CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF
LATTER-DAY SAINTS (THE MORMONS)
Historical Perspective
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is distinctive among all the religious cults and sects active in the United States in that it has by far the most fascinating history, and one worthy of consideration by all students of religions originating on the American continent.
The Latter-day Saints, as they are commonly called, are divided into two major groups, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons), with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, and The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with headquarters in Independence, Missouri.
Today, over 167 years after the movement’s founding, the Mormons own considerable stock in the agricultural and industrial wealth of America and circle the earth in missionary activities, energetically rivaling evangelical Christianity. The former group, which is the main concern of this chapter, claims a membership in excess of nine million (Ensign Magazine, May 1995, 22). The Reorganized Church has just over 240,000 members worldwide and has won acceptance in some quarters as a “sect of fundamentalism.” The Reorganized Church, which rejects the name “Mormon,” is briefly reviewed in this chapter, but there can be little doubt that it is composed of a zealous group of dedicated people.
They irritate the Utah Mormon Church consistently by pointing out that court decisions have established their claim that they are the true church and Utah the schismatic. From its founding, the Mormon Church has been characterized by thriftiness, zeal, and an admirable missionary spirit, as even before the advent of World War II, it had more than 2,000 missionaries active on all the mission fields of the world. Since the close of World War II, however, and in keeping with the acceleration of cult propaganda everywhere, the Mormons have around 50,000 “missionaries” active today.
The missionary effort of the Mormon Church is seldom matched by any other religious endeavor.
The young Mormon children are taught from primary age onward that it is their duty to the church to serve a mission following high school. The entire missionary force is broken down into the following percentages: 75 percent single males, 19 percent single females, and 6 percent married couples.
One interesting fact, however, accounts for this large missionary force, and that is the practice of the Mormon Church to encourage its most promising young people, boys aged nineteen and older and girls aged twenty-one and older, to perform missionary work. Only in recent years did the Mormon Church begin to subsidize the expenses of their American and Canadian missionaries.
Membership in the Mormon Church now increases each year at an average rate of 300,000 conversions and 75,000 children’s baptisms. The Mormons have a birthrate of 28.1 per thousand, in contrast to the average 15.9 birthrate of the United States.6-1 According to the teaching of the Mormon Church, Mormons are to preserve their bodies always in the best of health and are cautioned against the use of tobacco and alcohol, and even the drinking of tea, coffee, and other caffeine-bearing drinks, such as Coca-Cola. Strongly insistent upon the Old Testament principle of tithing, the Mormon Church
requires all temple Mormons and requests members to meet the biblical one-tenth of their gross income.
The facts and figures for the wealth of the Mormon Church have been carefully guarded for years.
However, in 1991 the Arizona Republic newspaper ran a series entitled “Mormon Inc. Finances & Faith,” which estimated that the Mormon Church conservatively “collects about $4.3 billion from its members a year plus $400 million from its many enterprises.” Stating that “only a few church officials know how the money is spent,” the articles maintained that the church’s investment portfolio “easily exceeds $5 billion, including $1 billion in stocks and bonds and another $1 billion in real estate. The reader should bear in mind that the Mormons put this money to good use in the expansion of their church, a truth borne out by the fact that the church is rapidly expanding its real estate holdings, both for commercial and ecclesiastical purposes. The “Saints” now have around fifty temples in operation, with many more either in design or under construction on every continent on the globe. The Mormon university in Utah, Brigham Young University, boasts more than 37,000 students on two campuses.
Promulgated as it is by determined, zealous, missionary-minded people who have a practical religion of “good works” and clean living, the Mormons each year spend millions of dollars in the circulation of the writings and teachings of their prophets and apostles, while proselytizing any and all listeners regardless of church affiliation.6-2 In addition to their regular tithing fund, the Mormon Church also encourages what it terms “fast offerings.” This unusual practice involves the giving up of two meals on the first Sunday of each month, the price of which is turned over to the church as a voluntary
contribution to support and feed the poor.
Since education ranks high in Mormon circles, the existence of their “seminary” and “institute” programs for high school and college students with an enrollment of over half a million is what could be expected of such systematic growth. The church also has more than fifty schools outside of the United States, most of which are in Mexico and the South Pacific.
Mormonism, then, is not one of the cults tending to appeal merely to the uneducated, as for the most part Jehovah’s Witnesses do, but instead it exalts education, which results in huge amounts of printed propaganda flowing from its presses in the millions of copies annually. The Mormons are also great chapel and temple builders, temples being reserved for the solemnization of “celestial” marriages, sealings, plus proxy baptisms and other ordinances for the dead (nearly 5.5 million sacred endowment rituals performed in 1993 alone). Such temples are forbidden to “Gentiles” (a Mormon term for all non-
Mormons) and are truly beautiful buildings, usually extremely costly both in construction and furnishings. Along with their strong emphasis on education, the Mormons believe in sports, hobbies, dramatics, music, homemaking courses for prospective brides, dances, and dramatic festivals. The Mormon organization that sponsors a good deal of this is known as the Mutual Improvement Association, and has sponsored literally thousands and thousands of dances and other programs designed to attract and entertain young people. Each Mormon dance is begun with prayer and closed with the singing of a hymn. Mormonism does all that is humanly possible to make its church organization a home away from home for Mormon children and young people, and its low level of
juvenile delinquency is in a marked proportion among Mormons, testifying to the success of the churchcentered program.
