Saints Exodus from Nauvoo Part 1

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.

Saints, No Unhallowed Hand. It's volume two in a set of four that will be eventually coming out that recounts the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We have already looked at volume one that was titled Saints, the Standard of Truth. Volume one ends with the Latter-day Saints preparing to leave Nauvoo, Illinois after the death of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon movement, and getting ready to move west. This book continues that thought by talking about how they are still considering moving west, but they just haven't done so as of yet. Now, this book was published in 2020.

It gets its name from a statement that Joseph Smith made in 1842. He said the standard of truth has been erected. No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing. Persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done. So that's where this book gets its name, No Unhallowed Hand. Now, chapter one, and we're not going to be going through every chapter in this book, but there are some historical entries that we certainly do feel that we need to comment on.

But part number one, titled Rise and Go, covers the time of October 1845 to August 1852. Now, August of 1852, of course, is when they had that general conference, and Orson Pratt was allowed to introduce publicly the doctrine of polygamy, which of course was being practiced during this time, but done secretly. And because it was done secretly, that caused Joseph Smith a lot of problems. Several of the men who put together the Nauvoo Expositor knew of Joseph Smith's secret practice of polygamy, and this is what ultimately led to Joseph Smith's demise after the Nauvoo Expositor newspaper was published, and Joseph Smith had that paper and the printing press destroyed. Now, Joseph Smith is dead, and so now we get to page three in chapter one, titled Gather Up a Company. I want to speak about the dead. Thousands of Latter-day Saints hushed as Lucy Mack Smith's voice echoed through the large assembly hall on the first floor of the nearly completed Nauvoo temple.

Now, we should stop. Lucy Mack Smith is the mother of Joseph Smith. She is going to address this conference that is held, as it says in the next paragraph, on the morning of October 8th, 1845. Now, from what we understand, Lucy had asked to speak at this conference. From what we gather, she was not invited to speak. She kind of invited herself, but she wanted to speak.

So this is where this third paragraph comes in. It was the morning of October 8th, 1845, the third and final day of the fall conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Knowing she would not have many more opportunities to speak to the saints, especially now that they plan to leave Nauvoo for a new home far to the west, Lucy spoke with the power beyond her feeble 70-year-old body. It was 18 years ago, last 22nd of September, that Joseph took the plates out of the earth, and it was 18 years last Monday since Joseph Smith, the prophet of the Lord. And then there's an M-dash in it, and then it says, she paused, remembering Joseph, her martyred son. The saints in the room already knew how an angel of the Lord had led him to a set of gold plates buried in a hill called Camorra. They knew that Joseph had translated the plates by the gift and power of God and published the record as the Book of Mormon.

Yet how many saints in the assembly hall had truly known him. Well, let's go back and look over what we've seen so far. She's going to give this emotional appeal, obviously. And so at the bottom of page three, when she's mentioning, it was 18 years last Monday since Joseph Smith, the prophet of the Lord.

And then, as you said, there's this M-dash, and I'm sure that's done for effect. She paused, remembering Joseph, her martyred son. That's probably how you should be reading it, Eric, because this is an emotional time. And of course, the Mormon Church loves to play off individual emotion. And the death of Joseph Smith is a very emotional moment in Mormon Church history.

I'm not trying to downplay the death of Smith, certainly not. But that is a huge part of why Mormons are what they are. Their emotions play a huge role. Why do they believe what they believe? Many times it's based on an emotional feeling that they feel they have received from the Holy Ghost. And the idea that Joseph Smith was a martyr. Joseph Smith predicted he would be a martyr, according to LDS historians, that he said that he would be as a lamb led to the slaughter.

And so Latter-day Saints today look at Joseph Smith as a martyred man who died for his faith and died for the Latter-day Saint people. Well, there's a phrase in here that I think we need to bring attention to, where it says at the top of page 4, the saints in the room already knew how an angel of the Lord had led him, speaking of Joseph Smith, to a set of gold plates buried in a hill called Kimura. What attracted my attention, Eric, on this was when it says a set of gold plates, notice it doesn't say a set of gold den plates. Remember a few years ago, there was an Ensign magazine that came out and I can't recall the month or the year, but we noticed that there were a lot of articles on the plates and they kept referring to the plates as gold den plates. We had often heard the argument on the streets talking with Latter-day Saints that the plates weren't gold at all, that they were some kind of metal that had a golden color. And of course, why were Mormons using this type of an argumentation? Well, because even their own apologists knew that if the plates were actually made of the metal gold, they would be severely heavy, making it impossible for Joseph Smith to do what he claimed to have done when he retrieved the plates out of the ground, put them in a hollow log, and then went back later to carry them three miles away to the Smith home. So the fact that they're using the phrase gold plates, I think is something we should focus on. And that allows us to once again show the Latter-day Saints why we have a problem with this idea that Joseph Smith allegedly had gold plates, was able to carry them for a distance of three miles, jumping over a log, fighting off attackers, and doing all sorts of incredibly physically strenuous feats in order to get those plates home. And of course, nobody saw them. They were always covered up, always wrapped up.

