don’t know that it really matters. As I was reading through, trying to figure it out, it was so confusing. And I was like, I don’t even know

[01:29:37] what the implications are either way, which one was written first, because either way, this is very tricky, because either Wilfred Woodruff recorded his journal first. In which case, the quote is not present in the earliest record, but for some reason, shows up sometime later. By the same person who made the first record, right? Which makes us wonder why he didn’t add it in the first place, since he was at the meeting and recorded it from his own recollection and notes. So that’s really hard to explain why he would add it later. Um, that seems to me to be a problem, but it’s a problem the other way as well, because if he recorded The Book of Revelation version first, then that meant that he had recorded the final key already, but he intentionally decided to omit it, to delete it from the record and rewrite the end of the sermon in different words, which seems, it does seem very unlikely to me, despite the, the Joseph Smith papers saying that that’s what happened. I think that they just made a mistake there. But even if that were what happened, if someone wanted to argue that, that would be A problem because it meant that he decided that quote should not be in the sermon after all. But one really important thing that I think we should consider while we are trying to decide which of these versions is more correct is the date, right? The journal gets the correct date for the meeting, while the Book of Revelations incorrectly claims it was July 1st. It got it wrong. Whatever else that may mean, it certainly is a strong indication. that the journal, which doesn’t have the final key, which was quoted in the improvement era, is the more accurate record. And so for me, that’s actually when I realized that that was the most compelling argument to question the veracity of this quote. Isn’t this fascinating? It just never ceases to amaze me what the directions that things take as you dive into them. I just thought I was studying this lesson, and it opened up this whole big thing that’s been Fascinating to try to figure out. So, but now remember back to the citation in the church manual when it used that quote, and it lists both Wilfred Woodruff and Willard Richards, right? Isn’t that really interesting there? So I want to talk about that because as you can see, this is again from Joseph Smith’s journal. It clearly is marked the 2nd of July 1839, which is the correct date. We can tell from other records that that is when this happened. And here’s the problem. Willard Richard Richards was in England in 1839. He was actually in a mission in England from 1837 through 1841. So he was clearly not present at the sermon to take his own notes. I’ll read again from the Joseph Smith Paper’s description of Wilfred Woodruff’s Book of Revelations that I read this a minute ago, part of it. It says, While in England, Woodruff lent his notebook to a fellow mission. Willard Richards, who copied this discourse into another book, which he called a pocket Companion. So here it is. This is Willard Richards’s Pocket Companion. It’s another tiny book. It’s 6 1/4 by 4 inches and around 100 pages. So it’s actually larger than Wilford Woodruff’s journal, which is really, I think, are about the same size. They’re all about the same size, these tiny little books. It includes the July 2, 1839 sermon. You can See, he makes note of it right here.

[01:33:13] And interestingly, it also is incorrectly dated July 1st, just like Wilfred Woodruff’s Book of Revelations, which is why we know that that’s what he used. It includes both of the first keys, as you can see here, and it also includes the third key. So we can know again for certain which source this is from. Reading again from the Joseph Smith Paper’s description of Richard’s. Pocket companion, it says, the majority of the volume’s content is a copy of Apostle Wilfred Woodruff’s Book of Revelations, which contains several Joseph Smith revelations and discourses, as well as a sermon by Parley P. Pratt. Richards copied the content at some point after the 13th of January 1841, when Woodruff arrived in England for a proselytizing mission with Richards and others. This explains perfectly why Richards has a copy. by not being present to hear it for himself. But it also means that we probably, that Richard should probably not be listed as a source for the sermon, since he wasn’t there to record it, and he only copied it into his pocketbook from another source. But the description goes on to explain, after Richards became church historian and recorder later in, um, later in the 1840s, this volume and his other personal papers were included among the archive. holdings of the church. So Richard’s pocket companion was very likely the source used to add this to the church history and the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, where it was quoted from in this article. The challenge is the question about its authenticity based on Woodruff’s, Wilfred Woodruff’s more accurate journal account was lost. It wasn’t known or it wasn’t acknowledged. So the quote comes down to all of us. As a certain verbatim quote that Joseph Smith absolutely said, when it might be far more questionable than we realize. And I just want to share what I think is an important insight here about when, with all