Emphasizing as they do the importance of missions, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has become famous and is well known to all radio listeners. The choir contains 350 singers and has a repertoire of hundreds of anthems. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir began network broadcasting in 1929. Those who would tend to write off the Mormons as an influential force in the United States would do well to remember that Mormons have more adherents listed in Who’s Who in America than any other one religion, and this also holds true for the scientific honor societies of our nation. Mormon leaders have become powerful in almost all branches of American government, headed by former Secretary of
Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, the late thirteenth prophet of the Mormon Church; former Treasury Secretary David M. Kennedy; former Treasurers Angela (Bay) Buchanan and the late Ivy Baker Priest; former Education Secretary Terrel H. Bell; former Michigan governor George Romney; Marriner S. Eccles; numerous U.S. ambassadors; and dozens of U.S. senators and representatives, to name but a few. Far from being an organization of minor influence, the Mormons are indeed a potent political and social force to be reckoned with, a fact that few informed persons would doubt.
Church Organization
The organization and general administration of the Mormon Church is directed by its “General Authorities.” At the top is the First Presidency (presently composed of eighty-five-year-old “prophet” Gordon B. Hinckley and two “counselors”), assisted by a “Council of Twelve” apostles, the “First Quorum of the Seventy,” the “Second Quorum of the Seventy,” and its Presidency, a “Presiding Bishopric,” and the Patriarch of the church. All authority resides in the Mormon “priesthood,” established under the titles “Aaronic” (lesser) and “Melchizedek” (higher). To the Aaronic priesthood
belongs nearly every active male Mormon twelve years of age or over, and if “worthy” these are ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood at age eighteen. The Mormon Church administration is divided into territories made up of “wards” and “stakes,” the former consisting of from five hundred to a thousand people. Each ward is presided over by a bishop and his two counselors. The wards are all consolidated into stakes, each of which is supervised by a stake president and two counselors, aided in turn by twelve high priests known as the “stake high council.” At the beginning of 1995, there were approximately 21,774 wards and branches, 2,008 stakes, and 303 missions functioning in the Mormon
Church. The various auxiliary groups form a powerful coalition for mutual assistance among Mormons, and it is noteworthy that during the Depression in 1929, the Mormon “Bishop’s storehouse” saw to it faithfully that few worthy members were in want of the necessities of life.
In their missionary program the Mormons continue to manifest great zeal and quote the Bible profusely. Thus it is that many true Christians have often been literally quoted into silence by the clever disciples of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, who flourish a pseudo-mastery of Scripture before the uninformed Christian’s dazzled eyes and confuse him, sometimes beyond description.
In common with most cults, Mormonism has had its siege of persecutions and slander, but unlike many of the other cults who prefer to “let sleeping dogs lie,” the Mormons have attempted at times to defend their “prophets.” This has led them into more than one precarious historical dilemma.
The young and boastful Joseph Smith went on record with outlandish statements that later proved to be a trouble source for the Mormon Church. Examination of three examples will suffice. Joseph Smith once said, “No man knows my history,” which statement caused endless suspicion by Mormon historians and non-Mormons who began researching Joseph Smith’s background and found dozens of improprieties ranging from occult peep-stone seeking, treasure digging, adultery before the polygamy prophecy, and financial schemes. In another instance, Joseph Smith proclaimed “the Book of Mormon
is the most correct of any book on the earth,” which has been amply refuted by both Mormon scholars and Christian apologists. Another regrettable statement made by Smith was, “I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the
Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet” (History of the Church, 6:408–409).
The average active Mormon is usually marked by many sound moral traits. He is generally amiable, almost always hospitable, and extremely devoted to his family and to the teachings of his church. Sad to say, however, the great majority of Mormons are in almost total ignorance of the shady historical and theological sources of their religion. They are openly shocked at times when the unglamorous and definitely unchristian background of the Mormon Church is revealed to them. This little known facet of
Mormonism is “a side of the coin” that innumerable Mormon historians have for years either hidden from their people or glossed over in an attempt to suppress certain verifiable and damaging historical evidences. Such evidence the author has elected to review in the interest of obtaining a full picture of Joseph Smith’s religion.
Early Mormon History
The seeds of what was later to become the Mormon religion were incubated in the mind of one Joseph Smith Jr., “The Prophet,” better known to residents of Palmyra, New York, as just plain “Joe Smith.” Born in Sharon, Vermont, December 23, 1805, fourth child of Lucy and Joseph Smith, the future Mormon prophet entered the world with the proverbial “two strikes” against him in the person of his father and his environment.
Joseph Smith Sr. was a mystic, a man who spent much of his time digging for imaginary buried treasure. This fact is, of course, well known to any informed student of Mormonism. Former Mormon historian Dr. D. Michael Quinn has thoroughly documented the fact that both Joseph Smith Sr. and Joseph Smith Jr. were avid treasure-seekers. In his book entitled Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (1987), Quinn writes, “Joseph Smith, the founding prophet and president of the new church organized on 6 April 1830, had unquestionably participated in treasure-seeking and seer-stone
divination and had apparently also used divining rods, talismans, and implements of ritual magic.
