161: Brigham's Transfiguration & Joseph's Polygamy: Two Dubious Narratives

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John Dehlin brings up very good points about the problems with the dubious story of the transfiguration of Brigham Young. Hopefully he and his audience can see that the story of Joseph Smith’s polygamy suffers from the exact same problems. This is a fun one.

Transcript

[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon polygamy. I’m excited to bring you this episode comparing the story of the transfiguration of Brigham Young to the many stories we have of polygamy. I think this is a very useful comparison that I hope people will get a lot out of. So thank you so much for joining us as we take this deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. This is a topic I hadn’t necessarily planned to cover, but recently, I watched a Mormon Stories episode that they did on their LDS discussion series with Mike on the transfiguration of Brigham Young. And I realized I needed to talk about this because it has so much application. To polygamy. This story really is like the main foundational miracle story of the LDS Church, the brighamite faction of the LDS Church that I’m part of that is used to justify and bolster Brigham Young’s claims to the succession. And so I am hoping that, well, I’m hoping you’ll understand the reason I’m covering it. And I’m really hoping that people who are open to questioning stories like the transfiguration based on the arguments that Mike will make in this episode will be willing to apply the same kind of rigorous study and thinking to the claims of polygamy. So I’m going to go ahead and let Mike introduce this topic.

[01:31] Mike: As John mentioned earlier. After Joseph Smith was killed, uh, there was no, there was no clear plan on who is going to be the next prophet. And so that led to a lot of confusion. And again, that’s one of those things where, uh, you know, you would think that there’d be some better um way to to have this happen, you think it would have been thought of ahead or God would have given a revelation about this, but, but no, and so there’s all this confusion. And both Sydney Rigdon and Brigham Young both felt that they should lead the church moving forward. Um, Sidney Rigdon felt that he should be the prophet. Brigham Young felt that he should lead the church as the leader of the 12. And so this is basically the transfiguration of Brigham Young’s story. This is from a website called LDS Answers, and this is how they describe it.

[02:12] Michelle: I’m going to pause right here to tell you that LDS Answers is the Joseph Smith Foundation. So many people in my audience know who they are. They are not fans of mine. They are extremely pro polygamy and extremely pro-Brigham Young. Um, they actually are not representative of the church. So it’s interesting that Mike uses them. They are a good way to get a sense of extremely conservative LDS views, but they are actually out of alignment with the church on many. Many topics, many historical topics, including, for example, sear stones. So, um, the founder of the Joseph Smith Foundation, he once in a conversation with me, told me that he has studied church history more than anybody else. And he told me that every single thing, every leader of the church has ever said is in perfect alignment. There’s no contradiction between any statements of any of the presidents of the church. And when I heard him say that, I really thought it told me a lot more about Him and his willingness and ability to, you know, try to bring, like, like the way that he thinks that it tells me about the leaders of the church, because that is absolutely not true. But what the Joseph Smith Foundation admittedly does is they get the conclusion they want, and then they cherry pick and find whatever information or whatever incredibly weak arguments they can find to try to prove their point. It, I, I am not even slightly impressed with their scholarship. They actually admit that they do that. They just justify it by saying that everybody does it. So anyway, I’m just letting you know who the LDS answers is before we go on with the rest of the quote. So when you hear how they’re talking about it, you can hear, um, how strongly they claim that this miracle story actually happened in the exact same way that they are extremely pro polygamy, polygamy, and they claim in extreme ways that Joseph Smith’s polygamy happened and that God is a polygamist and all the rest of it.

[04:03] Mike: Brigham Young, a man fiercely loyal to the Prophet Joseph Smith, current president of the 12 and later to become known as the Lion of the Lord, takes a stand. Suddenly the people arise en masse to their feet, astonished. One eyewitness later remembered it appeared that Joseph had returned and was speaking to the people. As Brigham Young commences speaking, hundreds in the audience believe in every possible degree it is Joseph’s voice and his person, in look, attitude, dress, and appearance. It is Joseph himself personified. Um, there are even stories where people say that, um, Joseph Smith apparently had like a chipped front tooth and people would say that they even heard Brigham Young started talking with that S sound, like when you have a chipped tooth and the S kind of, so I mean, like that this was basically the story that Brigham Young turned, transfigured into Joseph Smith in front of hundreds of people. And this is, this is obviously a crucial moment in the history of church, um, because following Joseph Smith’s death, the church had split off into many factions, as we all know, um, with all of the living witnesses following Emma Smith. Um, to form the reorganized church, uh,

[05:06] Michelle: I need to pause there. Mike actually does a really good job with most of the history, but he gets that completely wrong. I’ve covered this many times, but I always want to point out, Emma Smith did not lead any faction of the church. The RLDS Church is not Emma’s Church. It was actually reorganized by other members, Jason Briggs and Zena Gurley, right? They came to Joseph Smith the 3rd and asked him to lead the church. Because that was part of the revelation that they had, and part of the answer they had in reorganizing the church. They had to ask several times before Joseph Smith III finally agreed, he felt like he had a revelation and agreed to go and lead the RLDS Church. Emma Smith was never a leader in the RLDS Church. It is factually completely wrong to claim that it is Emma’s church, or to say that it’s her that she led it or that it was a break off of her. in any way. So I always want to correct that because it really is important and it does it does a disservice to get the history wrong on that.

[06:04] Mike: Due to their belief that polygamy is not from God, um, this moment is used to explain why Brigham Young was the one that was chosen by God to lead this church and why this branch of Mormonism is true and the only living branch of God’s church, and that Brigham Young was truly a prophet of God. Like this is. You know, this sounds crazy to maybe to some people listening, but this is not just the most one of the most important miracles in Mormonism. This is one of the most important miracles in in religion, like to have this happen in front of hundreds of people, um, that’s a miracle that would live up to a lot of the stuff in the Bible. This is no small thing. And so we accept this now as being the truth. Um, I remember, um. I asked somebody, I said, how do we know Brigham Young was the one that’s supposed to leave the church, because you know, you have all of these, these breakoffs, you know, and so I’m like, why, why did everyone follow Brigham and and they said, they said, because when Joseph Smith died, um, Brigham Young spoke and he was being challenged, a lot of people wanted to take over and everybody saw Brigham Young turn into Joseph Smith in every possible way, and that’s how they knew. So I mean, like that is exactly why Brigham Young ended up being the prophet. So this story is a massively important one, even though a lot of people might kind of. Uh, gloss over it because we focus so much on on Joseph Smith and in early uh early church history.

[07:20] Michelle: So he makes some really good points there. He’s exactly right that we focus so much on Joseph Smith and early church history that we ignore a ton about Brigham Young and the other leaders, the Utah polygamists, that should get a lot more focused. I disagree with him slightly. This story isn’t the reason that Brigham became the leader of the church, the people that chose to follow him. You, if you read some of the, um, Forces were going to go over, you get a good idea of what happened in that meeting and how Brigham Young was so much more convincing than Sydney Brigden, who had been sick. And, you, you know, Brigham Young really make, made a strong case. And I will say the people who chose to follow Brigham Young gave him their common consent. It is true that the succession was messy, right? And so I’m not in any way arguing that Brigham Young was not a valid successor for those who chose to follow him. But it is important for us to talk about this story, and I would argue all of the rest of the claims of, um, Brigham Young and the Utah leaders deserve a lot more focus than they get because there is so much focus given only to Joseph Smith. But I do agree with Mike, and I think it is true that most of us did not learn about the succession. Crisis and the ongoing questions about who was the rightful successor to Joseph Smith after Joseph and Hiram’s death, who was actually supposed to lead the church. It, it was a very messy topic. I have my own views on why that is. So, um, you know, I, I, I like when Cheryl Clo said that God just scattered seats everywhere and everybody had their own little piece of the restoration. That actually works for me, and I think it’s interesting that we all need each other. We need to learn from each other as the sort of the cousins in the restoration, right? But, um, the arguments used to support the succession claims generally did grow up later. And so in episode 148 on James Whitehead and WW Blair’s journal entry, I discussed the many RLDS affidavits of people swearing that they heard Joseph Smith say that if Brigham Young ever led the church, he would lead it to hell. And I think those claims suffer from the same challenges of the of the LDS affidavits. Who knows? But everybody needed to bolster their succession claim, right? And the transfiguration story became an extremely important story to confirm to the people, um, to who followed Brigham Young, that God had indeed chosen. Him as the rightful successor. And so I want to share that in my research on polygamy, I have read multiple accounts in various family histories and other histories of people talking about this story. Most recently, when I was working on my episode on Melissa Lott and the Lott family Bible, I read this account from her younger sister Elzaina Lot Willis. Melissa Lot Willis is Elzaina’s older sister, and Elzaina married Melissa’s husband’s younger brothers. They were siblings that married siblings, which is kind of a Fun story. But Alzaina was chosen to speak at the relief Society celebration in 1902 in Lehigh. And this is how she ended her talk. She said, in conclusion, I wish to say that I was at the meeting called by Sidney Rigdon to press his claims for the guardianship of the church when Brigham Young was transfigured before the people. When he first commenced speaking, I could not see him, but the voice was the voice of Brother Joseph. I moved a little so I could see the speaker, and I saw that he looked like Brother Joseph. After meeting, I asked my mother who that was that looked and talked so much like Brother Joseph. And she told me that he was apostle You. Of course, I was very much disappointed the next time I saw him, to find that he did not look like the prophet at all. This incident is as fresh in my memory today as if it had occurred but yesterday, and it is true, and I bear my testimony to it. That’s how she ended her talk, um, commemorating the relief Society, right? It is really start. to hear these strong testimonies given of events that almost certainly didn’t happen. This, well, from all of the evidence that we have, this, um, her speech or her experience was recorded in multiple biographies and histories. So here’s just one example. This is the history of her mother, Perilalot, that was written, and it says this. When Brigham Young stood to talk to the assembled group, it was to the astonishment of those present that they heard the prophet Joseph Smith’s voice as plainly as ever they did when he was living among them. Premilia’s daughter, Ezaina was sitting next to her and said, Mama, I thought the prophet was dead. Premila answered her and said, He is. This is our heavenly Father’s. This is, uh, um, the way our heavenly Father has told us who is to be our next leader. So you can see how these stories grow. And really, it is jarring, I think, to hear such fervent and seemingly sincere testimonies born of these events that, that the evidence looks like didn’t actually happen the way that were reported, but I think people really need to consider the testimonies like these of these other events when they say things like, Listen to the women in regard to polygamy. Women were certainly not immune from accepting and passing on the propaganda built around these kinds of faith promoting stories, both regarding the trans configuration and polygamy. So, so this, that’s part of why this is such a useful example and comparison to make. We’re talking about the transfiguration. Compared to polygamy. So I’ll go ahead and go on to the next clip so that again, hopefully you can understand why I am taking time to focus on Mormons discussion’s coverage of the transfiguration story.

[12:51] Mike: Yeah, and so this is where the story gets interesting because again, we have this miraculous story of the transfiguration of Brigham Young, but it’s going to suffer from the same problems that we talked about with Joseph Smith’s first vision, the priesthood restoration, the 1831 polygamy revelation, and what so many of the other of these other stories do, which is nothing was written down about it happening. Um, this way at the time.

[13:14] Michelle: I will also include the story of Hiram reading the high reading the revelation to the high council. We don’t get any, any testimony of that, even in the high council minutes, in any letters, in any journals anywhere until a year later when it is claimed in the expositor that that happened. And that’s the earliest claim by far. All of the other claims come decades later. So we need to pay attention to, um, the And, and all of the, all of the claims about Joseph Smith’s polygamy don’t come until decades later. Nothing was written about down about it at the time.

[13:44] Mike: And so with, with Brigham Young, this is extremely more problematic because we do have many letters and journals from the day the meeting took place, along with newspapers and church records from leaders. Not a single mention of this miraculous event is going to surface until at least 7 years later, when the illusions to this event begins to spring up in journals such as Emily Hoyt’s diary. And and so, you know, the most consequential event potentially in, I would say modern religious history, um, happened and not a single person or publication mentioned it until seven years later, and that is a massive red flag, not just because it wasn’t mentioned, but because we have a lot of accounts of the event not mentioning it. So like with the first vision, you could go, well, Joseph Smith didn’t have a journal in 1820, or in my opinion, 1824 that said, I saw God and Jesus. He just, he didn’t do any of that. In this case, we have a lot of writings that talk about the event. Um, and we’ll get into it a little bit. In some cases, you know, there’s pages of details about what happened, not a single mention of them seeing it or anyone else reporting it. And that is a really clear indication that this did not happen.

