I respect all religions. I should clarify this statement, somewhat, as I think religious organizations have committed horrendous crimes throughout history. There has been death, destruction, ruin as a result. That part, I do not show consideration for.
Conversely, there has been good too. People, for centuries, have found a place of community, faith, and comfort through being a part of a religious group. Many have found a way to their spiritual paths. This part, I regard positively.
Finally, I don’t think that one religion is better than any other religion. I have yet to meet an individual who can prove how things work before we are born, after we die, and all the time in-between, if there even is an otherly-existence.
With all that said, I want to talk about Joseph Smith. Truthfully, I know very little of the man or the “every” detail of the formation of The Latter-Day Saints. I’ve seen The Book of Mormon on Broadway. It was one of my favorite Broadway shows ever. That’s as far as it goes.
I’ve had this “picture” of Joseph Smith in mind without really knowing a thing about him. Just a guy, maybe on the quiet side, with a charismatic nature about him. A person who people loved to talk to, be around, and um, follow. I figured he died somewhere of old age, a happy fellow, and was buried under some tree out in Utah.
I could not have been more wrong. I did a bit of discovery this morning.
A brief synopsis. He was born in 1805, in Vermont. Joseph Smith became interested in religion by the age of 12. The family moved to New York where they had financial difficulties. They started working odd jobs, which included “religious folk magic” in which they would seek out hidden treasures for people. This in the early part of his life. In 1820, Smith had a visit from God and Jesus, in which they told him other religions were failing the gospel. Then, in 1823, an Angel, by the name of Moroni, came to visit him. Moroni told him about some golden plates and other things, with important messages, and such.
Here, I get a little lost. It seems that Joseph looked around for them in New York, I think. But then they moved to Pennsylvania, where he met his wife Emma Hale. Moroni kept visiting. At any rate, Smith found the plates but he wasn’t allowed to show them to anyone. I think he found them back in New York at a place called Hill Cumorah.
Here’s the thing about the golden plates. They were written in secret code. The translation was a religious record of indigenous Americans, and those plates were engraved in an unknown language, called “reformed Egyptian.” But only Smith was capable of reading and translating them. Again, I’m a little hazy here.
This was supposed to be a brief synopsis. But boy, what a story this is. I’ll sort of skip to the end here though.
In 1828 he started transcribing those plates, and by 1830, he had written “The Book of Mormon.” The actual book, not the play. At that point, I suppose the religion was created.
They all went to Ohio. They all went to Missouri. Then they backed up and went to Nauvoo, Illinois. Now, I’ve skipped over a great deal here, including a tar and feathering of Joseph Smith in Ohio, and some sort of massacre at Haun’s Hill in Missouri.
But when he wound up in Illinois, he had made some people mighty angry over several different things, including marriage proposals to a few of the men’s wives. This all caused a certain number of the Mormons to break off from the church and start a new religion of their own. There are pages of details, but it comes down to this. When you put water in a pot and turn up the heat, things are going to boil.
On June 27, 1844, an armed mob with blackened faces stormed the jail where Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were being held. Hyrum, who was trying to hold the door shut, was killed instantly. A shot to the face.
They entered the room and Joseph Smith fired his gun toward the group several times, wounding three men. After that, he turned and tried to spring out the window.
He was shot multiple times before falling through that window, crying, “Oh Lord my God!” He died shortly after hitting the ground. But then, you know how things go. He was shot several more times before the mob dispersed. Five men were later tried for Smith’s murder but were all acquitted.
Smith was buried in Nauvoo and is interred there at the Smith Family Cemetery. He was only 38 when he died. And I had thought he was an old guy, who died in his sleepers.
After his death, non-Mormon newspapers were almost unanimous in portraying Smith as a religious fanatic. Conversely, within the Mormon Church, Smith was remembered first and foremost as a prophet, “martyred to seal the testimony of his faith.”
Today’s date is the anniversary of his death.
So, that’s some of what I know about Joseph Smith now.
Some people see him as a great prophet, while others view him as a charlatan.
And I do not know, what I do not know.
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“The cause is hidden. The effect is visible to all.”
― Ovid
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“You are like a chestnut burr, prickly outside, but silky-soft within, and a sweet kernel, if one can only get at it. Love will make you show your heart some day, and then the rough burr will fall off.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
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“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
― Roald Dahl
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