His father, one of the Eight Witnesses to the divinity of the Book of Mormon and later the church patriarch, had also participated in divining and the quest for treasure.” Quinn states on page 207 that Smith was interested in treasure-seeking even after he became president of the LDS Church and that “occult dimensions of treasure digging was prominent among the first members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, organized in 1835.” In the past, Mormon historians have avoided every indication that Joseph
Smith owned a peep stone or seer stone. Dr. Quinn’s aforementioned book includes photographs of actual seer stones owned by Joseph Smith. It should be noted that D. Michael Quinn was excommunicated from the LDS Church, in 1993, after refusing to keep silent about his unflattering research. This newer honesty among Mormon historians is appearing in other books, like the revision of The Story of the Latter-day Saints by J. B. Allen and G. M. Leonard, where they discuss Smith’s “youthful experiments with treasure-seeking”6
The mother of the future prophet was as much as her husband the product of the era and her environment, given as she was to extreme religious views and belief in the most trivial of superstitions.
Lucy Smith later in her life “authored” a book entitled Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith and His Progenitors for Many Generations. When published by the Mormon Church in Liverpool, England, however, it incurred the enduring wrath of Brigham Young, the first successor to Smith, who brought about the suppression of the book on the grounds that it contained “many mistakes” and that “should it ever be deemed best to publish these sketches, it will not be done until after they are carefully corrected” (Millennial Star, 17:297–298, personal letter dated January 31, 1885).
Mrs. Smith, of course, was totally incapable of writing such a work, the “ghost writing” being done by a Mrs. Martha Jane Knowlton Coray, who faithfully recorded what came to be known as “Mother Smith’s History.” We will quote from this work as we progress, as we also will the personal history of Joseph Smith Jr. It is merely mentioned now to indicate the contradictory views held by the Mormon Church and by Smith’s mother concerning the prophet’s homelife, background, and religious habits.
We return now to the central character of our survey, Joseph Smith Jr. The year 1820 proved to be the real beginning of the prophet’s call, for in that year he was allegedly the recipient of a marvelous vision in which God the Father and God the Son materialized and spoke to young Smith as he piously prayed in a neighboring wood. The prophet records the incident in great detail in his book The Pearl of Great Price (Joseph Smith—History 1:1–25), wherein he reveals that the two “personages” took a rather dim view of the Christian church, and for that matter of the world at large, and announced that a
restoration of true Christianity was needed, and that he, Joseph Smith Jr., had been chosen to launch the new dispensation.
The Mormon Church has always held the position that they alone represent true Christianity.
Mormon leaders have consistently taught that after the death of the apostles, true Christianity fell into complete apostasy, making it necessary for a “restoration.” Mormon Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, on page 513 of his book Mormon Doctrine, writes, “Mormonism is Christianity; Christianity is Mormonism … Mormons are true Christians.” In 1995 Mormon Apostle Dallin Oaks stated that the differences between “other Christian churches” and the LDS Church “explain why we send missionaries to other Christians” (Ensign, May 1995, 84).
It is interesting to observe that Smith could not have been too much moved by the heavenly vision, for he shortly took up once again the habit of digging for treasure along with his father and brother, who were determined to unearth treasure by means of “peep stones,” “divining rods,” or just plain digging.
History informs us that the Smith clan never succeeded at these multitudinous attempts at treasure hunting, but innumerable craters in the Vermont and New York countryside testify to their apparent zeal without knowledge.
In later years, the “prophet” greatly regretted these superstitious expeditions of his youth and even went on record as denying that he had ever been a money-digger. Said prophet Smith on one such occasion, “In the month of October, 1825, I hired with an old gentleman by the name of Josiah Stoal, who lived in Chenango County, State of New York. He had heard something of a silver mine having been opened by the Spaniards in Harmony, Susquehanna County, State of Pennsylvania; and had, previous to my hiring to him, been digging in order, if possible, to discover the mine. After I went to live with him, he took me, with the rest of his hands, to dig for the silver mine, at which I continued to
work for nearly a month, without success in our undertaking, and finally I prevailed with the old gentleman to cease digging after it. Hence arose the very prevalent story of my having been a moneydigger.”
This explanation may suffice to explain the prophet’s treasure-hunting fiascoes to the faithful and to the historically inept; but to those who have access to the facts, it is at once evident that Smith played recklessly, if not fast and loose, with the truth. In fact, it often appeared to be a perfect stranger to him.
The main source for promoting skepticism where the veracity of the prophet’s explanation is concerned, however, is from no less an authority than Lucy Smith, his own mother, who, in her account of the very same incident, wrote that Stoal “came for Joseph on account of having heard that he possessed certain means by which he could discern things invisible to the natural eye” (History of Joseph Smith by His Mother, 91–92).
Further evidence, in addition to Mrs. Smith’s statement (and prima facie evidence, at that), proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the prophet was a confirmed “peep-stone” addict, that he took part in and personally supervised numerous treasure-digging expeditions, and further that he claimed supernatural powers that allegedly aided him in these searches.
To remove all doubt the reader may have as to Smith’s early treasure-hunting and peep-stone practices, we shall quote two of the best authenticated sources, which we feel will sustain our contention that Smith was regarded as a fraud by those who knew him best. It should also be remembered that Joseph Smith Sr., in an interview later published in Historical Magazine, May 1870, clearly stated that the prophet had been a peep-stone enthusiast and treasure-digger in his youth, and, further, that he had also told fortunes and located lost objects by means of a peep stone and alleged supernatural powers therein. Substantiating Joseph’s father’s account of his rather odd activities is the testimony of the Reverend Dr. John A. Clark after “exhaustive research” in the Smith family’s own neighborhood.
