Martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith

In the flurry of all the news activity of the SCOTUS ruling last week, an important date in the Mormon calendar was skipped over. I speak of the 168th anniversary of the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith (38) and his brother Hyrum (44) on June 27th, 1844.

Carthage Jail

It has been estimated that thirty-five lead balls were fired that day in Illinois by the participants in the massacre at Carthage Jail. The mob was estimated at around fifty in number against the four who were in the room where Joseph and Hyrum died. We know that fifteen of the bullets found their mark, killing Hyrum and Joseph and injuring John Taylor (35). Willard Richards the largest man of the four escaped uninjured.

Hyrum Smith, the Prophet's older brother, was the first to die instantly as he was hit by four lead balls. At the time of his death he was the assistant president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and also the patriarch to the Church. The Prophet Joseph Smith and Elder John Taylor, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles were also each struck by four lead balls. We know the exact time of the martyrdom because John Taylor pocket watch stopped when it was struck by one of the balls, and the watch likely saved his life. Some accounts marked the time at 5:21:15 p.m., others at 5:26:16.

Many authors over the years have written their accounts of the martyrdom, but there is nothing to compare with standing or sitting in that room to help one relive those events. I've had that experience on four separate occasions over the years. I can tell you the witness of their divine calling as true prophets never diminishes each time I have gone.

President John Taylor

In the heat of that sweltering June afternoon, the Prophet asked Elder Taylor, an accomplished tenor soloist, to sing "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief,” and he complied not just once but twice. His voice uplifted his fellow inmates. It was also John Taylor who would later pen the official account of the martyrdom, and it is preserved today as D&C 135. Joseph Smith predicted his time had come when he said to his brethren on the other side of the Mississippi, forsaking his plans to flee to the west, "I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer's morning."

Elder Willard Richards

Elder Willard Richards, also a member of the Twelve, who received powder burns on his cheek that day in 1844, wrote his own account of the martyrdom. It was later published in the Nauvoo Times and Seasons, titled “Two Minutes in Jail.” He said he hid the wounded Elder Taylor underneath a mattress in another room in the jail, fearing the mob would return and finish them off. Later that night, Elders Richards and Taylor sent a message back to Nauvoo. They wrote simply, "Carthage Jail, 8:05 o'clock, p.m., June 27th, 1844. Joseph and Hyrum are dead. . . The job was done in an instant."

Elder Taylor returned July 2nd to Nauvoo on a sleigh, but the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum were taken to Nauvoo on June 28th.

Those who succeeded the Prophet and Hyrum in their death were their two widows, Emma (40) and Mary Fielding Smith (43). Emma and Joseph had eleven children, including their youngest son, David H. Smith, who was born in November, four months after the Prophet's death. Only five lived to adulthood.

Mary Fielding Smith was the mother of two of Hyrum's eight children, including then five-year-old Joseph F. Smith, future Apostle and eventually a President of the Church.

Two others known by Joseph Smith were among those late arriving on the scene on June 27, 1844: Samuel Smith, his younger brother, and “Sonny,” who first met the Prophet as a young man.

Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin

In his October 2007 general conference address, the late Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin of the Quorum of the Twelve told of a fourteen-year-old boy who had been taken care of by Joseph Smith as he searched for his brother. This boy ended up being a stage driver between Nauvoo and Keokuk, Iowa, with Carthage being a half-way station. That boy was nicknamed “Sonny” by Joseph, who rode the stage.

On June 27, 1844, when that stage came through Carthage, Sonny saw a mob gathered around the jail. As passengers got off the stage, the shooting started. Sonny drove the stage to the stable and saw Joseph fall from the jail window.

Samuel, who was one of the eight witnesses to The Book of Mormon, never made it to the Carthage Jail before the martyrdom.

He lived southeast of Nauvoo in nearby Plymouth, Ill., and was on horseback to see his brothers in Carthage. He escaped after being met by members of the mob who chased him through the woods.

