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S2E2 · D&C 41 and the Kirtland Crazies
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Standard of Truth · Season 2 · Episode 2 · 1:08:27

D&C 41 and the Kirtland Crazies

In early Kirtland, some new converts were pretending to swing the sword of Laban and chasing parchments that flew through the air, and nobody had told them that's not how revelation works.

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The question ·

Why does D&C 41, a fairly obscure revelation, give us insight into Church history and into Joseph Smith's character?

Gerrit

Gerrit takes Richard into D&C 41, the first recorded revelation in Ohio, where Edward Partridge becomes the Church's first and only bishop. Gerrit tells how New York Saints sold farms at a loss to gather, and how Partridge left a sick family and his business to go a thousand miles to Missouri. He then explains the "Kirtland crazies," new converts copying wild revival behavior because they had no printed revelations and no one to teach them, as told by John Whitmer, Levi Hancock and Parley Pratt. The episode ends with Joseph turning down Leman Copley's offer of free land and housing because he asked God, a choice that later spared the Church a costly eviction.

Who comes upJoseph SmithEdward PartridgeLydia PartridgeSidney RigdonParley P. PrattOliver CowderyJohn WhitmerLevi HancockHeman BassettLeman CopleyMartin HarrisHyrum Smith
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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Richard LeDuc.
Richard Well, Gerrit, as the church is heading down the Old Testament path in the New Year, and as last week we discussed the Book of Moses, specifically Chapter 1, we thought we would go to Episode 2 of Season 2, this New Year, by talking about Dark and Covenant, Section 41.
Gerrit We figured it was a natural transition to go-
Richard Book of Moses, Kirtland.
Gerrit Yeah, something that's remotely relatable to what people are studying in church, to something that's just not.
Richard Absolutely.
Gerrit We realized that for people who are primarily listening to podcasts because it follows along the Come Follow Me curriculum, that this will not be as helpful a podcast for you.
Richard Yeah, we really look forward to you going back and listening to this podcast in 2025.
Gerrit That's what we're hoping for is we are front-loading this so that the next time we do Doctrine and Covenants, you-
Richard Oh, you're gonna be so ready.
Gerrit Yeah, we will have about three downloads between now and then, but then 30 million downloads, which means that every member of the church is gonna download it at least twice. Maybe by then.
Richard Well, if the missionary work continues to grow, perhaps we'll have that many by 2025.
Gerrit And that's exactly it. Well, why do I want to- Doctrine of Section 41 is a fairly obscure revelation. I would guess it's not one that you memorized among the other sections that you memorized in their totality. We should have Richard quote the ones that he's memorized in their totality, but maybe we shouldn't. Yeah, just for the length of time. It's a revelation that is, there's a lot of things going on surrounding it that I think provide some insights, both into how things make their way into the history of the church, and also how we attempt to interpret those things once they are in there. And then also there's an insight that we can gain about Joseph Smith's character here in the early days of the church. So there's a couple of things I want to start off explaining. Doctrine and Coven, section 41 is the first recorded revelation that we have in Ohio.
Gerrit It's that point of transition between the revelations were in New York, and now they're in Ohio. Now the Saints are there in the Kirtland area. When I say Saints, it's actually just Joseph. There's only a few people that have made it in February, and the others are going to follow more in the spring. But Joseph arrives there in February, early February. This revelation is not terribly long, and one of the things that we get out of it is the office of a bishop. I believe we talked about last time, we talked about the Book of Moses, well, at least Moses 1, how incredible that revelation really was. One of the things we mentioned is this is months before there even is a bishop in the church. And it is in Doctrine and Covenants section 41 that this calling in verse 9 is the first time that the office of bishop is really mentioned in the church. And again, I have called my servant Edward Partridge, and I give a commandment that he should be appointed by the voice of the church and ordained a bishop unto the church to leave his merchandise and to spend all his time in the labors of the church, to see to all things that shall be appointed unto him in my laws in the day that I shall give them.
