Temple prep - "'We Saw the Lord'"

The following text is taken from the pamphlet "Preparing to Enter the Holy Temple" (2002) and annotated by me.

The day of the return of Elijah was a Sunday afternoon, April 3, 1836. A sacrament meeting had been held in the Kirtland Temple. Right, because the concept of the temple was more like a stake center or cathedral, not a Freemason temple. The Prophet described that afternoon in these simple terms:

In the afternoon, I assisted the other Presidents in distributing the Lord’s Supper to the Church, receiving it from the Twelve, whose privilege it was to officiate at the sacred desk this day. After having performed this service to my brethren, I retired to the pulpit, the veils being dropped, and bowed myself, with Oliver Cowdery, in solemn and silent prayer. After rising from prayer, the following vision was opened to both of us. (D&C 110, introduction.)

The veil was taken from our minds, and the eyes of our understanding were opened. So this is all imaginary...

We saw the Lord standing upon the breastwork of the pulpit, before us; and under his feet was a paved work of pure gold, in color like amber. You know where else Joseph saw visions of gold? In a hat.

His eyes were as a flame of fire; the hair of his head was white like the pure snow; his countenance shone above the brightness of the sun; and his voice was as the sound of the rushing of great waters, even the voice of Jehovah, saying: This is sounds like one very horrifying acid trip.

I am the first and the last; I am he who liveth, I am he who was slain; I am your advocate with the Father. Lord, are you really going to run through all your titles?

Behold, your sins are forgiven you; you are clean before me; therefore, lift up your heads and rejoice. Yay!

Let the hearts of your brethren rejoice, and let the hearts of all my people rejoice, who have, with their might, built this house to my name.

For behold, I have accepted this house, and my name shall be here; and I will manifest myself to my people in mercy in this house. You're not pissed that they didn't built it by a beach or a lakeside resort, Lord? There's not even a patio for your sun chair.

Yea, I will appear unto my servants, and speak unto them with mine own voice, if my people will keep my commandments, and do not pollute this holy house. Is this where Mormons get the misguided idea that the prophet sees and hears the Lord? Who was the last prophet who said he saw Jesus in the temple?

Yea the hearts of thousands and tens of thousands shall greatly rejoice in consequence of the blessings which shall be poured out, and the endowment with which my servants have been endowed in this house. Tens of thousands? Proportionally to the world's population, that not very impressive.

And the fame of this house shall spread to foreign lands; and this is the beginning of the blessing which shall be poured out upon the heads of my people. Even so. Amen. The fame of the Kirtland temple is known abroad only to members and they have been given a whitewashed and embellished version of its history and meaning.

After this vision closed, the heavens were again opened unto us; and Moses appeared before us, and committed unto us the keys of the gathering of Israel from the four parts of the earth, and the leading of the ten tribes from the land of the north. Ah, yes, the 10 tribes!

After this, Elias appeared, and committed the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham, saying that in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed. The "gospel of Abraham"? Is that the gospel where you circumcise yourself, your sons and all other males in your household?

After this vision had closed, another great and glorious vision burst upon us; for Elijah the prophet, who was taken to heaven without tasting death, stood before us, and said: WHOA! Hang on a sec. You made a big booboo, Joseph. I think we can safely say you're pulling this vision out of your ass.

Behold, the time has fully come, which was spoken of by the mouth of Malachi—testifying that he [Elijah] should be sent, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord come—

To turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, lest the whole earth be smitten with a curse—

Therefore, the keys of this dispensation are committed into your hands; and by this ye may know that the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors. (D&C 110:1–16.) I can't wait for the day of the Lord. That's Sunday, right?

I saw Jesus in the temple. He was so beautiful.

It had happened! This signal event went unheeded by the world, but it would influence the destiny of every soul who has ever lived or will live. In the words of Ken Ham, WERE YOU THERE? How do you know this happened? The story appears grossly fabricated. Things began quietly to happen. What things?! The Church became a temple-building church. The Church is definitely not quiet about its temple building! It is very quiet about how the purpose of temples has drastically changed and even quieter about how the ordinances continue to change today.

In the world there emerged here and there, in a way thought to be spontaneous, people and organizations and societies interested in tracing genealogies. This happened thanks to John Farmer's efforts in the more heavily populated New England area throughout the 1820s, not Joseph Smith receiving "keys" in on of America's sparsely populated frontier towns in the mid-1830s. This has all taken place since the appearance of Elijah in the Kirtland Temple. Or do you mean Elias? Please reread my comments above.