of this. It’s about taking the Holy Spirit as our guide, right? And not putting the words of anybody up on a pedestal if they are not confirmed by the Spirit, by reason, by experience, ideally by the scriptures and by other things that otherwise people have said and experienced, right? Like, just because we read a quote and attribute it to someone doesn’t mean they absolutely said it. And we should judge the quote on its own merits, not merely by who the author is claimed to be. I think that that’s a good, um, rule to take away from this investigation. With all of this that I’ve dug into, I do feel like there is sufficient reason to question the validity of this quote. I have no idea why Wilfred Woodruff would have, would have added it, but I think it’s important. To at least understand and acknowledge that it was added later. I’m not claiming we can definitively rule it out, right? I think that it’s possible that he added it because he remembered it later or something, that’s possible. So, in any case, I think it’s worthwhile to compare it to other things that Joseph Smith said, just as George Albert Smith did to some extent in his letter, and to consider the context of what was happening at the time of this meeting, which we have already done. At least to some extent, and to look at how Joseph tended to deal with criticisms or disagreements in general in other situations. So that just in case Joseph did say something like this, anything similar, we can have a better understanding of what he might have meant by it and how he would have wanted it to be applied. The Improvement era article used this quote to support the idea that disagreeing with any church policy or any statement from any leader is the equal The of evil speaking of the Lords of the Lord’s anointed and apostasy, that thinking for ourselves is somehow a bad thing and should be avoided. They tried to use Joseph Smith to promote those messages. I think that that is, I think that’s terrible, honestly, because that is not what I get from reading Joseph Smith. George Albert Smith’s response alone, especially with the quotes from Joseph Smith that he shared, should be more than enough to dispel the idea

[01:37:28] that he or Joseph Smith would have I would have agreed with those ideas. And then, uh, and then showing the history of this source should bring the entire article into even more question. But now let’s look at how Joseph tended to deal with criticism, which he experienced a ton of in his lifetime, from every direction, often including those he served with in the church. And his friends and sometimes his family. There are so many things we could discuss to and look at, but I want to share. Just one specific example that I think more than adequately reveals how Joseph dealt with people who disagreed with him or who even harshly criticized him, or worse. So I’m gonna talk about Joseph Smith’s brother, William. He tended to be quite problematic. He seems to have been very hot-tempered and critical of Joseph, hot-tempered and also just given to, uh, he seemed to be a concern to the family, right? And he was very critical of Joseph, even long before he was disfellowshipped in 1839. We have good records of some events that occurred in late in late 1835. And that’s what I want to talk about. On October 29th, William brought charges against a woman for abusing her children. Both she and her husband had already been tried for for child abuse earlier in the day. Joseph was summoned to preside over the case, and William called their mother, Lucy, as a witness. Joseph objected to his mother’s Testimony to Lucy’s testimony because it had already been heard and settled. So he was, they were hearing the same things a second time. I’ll read from Joseph’s journal, which matches the high council record. So I think these are pretty good records. It says, the complainant, um, Brother William Smith, arose and accused me of invalidating or doubting my mother’s testimony, which I had not done, nor did I desire to do. And I think that’s quite an accusation. I think that Joseph held his mother in very high regard. I told him he was out of place and asked him to set down. He refused. I repeated my request. He became enraged. I finally ordered him to set down. He said he would not unless I knocked him down. I was agitated in my feeling on the account of his stubbornness and was about to leave the house. Isn’t that interesting? This was a meeting where Joseph, the president of the church, the prophet of the Lord is As they all believed, was presiding at this meeting, this official meeting, this high council meeting where they were deciding important things, and his brother was acting this way, who was a member of the church, was acting this way, and he got upset and his response was to leave rather than to fight or yell or, you know, like, I think that that’s interesting, that’s what he was going to do. Um, let’s see. But my father requested me not to do so. I, I complied. The house was brought to order after much debate upon the subject, and we proceeded to business. I just think it’s interesting that he was going to leave rather than, like, have someone arrest William Smith, which is what would happen in any courthouse that we’re aware of, right, if somebody was out of order like that. Um, following this meeting, Joseph took no action against him. Two days later, William came to Joseph to discuss it.

