Splinter Group Community of Christ Part 3

Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism.

I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. This week we've been looking at one of the many splinter groups of the Restoration movement. In particular, we've been looking at the Community of Christ, which is originally known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And you've probably noticed during this series that a lot of these groups claim that they are the rightful successors of Joseph Smith.

After he died in 1844, there seemed to be no real clear plan as to who would be the rightful heir to the authority of this church. The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as we mentioned, was started in 1860. Its first president was Joseph Smith III, the son of Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of what's known today as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, however, not following the lead of Joseph Smith III, because at the time of Smith's death he was still a very young boy, chose instead to follow Brigham Young and eventually left the Midwest and came out to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. But they've always felt that they are the rightful heir, if you will, of Joseph Smith's authority. A phrase that's often used by Latter-day Saints is this phrase of an unbroken chain. They feel that Joseph Smith, for instance, had hands laid on him by Peter, James, and John, who they assume also had hands laid on them by Jesus himself. So this unbroken chain becomes very important when it comes to who has the authority. Now, the community of Christ comes on the scene, as we said, in 1860. And they claim, because Joseph Smith III is their president, who's related to Joseph Smith Jr., that they have this rightful authority. So there's this rivalry, you might say, going on between these two groups. But then here's what happens.

In 1981, a paper surfaces. It's called the Joseph Smith III Blessing. And, according to this paper, it seems that Joseph Smith did give authority to his son to become the rightful heir if Joseph Smith was to pass away.

Believe me, folks, I don't think Joseph Smith had any hint that he was going to die at the age of 38 in 1844. But this document surfaces, and now the Mormon Church is going to have to do some damage control, because it appears that this document is vindicating the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, later to be known as the Community of Christ. Before I get into some of the specific things that Gordon B. Hinckley, who at this time was an apostle in the LDS Church, I think we need to give you a little bit of a background regarding this paper and the controversies that surrounded it. Yes, this document was a forgery, and it was put together by a man by the name of Mark Hoffman. And if you want to type that into your computer, Mark, H-O-F-M-A-N-N, you'll find out a lot of information. There have been books written on the forgeries.

It ended up with bombings, murders, and there's all kinds of intrigue if you want to do some more research on it. But Mark Hoffman is getting his start in 1981, and I'm reading from the Wikipedia article that's on wikipedia.org, and this is what it says. In 1981, Hoffman presented the LDS Church with a document which supposedly provided evidence that Smith had designated his son Joseph Smith III rather than Brigham Young as his successor. In a forged cover letter purportedly written by Thomas Bullock and dated January 27, 1865, Bullock chastises Young for having all copies of the blessing destroyed. Bullock writes that although he believes Young to be the legitimate leader of the LDS Church, he would keep his copy of the blessing.

Now, this is the document that Hoffman claims to have. Such a letter, if true, would portray Young and by extension the LDS Church in an unfavorable light. In February 1981, he tried to sell the letter to the chief archivist of the LDS Church.

He expected the church to quote-unquote buy the blessing on the spot and bury it. When the archivist balked at the price, Hoffman offered it to the RLDS Church, which had always claimed that the line of succession had been bestowed on Smith's descendants but had never had written proof. A scramble to acquire the document occurred and Hoffman, posing as a faithful Mormon, presented it to his church in exchange for items worth more than $20,000.

Nevertheless, he also ensured that the document would be made public. The next day, a New York Times headline read, Mormon Document Raises Doubts on Succession of Churches Leaders, and the LDS Church was forced to confirm the discovery and publicly present the document to the RLDS Church. During the race by the Utah and Missouri churches to acquire the blessing document, Hoffman discovered, quote, a lever to exercise enormous power over his church, end quote, a power to, quote, menace and manipulate its leaders with nothing more sinister than a sheet of paper, end quote. And what's fascinating is Hinckley believes that the document is authentic, so much so that in General Conference of April 1981, he gives this talk, as I mentioned, the Joseph Smith III document and the keys of the kingdom. This is what Gordon B. Hinckley said, I think I should like to say a few words this afternoon about the recently discovered transcript of a blessing reported to have been given January 17th, 1844 by Joseph Smith to his 11 year old son.

This has received much attention in the media of late. The document is evidently in the handwriting of Thomas Bullock, who served as clerk to the prophet. Our historical department secured it in pursuit of their practice of obtaining artifacts of many kinds related to our early history. We determined that we would give full publicity to the discovery, even though we were confident that critics, knowing little of the factual history of the church, would seize upon it as suggesting a flaw in our line of authority. Now, Eric, let me just stop here in his talk, because now looking back, knowing that the document that he has just mentioned in this conference address is a forgery.