Gerrit Now, think about what's going on here. Edward Partridge is a very recent convert to the church. Now, look, the church is not even a year old, so the person who's, you know, well, yes, I've been in the church since the day it was founded has been in, you know, for 11 months or, you know, 10 months. I mean, but there are people, of course, who have been with Joseph since before then. And the way Edward Partridge comes into the church is actually through skepticism, not through just hearing and believing. So the missionaries that are sent out by Doctrine and Covenants Section 28, this is when, remember, the whole Hiram Page incident, which we have a whole season one episode that at least spends some time on it, as a result of those false Hiram Page revelations and Oliver Cowdery believing them, the Lord rebukes them and in Doctrine and Covenants Section 28 sends Oliver Cowdery on a mission to preach to the American Indians, to the Lamanites, as it's referred to in the Revelation.
Gerrit Well, others are called to go with him, and so they go and on their way, they stop in Ohio because Parley Pratt, one of the missionaries, used to live there, and he knows a minister there, a former minister friend of his, who's Sydney Rigdon, and they're able to convert Sydney Rigdon, and Sydney Rigdon converts, you know, begins preaching the Book of Mormon and converts like half of his congregation. And so all of a sudden, this church that has maybe 150 people in New York, in the space of a few weeks in November of 1830, there's between a hundred and two hundred people that are baptized in the Kirtland area. So the church is going to double in its membership in the space of weeks. Well, one of the people who was very disconcerted by this is actually Edward Partridge. Edward Partridge is a community leader.
Gerrit He's a businessman. He's done very well for himself. And he and Sidney Rigdon travel together to go meet Joseph Smith. Sidney Rigdon, because he believes. Sidney Rigdon reads the Book of Mormon for a week, gets converted and says, I got to go meet Joseph. Edward Partridge essentially says something to the effect of, I can't believe all these people are believing this. I've got to go meet this Joseph person so I can prove that he's not really some prophet. And so they go with two different reasons, but when they get there, Partridge is not only convinced that Joseph is a prophet, he's baptized and he comes back to the Kirtland area and is going to become one of the real leaders of these Kirtland saints. It's a pretty big transition for him though. He goes from being a well-respected person in the community and a well-off person in the community to being someone that people are now essentially making fun of.
Gerrit And worse, right as his family makes this conversion to come into the church, God is going to command the Latter-day Saints in New York to leave. He's going to command them to leave and to go to the Ohio, and that there you will receive my law. So that's Doctrine and Covenants, section 37 and 38. We'll probably have a podcast where we spend more time on them.
Richard When we get to the New Testament.
Gerrit Yeah, if we could get to maybe the Pearl of Great Price, but only the Articles of Faith, that's when we'll circle back around to D&C 37 and 38. But anyway, they're commanded to leave, and it's actually a pretty tough commandment for people, because one of the things they're told to do is they're told, them that have farms that cannot be sold, let them be left or rented as seemeth them good. God commands these saints who are suffering persecution in New York, especially in Colesville, which is the whole reason why they are moving to Ohio. God is commanding them to flee the land of their enemies, to essentially lose all of their property, all of their status that they have in America is based upon whether or not they own land and how much of that land they own. Imagine you are somebody who has spent decades of your life, starting with nothing, working as a day laborer on someone's farm, digging ditches, digging wells, and helping people harvest until you finally were able to buy a two-acre plot of your own ground.
Gerrit And then you work on it, you raise it, and you're able to save enough money to now, now, four acres. And then five years after that, you're able to buy another five acres. And eventually, you've got to the point where you've, by the sheer sweat of you and your wife and your kids, you've made it to where you own a 100-acre farm and you're actually a well-off person by the time you're 45. And then the commandment comes from God to leave that farm. The farm that you've spent all of your life trying to acquire, the farm that gives you the right to vote, the farm that gives you any type of respect in the community, and outside of those non-tangible things, the way that you provide for your family. The reality is this hits the Latter-day Saints in New York like a ton of bricks.