[01:40:38] Joseph recorded, I proposed to relate the occurrences of the council before named wherein I had been out of the way, I would confess it and ask his forgiveness, and then he should relate his story and make confession where wherein he had done wrong, and then leave it to Brother Hiram and Brother Parrish to decide the matter between us, and I would agree to the decision and be satisfied therewith. So Joseph was like, oh, if William wasn’t coming to apologize, he was still mad about this happening. It sounds like to me, and Joseph’s like, OK, let’s talk about it. I will tell it from my version, and I’m happy to apologize for anything I did wrong, then you tell your version. And you can apologize for anything you did wrong. And William and and that we’ll have to, Joseph actually didn’t want to talk about it with William alone. He wanted Hirum to be there, and it sounds like Brother Parrish to be able to decide the matter between them. He felt like they needed to be an arbitrator, arbiter. They’re an arbiter there. To help with them. Um, let’s see. He observed that he had not done wrong and that he, I was always determined to carry my points, whether right or wrong, and therefore, he would not stand an equal chance with me. This was an insult, but I did not reply to him in harsh manner, knowing his inflammatory disposition. But tried to reason with him and show him the propriety of compliance with my request. I finally succeeded with the assistance of Brother Hiram in obtaining his assent to the proposition that I had made. I then related my story, and wherein I had been wrong, I confessed it and asked his forgiveness. And I got through after I got through, he made his statements, justifying himself throughout and transgressing the order of the council and treating the authority of the presidency with contempt. After he had got through, Brother Hiram began to make some remark in the spirit of meekness. He, William, became enraged. I joined my brother Hiram in trying to calm his stormy feelings, but to no purpose. He insisted that we intended to add abuse to injury. His passion increased. He arose abruptly and declared that he wanted no more to do with us or the church, and that we might take his license, for he would have nothing to do with us. He rushed out the door. We tried to prevail on him to stop, but all to no purpose. He went away in a passion and soon sent his license to me. He went home and spread the leaven of iniquity upon my brethren, and Especially prejudiced the mind of our brother Samuel Smith, as I soon learned that he was in the streets exclaiming against me, which no doubt our enemies rejoiced at. So this happened with William. William went and told Samuel, both Samuel and William started to decry Joseph Smith, which their enemies took it, you know, they were in a precarious situation. This is a really, really hard thing that happened. And where the matter will end I know not, but I pray God to forgive him and them and give them humility and repentance, the feelings of my heart I cannot express on this occasion. So that is really, really hard. That was some pretty intense criticism and disagreement. But beyond that, insubordination, right? And then going out and speaking, speaking badly publicly, um, in these really direct ways where the enemies of Joseph Smith were there eager to laugh it up. But Joseph seems to simply have borne it. Um, a little bit later,

[01:43:48] he said, I obtained a testimony that Brother William would return to the church and repair the wrong he had done. So that probably made him happy, but things did not end there. Things were not smoothed over by any means. So a few months later, let’s see, October, that was the end of October, November, so a month and a half later, December 15th, there’s a lot that happened in these couple of days. So I’ll just give a quick summary. Orson Hyde brought a letter of complaints to to Joseph saying, Quote, that unless these things named in the letter could be reconciled to his mind, his honor would not stand united with the council, with the council of the church, is what it was talking about. Joseph wrote, My feelings on this on this occasion were much lacerated, but yet again, he just bore it. The next day, December 16th, things got more intense. So here’s a fun fact, digging into this history, what you learn, right? There was a short-lived debating site society or school in Kirtland. Um, Joseph, Joseph didn’t start it. It sounds like William may have started it, or at least been involved in it. Joseph learned about it the previous month when he watched a three-hour debate between some of the young elders on the topic, quote, Was or was it not the design of Christ to establish his gospel by miracles? I think that is amazing to know a little bit about the culture here. I think it’s really fun. But Joseph, who Watched the debate was concerned that there was, quote, too much warrant displayed, too much zeal for mastery, too much of that enthusiasm that characterizes the lawyer at the bar, who was determined to defend his cause, right or wrong. I therefore availed myself of this favor favorable opportunity