[14:43] Michelle: So what Mike is doing there is making an argument from silence. And I think that actually it’s valid because I think the point he’s making, it’s it, this is a fair argument from silence because he’s saying there are things that we would expect to see if this had not happened. That we don’t see. And that’s why he’s making this argument from silence. And the exact same thing is true of polygamy, right? Like when he says that nothing was written down at the time that this happened, the day that Hiram supposedly read the revelation to the high council, there are no records of that happening. They kept high council records, no mention of it, no letter from anybody, no journal entry, nobody talking about this massively controversial revelation being read, and the only account we get of it comes A year later in the novel expositor, which both Joseph and Hyrum deny ever happened, and many others deny as well, right? And so the argument from silence, and that, that’s just one example. If we had this, like, what is, what does the narrative say something like 140 people directly involved in Navu polygamy with Joseph Smith, according to the Joseph Smith narrative, and that’s not even taking into account their siblings, their parents, their immediate family members that would have known about this, right? To claim that Nobody said a single thing about it at the time. There’s not a single journal entry. There’s not a letter. There’s not a record anywhere. There are no indications of Joseph Smith providing for any of his other wives. Anything that we would expect to see. Not to mention no children, which we would also expect to see, while at the same time, we can see these things for the other Navo polygamists. I, in my model, it’s far fewer than 140 people involved in it, right? Because those stories all grew up later. It was A small group of Nu polygamists that Hirum Smith especially was trying to root out. Joseph and Hirum and Emma were working to try to end this, right? And, and, um, and so we do see all of this evidence from them, but we don’t see anything about Joseph Smith. And in fact, we don’t even just have to rely on the argument from silence, because we see, we see things that we would not expect to see if if polygamy were happening with Joseph Smith. So one of the arguments from silence, um, Eliza Snow. Her Novu Journal was actually found it’s copied in this book, which is a very useful book. It became available for research in, um, the 1970s, I believe. Well, at least that’s when, um, um, Maureen Beecher gained, gained access to it. And it does not say anything about polygamy. This is, um, this is Eliza Snow’s contemporary journal in Navvo, and there’s no information at all, right? And at some point, the weak argument of it was secret. They had To keep it secret, it falls apart because it’s exactly like you could say about this, that the only reason they didn’t write it down was because it was too sacred. There’s no evidence to claim that, right? There’s those, that’s all based on arguments that grew up later. But what, um, Eliza Snow’s Novou journal is much more aligned with is the contemporaneous record that she made at the time. Her signature on the October 1st, 1842 testimony published that Um, it, it again published the Doctrine and Covenant Section 101 in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants that said, we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death when either is at liberty to marry again. They published this yet again, and she signed this statement saying that there was no system of marriage being practiced in the church, other than the strict monogamy taught by the Book of Mormon, and multiple times in the Doctrine and Covenant. And every sermon, speech, publication of Joseph and Hiram Smith, including, I’ll show you this, I’ll just show you this one example, including the index to the Book of Mormon printed in 1835, which defines Jacob’s sermon as purely anti-polygamy with no loophole. This is just one of literally dozens of other contemporaneous novou documents I could show, making it abundant abundantly clear that only Meno. Me was being taught by Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and documents to the contrary come much later or suffer from substantial credibility problems and lack any support, anything that would support them. So every problem the transfiguration story story suffers with applies even more to polygamy. Richard Van Wagner wrote a great article on the transfiguration that Mike references in this episode, and I want to read directly from it. And hope that people who can see the application of these problems to the story of the transfiguration can also see the application to the stories of polygamy. So, let me quote this article. It says, the official account of post martyrdom Mormonism, also Joseph’s Mormonism, was written after the fact by members of the Quorum of the 12 or their advocates. These men under Brigham Young’s direction, zealously projected their role in history in the most favor favorable life. Overshadowed by editorial censorship, hundreds of deletions, additions, and alterations were made when the history of Joseph Smith, as it was originally called, was serialized in the Deseret News in the late in the late 1850s. Not only does this history place polygamy and Brigham Young’s ecclesiastical significance in the rosy glow of political acceptability, it does a monumental disservice to Sidney Rigdon and others who challenged the twelve’s ascent to power. The 12th 19th century propaganda mill was so adroit that few outside Brigham Young’s inner circle were aware of the behind the scenes alterations that were seamlessly stitched into church history. Charles Wesley Wadell was an assistant church historian who later left the church. He was aghast at these emendations, commenting on the many changes made in the historical work as it was being serialized. Wandell noted in his diary, I noticed the interpolation. because having been employed in the historian’s office at Navvo by Dr. Richards and employed two in 1845 in compiling this very autobiography, I know that after Joseph’s death, his memoir was doctored to suit the new order of things, and this too by the direct order of Brigham Young to Doctor Richards and systematically by Richards. More than a dozen references to Brigham Young’s involvement in transposing the written history may be found. In the in the post martyrdom records, first published in book form in 1902 as History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For example, I’m still reading from Richard Van Wagner. For example, of first of April 1st, 1845 citation records Young saying, I commenced revising the history of Joseph Smith at Brother Richard’s office. Elder der Hebrew C. Kimball and George A. Smith were with me. That this revision or censorship of the official record came from Brigham Young is evidenced by July 11th, 1856 reference in Wilfred Woodruff’s diary. Apostle Woodruff, working in the church historian’s office, questioned Young respecting a piece of history on book E page 1681 concerns. Hirum leading this church and tracing the ironic priesthood. Young advised it was not essential to be inserted in the history and had better be better be omitted. Woodruff then queried him about, quote, Joseph’s words on South Carolina, which had recently been published in the Deseret News. Young said he wished it not published. Years later, Elder Charles W. Penrose, a member of the first presidency, admitted that after Joseph Smith’s death, some changes were made in the official record, quote, for prudential reasons. These are the exact arguments that I and other monogamy affirmers have been making. And it’s so great to see them applied to the transfiguration, just like we need to. them to polygamy. I really hope people who understand the problems this revised history poses for things like the transfiguration can also open their minds enough to recognize that it poses the exact same problems for the narrative of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. So now I will play a clip of Mike citing the exact article I just read from.

[23:24] Mike: Richard Van Wagener, um, kind of discusses the evolution of the story in a dialogue for an article for dialogue, and he documents that journals from the days surrounding the meeting discussed the event, yet failed to mention the transfiguration on every instance. And so he, he says the following. The legend is now unsurpassed in Mormon lore, second only to Joseph Smith’s own account of angelic uh. Ministrations and his first vision and that when the 8th of August 1844 is stripped of emotional overlay, there is not a shred of irrefutable contemporary evidence to suggest or to support the occurrence of a mythical mystical event either in the morning or afternoon gatherings of that day.

[24:04] Michelle: OK. I hope you recognize the exact same thing could be said of every event having to do with Joseph’s polygamy. When it is stripped of emotional overlay, there is not a shred of irrefutable contemporary evidence to support that Joseph Smith ever taught or practiced polygamy. We have John Bennett’s accusations. I know people are going to be thinking of those, but there, there is no contemporary evidence. To support them, to to make the claim that they are better understood as factual information that John Bennett had, that he was somehow a polygamy insider who never had permission to practice polygamy, rather than that they are accusations, false accusations and rumors that he is starting and spreading, and that we actually, I, I won’t take the time to show you John Bennett’s affidavits that he signed. Declaring that Joseph Smith had not been involved in these things at all, so he contradicts himself, and the only reason anyone takes Bennett’s accusation seriously is because of the evidence the Utah polygamist created decades later using John Bennett as a reference to try to validate his unfounded accusations because it was useful to them to claimed that Joseph Smith had been a polygamist. So, um, Mike in this episode, um, skips over a few sources that Van Wagener includes that actually do sort of strengthen the case, but they still are later and not very strong. But this, I’m going to now play Mike’s first example of why the transfiguration story is problematic. And this is the one that made me decide I needed to do this episode. This is really fun.

[25:40] Mike: Everything, everything is pointing to this didn’t happen. I mean, it’s just, I don’t know how to say it, but this one is really funny because, um, there’s one diary that’s been used by some church scholars in the past to prove it was mentioned at the time. It’s a diary written by George Loub. Um, but as Van Wagener discovers, this small tan colored leather diary, which has misled many scholars, has now been determined to be a copy of the original, um, by Laub himself with additions.

