PART TWO

 MORMONISM

Chapter III

The History of the Movement

 Joseph Smith Jr.

            Of all the religious cults and sects originating on American soil, the Church  of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is one of the most active.  It’s history begins in Palmyra,  New York, in the year 1820, when a young man, Joseph Smith Jr. allegedly claims  to be  the  recipient of a marvelous vision in which God the Father and God the Son materialized and spoke to him. as he  piously  prayed  in  some  neighboring  woods.    Van  Baalen records the history when he  writes:

The Mormon “profit” Joseph Smith, Jr., was born December 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vermont.  He was reared in ignorance, poverty, and superstition.  Moreover, he was indolent in his youth.  However, quite in keeping with the superstitious atmosphere in which he breathed, he claimed to have visions and divine revelations as early as 1820 and 1823.  In the latter year the angel Moroni revealed to him the spot where golden plates lay buried containing the history of ancient America in “reformed-Egyptian caractors.”  Smith undoubtedly meant characters, but, unlike Mother Eddy, he had never known enough grammar for it to be “eclipsed” by a divine revelation; hence he made occasional grammatical and spelling errors.1

Martin says:

 Joseph Smith Jr., in 1820, claimed a heavenly vision which, 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.2

Joseph Smith organized The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, on April 6, 1830, at Fayette, New York, and Mormonism became a reality. According to Elwell, who writes:

...Soon after its formation its members moved to Kirtland,Ohio, and then Jackson County, Missouri, as a result of the intense opposition they encountered.  They finally settled at a place they called Nauvoo on the Mississippi River in Illinois.  Here they prospered and built a thriving city. 

On July 12, 1843, Smith received a revelation allowing for polygamy, which caused four disillusioned converts to found an anti-Mormon newspaper.  Smith was denounced on June 7, 1844, in this paper, the Nauvoo Expositor, in its single publication.  For that the brothers of Smith burned down the news- paper office.  As a result Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were placed in Carthage jail, where on June 27, 1844, they were brutally murdered when a mob stormed the jail.3

             Martin gives more insight into Joseph Smith’s unsavory character and habits of exaggeration and untruthfulness.  On the issue of his polygamy  and his assassination over the burning of the newspaper, he writes:

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 persons 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, thus insuring his perpetual enshrinement in Mormon history as a “true seer.”4

 Brigham Young

 Following the assassination of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young became the recogniz leader of the large majority of Mormons.  According to Van Baalen, he “came from England,where he had been proselytizing, and by the force of his personality put several rivals out of commission.”5

      He continues:

Brigham Young led the thousands of disciples amid untold sufferings until, in July 1847, they reach Utah, which was then unoccupied Mexican territory.  Young did not know himself whither the long trek was.  Now and then he would say, “I will know the place when I see it.”  When the outposts of the travelers reached Salt Lake, he announced his one and only “revelation,” to wit, the Lord had revealed to him that here would be the place where the Saints would be free from Gentile American persecution.6

 As with all cults the prophetic mantle must be passed, and so it was with Young , who with only eleven days of formal education became a statesman and of no mean proportions to the Mormon people.  Of  Brigham Young, Martin writes:

For more than thirty years, Bright Young ruled the Mormon church, and as 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 Bright Young—an infallible prophetic succession.7

The Mountain Meadows Massacre

 Brigham Young not only ruled Utah and the Mormon Church as his little Kingdom, but he  believed in the doctrine of  “Blood Atonement” (which will be discussed later) as taught by Joseph Smith.  The Mountain Meadows Massacre of  a wagon train of immigrants in 1857 on their way from Arkansas to California shows the ruthlessness of his rule.  Thelma Geer, the great-granddaughter of Mormon John D. Lee, who was executed by the U.S. government in 1877 for his part in the murders, tells about the massacre.

Once again orders from Mormon headquarters in Cedar City in southern Utah were issued to Grandpa Lee calling him away.... His priesthood and military superior, Elder Isaac Height , who was both president of the local Stake and Lieutenant Colonel of the Iron County Mormon Battalion, ordered  Grandpa Lee to lead in the pillage and attack of a wagon train of families headed for California from Arkansas and Missouri.  Grandpa Lee wrote:

About the 7th of September, 1857, I went to Cedar City from my home at Harmony, by order of President Haight...

He wanted to have a long talk with me on private and particular business.  We took some blankets and went over to the Iron Works, and lay there that night so that we could talk in private and safety.

John D. Lee
Mormonism Unveiled
Page 218

There that Sunday night it was agreed that those in authority in the Church would approve of the destruction of the emigrant wagon train, if it could be done by the Indians.  They also agreed that they would stir up the Indians further and encourage them to attack the wagon train compound and rob the cattle and goods.