In fact, we're going to find in the next paragraph, when it talks about the alleged interpreters that were buried with the plates that were to be used by Joseph Smith to translate the supposed reformed Egyptian characters off the gold plates into English. It continues, Lucy could still remember when Joseph, then only 21 years old, had first told her that God had entrusted him with the plates. She had been anxious all morning, afraid he would return from the hill empty-handed as he had the four previous years. But when he arrived, he had quickly calmed her nerves. He had said, do not be uneasy.

All is right. He had then handed her the interpreters the Lord had provided for the translation of the plates wrapped in a handkerchief as proof that he has succeeded in getting the record. Now, these interpreters can't be the seer stone. I have to assume Lucy Mack Smith already knew about the seer stone.

Smith had that for several years at this time. But this is supposed to be the spectacles that Joseph Smith describes in his testimony. He hands her the interpreters or these spectacles that the Lord had provided for the translation of the plates wrapped in a handkerchief. So again, she's not seeing what's in the handkerchief.

She's being told that what is in the handkerchief are these interpreters. But yet this is supposed to be, as this paragraph says, proof that he had succeeded in getting the record. Is that how Joseph Smith operates with the Book of Mormon, though? Because he says that he has the plates. He allows people to touch the plates from inside of a bag, but they can never see them. And so it seems that Joseph Smith has such charisma that he's able to get people to believe whatever he's saying without people actually ever inspecting what is inside.

And I think you make a good point. And going back to this paragraph that talks about the gold plates, the line that says the saints in the room, this is the room where they're listening to Lucy Mack Smith speak at General Conference, already knew how an angel of the Lord had led him to a set of gold plates. See, this is something that Mormons certainly do believe. And so when it speaks of them already knowing this, well, what is it referring to? It's referring to the testimony that they assume every Latter-day Saint has. And if you talk to a Latter-day Saint about the gold plates, or if you talk to a Latter-day Saint about this alleged first vision, they always speak of those events in terms of, well, I know this happened. Well, they believe it happened, but how do they really know it happened? Because the proof for those events certainly sounds elusive, especially when in the case of the gold plates, nobody really sees them. They only assume what they are touching are the plates because Smith told them they were plates. And here in this line here, regarding the interpreters, it says it was proof to her, to Lucy Mack Smith, that he had succeeded in getting the record. All it proves is that he had something wrapped in a handkerchief that may have felt like a pair of spectacles. Would that be hard to duplicate?

I wonder. I don't think so, but it did tend to, I would say, bring Lucy Mack Smith to the belief that that's what Joseph Smith really had. Bill, the Bible says that it's impossible to please God without faith. A Latter-day Saint could argue, well, what about your faith in something like the resurrection? You weren't there, and yet you say that you know that the resurrection of Jesus took place.

How would you answer something like that? Well, I would argue that there is a way that we can come to the conclusion that the resurrection was real. And you're right, I wasn't there. So I can't prove it with any type of empirical evidence.

But this, wouldn't you say, Eric, is a little bit different. I mean, we're talking about actual artifacts here. We're not talking about that when it comes to the resurrection. And if these artifacts really existed, then if you're going to say that these artifacts are proof that Joseph Smith, for instance, in this case, had succeeded in getting these gold plates or this gold record, then how do we know it's proof if we never really get to see it? And why does it have to be hidden? Because we know that Joseph Smith claimed that the plates were not allowed to be shown. But what about the spectacles? Why is everything so secretive here?

That's a great question. And in tomorrow's show, we're going to continue looking at the first chapter of this book, a history book titled Saints, No Unhallowed Hand, Volume Two in a series of four that is being put out by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 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. When sharing your faith with a Latter-day Saint, it helps to know what their church has taught on several basic topics. For this reason, Mormonism Research Ministry has provided its Crash Course Mormonism. Crash Course Mormonism includes concise articles highlighting what LDS leaders and church manuals have taught on issues that will probably come up in a typical conversation. You can find these informative articles at CrashCourseMormonism.com. That's CrashCourseMormonism.com.