[26:06] Michelle: OK, this one’s so fun. John actually, just after this laughs out loud about, um, Lab recopying his own journal and says that it’s extremely condemning, and I agree. So since they are saying that a recopied journal that adds this event is condemning and gives them strong evidence that they didn’t that it didn’t happen, I want to introduce you to William Clayton and his recopied novel. Journal. So I want to talk about this for just a second, because we have access to all of William Clayton’s other journals. This is his, um, England Journal that is available at BYU, his missionary journal from England, and we can see it with no problem. It does not seem to have been recopied, but it is heavily redacted. I’ll just show you a few examples of the many redactions. In this journal. And they generally come when, um, William Clayton is talking about women. And that makes you really wonder what, what they cut out considering what they left in. He talks a lot about spending tons of time with women, um, at all hours of day and night, and all of the many gifts that they give him. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s quite interesting to read. He Also includes his strong, romantic feelings for them, except his wife, who he barely mentions in his journal. So this is an original uncopied journal that is open to research, even though it’s quite scandalous and has all of those redactions. So why do we have access to this, but not the recopied Navu journal, right? We also have access to his pioneer journals starting in 18. 46 you can see here in his journals from 1846 to 1853 we have full access to research those. The only journal that we are not allowed to see that has been kept secret in the vault is his most important journal, the Navvo Journal, that is considered to be the one and only contemporaneous source for Joseph Smith’s polygamy. That’s where most of the information. About Joseph Smith’s polygamy comes from is from the um copy that was made and then was released about it, but we’ve never seen the original journal. In 2017, the church announced that the Clay that Clayton’s Novou Journal, the one that’s so important, would be released, but here we are in 2025 and still nothing after many postponements. We are now being told that it will be released most likely next year. So almost 9 years after they, or full years after they announced it, and we, you know, we might, we might get it at that point. But here is what you need to know. Just like the George Love Journal was recopied, just like George Love recopied his journal, William Clayton recopied His Nu Journal. Uh, we have, I’ve already known that, um, from the very various pages that are available to see, both John Hayacek, an expert in physical history from the Nu era, and Jeremy Hoop have come on the podcast and explained in detail how we know that not that William Clayton recopied his Navu journal and that it’s not actually. a contemporary source. But now the historians working on it have themselves come right out and admitted, admitted that Clayton recopied his novel diary and that it has a lot of problems. I was actually at the panel where they said this, and I heard it firsthand. As I said, I already knew this, but it was really good to hear them acknowledge it. And when they say it has problems, let me show you just one example of the kind of thing they mean. So, one of the women that Clayton talked, wrote a lot about in his England missionary diary that we have a lot of retractions regarding is Sarah Crooks. He spends a ton of time with her, um, and he records many interactions and gifts. She washes his feet multiple times and bathes his forehead with rum and gives him a lot of gifts like Money, linen, oranges, raisins, cocoa, mint drops, ginger lozenges. He records all of these gifts from women in great detail. So, quoting from Clayton’s biography by James Allen, James Allen wrote, quote, Nothing ever seriously strained the relationship between William and Ruth, but his friendship with Sarah Crooks at least had the potential of doing so. The attachment between William and Sarah was more than a passing fancy. They frequently wrote letters. To each other, went to meetings together, dined together and stayed up late at night conversing with each other. The night he got back from a visit to his family after giving him dinner, Sarah washed his tired head with rum. That was, so he went back to visit. His wife was really struggling, being left alone with their young children, with her parents. And so he went back, had to go visit his wife, and then the night he got back, um, Sarah washed his head with rum, and they had dinner together. So, let me Read just one of the many entries he writes about her in his missionary journal. He wrote this. Remember while his wife and children were waiting for him at home, struggling. This is what he wrote on February 27, 1840. Went to T. Miller’s. Susan is determined to have less family and break up house. They would go to old Miss Miller’s. She was weary in consequence of having too much work. She could not bear it, etc. He’s talking about Sarah. Susan’s complaints. I went to William Miller’s to meeting and spoke much on the tribulation which is at hand. The spirits seemed moved. I had great liberty in speaking, prayed with one sister, Sarah and Rebecca, that Sarah Crooks, brought me home. I told them what Susan was intending to do. Rebecca seems much troubled, and Sarah appeared rather tempted to get married. I felt sorrow on this account. I don’t want Sarah to be married. I was troubled on Tempted and tempted on her account and felt to pray that the Lord would preserve me from impure affection. She gave me an orange. I certainly feel my love toward her to increase, but shall strive against it. I feel too much to covet her and afraid lest her trouble should cause her to get married. The Lord, keep me pure and preserve me from doing wrong. So remember, this was 2 years before Clayton came to Navu and long Before he claimed to have learned about polygamy. He claims that he prayed for help, but he certainly didn’t follow the example of Joseph in Egypt, and he didn’t do anything to remove himself from temptation. He continued to spend a lot of time with her and to write about her often in this heavily redacted missionary journal. So this is the woman, Sarah Crooks, that he just wrote about that is referred to in his 1874 affidavit that was actually Written by Joseph F. Smith, um, um, using Clayton’s recopied journal as his reference. So Cheryl and my paper in the Journal of Mormon Polygamy is one that I hope you will definitely read on that topic. So I’ll go ahead and read from this affidavit. He wrote, During this period, the Prophet Joseph frequently visited my house in company and became well acquainted with my wife, Ruth, to whom I had been married 5 years. This is where it starts on the page. One day in the month of February 1843, date not remembered, the prophet invited me to walk with him. During our walk, he said he had learned that there was a sister back in England, to whom I was very much attached. I replied, there was, but nothing further than an attachment such as a brother and sister in the church might rightfully entertain from each other. That’s not what his journal tells us, his contemporary redacted journal. He then said, Speaking of Joseph, why don’t you send for her? I replied in In the first place, I have no authority to send for her. And if I had, I have not the means to pay expenses. To this, he answered, I give you authority to send for her, and I will furnish you with the means, which he did. This was the first time the Prophet Joseph talked with me on the subject of plural marriage. He informed me that the doctrine and principle was right in the sight of our heavenly Father, and that it was a doctrine which pertained to the celestial order and glory. After giving me lengthy instruction and information. Concerning the doctrine of celestial or plural marriage, he concluded his remarks by the words, It is your privilege to have all the wives you want. There are so many problems with this, um, with this narrative. First of all, I’ll just mention, as I always do, the terms celestial or plural marriage were not used at any time during Joseph Smith’s life, not until decades later, during the 60s. So they’re perfectly appropriate to show up in the 1874 affidavit, but not during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. And that’s is one of many problems. But what I want to point out actually is that Clayton’s recopied Navu Journal writes about him sending for Sarah Crooks, but it makes some pretty massive mistakes. So on March 7th in the what we have of of, um, Clayton’s journal so far, on March 7th, he wrote, Elder Brigham Young called on me, um, called me 1 to 1 side and said he wants to give me some instruction on the priesthood. The first opportunity. So it’s Brigham Young instructing him. He said the prophet had told him to do so and to give me a favor, which I have long desired. For this, again, I feel grateful to God and His servant, and the desire of my heart is to do right and be saved. So his recopied journal makes it clear that Brigham Young, not Joseph Smith, taught him the doctrine and gave him the favor he had long desired of sending for Sarah Crooks. And then on Thursday, The night, 2 days later, he recorded at President Joseph’s office, walked out in the p.m. He told me it was lawful for me to send for Sarah and said he would furnish me money. So that’s what we get showing up in the affidavit. We already have a problem since the Journal says Brigham Young told him about it first, and that it was in March when the affidavit says that Joseph taught him first and that it was in some unknown date in February. But the real problem shows up in Clayton’s. copied journal for the March 30th first entry which says this Am. Sarah Crooks arrived in Navvo. She received word that I sent to Brother Clark on February 12th and started immediately. She has been prospered and blessed on her journey. So it seems in his hurry to recopy his journal, he missed this serious error, despite claiming that Joseph didn’t tell him to send for Sarah Crooks until March 9th, his own recopied journal revealed. feels that the letter that he sent sending for her arrived in Manchester on February 12th when she immediately began making preparations to come. So do you get, do you get that this is a huge problem? When Joseph F. Smith wrote his affidavit, let me get back to the affidavit. He tries to fudge through this problem by claiming that it’s just some unremembered date in February, right? That’s how he tries Make sense of this. It still doesn’t work. It’s a far less committal claim, but it still doesn’t work because Clayton’s journal says that it’s March 9th, and yet his journal also shows that the letter arrived in Manchester, February 12th. This is a really big problem for the validity of this recopied journal. So if the George Lab Journal, thought to be the only contemporary evidence of the transfiguration is a problem because it was re Copied and this story added, then we must also acknowledge that the William Clayton Journal, long thought to be the only contemporary source for the details of Joseph Smith’s polygamy, is also a problem because it was recopied. It’s the exact same pattern and the exact same problem. But Clayton’s recopy journal isn’t the only example of evidence being fudged, created, and added later. There are many, many more examples. I I will show you just one. So, Patty Sessions is thought to be one of Joseph Smith’s well-documented wives. Like several other people, she apparently decided, or was asked to write her reminiscent journal when she was in Utah. So, here is her journal. Um, let me see if I can make it a little bigger so that you can see it. You can see that she started to keep this journal in 1856. So, um, what is that? 9 years. After arriving in Utah in 1857, 12 years after Joseph Smith’s death, and, um, and 4 years after polygamy had been publicly acknowledged. So this journal is considered to be evidence of her plural marriage to Joseph Smith. This is the kind of thing that people are referring to when they say we have women’s journals. Let me show you some of the problems. If we scroll down here, I have to go all the way down to page 124. And you can see that she has this, um, this journal entry that goes on talking about her events from, I believe it’s May 23rd through Saturday, June 16th on this page. So let me get down here near the bottom. I’m going to start reading right here on Monday, the 11th, Tuesday the 12th, Wednesday the 13th, wove, Let my dresses out. Thursday the 14th, size and share and Sized and spooled my blankets. February the 5th or Friday the 15th, warped Sister Grow’s web. That’s a term that refers to blanket making. She had to warp her web. Those are terms I looked up that are valid terms from that day and age. But and then you can see Saturday the 16th. Now, the next page is put in after the fact, and I’ll show you. So here’s Saturday the 16th. We have to skip over these three pages to get back. To her contemporary journal where it says, Saturday the 16th, warped mine. So she had warped the other web, now she warped hers. Sunday the 17th, went to meeting. Monday the 18th, got my corn plowed. Tuesday the 19th. It continues on. This is obviously the journal that she is keeping. This is actually 1860 by the time she gets to this point in her journal. And these are the kind of daily events that she is recording. But here, stuck in the middle is an un Dated, reminiscent, um, biography of her entire life. And it’s just stuck in the middle of this journal, which is bizarre and random. We don’t know when she wrote this, but I’ll read part of it. She says, um, let’s see. I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ, July 2, 1834. Mr. Sessions was baptized August 1835, a couple of crossed out words. We received our endowment, December 16. 1845 in Navu. So that was again what that during that period of time that the Navu Temple was open over a year, well, a year and a half after Joseph’s death. We’ll continue reading the next, the second of these second pages. I was sealed to Joseph Smith by Willard Richards, March 9, 1842 in Newell K. Whitney’s Chambers Novou for eternity, and then written in above is time and all eternity. And if I do not Live to attend to it. What does that mean? What does it mean to live to attend to it myself? When there is a place prepared, I want someone to attend to it for me, according to order. And, um, Sylvia, my daughter, was, um, present when I was sealed to Joseph Smith, right? So we get this, we get this later written, undated, reminiscent claim stuck in the middle of her journal between Two obviously contemporary pages recorded in 1860, right? And then stuck on beneath this, it’s stuck on, I believe, with wax or glued on. This says is this little receipt, Great Salt Lake City, July 3, 1867. So this one is at least dated and it says I was sealed to Joseph F. Smith for time and all eternity, and the redacted part says and received my second anointing. The Joseph F. Smith acting for and on behalf of his uncle, Joseph Smith, the prophet, who was martyred June 20th, 1849 in Carthage jail with his brother Hiram, Joseph F. Joseph F. Father, I think it’s saying that Hiram was Joseph F. Smith’s father, Patty Sessions. So we get this, this, um, entry in her journal. It is so hard to explain and so hard to understand. People can choose to interpret this however they want to, but it says, I want someone to attend to my ceiling to Joseph Smith. She wrote this, and then it seems she got this little receipt where she claimed that she was sealed to Joseph F. Smith, who was standing proxy for Joseph Smith. So that’s at what point she was sealed to Joseph Smith. And this is Stuck in obviously much later into a Utah journal. And these are the kinds of things that are claimed as evidence to say we have the women’s journals. So again, I hope that you can see that the point I’m making, that if there are problems with George Lab rewriting his journal to add these claims into it, there are a lot of similar problems with every journal we have regarding polygamy. The next problem they bring up with the transfiguration claim is um people claiming to have witnessed the transfiguration, who we now know weren’t there when it happened. Let me play you an example.

[44:06] Mike: OK, this one, this is one of those, this is one of those ones where you hear this now and I’m just like, holy crap, like. So this is apostle Orson Hyde, um, speaking at general conference in 1869, and this is what Orson Hyde says to the church. We went among the congregation, and President Young went on the stand. Well, he spoke, and his words went through me like electricity. Am I mistaken? said I, or is it really the voice of Joseph Smith? This is my testimony. It was not only the voice of Joseph, but there were the features, the gestures, and even the stature of Joseph before us in the person of Brigham. And the problem is that Orson Hyde wasn’t actually Navo that day. Um, he arrived 5 days, he arrived 5 days later as confirmed by the Journal of Wilfred Woodruff, so he wasn’t even there.

[44:48] Michelle: I’ll go on to the next clip where they talk about this.

[44:52] John Dehlin: No, this, this story that we just told about Orson Hyde was the lightning bolt for me. Yeah, like he’s an apostle. Decades later, he’s standing up in general conference to tell this powerful faith promoting miraculous story with his apostolic or whatever authority. Um, and, and we now know that he wasn’t even there, but we don’t even need to believe that he was lying or fooling people. We know enough now about social psychology to be able to say it would actually be weird if stuff like this didn’t happen because this is how the human brain works, but it’s so condemnatory that we have apostle over the pulpit, completely misleading everybody. Saying that he was there when we have hard evidence that he wasn’t even there.