to drop a few words upon this subject by way of advice, that they might improve their minds and cultivate their powers of intell. Like in a proper manner, that they might not incur the displeasure of heaven, that they should handle sacred things very sacredly and with a due deference to the opinions of others and with an eye single to the glory of God. That was so interesting to me to read, um, Joseph Smith’s thoughts about debates, right? I think there are some people who maybe could pay attention to that. So, any way, but then going forward, the the evening of December 16th was the second half of a scheduled debate at William’s house. That debate had been a month earlier in November. So the topic for this debate was, was it necessary for God to reveal Himself to man in order for their happiness? It’s not an interesting topic, and this was a two-part debate there the week before they had had the first part, and this was the second part. And Joe’s Smith actually took part in this, in this debate, arguing the affirmative. I think he was my assumption is that he was trying to kind of show them how to do it right, if they’re going to do it right, how to do it in in good feeling. But after the debate was over, he again expressed concern, quote, upon the impropriety of continuing the school, fearing that it would not result in good. So I guess there were some people that thought that, including Joseph and Hiram. And that made some people very angry, mainly William. Brother William, the, the debate, if I didn’t say it, it was at his house.

[01:46:53] So it might have been that he was hosting the debating society, I’m not sure, but it says Brother William opposed these measures and insisted on Having another question proposed, and at length became much enraged, particularly at me and used physical violence upon my person. Joseph was actually quite badly injured. All he records in his journal is he used physical violence upon my person. There’s a lot more to read through to get a better understanding of this, especially the letters back and forth between, um, Joseph Smith and William and some other people who made some records of it as well. He was quite badly injured. The beating William gave him, it, it sounds like it was actually quite a beating. It exacerbated injuries he had received just a few years early, earlier when had been so badly beaten and tarned, tarred and feathered by the mob. So keep in mind, like, William is beating up his brother, who’s already been nearly beaten to death and has been through so much. And, and, you know, he kind of expresses that he’s not able to defend himself the same way anymore. Some accounts say that he was trying to take his coat off, and that’s when then when William laid into Him, and so he wasn’t able to fight at all and just was on, just took the brunt of that beating. The next day’s entry starts at home, quite unwell. And for the next several days, he kept to his bed and even had letters read to him instead of reading them himself. He said that he was unable to sit or rise up without assistance. So it sounds like he was quite injured. William Smith harshly criticized Joseph, angrily disagreed with him, repeatedly refused to obey his counsel, even in direct, um, orders that Joseph gave him in an official capacity, and finally, physically attacked him very seriously. But through all of this, from what I have seen, Joseph took no action against him. William did write a letter that, in my opinion, was less than stellar, mostly apologizing to Joseph a few days later and said himself that he would step down from the 12. But Joseph actually opposed the idea and wrote back in his letter back he wanted William to rise up and make the tremendous effort to overcome his passion and remain in the quorum. Joseph didn’t take action against him and did fully forgive him, but some hard feelings did seem to persist on both sides. Joseph felt very badly about it. He records how worried he was about it, and Hiram and his parents were also all deeply troubled about it until January 1st, when Joseph Smith Sr. came over to Joseph’s house with William and Hiram and a few others and expressed, this is the quote from the journal. expressed his feelings with all the sympathy of a father whose feelings were wounded deeply on account of the difficulty that was existing in the family. Joseph wrote, quote, Our hearts were melted. Brother William made an humble confession and asked my forgiveness for the abuse which he had offered me. And wherein I had been out of the way, I asked his forgiveness, and the spirit of confession and forgiveness was mutual among us all. This entire episode is amazing to me. Reading extensively through these documents has given me personally a new depth of respect and admiration for Joseph Smith. I just think he was such a good man. Um, I’ve had, you know, challenges with family members, sometimes ongoing and persistent, and of course, both sides feel like they’re the injured party, and it can be really hard, some really hard things. And seeing What Joseph experienced with one of his brothers makes me feel like