When he talks about critics and critics suggesting a flaw in our line of authority, I would say, no, I would argue it's a flaw in your discernment. Gordon B. Hinckley fell for this. The first presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints fell for this. They thought this document was authentic, so much so that a whole talk in General Conference in 1981 would be dedicated to defending the LDS position and their line of authority as opposed to the Community of Christ, or reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Let me just say that towards the end of this talk, Gordon B. Hinckley makes a big deal out of this. He says, speaking of the Council of the Twelve, and Brigham Young and every president of the Church since then has come to that Most High and Sacred Office out of the Council of the Twelve. Each of these men has been blessed with the spirit and power of revelation from on high. There has been an unbroken chain from Joseph Smith Jr. to Spencer W. Kimball. And the reason why, of course, he mentioned Spencer Kimball is because Kimball at this time is serving as the president of the Church. But here's what's fascinating. In the last few remarks he makes, he refers to this document as a precious artifact.

It's not a precious artifact, folks. It's a blatant forgery done by Mark Hoffman to embarrass the Church. Even though Hoffman was a member of record, he certainly didn't seem to believe a lot of what Mormonism stood for, but he did know enough about its dubious history to create documents that would cause embarrassment to the Church. We have to understand that Mark Hoffman would only give this to the Church and trade it for $20,000 worth of documents if it was made public. And so the Church went ahead and said yes, and it was the next day that the New York Times has an article that goes all over the United States, so everybody knows about this.

It's quite embarrassing, and so it was just a couple of weeks earlier from when he gave this talk in April of 1981 that they actually traded with the RLDS Church. They received some documents in exchange for this blessing, and the RLDS Church ends up putting it into the Doctrine and Covenants, their own version of it, and it was very exciting for them. But I want to read the last paragraph of what Hinckley said.

I think everybody needs to hear this, and you can go online and see this from April of 1981, and check out what this speech is all about, and it actually has a videotape of Hinckley delivering it. It says this, We were glad to see our brethren of the reorganized Church get the document which contains a Father's blessing given upon the head of a son He loved. It is a precious artifact with great sentimental value for the family of Joseph Smith. It does not seriously raise any question concerning the validity of succession in the Presidency through the Council of the Twelve Apostles as that body was established by the prophet and as it has functioned under the revelations of God. Of this I testify in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen. Over the next five years, Gordon Hinckley is very much involved in buying many other documents from Hoffman, all forgeries, and if you read this talk that he gives in April of 1981, he makes it sound like he wants everybody to have full access to this, but that's not what he did with all of these other documents. They got buried in the Church archives.

For instance, there was a salamander letter. That was very embarrassing. They bought that up and didn't tell anybody really about that, but Hinckley was very much into trying to embarrass his former Church. He still belonged, but he was not a faithful member. But what I find interesting in the online version of the April 1981 talk that is given by Gordon Hinckley, this is what the editor's note says, this blessing was later discovered to be a forgery, a fact that in no way affects the history of priesthood succession in the Church or the wisdom of Elder Hinckley's observations herein. What I hear you saying, Bill, is you say he did not have wisdom in how he dealt with this issue.

Gordon B. Hinckley got played. The leadership of the Community of Christ, the reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that we've been discussing this week, the leadership of that organization got played. So it makes you ask the question, what kind of discernment do these leaders really have that a man like Mark Hoffman, as good a forger as he was, could fool these men? And we know that the LDS Church, they give the impression that they have the best discernment available. They can speak the mind of God.

And it seems odd to me that God would allow them to be fooled by this person and to spend thousands of dollars to buy bogus documents. There were many people who were accepting what Mark Hoffman was doing, but one person who did not, Gerald Tanner, who was the founder with his wife, Sandra, of the Utah Lighthouse Ministry. And I think that ought to be pointed out because Mark Hoffman would go visit the Tanners and he tried to convince them that what he was doing was authentic.

And Gerald always had his doubts about Mark Hoffman and he told Mark Hoffman that, and it really angered Mark Hoffman that the Tanners would not accept his documents. Tomorrow we'll continue looking at some of the scripture as well as doctrines of the community of Christ, headquartered in Independence, Missouri. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org, where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.