[45:47] Michelle: OK. I love this clip as well. I think they are making such good points. Um, John D. Lee was another one who made extreme claims about witnessing this miracle, but who was also later shown to have not been in town when it happened. So, again, I need to point out this exact thing happens with polygamy all the time. There are too many examples of people making claims. We now know to be absolutely false to even begin to choose from. I could point out Emily Partridge’s claims, her consistent claims of her wedding dates. Well, she fills out two affidavits and with two different dates, and then later explains that away by claiming that they did a pretend marriage after the fact that Emma was present at, and she claims that Judge Adams married them. We now know that Judge Adams was not in town the day that she said it happened, and Emma Smith. not in town the day that she said it happened. She wasn’t called on that until the Temple Lot cross-examination, which is why cross-examination is so important, which is why we can’t just take these claims and accept, accept them when they weren’t ever questioned on them. But she, she said, Well, I must have gotten the date wrong. That’s the first time she ever said that she got the date wrong after decades of making this claim, starting in 1869, right? And then she said it must have been some other day, but we now can show there is No day it could have possibly happened. There’s no day that, um, Emma Smith, Judge Adams, and Joseph Smith were all in town with Emily where this could have happened. So we have so many claims like this that we could talk about. We could go on and on about them. I want to also point out that the only reason that we claimed that Joseph Smith was practicing polyandry was these is because of these similar problems. It’s the affidavit that Joseph F. Smith wrote. Out and had the women sign. And, um, and then later on, historians went back and said, Wait, she was already married. Wait, she was married and pregnant at the time. They hadn’t stopped to figure out those problems when they were filling out those false affidavits. We do not have women claiming that they were married to Joseph Smith and their husband at the same time. That does not show up. What we do have is when Joseph F. Smith and others started to realize this was a problem, we have women and other is trying to explain it away. For example, Josephine Lyon in her affidavit said that her mother married, her mother Sylvia married Joseph Smith after her husband after her father, well, who she said wasn’t her father, after her mother’s husband had been excommunicated, we know that that’s false, right? And so all of these dating problems show up like crazy, where people are making claims that we can now show to be absolutely untrue. And again, it can be very strange to see people making these explicit claims of things that that never happened, or at least that they never saw happen. I really like what John talked about there about psychology and what he’ll, well, I’ll play clips of him getting into that a little bit more. But we have to remember that this applies just as much to polygamy. We have people making claims of things that they absolutely did not see. So here’s, here’s one example. This is Orson Whitney, Orson F. Whitney. Who was born in 1855, 11 years after Joseph Smith was killed, writing in 1888, he wrote, A grand and glorious principle had been revealed and for years had slumbered in the breast of God’s prophet, awaiting the time when with safety to himself and the church, it might be confided to the sacred keeping of a chosen few. That time had now come. An angel with a flaming sword descended from the courts of glory. And confronted the prophet, commanding him in the name of the Lord to establish the principle so long concealed from the knowledge of the saints and the and of the world, that of plural marriage. So again, this claim of the flaming sword, I love, I know that Brian Hills loves to say, a drawn sword, not a flaming sword, as if that is an important distinction when we are talking about a story that an angel with a sword came and threatened to kill Joseph Smith if he didn’t betray his. Life. And what Brian Hailes finds important about that is whether it was flaming or simply drawn. I, I, I, I don’t even know what to say to that. But I want to point out, Joseph Smith never said anything like that. Every single claim that Joseph said something like that comes decades later from these fanciful stories. In this case, from Orson, um, Orson F. Whitney, who would not even be born for a decade and a half after this supposedly happened. So here’s another completely made up story. I, I just think it’s fun to see how these stories get thrown out there and how similar they are to the stories of the transfiguration that we can acknowledge are not true. Here’s another completely made up story. So this entire article that I’m going to reference now, the article is called Conspiracy of Navu. And it was published in The Contributor in 1885. It was written by Horace Cummings, who similar to Orson F. Whitney, was not born until 1858, 14 years after Joseph Smith was killed. So I’ll go ahead and share part of this article called um Conspiracy. Of Navu. It was touted as never a never before published account of Joseph’s last days that had been hidden from the world, and it will and that will show that he suffered far greater agony than had previously been known. So again, remember who wrote this and where it comes from without ever citing a source, the author tells us. An extremely detailed and emotional tale of the brave boys who learned of the conspiracy to kill Joseph Smith. This is an interesting article. I may do a full episode on it at some point because it is so interesting and such a good example of what we’re talking about. So let me, let me just read a sample from it. This is page 258 of the um Of this, the contributor. And I’m starting at the top of this, this second column after the boys told him about the plot that they had uncovered, it says, Joseph was very much moved, and at length burst out, Oh, brethren, you do not know that, um, oh, brethren, you do not know what this will terminate in, but proceeded no further, for his feelings were so strong that he burst. Into tears in great agitation, Brother John Scott, who was an intimate and trusted friend of Joseph, sprang forward and throwing his arms around the neck of around the, the prophet’s neck, exclaimed, Oh, brother Joseph, do you think they are going to kill you? And they fell on each other’s necks and wept bitterly. The scene is difficult to describe. Yes, because you weren’t born when it supposedly happened. The thought of losing their friend and profit by the hands of such a bloodthirsty mob was sufficient to wring their hearts, and those brave men who but a few moments before had fearlessly faced death and scorn, the proffered conditions on which their lives might be spared, now wept like children and mingled their tears with those of their leader. Joseph was the first to master his feelings, and raising Brother Scott’s arms from off his neck, he said in a deep and sorrowful tone, I fully Comprehend it. He then relaxed into a solemn study while the brethren anxiously watched the changes of his countenance, as if they would read the thoughts and feelings that were preying upon his heart. The scene was painful and impressive. Anyway, it goes on and on from there, and you can see what I’m talking about. But I want to read this quote on the next page that is, um, that is use the Joseph Smith Foundation, the people we were talking about before that love to promote polygamy and Love to promote the story of the transfiguration and all of these other things. They, they, um, published this as a direct quote from Joseph Smith. They claim that Joseph Smith said these words that were written in this source, and that is something we need to pay attention to. I haven’t seen this quoted in Saints. I hope it’s not, so I’m not sure how, um, various church historians deal with this. But no, there is no citation given. There is no source given for these exact quotes. From Joseph Smith that the Joseph Smith Foundation claims are exact quotes from Joseph Smith. This is why I have such a problem with this narrative. So I’m going to skip to the next page. I’ll just read a little bit at the, at the bottom of the first column, and then you’ll see me continue on. It says, he continued in great earnestness, speaking to these young boys, and this is the quote. They accuse me of polygamy and of being a false prophet and many other things, which I do not now remember. But I am no false prophet. I am no impostor. I have had no dark revelations. I have had no revelations from the devil. I made no revelations. I have got nothing up of myself. The same God that has thus far dictated me and directed me and strengthened me in this work gave me this revelation and commandment on celestial and plural marriage. Again, terms that were not used until the 1860s. Never used during Joseph Smith’s life. I can prove that even just by looking at the revelation, the supposed revelation. Section 132 calls it the principle and doctrine of having Many wives and concubines, right? It doesn’t call it celestial plural marriage because they hadn’t come up with that term yet when they wrote that revelation. And when they amalgamated that revelation and added the polygamy parts to the true revelation on eternal marriage that Joseph Smith had presented. So, um, I’ll continue. And at the same time, God commanded me to obey it. He said to me that unless I accepted it and introduced it and practiced it, I, together with my people, would be damned and cut off from this time henceforth. And they say, if I do so, they will kill me. Oh, what shall I do? If I do not practice it, I shall be damned with my people. But remember, they only had to practice it for that couple of years until they ended it in 1890, but really in 1904, but really in the 1920s, right? It was just a temporary principle that needed to be restored by the unchanging eternal God for some reason. Um, oh, what shall I do? If I do not practice it, I shall be damned with my people. If I do teach it and practice it and urge it, they, they say they will kill me, and I know they will. But, said he, we have got to observe it. It is an eternal principle. That was ended in 1890 and then 1904, and then the 1920s. But it is an eternal principle and was given by way of commandment and not by way of instruction. So I just wanted to share that source again, because these are the kinds of stories that we come up with. Later, after the fact that that we put in Joseph’s words, this is really how we get the polygamy narrative, just as it is the same way that we get the transfiguration narrative. It’s important to pay attention to the similarities. And when people say things like, why would they lie about polygamy, which I hear a lot, this, this is important evidence to pay attention to when people say that, like, they wouldn’t lie about this. Their testimonies are so sincere. It shows that they are just not very familiar. With the sources on all of these topics, or with the forces at work in early Utah. They made up stories and testimonies about polygamy for the exact same reasons. They made up stories and testimonies about the transfiguration. Brigham Young needed Joseph Smith’s and God’s authority and credibility in order to pass off his doctrines and claim his right to lead. And the people got, got in line behind that and contributed to it. And just Orson Hyde could stand in front of a conference and tell a story like that, like the transfiguration when he wasn’t even there, Brigham Young was able to do the exact same thing. So I want to talk now about an extremely important discourse conference talk that Brigham Young gave on October 8, 1866. This, um, this is important for a variety of reasons. It’s, it’s an extremely important talk. Um, it’s important about the succession and many more things. But I’m just going to Focus on the parts about polygamy. Um, the church historian, George A. Smith had been speaking right before this and had brought up some of Joseph Smith’s published denials of polygamy, which as church historian, he had, he had access to. We don’t have George A. Smith’s talk, at least not that I have seen, but because of Brigham’s talk, we know what he was talking about. And Brigham Young, Brigham Young did not like that at all. So he stood up after, and here’s part of what he said. I am an older man than Brother George A. Smith. And my memory of things which took place in his boyhood should be better than his. I would not be willing to say that Joseph Smith, that Joseph ever denied any doctrine he published. He did not, to my knowledge. He never made the letter A mean anything but A. It is nothing else but a in the gospel as it is in the Deseret alphabet. It does not represent any double meaning. So Brigham obviously did not support the carefully worded denials explanation. That we get now when people are trying to explain away the, the many, many times that Joseph condemned, forbid, and, um, denied practicing polygamy. He just insisted that Joseph never denied polygamy at all, which he was able to get away with at the time until the RLDS missionaries, and the sons of Joseph and Emma started publishing Joseph’s many denials and bringing them to Utah. That’s when they had to start coming up with new. Arguments like the carefully worded denials, or we were only denying, um, spiritual wifery, not celestial eternal marriage, celestial plural marriage. Although we have many sources of them all calling it spiritual wifery in Navvo and many decades after, even at the end of her life, Emily Partridge was still calling herself a spiritual wife and still referring to spiritual, spiritual wifery and a spiritual baby, right? Brigham Young then goes on to tell a fanciful story. In this October 8th, 1866 sermon, he tells a fanciful story of how he single-handedly convinced Tyrum to accept polygamy in 1842. That is very important. So I’m going to read part of this sermon right north of the Masonic Hala Navu, the ground was not fenced. The year was 1842. He says that explicitly. There were some rails laid along the fence up some lots. Hiram saw me and said, Brother Brigham, I want to talk to you. We went together and sat upon the rails that were piled up. He commenced by saying, I have a question to ask you. In the first place, I say that I do know that you and that you and the 12 know some things that I do not know. I can understand this by the motions and talk and doings of Joseph, and I know there is something or other which I do not understand that is revealed to the 12. Is that so? I replied, this is Brigham speaking. I do not know anything about what you know, but I know what I know. Then he said, I have mistrusted for a long time that Joseph had received a revelation that a man should have more than one wife. And he has hinted as much to me, but I would not bear it. We had heard him say hard things, I recollect. So Brigham Young then goes on for telling several stories intended to demean and undermine Hiram Smith and Joseph Smith’s relationship with with him, putting himself in between them as the person had to rely. on to save himself from Hirum. I will say that other than Brigham Young’s decades late claims like this, we have no evidence that that Joseph and Hirum were ever in discord with each other. And, and there’s absolutely no evidence that that Brigham Young was particularly close to Joseph Smith. They never really had one on one interactions. We only get that because Brigham sets himself up that way decades later, when he has this pulpit in Um, Utah that nobody can ever disagree with anything he says. And so he goes on to all of these stories to demean Hirum, and then he goes, he, he starts in again and says, I will now go back to where I met Hiram. He said to me, I am convinced that there is something that has not been told me. I said to him, Brother Hiram, Joseph would tell you everything, every, everything the Lord reveals to him if he could. I must confess. I felt a little sarcastic against Hiram. Um, he goes on to say, I said to him, Brother Hiram, I will tell you all about this thing, which you do not know. If you will swear with an uplifted hand before God, that you will never say another word against Joseph and his doings, and the doctrines he is preaching to the people. He replied, I will do it with all my heart. And he stood upon his feet saying, So, so Brigham is claiming that Hiram made an oath of vow to Brigham Young, in the name of God, that he would no longer criticize Joseph and his doctrines. I hope people are hearing how just truly ludicrous this is, and really narcissistic as well. Um, so according to Brigham, Hyrum said, I will do it with all my heart. And he stood upon his feet saying, I want to know the truth and to be saved. And he made a covenant there, never again to bring forward one argument or use any influence against Joseph’s doings. Joseph had many I sealed to him. I told Hyrum the whole story, and he bowed to it and wept like a child and said, God be praised. He went to Joseph and told him what he had learned and renewed his covenant with Joseph. And they went heart and hand together while they lived, and they were together when they died, and they are together now defending Israel. So, again, this story is ludicrous, right? Like, Brigham Young does not give Any indication of what it was he said that convinced Tyrum that this doctrine he had been so vociferously fighting against was in fact true, and that, that, you know, how he made it make sense to him. And it’s much more problematic even than just how fanciful and ridiculous it is, because while there is no evidence to show it ever happened, there is ample evidence to show that it did not happen. At the very least, not the way and the that Brigham Young claimed. Brigham had a distinct point of it being 1842, even using the fence rails being there for the fence that was being built at that time to support the timing of this story. And the 1842 date is important because we have a lot of affidavits that are, um, that are gotten up after this, claiming that Hyrum was sealing people uh after this time period, right? After this 18 this spring 1842 date. But we have multiple sources that we now have access to, showing that Hiram was fighting vociferously against polygamy well after 1842, well after the spring of 1842 when Brigham Young claims this happened. So let me go ahead and show you, I think it’s this slide, yes, this is Levi Richards, um, May 14th, 1843 journal. And this is at least a year after Brigham claimed to have had to have given Hirum this major, major change of heart. In this sermon that Levi Richards records contemporaneously, this is not a recopied journal, um, Levi recorded that Hirum said there were many that had a great deal to say about the ancient. Order of things as Solomon and David having many wives and concubines. But it’s an abomination in the sight of God. If an angel from heaven should come and preach such doctrine, you would be sure to see his cloven foot and cloud of blackness around his head, though his garments might shine as white as snow, a man might have one wife, concubines, he should have none. He observed that the idea was that this was given to Jacob for a perpetual principle, right? This is an Important source when we are talking about this story that Brigham Young is telling. And then another week and a half after that on May 23rd, Clayton’s recopied journal records Tuesday conversed with HCK, that’s Here C. Kimball, concerning a plot that is being laid to entrap the brethren of the secret secret priesthood. The Secret priesthood is polygamy, being made to entrap the men of the secret priesthood by Brother Hirum and others. Right? It says Brother H and others. That means Brother Hirum and others. There are many other documents, all of which were scrubbed from church history that make it abundantly clear that Hiram was not on board with polygamy, um, including the April 8th, 1844 sermon, just a few months before his death, where he gathers the elders together just to tell them that God has never commanded any man to have more than one wife, right? And to threaten them. That they will be exposed and lose their license if they do, if they teach any of this ridiculous nonsense, let alone doing it. So there is more than enough evidence to show the problems with Brigham Young’s claim, which leads to the next point Mike makes about the transfiguration, the way Saints handles it. So I, I have to talk about Saints’ handling of both of these sources. Let me play this clip.