Gerrit In fact, there's a non-Latter-day Saint newspaper that makes a mocking commentary of this, saying that this command was resisted by such as had property at first, but after a night of fasting and prayer, they all decided they would do as the Revelation commanded and immediately began making preparations to leave. Now the paper thought they were making fun of the Mormons for being so gullible to believe that they should leave everything and move. But in reality, it's pretty cool that they recorded their mocking, that they prayed about it, fasted about it, and all decided they'd do it. Well, as you might imagine, if you're in a community like Colesville in New York, rural New York, and everybody there puts their house up on the market at the same time, you're not going to get top dollar. Then, as now, the Colesville housing market is not overheated.
Gerrit It's rare that anyone's even moving there, let alone that you're going to have dozens of people all put their farms up on the market at the same time.
Richard Yeah, you list two houses in Colesville now. There's a crash.
Gerrit Yeah, right now, you list a house in Colesville. The whole thing comes down. Oh, great. We might as well give it to the government, hopefully, they eminent domain my house to build another path. And so, yeah, as one of the Knights, Joseph Knight reflected that, as you might imagine, we were required to make great sacrifice in the selling of their house. I mean, these people took a bath on their farms. They went from being well-off, well-respected community leaders to being essentially starting over from scratch, being poverty-stricken, because they either weren't able to sell their farms or they rented them, but that meant they didn't have any capital to purchase land when they arrived in Ohio. Joseph Smith is no different. He's under those same constraints. He's not able to sell his farm in Harmony.
Gerrit Now, he doesn't even own all of his farm in Harmony, so he's not able to make the payments while he's doing the translation of the Book of Mormon and their payments to his father-in-law. So I can only imagine what family dinners were like after that. But the reality is that Joseph is another person among these New York Saints that's going to be arriving in Ohio with essentially nothing. I mean, they're bringing whatever they got in their wagon, things like that. But as far as capital, to get started, to go buy a bunch of land and build a house and plant a crop, most of them are coming with not very much at all. So you have a huge introduction into the church in Ohio of Latter Day Saints who are poor, but not because they're just a bunch of drunks who've never thought to work a day in their life. They are literally poor because they followed the revelation of God commanding them to leave.
Gerrit It truly is one of the great sacrifices and miracles of the early church that we don't talk enough about. I think we talk so much about people moving from state to state and stuff, that we forget what exactly is entailed in this. In the move from New York to Ohio, people aren't just leaving behind the apple orchard they always liked. They're losing their standing economically and standing economically even more so then than now, which is hard to believe. But your class standing then was even more important than it is now. If you didn't own land, you were a failure. Period. End of story. There was no way to come back from that. Well, Joseph is among these people that is going to also make this sacrifice, and he's going to go. Now, I know we started talking about things with Edward Partridge, and then we moved back into the New York Sync, because I want to explain what's going on when Doctrine and Covenants Section 41 is received.
Gerrit Joseph has now arrived in Ohio. Edward Partridge, he gets converted, is baptized, and goes back to Ohio. So he's there for a couple of months before Joseph arrives again. And when Joseph arrives in February, Partridge is going to be called to take this new office of bishop. He's not really given a whole lot of directions, right? But already the early directions don't sound very good. I can only assume at some point, someone listening to this will either be a bishop or the wife of someone who is a bishop, and they will understand that part of verse 9 that says, I give a commandment that he should be appointed by the voice of the church and ordain a bishop under the church to leave his merchandise and to spend all his time in the labors of the church.
Gerrit Again, Edward Partridge was a pretty successful businessman prior to being called to be a bishop in the church. The amount of sacrifice that is required in our church by the lay leaders is really, frankly, it's stunning. It's very different than most other Christian churches. Most other Christian churches are led by not only paid clergy, which is what, if you're a bishop, that's what you're focusing on. Why am I not getting paid for this? It's not about the payment as much as it is about the training. Nearly every other Christian church, now there are exceptions, but most other Christian churches are led by pastors or preachers or bishops or however you want to call them, elders, presbyters, whatever you want to call them. In various churches, they're called different things. They're led by people who not only are being paid to do what they do, they have gone through intense graduate school training to do what they do.