[01:50:37] I’ve not experienced anything to that degree, getting in an actual physical altercation as adults, right? And having something like that happen, and to see how he forgave, even under all of those circumstances, to me is amazing. And some people might want to say, well, it was his brother. So he, of course, was gonna, that, that’s not my experience. I think often with family, it’s, it can be. Even harder, right? Especially with the persistent and ongoing things. Think if your sibling did this to you when you were already injured and they beat you like this, what would you, would you be able, within a day or two to forgive them and then within a week or two, be able to have such good feeling and actually apologize for what you had done wrong to contribute to it. It sounds like Joseph maybe realized that he’d been a little too hard on William. Maybe he had given advice a little too freely. I’m not exactly Sure. I know that. I know that he did get heated in that meeting when William was going off on him and threatening to fight him. He said something, he said something like, You’re as ugly as the devil or something like, or you have the devil in your account. I can’t remember. He yelled something. So he definitely wasn’t like just the, you know, always soft spoken, innocent bystander. But my goodness, how much provocation can you take before you want to give a little bit of it back? So, anyway, seeing this happen and seeing how he freely forgave and the good The feeling that existed after this is amazing to me. And just the day after the beating, when Joseph must have been in tremendous pain, he did talk about the injury to his side that the mob had, that, um, from the mob that had been re-injured and aggravated in addition to his other injuries. I just cannot imagine how hard it would be to deal with this, to take this, to be in that kind of pain again from your brother, you know. And, um, but that day when he was suffering so much, Orson Hyde, who had just sent his letter of objections, brought a new copy to read it to Joseph. Joseph had lost the, um, earlier one that he, when he had tried to give it to the high counsel. So Orson Hyde brought him a new copy, and, um, and he read it to Joseph. This is one. The letters that was read to Joseph instead of Joseph reading it himself as he had done before, it sounds like he maybe was not in shape to read a letter himself. And so he was laying there in so much pain, and he listened to Orson Hyde restate his complaints and concerns. And the letter is recorded in his journal by his scribe. And this is what it says. I explained upon the objections he had set, set forth in it, in his letter, and satisfied his mind upon every point,

[01:53:14] perfectly that he observed after I had got through, that he was more than satisfied. He took the parting hand with me with every expression of friendship that a gentleman and a Christian could manifest, which I felt To reciprocate, reciprocate with cheerfulness and entertain the best feelings for him, and most cheerfully forgive him of the ingratitude which was manifest in his letter, knowing that it was for want of correct information, that his mind was disturbed as far as his reflections related to me. So, isn’t that amazing? He’s like, like, not only in That circumstance, even he was willing to listen to complaints and criticisms and disagreements and willing to work through the misunderstandings. He did say later on, it didn’t include this, that Orson Haid had, there had been things that had not been correct that Joseph agreed with that he was wanting to help him with, but nothing related, none of the hard feelings should have been against Joseph as they had been. And so I have to say, looking, this is just one example, but there are, I, I had to sort through many to choose which example to use. I actually did a lot more research for this one than I had intended to, but I’m glad I did because I feel like I’ve just gained a whole new level of ah for Joseph Smith of admiration that I didn’t have before. I, I, this was a good man, and I know that doesn’t have direct bearing onto the question of polygamy for some people, but for me, I just continue to think that Joseph Smith was an extremely good man that we ought to give due credit to for these amazing things that we learn about him when we dig into the actual records instead of just believing things that people say. And to the point of this episode, looking at how Joseph Smith personally dealt with those who disagreed with him. And who criticized him and much worse in his position as prophet and president of the church, makes it very difficult to claim that he would in any way support the idea that everyone must automatically fall in line with the leader, follow the prophet in everything, or be on the high road to apostasy. I think this is borne out further by many of Joseph’s own statements that are much better supported in the historical record than the one included and misapplied in the 1945 improvement era lesson. So I want to start by rereading a couple of the statements that George Albert Smith included, and to be fair and consistent, I did go back and check the sources for each of