From that very day, April 3, 1836, the hearts of the children began to turn to their fathers. Before that, all children hated their fathers and never thought of them, especially not to help them. Thereafter ordinances were not tentative, but permanent. Baptism was tentative before 1836? Ordination to the Priesthood was tentative!! Are you serious? The sealing power was with us. Rest easy, kids, this highly suspicious story Joseph Smith told means we've got the most powerful magic of any religion. You're in the right place! No authorization transcends it in value. So never ever under any circumstance take seriously what other religions say they have to offer. That power gives substance and eternal permanence to all ordinances performed with proper authority for both the living and the dead. You'll feel it, brothers and sisters. It will feel low key. Almost anticlimactic. Kind of like the awesomeness of it all was in what was said, not so much in what was done and what happened afterward. What I'm saying is don't expect to see the Lord or anything amazing like that. Keep your expectations to a minimum.

Anti-Banking

If Joseph Smith's years of scrying and his story of gold plates that no one can see don't bother you at all, you probably won't be phased by Joseph's illegal creation of an "anti-bank" (sounds inspired by the Anti-Nephi-Lehies). It was a pure con that blew up in his face and cost the saints a pretty penny.

I have no idea how anyone can deny that Joseph was a conman. Doubt it if you can, shelf it if you must.

Mormon pilgrimages

Jerusalem? Rome? Santiago? What are we, Catholics? Do we have to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to worship an object? Not a chance. No idols for us. Leave reverencing objects to everyone else. Let the Muslims make their once in a lifetime trek to Mecca. We carry religion in our hearts. Our eternal souls worship in a walking tabernacle of flesh.

Sure, we have to be sure to make it to the temple at least once in our lives (heaven forbid we die before taking out our endowment and sealed for time and all eternity), but fortunately for everyone, the Church these days is working hard to make church and temple attendance as easy and non-pilgrimage-like as possible. With meeting houses and temples cropping up all over the globe, chances are you're no more than a couple of hours away from an LDS place of worship.

Of course that doesn't stop us from making distant religious journeys in order to prove our spirituality, pay our respects to our forebearers and prove to our neighbors that the Church is the most important thing in our life. Who among us doesn't feel a slight tinge of guilt for not having humbly offered a prayer of gratitude for Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove? Who among us hasn't felt some degree of urgency that our sons and daughters experience the spiritual banquet to be had on Heritage Tours? How else will they gain a testimony in their youth? The Kirkland temple, the Nauvoo temple, the temple site in Missouri, we just have to see them.

And why stop at the locations that have actual Mormon history? Why not make up some new sites for Book of Mormon tours? Heartland model believers, we've got you covered too! It doesn't matter if it's all bullshit. You really have to see it for yourself!

 

Most amazing of all is Salt Lake City! Come listen to a prophet's voice at General Conference! Come on! You believe he's a prophet, right? You love him, right? You have a testimony that he's God's mouthpiece, right? So show us your conviction! Come, come, ye saints! Come!

Fanny Young Murray (Smith) - wife #36

Fanny Young (November 8, 1787 - June 11, 1859) was Brigham Young's older sister. She took on much of the responsibility for raising her younger siblings after her mother died in 1815. She was also close to the Kimball family and young Helen referred to her as Aunt Fanny.

Fanny married Heber Kimball's father-in-law, Roswell Murray, in 1832, the same year she and other members of the Young family joined the Church. Roswell, however, did not join, but he still moved with the saints to Kirtland, Missouri, and then Nauvoo, where he fell ill and died in 1839.

Fanny's marriage to Joseph Smith was extremely abrupt. She found herself disagreeing with Brigham and Joseph in a conversation about the necessity of plural marriage in order to reach the highest glory of the Celestial Kingdom, and Joseph rebutted her expressed desire to simply be an administering angel with "you talk very foolishly, you do not know what you will want" and followed that up by having Brigham seal her to him then and there.

To me the story reads as an example of how Joseph liked to flash his prophetic mantle and shoot to close the sale quickly. Fanny's marriage to the prophet comes across as yet another example of how Joseph was good at pressuring people to reassert himself and get what he wanted.

Unlike many of the other plural wives, Fanny was not resealed to Joseph in the Nauvoo temple following his murder.

Nancy Mariah Winchester (Smith) Kimball Arnold - wife #35

Nancy Winchester (August 10, 1828 - March 17, 1876) moved to Kirtland with her recently converted parents and older brother at the age of about five. She herself was likely baptized three years later at the "age of accountability." The Winchesters later moved to Missouri, but by 1842 were in Nauvoo.

Nancy was fourteen or fifteen when she was secretly married to Joseph Smith. When he died, she and other wives of Joseph were married to Heber Kimball. Nancy separated from Heber and married Amos George Arnold after arriving in Utah. They had one son, George, together.

Desdemona Wadsworth Fullmer (Smith) Benson McLane - wife #31

Desdemona Fullmer (October 6, 1809 - February 9, 1886) was a devout believer from an early age. She had her own First Vision of sorts about ten years before reading The Book of Mormon. She was praying to know which church to join when she was struck down and paralyzed by the power of God. It was in that state that a voice came to her and told her that she would have to wait a while yet before finding the true church.