Long before the idea of a Golden Bible entered their minds, in their excursions for
money digging … Joe used to be usually their guide, putting into a hat a peculiar stone
he had through which he looked to decide where they should begin to dig (Gleanings by
the Way, by J. A. Clark, [Philadelphia: W. J. and J. K. Simon, 1842], 225).
The proceedings of a court hearing dated March 20, 1826—New York vs. Joseph Smith—revealed that Joseph Smith “had a certain stone which he had occasionally looked at to determine where hidden treasures in bowels of the earth were … and had looked for Mr. Stoal several times.”
The hearing ruled the defendant guilty of money-digging.
Peep-stone gazing was one of several occult practices deemed illegal in the 1820s. That Joseph Smith’s peep-stone gazing episodes met their challenge with the law is irrefutably documented. The original court bill of 1826, charging Smith with “glass looking,” was discovered by Rev. Wesley P. Walters, in 1971, at the Chenango County Jail, Norwich, New York. The trial for the misdemeanor crime cost two dollars and sixty-eight cents, which Smith apparently paid. A copy of the original court bill is reproduced in Walter Martin’s The Maze of Mormonism (Santa Ana: Vision House, 1978), 37.
In 1820, Joseph Smith Jr. claimed a heavenly vision that he said singled him out as the Lord’s anointed prophet for this dispensation, though it was not until 1823, with the appearance of the angel Moroni at the quaking Smith’s bedside, that Joe began his relationship to the fabulous “golden plates,” or what was to become the Book of Mormon.
According to Smith’s account of this extraordinary revelation, which is recorded in the Pearl of Great Price (Joseph Smith—History, 1:29–54), the angel Moroni, the glorified son of one Mormon, the man for whom the famous book of the same name is entitled, appeared beside Joseph’s bedside and thrice repeated his commission to the allegedly awestruck treasure-hunter. Smith did not write this account down until some years later, but even that fails to excuse the blunder he made in transmitting the angelic proclamation. This confusion appears in the 1851 edition of the Pearl of Great Price, wherein Joseph Smith identifies the messenger as Nephi, an entirely different character found in the
Book of Mormon. This unfortunate crossing up of the divine communication system was later remedied by thoughtful Mormon scribes who have exercised great care to ferret out all the historical and factual blunders not readily explainable in the writings of Smith, Young, and other early Mormon writers. In current editions Moroni is identified as the nighttime visitor. However, whether Nephi or Moroni carried the message to Smith apparently makes little difference to the faithful.
The nightmarish blunder of crediting the revelation of the Book of Mormon to Nephi instead of Moroni has never ceased to be a proverbial thorn in the side of Mormon historians. Try as they will, it is impossible to erase it from the handwritten manuscripts of the Mormon Church history, which was supervised by Joseph Smith during his life. A reproduction of the manuscript may be found in Jerald and Sandra Tanner’s Mormonism—Shadow or Reality (Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1987,
fifth edition), 136. Later, in 1842, these manuscripts formed the basis of the published history of Mormonism, again, overseen by Smith before his death, where Nephi appears as the revelatory angel, cf. Times and Seasons, vol. 3 (Nauvoo, Ill.: Times and Seasons), 753. The first edition of the Pearl of Great Price (1851), with the subtitle “Choice selections of revelations, translations, and narrations of Joseph Smith,” contained the name Nephi because the unchallenged history of Mormonism had set such a foundation.
In 1827 Smith claimed to receive the golden plates upon which the Book of Mormon is alleged to have been written. Shortly after this historic find, unearthed in the hill Cumorah, near Palmyra, New York, Smith began to “translate” the “reformed Egyptian”6-10 hieroglyphics, inscribed thereupon by means of the “Urim and Thummim,” a type of miraculous spectacles, which the angel Moroni had the foresight to provide for the budding seer. The account of how Smith went about “translating” the plates and of the attendant difficulties with one Martin Harris, his wife, and Professor Charles Anthon, a noted scholar, will be dealt with more fully later in this chapter. However, the plot is obvious to anyone who is even basically informed concerning the real character of Joseph Smith; so we will continue with the prophet’s history.
During the period when Joseph was translating the plates (1827–1829), one Oliver Cowdery, an itinerant schoolteacher, visited Smith at the home of his father-in-law (who after some months, for the sake of his daughter had received Joseph into his home) where he was duly “converted” to the prophet’s religion and soon after became one of several “scribes” who faithfully wrote down what Joseph said the plates read, in spite of the fact that he and Smith were separated by a curtain during the “translation.” In the course of time, Smith and Cowdery became fast friends, and the progression of the “translation” and spiritual zeal allegedly attained such heights that on May 15, 1829, John the Baptist,
in person, was speedily dispatched by Peter, James, and John to the humble state of Pennsylvania with orders to confer the “Aaronic Priesthood” on Joe and Oliver.
This amazing event is recorded in the Pearl of Great Price (Joseph Smith—History, 1:68–73), following which Oliver baptized Joe and vice versa; and they spent time blessing one another and prophesying future events “which should shortly come to pass.” Smith was careful not to be too specific in recording these prophecies, because of the fact that more often than not Mormon prophecies did not come in on schedule, which no doubt accounted for Smith’s hesitancy in alluding to details.