these quotes as well. So I don’t want to just accept things that I like without investigation. I want to be critical of all of them. So first is this source that is well sourced in contemporaneous notes from William Clayton, which I’ve included on the screen. When he said, I want liberty of thinking and believing as I please, it feels so good not to be trammeled. It doesn’t prove that a man is not a good man because he errs in doctrine. So this is a very solid sourcing contemporaneous notes that seemed to have been copied while Joseph was speaking. It was expanded a bit in the later records, but I’m using the earliest sources so we can see what the actual words were from the earliest sources we have. Then here’s another one that is recorded in the Millennial Star. Now, this source is not as solid. I was, I thought it was interesting to see. This was not, um, this was not recorded in 1851, when John Taylor attributed it to attributed it to Joseph Smith. But he did claim to hear it himself. And since there’s nothing to refute it, Taylor doesn’t have another source where he claimed Joseph said something different, and we don’t have other sources saying

[01:56:59] Joseph never said that. I want people to understand the standard that I think we should use. So I’m inclined to count this as a viable quote because we do have it from a firsthand witness who claimed to. Um, hear it. It’s quoted just a few years after it would have been said, and there’s nothing to refute it that I can find. So people can take it or leave it. But this is where Joseph said, I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves. That’s the origin of that quote. And then we’ll go on to this next quote, which is also quite well sourced from Joseph Smith’s journal. And it’s where he said, If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No, I will lift them up. And the, and in their own way too. If I cannot persuade them, my way is better, and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth cuts its own way. And this also, as I said, is very solidly sourced. There’s a bit more added to it in the expanded version in Joseph Smith’s history. The original just says, I will ask no man to believe as I do, so that Truth cuts its own way is not necessarily in the original. Then I just have a few more sources that I think are useful to consider that are also very well sourced. This again is from Joseph Smith’s journal where he said a prophet is not only a prophet, only when he is acting as such. And then we have another one. That he taught in the relief society that is included in the relief society record, and he taught, he said that the people were depending on the prophet, hence were darkened in their minds in consequence of neglecting the duties devolving upon themselves. I think that’s also a very good quote to consider. And then we have this list of questions and answers. that he published in the elder’s Journal. In answer to the question, Do you believe Joseph Smith Jr. to be a prophet? Joseph Smith answered on behalf of himself and his people, Yes, and every other man who has the testimony of Jesus, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. And because I have this source here up on the screen, I also have to read question 7. Do the Mormons believe in having more wives than one? Answer, no, not at the same time, but they believe if their companion dies, they have the right to marry again. In addition, I want to share this. After I had already tracked down all of the above quotes, I saw that the Joseph Smith Papers has this list of Joseph Smith’s quotes on religious freedom that are very applicable to the subject we’re talking about. He believes strongly in religious freedom for everybody, including his own people. So I haven’t even taken time to go. through these yet, but I am very excited to go through them. I will include that below for anybody else who wants to beat me to it and read things that Joseph Smith said on these topics, right? On, on how we, as members of the church, should be able to think for ourselves and express our views. And then I just have to end with one final Quote from Joseph Smith that hopefully we are all familiar with from Doc Doctrine and Covenants, Section 121, which, in my opinion, cannot be reconciled with any sort of authoritarian control in the church, including claiming that the people need to automatically fall in line behind everything the leaders ever have said or done or any. The leaders may say verses 41 and 42, no power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long suffering, by gentleness and by meekness,

[02:00:36] and by love unfeigned, by kindness and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy and without guile. I think that was a worthy investigation to as we consider the different applications of how we each, um, think about prophets and look to profits in our own lives. I think we should look to our church leaders with respect, honor, appreciation, and we should pray for them and err on the side of obedience. But I think that we should follow the Savior and we should take the Holy Spirit as our guide. I’ll see you next time.