[1:07:06] Mike: It’s interesting because this book, the Saint’s book is done by. Uh, scholars within the church, and you can kind of see in this, in this excerpt how you could tell the scholars kind of know that the story is actually weak historically. So I want to read, um, how saints, uh, treats the transfiguration of Brigham Young, um, and so it goes 7 years later, Emily Hoyt recorded her experience of watching Brigham speak to the saints, testifying how much he looked and sounded like Joseph on the stand. In the years to come, dozens of saints would add their witness to hers, describing how they saw Joseph’s prophetic mantle fall on Brigham that day. And so if you read that paragraph, knowing the history, you could see exactly what the writers of Saints is trying to accomplish here, which is they’re presenting the account as proof to members that it happened, but they’re, they’re putting in that it wasn’t written down until years later. So when someone like me points out the absence of any contemporary evidence, they can claim they were being honest in how they framed it. Um, but I, I would just point out that this, this, you know, if you read it not knowing the history, you’d be like, oh my goodness, they all saw it at the time and just didn’t write it down. I think it’s a really carefully worded paragraph to make it sound like it’s a factual event while also trying to be accurate so you know, they can fall back and say we weren’t holding anything back from people.

[1:08:18] Michelle: So, Mike makes such a good point there. I’m going to go on and let him make his next point. I just have to point out that saints’ handling of the transfiguration is extremely straightforward and honest compared to their handling of polygamy. It is their saint’s handling of polygamy is far, far more problematic, and we’ll go into that. But first, I want to let Mike make this point. Which I love, by the

[1:08:43] John Dehlin: way. Let’s go to the next

[1:08:44] Mike: slide. Yeah, and so this is uh something I say a lot and, um, you know, uh, follow the footnotes. It’s kind of like the follow the prophet song, which just replaces footnotes and um every time you read a church publication, you should kind of follow the footnotes to see what they actually say. And so, um, you know, this account we just read what what Emily Hoyt was attributed to in Saints, um, but it’s a little bit different than how it’s actually just how she actually described it.

[1:09:09] Michelle: I love Mike’s song of Follow the footnotes. That that is awesome. That is definitely something I say all the time. You must read the footnotes, particularly in saints and any study of church history, but I would say on um the topic of polygamy. More than any, any other. So I love follow the footnotes. That’s what I’m gonna hear for No, I’m when I hear that song. So, um, but I do have to say that Saints’ handling of the transfiguration, as I just said, is so much better and more honest than their handling of polygamy. Again, There are far, far too many examples that we could go into. But, um, I’m just going to show how they handle this, how they handle the topic in chapter 40, United in an Everlasting covenant. This is amazing to me. First of all, they, they cite extensively from Brigham Young’s October 8, 1866 speech about Hirum, though, that, um, that I just read much of, much. That is one of the main sources used in this chapter. Um, as a reminder, Brigham made it abundantly clear in that that it was spring of 1842 that he somehow, without a single argument or scripture or any logical case, convinced Hiram of the truthfulness of polygamy and got him to repent to him and covenant to him to never speak ill of Joseph again, as if Hiram ever spoke ill of Joseph to Brigham Young. Or as if Hyrum would ever go to Brigham Young for information about Joseph Smith, right? But Saints uses every part of this sermon by Brigham Young, even though Brigham Young chose not to have it published in the Journal of Discourses. The only way you can get access to that sermon is by, well, the only way I’ve seen is by the complete teachings of the complete discourses of Brigham Young by Richard, Richard Bad Wagner. It’s the volume, uh, I can’t remember if it’s volume 2 or 3. It’s the one that includes the year 1866. But But um, it includes even the stories he tells to demean Hirum. It just removes some of the insulting details, and it only leaves, it, it, it carefully crafts the year. Brigham Young explicitly said 1842, but Saints carefully leaves out the year to get to very gently gloss over the fact that Brigham said it was 1842 and suddenly sort of, um, switch it to 1843. So, I’ll start reading, um, down a little over halfway through the chapter right here. Um, let’s see. It says, on May 14th, while Joseph was away at another conference, Hiram preached in the temple against men having more than one wife. So it had talked about, um, it had just cited extensively from Brigham Young’s speech above, right, saying that he, um, that he convinced Tyrum to make a covenant. And then it Just switches to May 14th, doesn’t tell you it’s the following year, right? That, um, that he, Hirum preached in the temple against men having more than one wife, referencing, um, referring to Jacob’s condemnation of unauthorized plural marriage in the Book of Mormon. This unauthorized idea is, is just is maddening. Hirum did anything that Hiram said in that sermon I just read that Levi Richards recorded, which is what they’re referring. did anything about that. Talk about it being unauthorized. Hirum said it was a perpetual principle, right? Hirum called the practice an abomination before God. And sure enough, right there, it cites Levi Richard’s journal that we just referred to. And then it talks about Jacob too, um, to, in order to get their idea of unauthorized polygamy, that God just didn’t authorize the Nephites to practice this eternal principle, right? That, that, uh, anyway, it’s. Happening. So then it says, after the sermon, Hyrum began to question his own certainty about what he taught. So it gives it uses that sermon and then it with no source whatever says it began to question his own certainty. Discussions about plural marriage swirled around Navu, and rumors that Joseph had several wives were common. For that citation, it gives us, again, it’s referring to the Levi Richards discourse, right? That It was after that sermon. And the only citation it gives us for that is Emily Partridge’s testimony in the Temple lot when she says, decades later, that was in the 90s, right? So this is 50 years later, Emily Partridge, whose testimony is an absolute mess. She claims that there were rumors going around Navvo of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. And that’s the citation it gives us to tell us why Hyrum started doubting what he had just buried. Todd. It also ignores William Clayton’s journal that says that a week and a half later, Hirum was setting a trap for the men of the secret priests and it just completely leaves this out. So, this, this is what Saints is doing, and it’s telling us this factually, and mixing up the years, right? Hyrum wanted to believe this was not the case, but he wondered if Joseph was not telling him something. There had been times, after all, when Joseph had alluded to the practice, perhaps testing. Hiram to see how he would react. What? And Hiram sensed that, that, um, that there were some things that Joseph told the 12 that he had not taught him. This all relies only on this sermon by Brigham Young. One day after the sermon, Hiram saw Brigham near his home and asked if they could talk. I know there is something or other, which I do not understand that is revealed to the 12, he said. Is that so? So you can see it’s using Brigham Young’s sermon as the only source for And telling it factually, at least the, um, in the transfiguration when they use Emily Hoyt’s seven year later journal, at least they say, Emily recorded this. This doesn’t say Brigham Young recorded this. It teaches it factually. The men sat down on a pile of fence rails. I do not know anything about what you know, Brigham answered, but I know what I know. Here we go. This, this is the sermon. I have mistrusted for a long time that Joseph had received a revelation that a man should have more than one wife, Hyrum said. I will tell you about this, Brigham said, If you will swear with an uplifted hand that you will never say another word against Joseph and his doings and the doctrine he is preaching. Hiram stood up and said, I will do it with all my heart, he said, I want to know the truth. As Brigham taught him the Lord’s revelation to Joseph on plural marriage, Hiram wept, convinced that Joseph acted under commandment. And sure enough, the citation it gives us is the only source for this is Brigham Young’s October 8, 1866 discourse that I just read from. This is unbelievable. They don’t even. Any of Hiram’s many, many other actions and speeches and publications from both Hiram and Joseph against polygamy, right? Again, so, and, and again, they are pretending that this is 1843, although Brigham claimed it was 1842. They’re post putting it after the Levi, a few days after the Levi Richards sermon. This is This is just, uh, this is why I get so upset about the handling of polygamy, and I hope that people who are upset about the states, or at least recognize the problems with how the state how Saints talks about the transfiguration, can start to see how infinitely more problematic and egregious their handling of polygamy is. OK, let’s go on to Mike’s next clip.

[1:16:39] Mike: I, I honestly, I, I feel like it’s one of those things where you have 7 years of all this infighting between all these sects of Mormonism, and they’re trying to find any way they can to justify why they are the one true and living branch of Mormonism. And so I think that maybe it was something where people are just talking and someone mentions a detail and someone’s like, oh yeah, yeah, I remember that too. And then, then someone else kind of ups it a little bit and it’s kind of like, you know, again, we’ll talk about this a little bit as we go whispers, right? Yeah, it’s a telephone game except in this, in this, in this game, you’re, remember, you’re trying not only to convince yourself that you will join the right sect of Mormonism, but you’re trying to convince other people that they should join your sect of Mormonism. So of course, you need grander and grander stories so that when you’re trying to do missionary efforts, especially if you’re doing missionary efforts where they’re, where they’re hearing from other branches of Mormonism, it’s like, no, no, no, this is why. We are the one. And so I feel like whether or not, I don’t think that like the, the 12 are sitting in a room, you know, twisting their mustache, going, oh my goodness, how are we going to trick these people? I think it’s something where people are trying to convince themselves as well as convince others that they made the right choice to join this church, go all the way across the country, have family and friends that died along the way. And now they need to convince themselves not only that they made the right choice, but that this guy who’s leading this church, who I would argue is kind of a monster, is actually the right person, um, from God.

[1:17:56] Michelle: I think Mike is right on here. He’s making such a good point. The people who followed Brigham Young desperately needed to prove to themselves and everyone else that they had made the right choice because they had made these extreme sacrifices that, that, that they needed to know that they were living what God required. This is exponentially true for the people living polygamy, right? In particular, the women living polygamy, who had been Like, just hammered. It had been hammered into them for decades, that their job was to follow their priesthood head and that their feelings didn’t matter, that God required this of them and that their sacrifice would be their glory, right? These women needed to convince themselves and everyone else that they were doing what God has wanted, wanted. Even the women who weren’t living in it had to do this, right? They had to be certain about their choice. So if we can Accept that they told these stories about the transfiguration, which is such a small thing compared to polygamy. We need to accept that they could tell these stories about polygamy. I also want to say that the few incredibly brave women who were so insightful and willing to be honest about their experiences, for example, Annie Clark Tanner and Fannie Stenhouse, those are just two examples. Those women have been almost Completely ignored by people on both sides pushing the the polygamy narrative, by the anti-Mormons and the ex-Mormons, and also by the LDS Church, right? These are women’s voices who are the women that are my heroes that I admire. Both of these women, Annie Clark Tanner and Fannie Stenhouse were committed, um, the commit committed members of the church who lived in polygamy and shared honestly, their experiences. About it. They need to be listened to in regard to their experiences and what was happening in Utah, right? But again, the situation with polygamy is even worse than with the transfiguration, because we actually do have so much evidence of sort of the council, the people sitting in council almost mustache twirling, because actually changing the documents and coming up with an altered version of church history to support the claims that they wanted to. Make. And in far, far too many cases, the church and the people opposing the church are still using that evidence they manufactured, um, in order to make the case today. We’re still dealing with, with the, with, um, what they did in those secret councils, right? And then going on, what John says here is critically important and absolutely applies to the stories that we have been handed down about polygamy.