From the now hallowed state of Pennsylvania, immortalized by Smith’s initiation into the
priesthood of Aaron by John the Baptist, Joseph returned shortly to the home of Peter Whitmer in Fayette, New York, where he remained until the “translation” from the plates was completed and the Book of Mormon published and copyrighted in the year 1830. On April 6 of the same year, the prophet, in company with his brothers Hyrum and Samuel, Oliver Cowdery, and David and Peter Whitmer Jr., officially founded a “new religious society” entitled “The Church of Christ” (later to be named the Church of the Latter-day Saints [1834], and finally as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1838). Thus it was that one of the more virulent strains of American cults came into existence—
Mormonism had begun in earnest.
Following this “momentous” occasion, a conference consisting of thirty men was called by the “prophet” on June 9, 1830. A few months later missionary efforts were decided upon and some of the newly ordained elders were set aside to become missionaries to the Indians. In September 1830, a zealous preacher, Parley P. Pratt, was “converted” to Mormonism, and allegedly in November, Sidney Rigdon, a powerful Campbellite preacher from Ohio, “saw the light” and “converted” more than 100 of his congregation to Smith’s religion, which had begun to take root outside of New York State and Pennsylvania.
Sidney Rigdon and Parley P. Pratt, it should be noted, were almost from the day of their
“conversions” slated for greatness in the Mormon hierarchy, as was Orson Pratt; and it is their writings, along with those of Young, Charles Penrose, and James Talmage, which best argue in favor of the Mormon cause, even to this very day. The role Sidney Rigdon played in the Mormon saga will be discussed later, but it must be remembered that Rigdon would eventually be accused of apostasy and excommunicated from the Mormon Church in 1844. Rigdon soared to the heights of inflammatory rhetoric against the citizens of Jackson County, Missouri, when, on Independence Day, 1838, he virtually challenged the whole state to do pitched battle with the “Saints,” who were subsequently terribly persecuted and expelled in November 1838.
Shortly after the original conference meeting in Fayette on April 6, 1830, the nucleus of the Mormon Church moved to Kirtland, Ohio, where in a period of six years they increased to over 16,000 souls. It was from Kirtland that Smith and Rigdon made their initial thrust into Jackson County, Missouri. Joseph and Sidney were no strangers to persecution and suffered the indignity of an oldfashioned “tar-and-feathering,” accompanied by a trip out of town on the proverbial rail. While in Missouri, Smith purchased sixty-three acres, which he deemed “holy ground,” and there marked the
exact spot on which he declared that the temple of Zion, the earthly headquarters of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, was eventually to be built. It is an interesting fact of history that one small branch of Mormonism (The Church of Christ, Temple Lot) today owns that temple site and claims that it once refused five million dollars from the Utah church for the “hallowed ground.”.
Some of the more prominent divisions of the work of Joseph Smith have survived, though barely, to this day. In the 1990 edition of his book, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, author Steven L. Shields lists well over 100 “restoration” churches that claim Joseph Smith his first vision and the Book of Mormon as their foundation. Most of their differences concern his work and revelations following the Book of Mormon. To the far left are those who reject all or nearly all revelations since the early 1830s.
These are the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Independence, Missouri), The Church of Christ, Temple Lot (Independence, Missouri), The Church of Christ (Bickerton, Pennsylvania), and other factions. To the far right are the fundamentalist Mormon groups that sustain every revelation of Smith and subsequent prophets through 1890. These often practice polygamy and are mostly located in the Western United States, Canada, and Mexico. Some prominent groups are The Church of the Firstborn, The Order of Enoch, and the communal clans of Johnson, Allred, Barlow, and Musser.
In Kirtland, also, the First Stake of Zion was established and a quorum of twelve apostles was chosen, presided over by a First Presidency of three, supervised by the president, Joseph Smith, the Seer. It appears that the chief reason for the Mormons moving to Kirtland, Ohio, however, was the extreme unpopularity of Smith and his revelations among the people who knew him best and who regarded his new religion as a sham and a hoax, thus hardly recommending them as prospective converts. Smith, of course, had a revelation from God as authorization for the move. In fact, between the years 1831 to 1844, the “prophet” allegedly received well over 135 direct revelations from God,
revelations which helped build Kirtland and, later, the Mormon metropolis of Nauvoo, Illinois. Smith’s infamous practice of polygamy was instituted at Kirtland and later confirmed by “divine revelation.” Some misinformed persons have declared that Smith was not a polygamist, but one needs only to search the famous Berrian collection in the New York Public Library for volumes of primary information to the contrary, written by Mormon men and women who lived through many of these experiences and testified to the outright immorality of Smith and the leaders of the Mormon Church. Gradually, of
course, polygamy filtered down through the Mormon Church, so that it was necessary for the United States government to threaten complete dissolution as well as to confiscate all Mormon property in order to stamp out the accepted practice.
The “fundamentalist” or polygamist Mormon groups claim no revelation was ever given from God for the disbanding of polygamy. They wholeheartedly reject the 1890 “Manifesto” of Wilford Woodruff, claiming this fourth Mormon prophet apostatized from the revelations of Smith, Young, and Taylor. Fundamentalist Mormons delight in publishing revelations of John Taylor (third prophet) and Mormon apostles of that period who despised the United States government for the sake of polygamy.