Samuel rode back to Nauvoo as part of the fourteen-person bodyguard of Joseph and Hyrum when their bodies were returned to Nauvoo the next day in his wagon. Samuel would succumb and die on July 30th, just a month later as a result of the fatigue from the chase of June 27th. He left behind six children and his death preceded by twenty-one days the birth of his daughter, Lucy J.C.

Other members of the Quorum of the Twelve as well as two future church presidents, Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff, were on missions in Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Nauvoo at the time of the martyrdom.

Elders Taylor and Richards, the only two apostles who were not away on missions, were in the jail cell that day because they willingly chose to accompany the Prophet and Hyrum to Carthage.

Joseph and Hyrum leave Nauvoo for Carthage

Joseph, in his journal, noted Nauvoo had 15,000 inhabitants. There were between 25,000 and 26,000 members of the Church in 1844. Today, Nauvoo has a population around 1,000. When the company of fifteen men rode out of Nauvoo on that final journey to Carthage, the road was about fifteen miles in length. Today on paved roads it's about twenty-three miles on a similar route.

The Nauvoo Temple has now been reconstructed and was dedicated in 2002. The original temple was completed after Joseph and Hyrum's martyrdom, razed shortly thereafter.

John Taylor's tribute to the brothers concludes:

". . . henceforward their names will be classed among the martyrs of religion; and the reader in every nation will be reminded that the Book of Mormon, and this book of Doctrine and Covenants of the church, cost the best blood of the nineteenth century to bring them forth for the salvation of a ruined world; and that if the fire can scathe a green tree for the glory of God, how easy it will burn up the dry trees to purify the vineyard of corruption. They lived for glory; they died for glory; and glory is their eternal reward. From age to age shall their names go down to posterity as gems for the sanctified." (D&C 135:6).

"They Shall Not Be Moved Out of Their Place"

When I was reflecting the other day on the early days of the Welfare Program, and Harold B. Lee's role in it, I was reminded again how imperative it was then to encourage the members of the Church to follow the Brethren the Lord had raised up in these last days.  If there is a recurring theme in the sermons of Harold B. Lee, it would have to be the counsel to "follow the Brethren."

He was fond of quoting this scripture: 

Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed unto all his [Joseph Smith's] words and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me;
For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.
For by doing these things the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name's glory.
For thus saith the Lord God: Him have I inspired to move the cause of Zion in mighty power for good, and his diligence I know, and his prayers I have heard.
Yea, his weeping for Zion I have seen, and I will cause that he shall mourn for her no longer; for his days of rejoicing are come unto the remission of his sins, and the manifestations of my blessings upon his works.
For, behold, I will bless all those who labor in my vineyard with a mighty blessing, and they shall believe on his words, which are given him through me by the Comforter, which manifesteth that Jesus was crucified by sinful men for the sins of the world, yea, for the remission of sins unto the contrite heart.  (D&C 21:4-9).

That revelation was given on the day the Church was organized, April 6, 1830.  It always struck me as significant that even before the Church was organized, apparently Joseph Smith had "wept" for Zion.  In those formative years as revelation upon revelation burst upon him, it is striking to think what the enormity of the task that lay ahead of him must have been.  From the moment the Church was organized until this very writing, the cause of Zion has grown throughout the world.  We are witnessing its steady progress across the earth today.

Did anyone foresee the day when there would be temples in Russia?  On August 29, 2010, the temple in Kyiv Ukraine was dedicated by President Thomas S. Monson, making it the 134th operating temple worldwide.  We are living in the day foretold in that first formative revelation on April 6, 1830, when the cause of Zion is literally being fulfilled before our eyes.

There was a difficult time in Church history, when the Lord gave perhaps the sternest warning appearing anywhere in scripture.  It was when the first Nauvoo Temple was being built.  We still encounter opposition whenever a new temple is announced, that is true, but it was nothing like what it was in those days.  For that reason, it seems, the Saints delayed in commencing the work to build the Nauvoo Temple, knowing that the minute they set about the task persecution would surely come. 