[1:20:36] John Dehlin: Yeah, and then just to kind of repeat what I referenced a tiny bit earlier, the way memory works is You know, something happens or something doesn’t happen, but if, if, if something does happen. It, it is something that gets stored and um, but let’s say in this case it didn’t happen, but then this woman bears her testimony one time or a leader gets up and recounts the story and he tells it, and then everybody listens and then they store it, but then every time you. Uh, discuss or remember the memory, what you do, just like in a computer situation, you retrieve the memory. It’s an active memory and then you later restore it, but if you restore the memory and then you just happen to add a thing or two to it and then you store it again, this whole process of storing the memory, retrieving it, adding some things to it, and then restoring the memory and then retrieving it again over time. Not just allows the um the story to change over time, it allows other people to eventually insert themselves into the story because that’s just how memory works.

[1:22:00] Michelle: What John is talking about there about memory is so important to understand, and it does apply directly to polygamy. Um, Brigham Young and the other Utah polygamists, and then followed by Joseph F. Smith, worked to create a collective memory that then was embedded into the people. And all of the people worked together to secure. For this, um, this collective memory in order to, to justify the authority and the unique doctrines that they were being called upon to live in such extreme, um, sacrifice and also in such extreme, um, difference with the rest of their society, right? Their civilization, the fact that they were so isolated and so, and that there was so much opposition. Made that this meant that that this happened even more because they were even more motivated to, to justify themselves, defend themselves, prove themselves that this is what God commanded, this is what God wanted. This is what the, um, what Joseph Smith, the, the one who restored the revela the, the religion, had said that they had to live, right? And so, this also needs to be understood and applied to people like Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, who never claimed to Be one of Joseph Smith’s wives until the very end of her life. She never filled out an affidavit. She didn’t even testify at the Temple Lot trial. It was just as a very old woman that she began writing stories about her supposed marriage to Joseph Smith as a little girl. It is not at all hard to understand this lonely, unimportant, forgotten, very depressed woman who was asked by Eliza Snow to write up these stories, which, like so many Others, her stories do not hold up to scrutiny and do not make any sense, even doctrinally, just compared to any of the other claims about polygamy. It’s not at all hard to understand how she would feel a sense of importance, being able to tell stories about the immense sacrifices she had made for this divine principle in a climate where a woman’s worth was to a huge extent, determined by how much she had sacrificed for the principle. And how obedient she had been to her priesthood head, right? It makes perfect sense in that context. Unfortunately, we are still operating under this collective memory. When people say things like, we have hundreds of sources, or in any other way, insist that the case of Joseph’s polygamy is clear, they’re actually not thinking for themselves or speaking from their own knowledge or their own, um, awareness of the evidence. They are simply restating the pre the precepts. Of the inherited collective memory we all have been given on this topic. And so this really is so important. It’s important to compare this to, um, with polygamy to the transfiguration. I’ll repeat what Van Wagner said about the transfiguration. When the 8th of August 1844 is stripped of emotional overlay, there is not a shred of irrefutable contemporary evidence to support the occurrence of a mystical event, either in That morning or after or either in the morning or afternoon gatherings of that day. Again, the exact same thing is true of Joseph and Joseph and Hiram Smith’s polygamy. And we have sources to confirm that. So I’ll say, when the Nuvo era is stripped of emotional overlay, there is not a shred of irrefutable contemporary evidence to support the occurrences of of Joseph and Hirum’s polygamy, right? And so, let me give you some examples to show, to confirm this and show how true it is. So Joseph F. Smith, Hiram Smith’s troubled son, who was 4 at the time of his father’s death and was brought to Utah by his mother, Mary, before she passed away, and then was groomed by Brigham Young and added to the quorum as a troubled young man in order to combat the RLDS claims to validity through having, um, the descendants of Joseph Smith as leaders, right? They needed to, um, Compete with the RLDS claim to lineal succession. So they needed a descendant of Joseph or Hirum in the court if they could get one. And that’s the the purpose that Joseph F. Smith served, as well as any other purposes. He was a hard worker and he was committed to proving that this narrative was true. But he was the first person to try to compile evidence for Joseph Smith’s polygamy. Now, remember, he was 4 years old when his father died, and he did not know much from firsthand experience. He didn’t know anything about his father’s. Polygamy from firsthand experience, but he worked very hard to try to compile a body of evidence to prove that Joseph had been polygamist. So nearly all the evidence people rely on to claim that Joseph was a polygamist actually comes from Joseph F. Smith. He was employed in the historian’s office and had access to all of the records. And this is a letter that he wrote to Orson Pratt, July 19, 187. 5. Let me go ahead and share, share this one with you, because this is a very important document. I believe that it’s John Bradley who found this document and deserves great credit for finding it. And so let me tell you about this letter. This is a letter that Joseph F. Smith wrote to Orson Pratt, July 19th, 1875, again, six years after he had started compiling evidence. He started that in 1869, practically begging Orson. to send him his account of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. I, I have another picture of it here. These are the first two pages, begging Orson Pratt to send him, um, information about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, and more importantly, to our topic, confirming that before his efforts to gather evidence, there had been no evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. So I’m going to read from pages 3 and 4 that are on the screen right now. This is what he wrote to or this is what Joseph F. Smith. Wrote to Orson Pratt in 1875. A few years ago, I obtained the affidavits of as many as I knew of, with a few exceptions, who received personal instruction or commandment from the prophet respecting the subject of celestial marriage, all of which are filed away in the HO. I think that means the head office, maybe of the church. If you had anything to add by way of of leaving, or rather, placing your testimony on those records in relation to the very important subject, as An individual, I would be grateful. This is the part. When the subject first came before my mind, I must say I was astonished at the scarcity of evidence. I might say almost total absence of strict evidence upon the subject as connected with the Prophet Joseph himself. There was nothing written and but few living who were personally knowing to the fact that Joseph taught the principle. True, much had been written. In support of the doctrine leaning upon scriptural and rational evidence as that was Orson Pratt’s job, but not a word except the revelation itself, showing that the prophet was the was the author under God. And remember that revelation in Kingsbury’s handwriting that has no provenance that didn’t show up until 1852 when Brigham Young claimed to, well, I don’t even know if it showed up at this point, but that’s when it was first published in the newspaper. I don’t know when we first saw the Kingsbury copy when it first shows up in the record. Um, let’s see. If you personally know that he was, that it says that the revelation itself is the only thing they had, showing that the prophet was the author under God. If you personally know that he was, I would like to have or see your testimony as a witness on the subject. Such testimonies may not appear very important just now, perhaps not while personal witnesses are living, and perhaps I might not. I think to witness their true value now to the top of page 4. But my children may. I am in favor of leaving no vacancies in the foundation walls, but want to see them laid solid, at least so far as the record of facts may be truthfully and consistently made. I hope, brother Pratt, you will pardon the liberty I have taken, knowing your lifelong devotion and deep interest in the cause of truth and appreciate. To some extent, your unceasing and efficient labors for the establishment of the kingdom and the salvation of mankind. I believe you will. I believe you will forgive, Joseph F. Smith for being so forward to ask for this. OK, this is huge. This is such an important document. Joseph F. Smith’s letter does specify that he wants to gather as much evidence as he truthfully can. And I believe that he likely had this aspiration. However, we know from Joseph Smith’s own extensive words and actions, including his very, very dishonest testimony at the Reed Smoot hearings, that literal truthfulness took a distant second place in his mind to saying whatever was necessary to defend the kingdom and the principle. So Orson Pratt responded to this letter and sent all of the other. that Joseph F. Smith requested. Joseph F. Smith asked him several other questions, and Orson Pratt answered all of those, but he gave no testimony about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, about polygamy originating with Joseph Smith. He completely ignored that, didn’t respond to it at all. But, so that’s interesting. But the important part is that this letter from Joseph F. Smith is a huge admission. I haven’t seen anything even close to get this, regarding the. Transfiguration. This is a huge admission that there is, and what that there was no evidence tying Joseph Smith to polygamy until Joseph F. Smith, created the evidence. He is admitting that when he started looking into polygamy, there was zero evidence that it came from Joseph Smith. So he went to work, he went to work systematically creating the body of evidence, starting with the affidavits that he himself wrote and going on from there. This is the evidence that is still relied on today to insist that Joseph Smith originated polygamy and that we have to hundreds of documents showing that. I don’t know if we even do have hundreds of documents. People just say that. But this is where the evidence comes from. It’s from Joseph F. Smith, who himself admitted that there was no evidence tying Joseph Smith to polygamy until he started. And, and then there’s another source I want to show you that makes it abundantly clear that there is actually no good evidence. Joseph Smith’s polygamy. So this was written by Joseph F. Smith’s son Joseph Fielding Smith, who also was employed in the historian’s office after his father. He had extensive correspondence with RC Evans, a member of the first presidency, the presidency of the RLDS Church in 1905. They wrote letters, and he published these letters in Blood Atonement and the Origin of Plural Marriage, and I believe it was published in 1905. That’s when the letters are dated. At least. So I’m going to go ahead and start on the bottom of page 54 under the heading, Original Records on Plurality of Wives. This is what Joseph F. Smith wrote to RC Evans. You confidently affirm that there is not a single sermon, lecture, statement, newspaper, or church publication printed during the life of Joseph Smith, wherein he by word has endorsed the doctrine of plurality of wives, not a single statement. Whether any such statement was Ever printed in his lifetime or not, I am not prepared to say. But I do know of such evidence being recorded during his lifetime, for I have seen it. I have copied the following from the Prophet’s manuscript record of August 5, 1843, and know it is genuine. So this is, he’s quoting from the manuscript record. I assume that’s from the, um, the the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith, that the, that was compiled by Brigham Young and the team of historians he put together. It said gave instructions to try those persons who were preaching, teaching, or practicing the doctrine of plurality of wives. For according to the law, I hold the keys of this power in the last days, for there is never but one on on earth at a time on whom this power and its keys are conferred. And I have constantly said no man shall have one wife at a time unless the Lord directs. Otherwise. So when Joseph Fielding Smith is challenged by RC Evans that there is, there was nothing published or said by Joseph Smith during his lifetime to support polygamy, this is the one source that, um, Joseph F. Smith could come up with. And I have talked about this before, so I’m just going to go over it very quickly, but it bears repeating. This right Here is the actual journal entry that this quote comes from. Again, we don’t have a journal from Joseph Smith. This was kept by Willard Richards, and, um, and it’s, it’s more like a guide in order to allow him to compile Joseph Smith’s history later on, which is what he uses it for. But I actually would argue that there’s a, that you could make a good argument that Joseph Smith might have been aware of and Seen this particular entry because on March, I mean on May 20th, 1844, Joseph says in his sermon that he had kept many good scribes that had followed him and that had written his doings so that he could prove, prove everyone perjurers who was claiming that he had more than one wife. So I think that it’s fair to think that maybe he would have checked on some of the things that his scribes were writing at some point. But I want to read what the original journal actually says. It says, gave instruction to try those who were preaching, teaching, or practicing, well, the doctrine of plurality of wives. On this law, Joseph forbids it. And the practice thereof, no man shall have but one wife. That is so clear. No man shall have but one wife, right? You couldn’t get much more clear than that. However, I’ll go ahead and show this. This is the, um, The draft history where you can see them recording it, and they left spaces, right, where it says, in this original pen, teaching and practicing the doctrine of plurality of wives, skip some lines on this law, skip some lines, Joseph forbids it, and the practice thereof, no man shall have but one wife skip some lines over here. You can see in this little writing to be revised, and then you can see where they come in with the new pin. Cross out much of what it originally said and write in what they wanted it to say now, and then we end up with the finished history of the Prophet Joseph Smith, where it said what Joseph Fielding Smith published in, um, this book, Blood Atonement and the Origin of Plural Marriage in order to prove to RC Evans that Joseph Smith had, in fact, said something during his lifetime in favor of polygamy. This is actually huge. Hugely important. I, I, for a couple of reasons. So, um, first