Most fundamentalist Mormons adhere to obscure teachings abandoned by the Mormon Church, such as the Adam-god and the restoration of Zion in Jackson County, Missouri. It is a matter of historical record that leaders of the Mormon Church were tried and convicted of unlawful cohabitation with plural wives after the 1890 Manifesto. For instance, Heber J. Grant, who would later become Mormonism’s seventh prophet, was fined $100 after pleading guilty to unlawful cohabitation in September 1899. In 1906, sixth LDS President Joseph F. Smith was found guilty of the same and fined $300.
Following his plea Smith stated, “When I accepted the manifesto issued by President Wilford Woodruff, I did not understand that I would be expected to abandon and discard my wives” (Deseret Evening News, November 28, 1906).
In 1890, President Wilford Woodruff officially abolished polygamy as a practice of the Mormon Church, one concrete instance, at least, of the fact that the religious convictions of the Mormons were sacrificed for their political and economic survival. The facts still remain that in Kirtland, Nauvoo, Jackson County, etc., the Mormons had a chance to win converts to Smith’s religion because they were strangers and the character of the prophet was unknown in those areas. But in New York, Smith was known by the most uncomplimentary terms, some of which have a direct bearing upon a proper
understanding of his character. Pomeroy Tucker, in his classic work The Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism (New York, 1861), collected a number of duly sworn statements by neighbors of the Smith family and by acquaintances of Joseph Smith Jr., particularly. According to the unanimous consensus of those who testified at the time, Joseph Smith Jr. was known for “his habits of exaggeration and untruthfulness … by reason of his extravagances of statement, his word was received with the least confidence by those who knew him best. He could utter the most palpable exaggeration or marvelous
absurdity with the utmost apparent gravity” (p. 16).
One of the most interesting statements concerning the early life of the Smith family and of Joseph Jr. was obtained by E. D. Howe, a contemporary of Smith’s, who did tremendous research during Joseph’s lifetime. Smith himself never dared to answer Howe’s charges, though they were well known to him, so great was the weight of contemporary evidence.
Mr. Howe obtained a statement signed by sixty-two residents of Palmyra, New York, one that cannot be ignored by any serious student of Mormonism:
We, the undersigned, have been acquainted with the Smith family for a number of years while they resided near this place, and we have no hesitation in saying that we consider them destitute of that moral character which ought to entitle them to the confidence of any community. They were particularly famous for visionary projects, spent much of their time in diggings for money, which they pretended was hid in the earth; and to this day, large excavations may be seen in the earth, not far from their residence, where they used to spend their time in digging for hidden treasures. Joseph Smith Sr., and his son Joseph, were in particular considered entirely destitute of moral character and addicted to vicious habits (Mormonism Unveiled [Painsville, Ohio, 1834], 261).
Mormons attempt to dissuade members from Howe’s research by pretending that his publication resulted from the revengeful vendetta of one Dr. Philastus Hurlbut (sometimes spelled Harlburt), a Mormon excommunicated in 1833. The fact that Howe published stories that were publicly circulated previous to Hurlbut’s excommunication is incontestable, despite Hurlbut’s assistance in research.
Some persons reading this may feel that it is unfair to quote only one side of the story; what about those who are favorable to the Mormons, they will ask. In answer to this, the amazing fact is that there exists no contemporary pro-Mormon statements from reliable and informed sources who knew the Smith family and Joseph intimately. It has only been the over-wise Mormon historians, utilizing hindsight over a hundred-year period, who have been able to even seriously challenge the evidence of the neighbors, Joseph’s father-in-law, and many ex-Mormons who knew what was going on and went on record with the evidence that not even Mormon historians have bothered to dispute.
As the Mormons grew and prospered in Nauvoo, Illinois, and as the practice of polygamy began to be known by the wider Mormon community and outsiders as well, increasing distrust of prophet Smith multiplied, especially after one of his former assistants, John C. Bennett, boldly exposed the practice of polygamy in Nauvoo. When the prophet (or “general,” as he liked to be known in this phase of his career) could tolerate this mounting criticism no more and ordered the destruction of its most threatening mouthpiece, an anti-Mormon publication entitled The Nauvoo Expositor, the State of Illinois intervened. The “prophet” and his brother, Hyrum, were placed in a jail in Carthage, Illinois, to await trial for their part in the wrecking of the Expositor. However, on June 27, 1844, a mob comprised of some two hundred persons6-11 stormed the Carthage jail and brutally murdered Smith and his brother, Hyrum, thus forcing upon the vigorously unwilling prophet’s head the unwanted crown of early martyrdom, insuring his perpetual enshrinement in Mormon history as a “true seer.”.
With the assassination of Joseph Smith, the large majority of Mormons accepted the leadership of Brigham Young, then forty-three years of age and the man who had previously led the Mormons to safety from the wrath of the Missouri citizenry.
In 1846, Young announced that the Saints would abandon Nauvoo. In 1847, after a brutal trek through the wilderness of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, Young brought the first band of Mormons to the valley of the Great Salt Lake and is credited with the exclamation “This is the place!”
The destiny of the Saints was sealed—they were in what was to become the state of Utah.
For thirty years, Brigham Young ruled the Mormon Church and, as is still the case, he inherited the divinely appointed prophetic mantle of the first prophet. So it is that each succeeding president of the Mormon Church claims the same authority as Joseph Smith and Brigham Young—an infallible prophetic succession.