Desdemona went through a lot with her fellow Mormons. Her family gathered in Kirtland and then in Missouri, where she witnessed the Haun's Mill massacre. She felt resolved to stay in Missouri and weather the persecution, but she and her family were eventually pushed out to Nauvoo in 1842.

In Nauvoo Desdemona first stayed with Joseph Smith and his family. (She most likely knew a few of Joseph's other secret wives, like Emily and Eliza Partridge, Elvira Cowles, and others) She moved out after a year without having married Joseph Smith, but that would be resolved less than six months later.

Desdemona's secret marriage to Joseph caused her to worry that Emma might find out and poison her, so obviously Joseph was not following the first wife's consent rule. On the plus side, she was probably a virgin!

Joseph was murdered less than a year later. Desdemona married Ezra Benson early on in 1846. Some time after Ezra died she married Harrison Parker McLane, with whom she had a daughter, Desdemona, who died the year she was born.

Ruth Daggett Vose Sayers (Smith) - wife #19

Ruth Sayers (February 26, 1808 - 1884) was an upholsterer from Boston. She was baptized there by Brigham Young in 1836, about four years after she had first heard of the Mormons. While living in Boston she donated significantly to the Kirtland temple construction.

Ruth married Edward Sayers in 1841 and the couple soon headed to Nauvoo. In August of the following year, Ruth got to know Joseph Smith better when he stayed with the Sayers for a week while hiding from the law. Ruth and Joseph were married six months later.

Ruth stayed living with Edward in Nauvoo and for the rest of her life. After Joseph's death the Sayers moved back to Boston for a few years before moving out to Utah.

Delcena Johnson Sherman (Smith) Babbitt - wife #14

With Delcena Johnson (Novermber 19, 1806 - October 21, 1854) we have yet another widow. She was first married to Lyman R. Sherman, with whom she had six children, so right off the bat we can see that Joseph Smith wasn't following the virginal bride requirement. The couple joined the Church together in 1831 in New York. They moved Kirtland, then to Far West, and, following Lyman's death, Nauvoo. Delcena's brother Benjamin took her and her children in.

Then Benjamin was sent on a mission to Canada and before he returned in 1842 Delcena was married to Joseph. Benjamin accepted the marriage without question. Delcena was living with her sister wife, Louisa Beaman. The three of them - Benjamin, Delcena, and Louisa - would eventually all pitch in to convince Almera Johnson, Benjamin and Delcena's younger sister, to marry Joseph as well.

Delcena married a third time after Joseph's assassination, this time to Almon Babbitt. In 1850 he left for Utah without her. She made the trip four years later, eager to no longer be left lonely, only to die within a couple of months of arriving in Utah.

Agnes Moulton Coolbrith Smith (Smith Smith) Pickett - wife #7

Agnes Coolbrith joined the Church in 1832 and, after staying with the Smiths in Kirtland for a time, married Joseph's younger brother Don Carlos in 1835. They had three daughters together, the youngest of which was Josephine Anna Smith, who later became known as Ina Donna Coolbrith. Don Carlos and one of the two older daughters died in Nauvoo of malaria.

 DH#1

Five months after her husband's death, Agnes married her brother-in-law Joseph. (This marriage is not mentioned on the Church's website.) The marriage warranted a cryptic note in Masonic code by Brigham Young, an enthusiastic journal entry by Joseph, and a rumor against the prophet that sent Emma into a tizzy.

Cousin George, DH#3

After Joseph was killed Agnes ended up marrying George Albert Smith, a cousin of her first two husbands, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, and husband to another woman, but ultimately left George during his preparations to move to Utah. Instead, Agnes left the Church and went to Saint Louis, where she married printer and lawyer William Pickett, with whom she had twin boys. They soon moved to California where Ina would gain fame as poet laureate.

(Joseph)Ina

Agnes hid her Mormon, polygamist past for the remainder of her life, though a letter to her nephew Joseph F. Smith reveals a deeply felt tie to Joseph and Don Carlos' family.

Why did Joseph take Agnes on as another wife? Was it simply a Levirate thing? It definitely doesn't meet God's requirements for the New and Everlasting Covenant. For starters, Don Carlos and Agnes had probably been sealed - I find it difficult to imagine that someone as inner-circle as the prophet's brother would have been left out of the sealing game. Secondly, she was most definitely not a virgin. Third, it's doubtful that Emma gave her permission otherwise she probably wouldn't have initiated an investigation of rumors about Joseph's licentious dealings (or she could have been trying to cover them up). And finally, where are the Joseph-Agnes babies? They raised no "seed." So why should anyone believe this marriage was sanctioned by God?