of all, again, this is the only thing Joseph Fielding Smith could find in order to try to prove that Joseph Smith supported polygamy in any way during his lifetime. I know that, um, Dan Vogel has has recently responded to this, and I’m so amused that he’s making almost exactly the same argument that Brian Hailes made in order to refute this, which is using. Doctrine and Covenants 132 in order to validate and justify the changes made to this document. Let me try to explain this. You cannot use a document that appeared in 1852, amalgamated in our view, by this team of historians that were that we know we’re changing history in order to justify a change that that same team of historians made to a historical document, right? That is ludicrous. Dan tries to point out that it says on this law, Joseph forbids it as if this law is some sort of a code word because Doctrine Covenants 132 7 also says this law, surprise, the term this law is used in other places in the doctrine of covenants, in other places in the in on the Joseph Smith page first, where Joseph is talking about a particular law, right? And Joseph forbids it. It says Joseph forbids it because Joseph is at least In his mind, if people don’t think so themselves, he’s the prophet of God, right? So he has the, uh, it’s right here. So he has the authority to forbid something in the name of God, especially when it is consistent with every teaching of God that Joseph had brought forth. The, the Book of Mormon forbids polygamy. The doctrine and covenants repeatedly forbids polygamy. The Book of Mormon repeatedly forbids polygamy, right? The doctrine and covenants univers did in the law of God to the church in section 49 written about the shakers, and in section 101, the original one that was the law on marriage, right? God could not have been more clear about forbidding polygamy through Joseph Smith, the prophet. He’s the one that brought forward all of those condemnations and, um, all of those times that God forbid polygamy. They all came through Joseph Smith. So Joseph Smith laying down the law here and saying, Joseph forbids it is Just fine. Especially we have Hiram forbidding it as well in his many sermons. And I don’t know how you could be more explicit than no man shall have but one wife. Right? And yet, Dan Vogel is claiming now that he has some special insight into the mind of either Joseph Smith or Willard Richards, or both of them to claim he knows better what they were talking about when they wrote it than any of the rest of us. He can now see that they actually were saying the opposite. of what was written, and he’s using Dr. Governess 132 that came out in 1852 in order to justify and explain away this claim. That is such massive circular reasoning and is not a good argument at all. If it were true that this were were some deep 3D chess type of code, that this law, and Joseph forbids it really gives them an out from no man shall have but one wife, then the historians wouldn’t have had to change it. And Joseph Fielding Smith could have just Published what was originally written, but explained like Dan is doing, how, actually, it meant the opposite of what it said because of Section 132. It is just not a good argument at all. And this is a hugely important source. And again, this altered version of this journal entry is the one and only thing Joseph Fielding Smith could find to justify saying that Joseph, that polygamy originated with Joseph Smith. I also need to add that this It is far from the only document we see this with. This is an ongoing pattern of documents being altered and changed to build in loopholes for polygamy, to change Joseph’s original words to to be the opposite of what they said when they were completely anti-polygamy, they build in little loopholes. They either do that or they completely erase them from history, as they did with many of, with all of Joseph’s publications, right? Brigham Young gets up and says, Joseph never denied polygamy. That’s the history they were trying to create. So I’m sorry, Dan Vogel’s explanation of this does not hold water. It would be far better to just say, yeah, they lied about it, and then the church historians changed it cause they lied about it too, or something. I don’t know. But you could not try to claim that this is a deep code embedded in this, applying it to section 132. That is ridiculous. So, OK, let’s go ahead and go back to Joseph Fielding Smith’s proofs that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy, right? Saying that there is evidence. He goes on to say, there is also at the historian’s office in this city, a Bible, which I have before me, containing containing the record of the marriage of Melissa Lott to the Prophet Joseph Smith, which was recorded at the time, September 20, 1843. 0, I don’t even know where to talk about all of the problems with this. First of all, this Bible does not record a marriage between Melissa Lott and the Prophet Joseph Smith. It never says Joseph. This name. It does not have the name of a groom, and the record before it makes it seem at least that Joseph Smith was not there because it says that Hiram Smith performed the ceiling of, of, um, Cornelius and Cornelius and Permilia with the seal of Joseph Smith, right? As if he had Joseph Smith’s permission to do it because Joseph wasn’t there. And, and the Bible does not say that Joseph was married to Melissa Smith. It also does not have a date. It doesn’t have a year when it includes that record. I’ve done a episode on this. Let me go ahead and read the rest of what it says. This Bible also contains the record of the ceiling of Cornelius P and Premilia Lot, Parents of Melissa, which was done by patriarchyrum Smith in the prophet’s presence and with his seal or sanction. Again, adding tons to that. It does not have a year. It does not say at all that it was in the Prophet’s presence. It goes on to say, the president of your church has seen this record, and it matters not what he may say now. He then Acknowledge the genuineness of the record. OK. I have to go into this because again, I have done an episode, I’ll show it right here on the, um, on the Lott family Bible. I hope people will watch that episode because it’s very important and it goes into this in detail. But first of all, in addition to the other things that, um, Joseph Fielding Smith falsely claims about this Bible, one of the huge problems is that that entry about Melissa Smith being married on September 20th to Some unnamed groom was not put in in Navu. That was not added until 1848, when they were firmly established in Utah. And when we start to see other records starting to show up trying to imply that polygamy was happening with, um, Joseph Smith. And I think that they just leave it, leave the groom off, because maybe they weren’t, hadn’t decided yet if they were going to try to make it be about Hiram or about Joseph because the only name included in the in the Bible is Hiram Smith. I’ll show just a couple of things about it. The fact that it doesn’t include a year, that it only says September 18 September 20th, becomes a problem when Joseph F. Smith is trying to create the, um, affidavits for Melissa Lott because he doesn’t know what year to put. So he puts 1842 and then has a question mark, because he’s not sure of the best year to include. And as I already said, if you’ll watch that episode, you will see this is what the entry says, September. 20, Plot and Premilia gave their daughter Melissa to wife. That’s all it says. It does not include a groom, and it was not created, that part of the record, until the next batch of records were created in 1848. So this is an extremely important episode to watch if you haven’t already. And again, that’s the second piece of evidence that Joseph Fielding Smith was able to come up with from Joseph’s life was is the family Bible, which we know is not at all evidence from Joseph Smith’s life. That Bible is not evidence that Joseph was married to Melissa. It is actually evidence that someone wanted people to believe that either Joseph or Hiram had been married to Melissa because it never says the name of a groom, right? And Hiram was the only one there. So that, but you can see Joseph Fielding Smith now is using it as evidence after Joseph F. Smith had used. It to create Melissa Lott’s affidavits where he didn’t know the year because it wasn’t included. And then the next thing I want to talk about is where it says that Joseph Smith III had to agree that this was that he acknowledged the genuineness of the record. That is also completely untrue. Joseph Smith III left extensive accounts of his visit with Melissa Lott. He, we have his. a journal that talks about it and, and, and supports what we’re going to read in his memoirs right here. He also spoke about it. He was asked about it in his Temple Lot testimony. And then this is the, um, these are the memoirs of Joseph Smith III that talk about this visit to Melissa Lot, where she showed the Bible. So I’ll go ahead and start right here in the middle column. I’m going to read this. I didn’t read it in my episode. This is the the source I didn’t read in Episode on the Lott family Bible because it was near the end, but I’ll go ahead and read it now because it becomes relevant with what we’re talking about now. So he, he went to visit Melissa a lot. She wasn’t able to talk to him at the time. He goes back in the afternoon and visits her, and this is their conversation. He said, Did you know of any teaching of plural marriage or polygamy at Navvo? I had heard of it private, but not publicly. Did you know of any woman having been married to my father and living with him as his wife besides my mother? No, and nothing of the kind occurred to my knowledge. Do you have any reason to believe such a thing took place and that my mother knew of there being another woman besides herself who was wife to my father? No, quite emphatically, I am sure she did not. Now Melissa, I have been told that there were women other than my mother who were married to my father and lived with him as his wife, and that my mother knew it. How about it? She answered rather tremulously. If there was anything of that kind going on, you may be sure that your mother knew nothing about it. I then asked her what her opinion was of my mother’s character for truth and veracity. She replied that she considered my mother one of the noblest women in the world, and that she had known her well and knew her to be as good and truthful a woman as ever lived. Then you think I would be justified in believing what my mother told me? Yes, indeed, for she would not lie to you. Well, Melissa, my mother told me that my father had never had any wife other than herself and never had any connection with any other woman as a wife, and was never married to any woman other Herself with her consent or knowledge or in any manner whatsoever. Do you consider I am justified in believing her? Without hesitation, she answered, If your mother told you any such thing as that, you may depend. I’ve got to get to the top of the column. You may depend upon Um, upon what she said and feel sure that she was telling the truth and that she knew nothing about any such state of affairs, yes, she would be entirely justified in believing her. Our conversation continued for some time. Finally, I asked plainly, Melissa, will you tell me just what was your relation with my father, if any? She arose, went to a shelf, and returned with a Bible, which she opened at the family record pages, and showed me a line. written there in a scrawling handwriting. Married my daughter Melissa to Prophet Joseph Smith. And it’s interesting that Joseph Smith III recalls this incorrectly as well, because again, it does not say Joseph Smith. Given the date, which I seem to remember as late in 1843. Again, he recalls it incorrectly there because it doesn’t say 1843. It just says September 20th and doesn’t include the year again, which is why Joseph F. Smith didn’t know what. Year to include on the affidavits he wrote out for Melissa Lott. And he, um, Joseph Smith III continues. I looked closely at the handwriting and examined the book and other entries carefully. Then I asked who were present when this marriage took place, if marriage, it may be called. No one but your father and myself. Was my mother there? No, sir. Was there no witness there? No, sir. Where did it occur? At the house on the farm. And my mother knew nothing about it before or after. No, sir. Did you ever live with my father as his wife in the mansion house in Navvo, as has been claimed? No, sir. Did you ever live with him as his wife anywhere? I persisted. At this point, she began to cry and said, No, I never did, but you have no business asking me such questions. I had a great regard and respect for both your father and your mother. I do not like to talk about these things. Well, Melissa, I have been repeatedly told that you have stated that there were, that you were married to my father and lived with him as his wife, and that my mother knew of it. Now you tell me you never did live with him as his wife, although claiming to have been married to him. You tell me that there was no one present at, um, at that purported marriage, except the three of you, and that my mother knew nothing about such an alliance. Frankly, I am at a loss to know just what to You would have me believe about you. I was about to make still closer inquiries in order to find out if she ever had any relations of any sort with my father, other than the ordinary relations that may properly exist between such persons under usual conditions of social procedure. When just then there came a rap on the door, and in walked her sisters, Mary and Ezaa. Alzaina, who is, is whose testimony I read earlier about the, um, The transfiguration. Alzaina lived rather near Melissa, but Mary, the older was, was living some 25 or 30 miles away. Hearing I was in Lehigh, she had hitched up her team and come to see me, stopping at Alsina’s on the way to bring her along. And again, this is supported by, um, Joseph Smith III’s contemporaneous journal that I show in that other, in that other episode. So I’ll Continue reading from this account. Let me get the next part. It was published serially, so I need to get the next part on the screen. Um, it says, they expressed great pleasure in, um, oh, I got it too big. They explained, expressed great pleasure in meeting me again, and I was glad to see them. Our talk was general for a while, for their entrance had changed my line of inquiry somewhat. Then urged to put to Melissa a question. of importance. I asked, Melissa, do you know where I can find a brother or a sister, child or children from my father born to him by some woman other than my mother in Illinois, Utah, or anywhere else? She answered that she did not know. Whereupon Mary broke in and said, No, brother Joseph, for there isn’t any. She um, then she went on to say, for 12 years, I have made it my business to run down every rumor I have heard. About the existence of children born to the prophet by those women who who were reported to have been his wives. I have traveled a good many miles here and there for the purpose of finding out the truth about such statements, and have not in one single instance have I ever, and not in one single instance have I ever found them substantiated or any evidence presented that had been the least bit of truth in it. I have never been able to find a single child which could possibly have been born to Joseph Smith in plural marriage. At this juncture, Alzina snapped in with