The “spiritual deed” that the Mormons felt entitled them to possession of the valley of the Great Salt Lake was “granted” in June 1848, when the first Mormon crops were largely saved from a plague of locusts by a vast armada of sea gulls; thus, according to Mormon teaching, God gave visible evidence of His blessing upon the Latter-day Saints Church.
We cannot, of course, discuss the history of the Mormons under Brigham Young in great detail because that would easily necessitate a full volume by itself, but suffice it to say that Smith gave the movement its initial thrust and Brigham Young supplied the momentum necessary to establish it as a bona fide religion. Young himself was a character of many facets, and one cannot understand the theology of Mormonism without understanding the tremendous influence exercised upon it by the person of “prophet” Young and his teachings. Smith and Young, in company with the pronouncements
of the succeeding presidents, have made Mormon theology what it is, and apart from Brigham Young, Mormonism cannot be thoroughly understood.
Young was a man of indomitable courage, possessed of a canny nature, but given to fits of ruthlessness now conveniently forgotten by Mormon historians. One such evidence of his determination to control Utah was the order that he gave to those involved in the massacre of around 100 non- Mormon immigrants to remain quiet about what has now become known as the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre. In September 1857, John D. Lee and a group of LDS cohorts devised a plan to mercilessly annihilate a wagon train of virtually helpless immigrants. Twenty years later he was imprisoned, tried, convicted, and executed by the government of the United States for this vicious action.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre has definitely become a lamentable part of Mormon history.
Whereas Mormons often like to point to persecutions brought on them from outside sources, this is one area of history where there is no doubt that the Mormons were guilty of the most heinous of crimes.
According to The Comprehensive History of the Church (4:177), when Brigham Young was told of the deed, he said, “As soon as we can get a court of justice we will ferret this thing out, but till then, don’t say anything about it.” In her book entitled The Mountain Meadows Massacre, the late LDS historian Juanita Brooks admits that the secrecy surrounding the tragedy has prevented the whole truth from ever being known. It would take nearly two decades before John D. Lee would be made the lone scapegoat.
On March 23, 1877, he was executed by firing squad while sitting on the edge of his coffin. Brooks writes on pages 219–220, “The Church leaders decided to sacrifice Lee only when they could see that it would be impossible to acquit him without assuming a part of the responsibility themselves.” She also states on page 219 that while Brigham Young and other church authorities “did not specifically order the massacre, they did preach sermons and set up social conditions that made it possible.” Before Lee would be executed, he would face excommunication from the LDS Church. This decision, however, was overturned, when on April 20, 1961, The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve reinstated John D. Lee’s membership and former blessings.
In his memorable book The Confessions of John D. Lee, a consistent sore spot in the Mormon scheme of historical “reconstruction,” Lee confessed to his part in the infamous doings, but he swore that he believed he acted upon the approval of Brigham Young. As we further study Mormon theology, it will become apparent that this was not at all beyond the limits of Young’s character. He was the law in Utah, and as it has been so wisely observed, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Mormonism today, then, is a far cry from quite a number of the principles and practices of its early those tenets come in conflict with government statutes or political influence, the Latter-day Saints have wisely chosen to ignore (the word commonly used is “reinterpret”) the counsels of their two chief prophets. The history of the Mormons is a vast and complex subject; it is a veritable labyrinth of books, testimonies, affidavits, photographs, hearsay, and opinions, and it is only after the most careful analysis of the contemporary evidence that a picture emerges consistent with verifiable facts. For the average faithful Mormon, one can but have sympathy and regard. He is, by and large, honest, industrious, thrifty, and zealous in both the proclamation and promulgation of his beliefs. One only regrets that he has accepted at face value a carefully edited “history” of the origin and doctrinal development of his religion instead of examining the excellent sources which not only contradict but irrefutably prove the falsity of what is most certainly a magnificent reconstructed history. It is to be hoped that as we further
study the unfolding drama of Mormon doctrine and the basis of such doctrine, the reader will come to appreciate the evolution of Mormonism and the pitfalls which most certainly exist in taking at face value the gospel according to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. The verdict of history, then, is overwhelmingly against the Mormon version, particularly where Smith and Young are concerned.
There is a vast amount of documentation all but a few Mormons seem content to ignore, but the facts themselves remain too well verified to be ignored.
A New Revelation—the “Mormon Bible”
Aside from the King James Version of the Bible, which the Mormons accept as part of the Word of God “insofar as it is translated correctly” (Eighth Article of Faith), they have added the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the initial volume, the Book of Mormon, to the canon of what they would call authorized Scripture—the “Four Standard Works.” The last mentioned is a subject of this chapter since it occupies a pivotal place in Mormon theology and history and therefore must be carefully examined.
A great deal of research on the part of a number of able scholars and organizations has already been published concerning the Book of Mormon, and we have drawn heavily upon whatever documented and verifiable information was available. The task of validating the material was enormous, and so we have selected that information which has been verified beyond refutation and is available today in some of our leading institutions of learning (Stanford University, Union Theological Seminary, the Research Departments of the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and others).
It is a difficult task to evaluate the complex structure of the Book of Mormon, and the reader is urged to consider the bibliography at the end of this volume if he should desire further and more exhaustive studies.