Grandpa Lee went on to say:

Haight said he had sent Klingensmith and others towards Pinto, and around there, to stir up the Indians and force them to attack the emigrants.

On my way from Cedar City to my home at Harmony, I came up with a large band of Indians under Moquetas and Big Bill, two Cedar City chiefs; they were in their war paint, and fully equipped for battle.  They halted when I came up and said they had had a big talk with Haight, Higby, and Klingensmith and had got orders  from them to follow up the emigrants and kill them all, and take their property as the spoil of their enemies.

These Indians wanted me to go with them and command their forces.  I told  them I could not go with them that evening, that I had orders from Haight, the big Captain, to send other Indians on the  war-path  to  help  kill the emigrants, and that I must attend to  that first; that I wanted them to go on near where the emigrants were and camp until the other Indians joined them; that I would meet them the next day and lead them.

John D. Lee
Mormonism Unveiled
Page 226

...In addition to the military orders and war-mongering sentiments he conveyed to the Latter-day Saints, Apostle Smith also had a most significant epistle for Jacob Hamblin, one of Grandpa Lee’s many brothers-in-law. 

This letter from Brigham Young dated August 4, 1857, appointed Jacob Hamblin as President of the Santa Clara Indian Mission of the Church.  He was adjured:

...to enter upon the duties of your calling immediately.    Continue the conciliatory policy towards the Indians, which I have ever recommended, and seek by works of righteousness to obtain their love and confidence, for they must learn that they have either got to help us or the United States will kill us both....Seek to unite the hearts of the brethren on that mission, and let all under your direction be knit together in the holy bonds of love and unity.

 ...Jacob Hamblin, who was concerned about his  new responsibilities to enlist the Indians to do their part in the approaching war, escorted leading Indian chiefs of his district to confer with Brigham Young in Salt Lake City.  Under the date of September 1, 1857, the Journal History of the Church recounts:  “Bro. Jacob Hamblin arrived in G.S.L. City from Santa Clara Mission with 12 Indian chiefs who had come to see Pres. Young... Pres. Young had an interview for about one hour with the Indians.”

Brigham Young evidently persuaded the Indians that “they must either help us or the United States will kill us both.”  Seven days later, these Indian chiefs and about 400 of their braves joined my great-grandfather John D. Lee and 53 other Mormon leaders and attacked the wagon train of settlers at Mountain Meadows.8  In his last words before he was executed, John D. Lee testified:

“I have but little to say this morning.I feel resigned to my fate... I am ready to meet my Redeemer and those that have gone before me, behind the veil.  I am not an infidel.  I have not denied God and His mercies.

I am a strong believer in those things.  Most I regret is parting with my family; many of them are unprotected and will be left fatherless...

I am a true believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I do not believe everything that is now being taught and practiced by Brigham Young.  I do not care who hears it.  It is my last word — it is so.  I believe he is leading the people astray, downward to destruction.  But I believe in the gospel that was taught in its purity by Joseph Smith, in former days.

I studied to make this man’s (Brigham Young) will my pleasure for thirty years.  See now,  what I have come to this day!

I have been sacrificed in a cowardly manner...

Evidence has been brought against me which is as false as the hinges of hell, and this evidence was wanted to sacrifice me.  Sacrifice a man that has waited upon them (the Mormon hierarchy), that has wandered and endured with them in the days of adversity, true from the beginning of the Church!  And I am now singled out and am sacrificed in this manor!  What confidence can I have in such a man!  I have none, and I don’t think my Father in heaven has any.

Still, there are thousands of people in this Church that are honorable and good-hearted friends, and some of whom are near to my heart.  There is a kind of living, magnetic influence which has come over the people, and I cannot compare it to anything else than the reptile that enamors his prey, till it captivates it, paralyzes it, and it rushes into the jaws of death.

I regret leaving my family; they are near and dear to me.  These are things which touch my sympathy, even when I think of those poor orphaned children.

I declare I did nothing designedly wrong in this unfortunate affair.  I did everything in my power to save that people, but I am the one that must suffer.

Having said this I feel resigned, I ask the Lord, my God, if my labors are done, to receive my spirit.”9

John D. Lee
Mormonism Unveiled 
Pages 387-389

 There was a Methodist minister that was with John D. Lee in his final days  before execution. Thelma Geer says:

Some have said that through the prison chaplain’s ministry and benevolence toward Grandpa as he awaited trail and execution, that Grandpa received Jesus as his personal saviour and made his peace with God.  I wish I knew.10