an explosive and characteristic exclamation. No, brother Joseph, there is none. And what’s more, I don’t believe there ever was a chance for one. The earnestness of her manner and the snap with which she pointed her remark caused a ripple of laughter among us in which, in which, however, Melissa did not join. Noticing this, I turned to her and said, Melissa, how about it? You hear what your sisters are saying. Tears began to trickle down her face, and she said, Yes, brother, brother Joseph, I hear them. Well, what can you say? Can I believe as they do? She drew a deep breath as if making a sudden decision, and then with a sigh, with trembling lips. Yes, you can believe that they’re, that they are telling the truth. There was no chance for any children. Mary then explained in more detail about certain places she had gone to make inquiries directly of the persons involved, who, whom she named. And to see the women and the children who it was stated were wives and offspring of the prophet, she said in every instant she had proved the report false, either as to the woman claiming to be such a wife or as to children being there as claimed. I thanked her and the other girls for the statements they had made. Our conversation on this and other topics continued for some time. We recalled many incidents of old times, and I learned from them of the deaths of their parents and the whereabouts and fortunes of others of their families. I left these sisters feeling, feeling well repaid for my persistence in obtaining the interview with Mrs. Willis. In spite of what I had been told, she had neither been able to face me down nor to convince me that my father had done reprehensible things, which I would be unwilling to believe. Instead, I left her presence and that of her sisters with my previous convictions being more firmly established if such a thing were possible. The interviewer had convinced me that this Statements made in the affidavit of this Melissa Lott Willis, published by Joseph F. Smith, along with others of similar import to the effect that she had been married to Joseph Smith was not true, provided the word married be construed as conveying the right of living together as man and wife, a relation she had unequivocally denied in my in my presence. And it goes on from there. I think that is an important source for us to read. When we consider that Joseph Fielding Smith, the reason I went into that whole document is because Joseph Fielding Smith claimed that Joseph Smith III had had to admit that that the Lot family Bible was strong evidence that Joseph Smith had been married to Melissa Lott. He did not believe that at all, and that was a long document to read, but it’s important. And in that other document, I, I mean, in the other episode, I read from Melissa Lott’s Temple Lot testimony, and you can see how Just not believable she is. Again, the Judge Phillips did not believe her testimony or and or the other women’s testimonies because they do not sound at all credible, and they keep changing their story. And Melissa was totally thrown off guard as soon as the lawyers started to ask her about this visit from Joseph Smith III. She had to later with help, come up with an affidavit to try to repair the testimony that she gave. Joseph Smith III’s testimony. On the other hand, is extremely consistent and clear and reliable and believable. So I think that this is an important thing to read as we are considering that Joseph Fielding Smith claimed that the Lot family Bible was certain evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. It’s not. I also need to point out, again, that Joseph Smith III’s accounting of this day that’s published much later in his memoirs does match what we have of his contemporary journal that he kept. And I will say that Mary’s claim and Alzhea’s claim that she had tried to hunt down and find if there were any polygamist children from Joseph Smith, and that she determined that there were not, she has been proven correct, right? The, um, later polygamists, the early polygamists knew that Joseph didn’t have children, I believe, which is why they never claimed there were children, because they knew that Joseph hadn’t been a polygamist. But the later, um, um, Utah historians that tried to track down children and that, um, took, for example, Joseph. Fisher’s 18 1915 affidavit. They did try to claim that Joseph had had polygamous children, but we now know that Alzaa and Mary’s testimony was correct that Joseph III recorded on that day. DNA evidence has proved that. So again, the evidence is all on the side of Joseph not having been a polygamist. So we’ll just read the last part of this document from, um, Joseph Fielding Smith. The last thing he says on this topic is the following is also copied from the Journal of William Clayton, which is in the historian’s office, and he writes, May 1, 1843 a.m. at the temple at 10, Mary Joseph to Lucy Walker PM at President Joseph’s. He has gone out with Woodworth. So according to this, he married Lucy Walker and then went out with Flora Woodworth after that. This is this, and, um, Joseph Fielding Smith goes on to say, this is the same William Clayton who Wrote the revelation at the direction and from the dictation of the prophet, July 12th, 1843. However, this principle was first revealed to the prophet several years before that, as you learned in your conversation with President Lorenzo Snow when you were in his office. OK. I will repeat one more time that William Clayton’s Novou Journal is known and admitted to be recopied. William Clayton recopied that journal, and it has many problems, showing that it is not. Contemporary journal and is not solid evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy any more than the lab recopy journal is evidence of the transfiguration, right? And, um, this is, this is a fun one, this Lucy Walker claim in Clayton’s journal. So I want to show you this. Lucy Walker is, um, is the one ceiling Clayton gives us the most information about in that entry we just read and claims to have performed. Lucy’s affidavit was one of the boilerplate affidavits written by Joseph F. Smith. I’m By, yeah, by Joseph F. Smith. And he had William Clayton’s journal as his source to create it. So let me go ahead and show you this because this is also great fun that you will want to see. So this right here is Lucy Walker’s affidavit that, well, I shouldn’t even call it Lucy Walker’s affidavit. It’s Joseph F. Smith’s affidavit that he wrote out for Lucy Kimball, right? And you can read this, be it remembered that on this 9th day of August 18, 1860. personally appeared before me. James Jack, again, this is a Joseph F. Smith’s handwriting, a notary public in in Forsyth County, Lucy W. Kimball, who was by me sworn in due form of law and on her oath saith that on the first day of May 8, 1843 in the city of Navvo, County of Hancock, State of Illinois, she was married or sealed for time and all eternity to the Prophet Joseph Smith by William Clayton, a high priest in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the present. Of Eliza Maria Partridge. So this one’s fun because it doesn’t even leave the links that we usually see where they have to fill in the date afterward. Um, Joseph F. Smith knew exactly the date to fill in in this boilerplate affidavit he made for Lucy W. Kimball, and it’s fun because this one says Lucy W. Kimball. Lucy’s much later, 190, 0, I can’t remember it’s 1902 or 1903 affidavit, um, adds the name Smith to her, right? We, we get that happening a lot. They start adding the James Smith. But, and so some people want to use this affidavit to validate William Clayton’s journal entry in his recopied journal because they both have the same information. They both say that William Clayton married Joseph Smith to Lucy W. Kimball, Lucy Walker, on the first day of May 1843. But here’s the interesting thing that you need to see. We already knew that Joseph F. Smith had, um, um, William Clayton’s. Copy journal when he was creating these affidavits. But let me show you how clear that is in this case. You’ll note this is page 66 of Joseph F. Smith’s books of affidavits that Cheryl Bruno and I are writing our book on. Let me show you what’s on the very next page, written the exact same day, page 67, the following extract is taken from William Clayton’s journal as per date. May 1st, 1843, a.m. at the Temple at 10, Mary. Joseph to Lucy Walker. PM at President Joseph’s. He has gone out with with with Woodworth. He borrowed $20 I guess, of William Allen. I took supper with him. President paid $20 to Woodworth for Navvou House. So again, and William Clayton had dinner with Joseph Smith on his wedding night to Lucy Walker, apparently. The above is a true copy of entry as per date in William Clayton’s journal, kept at the time as witnesseth our hands. Um, and It’s written August 9, 1869. Let me remind you that the, um, the affidavit he wrote for Lucy Walker was also written August 9, 1869. So what seems to be happening is that Joseph F. Smith is reading through William Clayton’s journal, comes to this entry and learns, Oh, I need to make an affidavit that William Clayton’s recopy journal where he builds in this information that we can’t verify earlier. And then Joseph F. Smith sees Say, Oh, great evidence. I need to make an affidavit for Lucy Walker that William Clayton married her to Joseph Smith on this day, and he creates an affidavit, right? And then he thinks, Hmmm, I might need more verification for this, because apparently, according to Joseph F. Smith himself, his affidavits weren’t very good, reliable information. So he makes an additional affidavit at the same time showing where he got the information and showing that it came. From William Clayton’s recopied Nova journal that he had when he made the affidavit. This is so great because you absolutely cannot use these two sources, the journal and the affidavit, to validate one another because they come from the same source. And it seems Joseph F. Smith was in the office and just had whoever was there with him, go ahead and sign that he had copied the journal correctly, which I have no doubt that he probably did, because he had the recopied journal in his Office. I went ahead and looked up who signed it. Um, John Henry Smith was the only child of church historian George A. Smith with his 6th, 6, 6th wife of 11, and he would become an apostle 11 years later. S H B Smith was Samuel Harrison Bailey Smith. He was the son of, of the murdered Samuel Smith. Well, the killed the dead Samuel Smith, Joseph’s younger brother who died suspiciously after Joseph and Hyrum after being Treated with white powder by Hosea Stout. And then the last one is John Lyman Smith, who was the younger brother of George A. Smith, so the uncle of John Henry Smith. Those those are who signed it. And then we see that this was on August 9, 1869. The next entry is another extract from William Clayton’s journal, but this one was written the following week, August 16th at 1843. So it’s, I mean, I mean, August 16th of 1843. So it seems that Joseph F. Smith was still reading. Through William Clayton’s journal and found another entry that he thought would be useful and this time again, John Henry Smith signed it and also Robert L. Campbell, who we know was employed in the church historian’s office. So again, he just had whoever he needed to sign what the information that he got from William Clayton’s journal. This is amazing to be able to show that specifically the procedure, the method that Joseph F. Smith used to create these affidavits, and hopefully people are beginning to understand. That the affidavits are not the evidence that they want to claim them to be. So I know I’ve been talking about these things for a little while, but to remind everyone, the importance of these two documents that I’ve just shown, the, um, the letter from Joseph F. Smith to Orson Pratt, and then the, the publication by Joseph Fielding Smith, the importance of those are that first of all, with the first one, we have the central architect of the entire body of evidence created to substantiate Joseph’s. Smith’s polygamy and still used to prove that Joseph originated polygamy. We have him admitting that before he got started, there was not a shred of evidence tying Joseph Smith to polygamy, other than the revelation itself, which, again, Brigham Young first presented in 1852, and we have no good provenance for, despite what, um, Brian Hills likes to claim. The only providence for it comes from the much later claims from Helen Kimball. Right? When she’s writing her stories. We have no provenance for, um, for that document that is claimed, that claims to be the revelation from Joseph Smith. And then, in addition, we have his son, Joseph Fielding Smith, who was not born until 22 years after Joseph’s death, relying entirely on the record created by his father, and his and his predecessors, giving what he considers to be the very best evidence he could find of Joseph’s polygamy. And it consists As it consists of an altered journal entry, the original of which was vehemently anti-polygamy, an incomplete marriage record in a Bible also created in Utah five years after it supposedly happened, and an entry in William Clayton’s recopied and never released journal. Right? That’s the best evidence he could come up with. Every piece of evidence he cites was created later in Utah. To promote this narrative, and, and is at, and that’s the best evidence that he could come up with. There’s nothing better. I would argue that these sources, along with so many others I could show, actually validate our story that records were changed to try to paint Joseph Smith as a polygamist after the fact. So, and just to sum this up, it is completely fair to people point out the huge problems with the transfiguration story. I think they have a very very good case to say that the evidence looks like this story was created after the fact in order to validate the people’s belief in Brigham Young and their decision to follow Brigham Young, and I agree that the evidence makes it clear that it almost certainly did not happen the way it is that it handed down to us. I hope that people will be willing to apply the same standard and the same critical approach to the similarly created. Evidence to show that Joseph Smith was a polygamist, right? It’s just the same thing. It was created later to hand us this story to validate for the leaders and for their people that they had made the right choice, that Brigham Young was the rightful successor, and that polygamy was a true doctrine from God. And that had been taught by Joseph Smith. They needed to create that evidence in order to promote that story, but the evidence is not solid. It suffers from all the exact same problems. So I thought this was worth going on to. I hope that you guys thought it was worthwhile as well. This was a pretty fun episode to do. And there’s so much more to cover, so we’ll just keep going and try to get as many people to be willing to open their eyes and open their minds as possible. Thank you so much for joining me. I’ll see you next time.

132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

161: Brigham’s Transfiguration & Joseph’s Polygamy: Two Dubious Narratives

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Transcript

132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

161: Brigham’s Transfiguration & Joseph’s Polygamy: Two Dubious Narratives

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Transcript

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