The Story of the Ancient People
The Book of Mormon purports to be a history of two ancient civilizations, which were located on the American continent. According to the Mormon version, the first of these great civilizations, named the Jaredites, left the tower of Babel (about 2,250 B.C., by Mormon reckoning), and emigrated to the Western hemisphere. The Jaredites were destroyed as a result of “corruption” and were punished for their apostasy, their civilization undergoing total destruction.
The second group allegedly left Jerusalem somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 B.C., before the destruction of the city and the Babylonian captivity of Israel. According to traditional Mormon thinking, that group crossed the Pacific Ocean, landing on the west coast of South America. The Book of Mormon is supposedly a condensation of the high points of these civilizations. The author of the abridged book was a prophet named Mormon. The book is “the translation of the abridgment of the record of these civilizations” and “includes a brief outline of the history of the earlier Jaredite people,
an abridgment made by Moroni, son of Mormon, taken from the Jaredite record found during the period of the second civilization.”
The second group, who came to America about 600 B.C., were righteous Jews, led by Lehi and later his son Nephi. This group eventually met a fate similar to the Jaredites and were divided into two warring camps, the Nephites and the Lamanites (Indians). The Lamanites received a curse because of their evil deeds, and the curse took the form of dark skin.
Racism is a charge that has been leveled at the Mormon Church throughout their history by a number of civil rights groups. Naturally, Mormons reject such claims by pointing to a small number of African-American and Native-American members. The fact remains, however, that the god of Mormonism elevates “white” races as supreme and has demeaned African-Americans and Native Americans as “unrighteous.” The Book of Mormon describes the Native-American curse as, “they were white, and exceeding fair and delightsome; that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them” (2 Nephi 5:21). Post-1981 editions of the Book
of Mormon have deleted the strength of the racist overtones by changing the word “white,” in the original Book of Mormon, to “pure,” (cf. 2 Nephi 30:6).6-12 The racism concerning African-Americans surfaces in the Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses (7:8–12) and Book of Abraham (1:24), but is amplified much by Brigham Young’s degrading comments found in the Journal of Discourses (7:290; 10:110). The Journal of Discourses is a twenty-six volume collection of sermons of early Mormon authorities.
Even though it is said that today’s Mormon Church places little value in them, they are still published by the Church’s Deseret Publishing Company. In any case, the past General Authorities took a different view, as is seen in the preface to various volumes written by Brigham Young (1:v), Orson Pratt (3:iii), George Q. Cannon (8:iii), Brigham Young Jr. (11:iii), and Joseph F. Smith (18:iii).
The Mormon’s record claims that Christ visited the American continent, revealed himself to the Nephites, preached to them the gospel, and instituted both baptism and Communion, or “the sacrament” as Latter-day Saints call it.
The Nephites, unfortunately, proved to be no match for the Lamanites, and they were defeated by them and annihilated in a great battle near the hill Cumorah, approximately A.D. 421. The traditional view held by the LDS Church is that the hill called Cumorah in the Book of Mormon is the same hill where Joseph Smith dug up the gold plates. This would place the final battle between the Nephites and Lamanites near Palmyra, New York, or near the Smith farm. This view has been vehemently challenged by various Mormon scholars who hold to the view that the hill Cumorah of Book of Mormon fame was located rather in central America. Both theories have serious flaws and because of this, it is doubtful that a general consensus is forthcoming.
Some fourteen hundred years later, the Mormons claim, Joseph Smith Jr. unearthed Mormon’s abridgment, which was written in reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics upon plates of gold, and with the aid of Urim and Thummim (supernatural spectacles) translated the reformed Egyptian into English. It thus became the Book of Mormon, which was published in 1830, bearing the name of Joseph Smith Jr. as “Author and Proprietor.”
Lest there be any confusion, there are four classes of record plates, which were allegedly revealed to Smith: (1) the plates of Nephi; (2) the plates of Mormon; (3) the plates of Ether; and (4) a set of plates mentioned throughout the Book of Mormon known as the “plates of brass” or brass plates of Laban.
The plates of Nephi recorded mostly the secular history, although the smaller plates of Nephi allegedly recorded sacred events. The second group is an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, which was made by Mormon and which included his commentaries and additional historical notes by his son, Moroni. The third set of plates recorded the history of the Jaredites, also abridged by Moroni, who added his own comments. It is now known as the Book of Ether.
The fourth set of plates are alleged to have come from Jerusalem and appear in the form of extracts in Nephite records. They are given over to quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures and genealogies.
Joseph Smith is alleged to have received the plates from the hand of Moroni, “a resurrected personage,” in the year 1827.
The conflicting methods Smith used for translating the Book of Mormon leaves little doubt that the story changed often through its progressive history. Mormon missionaries will only discuss the official version of the church: that Joseph Smith received the golden plates with the Urim and Thummim and viewed the plates through the clear stones to translate the reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics into Elizabethan English. The other version, offered by those who saw Smith conducting his work, purports that he often didn’t even look at the golden plates. Instead, he placed a seer stone into a hat and covered his face with the hat to see wonderful visions in the stone concerning the hieroglyphics and English translation (cf. David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ [Richmond, Mo.: 1887], 12; Deseret News Church Section, [Salt Lake City: September 20, 1969], 32; Emma Smith, The Saint’s Herald [Independence, Mo.: May 19, 1888], 310).