Gerrit They're not reading the scriptures in Greek by accident or because they picked it up with a language training app. They went to graduate school and got a degree in divinity. And part of that training is how do you run your local church? They have classes on pastoral care of your flock. What do you do in a situation where a couple comes in and thinks they want to have a divorce? Well, so they have a class, they're going to write papers on how to use the scriptures to help people who are struggling with... I'm going to just guess that your average Latter-day Saint Bishop listening to this podcast did not get to take a graduate school class on how to counsel people who are struggling in their marriage. Richard, you're in a bishopric. How many...
Richard Well, I think when we were put in about a year or so ago, and I think the way that it went is that the outgoing bishop said, all right, here's the keys and...
Gerrit And he's not talking about priesthood keys.
Richard No, no, no. Here's the literal keys. Here's how you get into the Xerox machine. Then our bishop met with him for a couple of hours and just kind of did a download real quick and said, all right, good luck.
Gerrit So I'm not saying there's not training. There's of course all kinds of trainings that are held.
Richard But this is something that I know that, you know, it takes a minute to grow into this and to understand even what resource... And the church has done a lot of things to provide more resources and more things, but it can be an absolutely overwhelming feeling for a bishop.
Gerrit No matter how much training the church provides, it will never be as much training as most Christian pastors have. Because you have a bishop who has a degree in business or a degree in law or a degree, maybe a medical degree, right? You usually, and again, I'm sure there's some exceptions, but you usually don't have a bishop who has a degree in theology, right?
Richard No.
Gerrit Who went to graduate school on how to be a pastor. Now, I know they're not listening to this podcast, but I know there's some in the church, but they're just not listening to this podcast. And so what I mean is that even though you can take different trainings that help round out the rough edges, the reality is in our church, because we have a lay ministry, you are in many ways being thrown to the wolves. You are being thrown into a calling that you're expected to be just as successful at as a professional, paid, graduate school-obtained clergy is, and your training is, here's the keys to the resource closet.
Richard I will say though, just from a testimony or spiritual perspective on this, it does speak to the nature of the spirit and what happens when bishops are called and set apart, because what you're describing is something that is completely impossible, and yet thousands every year do this thing.
Gerrit It's a lot like sending 18-year-olds on missions.
Richard They haven't ruined the church yet.
Gerrit I mean, I know people will say like, well, the church must be true, otherwise people wouldn't be listening to 18 and 19-year-olds. I went on my mission to Wisconsin, and they weren't listening there. So people say that all the time. I'm like, you know, the church must be true, or a bunch of 18 and 19-year-olds, no one will listen to them. And I thought, well, they're not listening to them. Oh, they listen to them at other places? Oh my goodness. At any rate, as little training as you or your bishop might feel that he has, Edward Partridge had less. Edward Partridge's training was, you're going to be called to be a bishop, and it shall be appointed unto him in my laws in the day that I shall give him. That's what he's going to do. You're called to be a bishop over the church. Now, this is a very short handbook, and it's not just under, hey, you're one of 40,000 bishops. You're a grand total of an bishop.
Gerrit You are one bishop. There's only one bishop in the church, and in fact, this office of bishop is a much more powerful and prominent office in the early church. Because there's only one, there's not dozens of bishops. I mean, I live in Utah. I probably live within a five-mile radius of how many bishops? I mean, 40 maybe? Yeah, at least. Yeah, and I'm not even talking about the ones that have been released that are former bishops, current bishops, right? So it's a very powerful position, but there's very little instruction that's given to it. But Partridge is told expressly to leave his merchandise and to spend all his time in the labors of the church. So you're dealing with someone who's a fairly well-off, prominent businessman, and the revelation God is giving him is telling him to now your job is to spend your time in the church.
Gerrit Interesting, the Lord provides some commentary on why he calls Edward Partridge. Verse 11, And this because his heart is pure before me, for he is likened to Nathaniel of old, in whom there is no guile. Nathaniel, of course, this revelation quoting the scripture where when Jesus sees Nathaniel coming, he says, