It is my belief that we need to tread lightly when we delve into the past. I heard one of my University professors say once that history is very much subjective. Even though it is supposed to be cold hard facts, they are recorded from someone's perspective, a human perspective. We of this century cannot fully understand the mentality, the challenges and the pattern of how things worked in times past. Equally hard to understand to the people of other time periods would be our dispensation; the liberties we take, the freedoms we have, the technology which affords us the ease with which we perform our daily tasks, the stresses of modern day living, our sicknesses, our anxieties, our depressions, our battle with forces of evil. A clear example of differences in times is found in Mary, the mother of Christ: some historians claim that Mary was 14 when she gave birth to Jesus. In the meridian of time, by the time girls reached that age they were well trained and ready for marriage. Today, Mary at 14, would have been considered a minor and not allowed to marry and any man who engaged in sexual conduct with her would be facing criminal charges. In times past and indeed until not long ago, marriage was a woman's destiny, now it is an option. Times change and with it the mentality of the people.
Was Joseph Smith a prophet? Yes. Was he perfect? No. He admitted so himself (JSH 1:28-9). But he did the best he could with who he was and with what was required of him. When the angel Moroni visited him for the first time he told him that his name will be had 'for good and evil among all nations, kindreds and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people' (JSH 1:33). It is sad indeed that even Church members are counted among those who speak ill of him. The truth is, each one of us has enough sins to worry about without worrying about those of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young or anyone else in the Church, living or dead. Another truth is, do we have a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ and are we focused on it? The Church is people but the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the truth, unchanging and the same yesterday, today and forever. It is administered to the hearts of the children of men by the power of His holy spirit. Once you have received this spiritual witness, all else is of little importance. Another truth, is there another Church out there as perfectly formed as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with apostles and prophets bearing the priesthood; with temples making available the saving ordinances for the living and the dead? To what other Church can we go for our eternal salvation? Who has what we have?
This year in Sunday School we are studying the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith called this book the keystone of our religion (Introduction, The Book of Mormon). Ezra Taft Benson, one of its' strongest advocates, explained that this keystone is threefold: 1. it is the keystone in our witness of Christ; 2. it is the keystone of our doctrine; and 3. it is the keystone of testimony. Bruce R. McConkie taught that Joseph's expression that "'the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion' means precisely what it says. The keystone is the central stone in the top of the arch. If that stone is removed, then the arch crumbles, which, in effect, means that Mormonism so-called -- which actually is the gospel of Christ, restored anew in this day -- stands or falls with the truth or the falsity of the Book of Mormon" (Bruce R. McConkie, Conference Report, April 1961, pp.38-39). Personally, if I take 'stone' out of it, I end up with the 'key' to all that the Book of Mormon represents to me, a key to my salvation which is in Christ, in His doctrine and in my testimony of same.
On the last leaf of the golden record, Moroni explained the purpose of the Book of Mormon. This explanation is found on the very first page of the book as we have it today. It can be summarized in three words: show, know and convince. To elaborate, it is to show the remnant of the house of Israel (Lamanites) what great things God had done for them; so that they may know the covenants and one day be converted; and it is to convince the Jew and the Gentile that Jesus is the Christ. When Joseph Smith called the Book of Mormon the keystone of our religion he also said that 'a man would get nearer to God by abiding its precepts, than by any other book' (Introduction, The Book of Mormon). This promise has been repeated by many other prophets since Joseph. In 1963, Spencer W. Kimball said this: "But after all, it is not the book's dramatic crisis, its history, its narrative that are so important, but its power to transform men into Christlike beings worthy of exaltation" (Spencer W. Kimball, Conference Report, April 1963, p. 6). How could a man who has brought the power of salvation and exaltation to mankind be a terrible man? The crucial part of all this is that we cannot have a testimony of the Book of Mormon if we do not have one of Joseph Smith, 'a prophet of dispensational proportions'......"As much as we delight in and need to have a testimony concerning the present-day prophet who heads the Church,we must also realise that each prophet subsequent to Joseph Smith has had a testimony of Joseph Smith. The echoing effect of these prophets only reinforces that there is an order and pattern by which that specific 'chosen vessel', the Prophet Joseph, was designed to re-reveal God to us in this day. As we teach the gospel in this dispensation, it is important to remember that the reality of God we proclaim to a world of non-members is founded on the knowledge of the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith, the revealer of God......." (Jerry A. Wilson, The Great Plan of Happiness, Insights from the Lectures on Faith, p. 23)
I fully believe we will be held accountable for our sustaining vote of Joseph Smith or lack thereof because his accomplishments were not his own. To deny them would be to deny the power of God through which Joseph accomplished all that he was given to do to prepare us for the second coming. He was called of God and he was anointed to accomplish this work and to deny his divine calling is to deny God Himself. The spirit can bear truth to this fact, besides the logical considerations of his greatest accomplishment being the bringing forth of the Book of Mormon. Consider the following views of this logic:
"There are three possible explanations for the origin of the Book of Mormon. One is that it is a product of spontaneous generation. Another is that it came into existence in the way Joseph Smith said it did, by special messengers and gifts from God. The third is the hypothesis that Joseph Smith or some other party or parties simply made it all up. No experiments have ever been carried out for testing any of these theories. The first has not even been considered, the second has been dismissed with a contemptuous wave of the hand, and the third has been accepted without question or hesitation. And yet the third theory is quite as extravagant as the other two, demanding unlimited gullibility and the suspension of all critical judgment in any who would accept it. It is based on the simple proposition that since people have written books, somebody, namely Smith or a contemporary, wrote this one. But to make this thesis stick is to show not only that people have written big books, but that somebody has been able to produce a big book like this one. But no other such book exists. Where will you find another work remotely approaching the Book of Mormon in scope and daring? It appears suddenly out of nothing--not an accumulation of twenty-five years like the Koran, but a single staggering performance, bursting on a shocked and scandalized world like an explosion, the full-blown history of an ancient people, following them through all the trials, triumphs, and vicissitudes of a thousand years without a break, telling how a civilization originated, rose to momentary greatness, and passed away, giving due attention to every phase of civilized history in a densely compact and rapidly moving story that interweaves dozens of plots with an inexhaustible fertility of invention and an uncanny consistency that is never caught in a slip or contradiction. We respectfully solicit the name of any student or professor in the world who could come within ten thousand miles of such a performance. As a sheer tour-de-force there is nothing like it. The theory that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon simply will not stand examination. (Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol.7, Ch.6, pp.137, 138).
"[I only] say what so many have said before: that if Joseph Smith–or anyone else, for that matter–created the Book of Mormon out of whole cloth, that to me is a far greater miracle than the proposition that he translated the book from ancient records with an endowment of divine power to do so. Has anyone here ever tried to write anything? Have you ever, with your degrees and libraries and computers and research assistants, ever tried to write anything anyone could stand to read? Even if you have my guess is you haven’t succeeded at writing anything anyone would read more than once, or say it changed their lives, or say that were willing to leave family and fortune and future for–and then do it. You thought it was tough to have your dissertation committee grill you for a couple of hours. How about tossing your piece of work to the most hostile–and learned–of enemies for, say, 164 years (just to pull a number out of the air). Go ahead. Put that terrific master’s thesis of yours out there under a microscope for everyone to kick and gouge and attack for a century or two, and let’s see how marvelous that university-produced accomplishment of yours really was. After a little of that are you still standing by the divinity and immortality of your work? Is anybody still reading it? In light of all this, as it applies to the Book of Mormon which is still changing human lives and still moving moral mountains, and as one who has tried to write a line or two of both poetry and prose and failed miserably, I want to meet the author of this work whoever it is. I want to praise first hand such a remarkably gifted writer. Furthermore I’d live to read anything else this elusive figure has ever written. I’d love to talk to the whole research team who must have produced it. If they’ve got anything else they’ve ever put their pen to, I’ll pay any amount of money to get hold of it. This is writing that moves millions so more of it could certainly make millions. Let’s talk contracts. Surely in 164 years there must be someone willing to step for forward– you know, the “real” author–claiming credit for such a remarkable document and all that has transpired in its wake. Or at least those descendants of such an author should have come forth by now willing to cashier the whole thing. Where are they? Well the simple fact of the matter is no other origin for the Book of Mormon has ever come to light because there isn’t one. A bad man could not have fabricated such an inspiring book and a good man would not have done so" (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, CES Symposium, BYU Marriott Center, 9 August 1994).
Elder David O. McKay told of his father's missionary experience that confirms Moroni's prophetic statement to the teenage Joseph that his 'name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people' (JHS 1:33):
"He accepted a call to a mission about 1880. When he began preaching in his native land and bore testimony of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, he noticed that the people turned away from him. They were bitter in their hearts against anything Mormon, and the name of Joseph Smith seemed to arouse antagonism in their hearts. One day he concluded that the best way to get these people would be to preach just the simple principles, the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, the first principles of the gospel, and not bear testimony of the restoration of the gospel. It first came simply, as a passing thought, but yet it influenced his future work. In a month or so he became oppressed with a gloomy, downcast feeling, and he could not enter into the spirit of his work. He did not really know what was the matter, but his mind became obstructed; his spirit became clogged; he was oppressed and hampered, and that feeling of depression continued until it weighed him down with such heaviness that he went to the Lord and said: 'Unless I can get this feeling removed, I shall have to go home. I cannot continue my work with this feeling'. It continued for some time after that, then one morning before daylight, following a sleepless night, he decided to retire to a cave, near the ocean, where he knew he would be shut off from the world entirely, and there pour out his soul to God and ask why he was oppressed with this feeling, what he had done, and what he could do to throw it off and continue his work....He entered that place and said: 'Oh, Father, what can I do to have this feeling removed? I must have it lifted or I cannot continue in this work'; and he heard a voice, as distinct as the tone I am now uttering, say: 'Testify that Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God'. Remembering, then what he tacitly had decided six weeks or more before and becoming overwhelmed with the thought, the whole thing came to him in a realization that he was there for a special mission, and that he had not given that special mission the attention which it deserved. Then he cried in his heart, 'Lord, it is enough' and went out from the cave. (Gospel Ideals, pp 21-22)
If we do not believe that Joseph Smith has done more towards the salvation of mankind save Jesus alone, we do not know and understand the Book of Mormon. In an interview with her sons a few months before she died, Emma Smith, bore her testimony to them: "My belief is that the Book of Mormon is of divine authenticity. I have not the slightest doubt of it....Though I was an active participant in the scenes that transpired, and was present during the translation of the plates....and had cognizance of things as they transpired, it is marvelous to me, 'a marvel and a wonder', as much as to anyone else". Describing her experience, she said: "The plates often lay on the table without any attempt at concealment, wrapped in a small linen tablecloth which I had given him [Joseph] to fold them in. I once felt the plates as they lay on the table, tracing their outline and shape. They seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sometimes thumb the edges of a book". She also testified, "I know Mormonism to be the truth; and believe the church to have been established by divine direction" (Gracia N. Jones, My Great-Great-Grandmother, Emma Hale Smith, Ensign Aug 1992)
What do we owe to Joseph Smith, 'a disturber and an annoyer of Satan's kingdom' (JHS 1:20), the revealer of God, a martyr in the cause of truth? In my opinion, much more than slanderous words and disregard for his sacrifices, obedience and divine appointment. When Parley P. Pratt visited Emma, 'a woman of commitment in sorrow', in Nauvoo where she remained after the saints travelled west, she told him 'I believe he [Joseph] was everything he professed to be'. Emma lived almost 35 years after the martyrdom of her prophet-husband. A few days before she died she told her nurse, Elizabeth Revel, that Joseph had come to her in a vision and said: "'Emma, come with me, it is time for you to come with me'. As Emma related it, she said, 'I put on my bonnet and my shawl and went with him; I did not think that it was anything unusual. I went with him into a mansion, and he showed me through the different apartments of that beautiful mansion'. And one room was the nursery. In that nursery was a babe in the cradle. She said, 'I knew my babe, my Don Carlos that was taken from me'. She sprang forward, caught the child up in her arms and wept with joy over the child. When Emma recovered herself sufficient she turned to Joseph and said, 'Joseph, where are the rest of my children?' He said to her, 'Emma, be patient and you shall have all of your children'. Then she saw standing by his side a personage of light, even the Lord Jesus Christ." (Gracia N. Jones, My Great-Great-Grandmother, Emma Hale Smith, Ensign Aug 1992)
Men may be deceived by our works and by our sins but God cannot. He knows all things and it is Him we must trust in all things, even in regards to a prophet named Joseph Smith upon whom the Saviour himself sealed his exaltation on 12 July 1843 in Nauvoo, Illinois:
"For I am the Lord thy God,
and will be with thee even unto the end of the world,
and through all eternity;
for, verily I seal upon you your exaltation,
and prepare for you a throne in the kingdom of my Father...."
(D&C 132:49)