In His patience, the Lord extended the time, but the extension also brought about the stern warning:  "If you do not these things at the end of the appointment ye shall be rejected as a church, with your dead, saith the Lord your God."  (D&C 124:32). 

But as is so often with the Lord, there are marvelous blessings coupled with the warnings.  This time was proof of that:  "If my people will hearken unto my voice, and unto the voice of my servants whom I have appointed to lead my people, behold, verily I say unto you, they shall not be moved out of their place." (D&C 124:45). 

There are many people struggling in this worldwide economy and society to hold on to their families in the midst of the gathering storms ahead.  This promise should give great comfort.  Who doesn't want to hold on to the hope that if faithful they will have a place of inheritance?

We live now in an openly hostile and wicked world seeking to not only undermine traditional family values, but to topple the very pillars by which they are upheld.  I never would have believed that by statute and by constitutional amendment state by state, we would see a day when marriage would of necessity have to be defined legally as between a man and a woman.  Living prophets have declared: 

We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children.
All human beings — male and female — are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.  ("The Family:  A Proclamation to the World," read by President Gordon B. Hinckley as part of his message at the General Relief Society Meeting held September 23, 1995, in Salt Lake City, Utah).

The promise we shall not be moved out of our place is a restatement of what the Lord told the multitude: "Blessed are ye if ye shall give heed unto the words of these twelve whom I have chosen from among you to minister unto you, and to be your servants." (3 Nephi 12:1). 

I repeat the promise that those who hearken to the voice of these men whom the Lord has raised up "shall not be moved out of their place."' (D&C 124:45). 

But the promise was followed with this caution: "But if they will not hearken to my voice, nor unto the voice of these men whom I have appointed, they shall not be blest." (D&C 124:46).

There are among us today some very erudite and persuasive voices who would have us believe that changing the views of the leaders of the Church on the bedrock eternal principles they have published in the Proclamation is akin to "waiting them out" until their views soften and they finally cave under pressure from the world as they did on plural marriage and the blacks and the priesthood.  These voices are not in harmony with the living prophets, and gay and lesbian marriage stands in stark opposition to the revealed will of God through His servants. 

We can and should reach out in love to all, but to believe for one instant this fundamental truth can be altered somehow is folly and will end in misery if pursued to its logical conclusion.

I say that because the definition of marriage is in a separate category.  The leaders of the Church are either inspired or they are mere mortals free to alter doctrine as they might policies and procedures at their whim and fancy.

In order to have the promise not to be moved out of our place, we must stand with the living prophets and smite the threatening waves before us, even though our stance will be increasingly unpopular.

In the October 1970 General Conference, President Harold B. Lee made some prophetic remarks as he introduced President Joseph Fielding Smith.  This is what he said:

We have some tight places to go before the Lord is through with this church and the world in this dispensation, which is the last dispensation, which shall usher in the coming of the Lord. The gospel was restored to prepare a people ready to receive him. The power of Satan will increase; we see it in evidence on every hand. There will be inroads within the Church. There will be, as President Tanner has said, "Hypocrites, those professing, but secretly are full of dead men's bones." We will see those who profess membership but secretly are plotting and trying to lead people not to follow the leadership that the Lord has set up to preside in this church.

Now the only safety we have as members of this church is to do exactly what the Lord said to the Church in that day when the Church was organized. We must learn to give heed to the words and commandments that the Lord shall give through his prophet, "as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me. . . as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith." (D&C 21:4-5). There will be some things that take patience and faith. You may not like what comes from the authority of the Church. It may contradict your political views. It may contradict your social views. It may interfere with some of your social life. But if you listen to these things, as if from the mouth of the Lord himself, with patience and faith, the promise is that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name's glory." (D&C 21:6).  (CR, October 1970, 152-3).

In three short weeks we will have the privilege once again of sitting at the feet of the living prophets among us and taking counsel from them.  As we sustain them and uphold them with our faith and prayers, the promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against us and that we will not be moved out of our place will come to pass. 

Ignore them, and we will not be blessed.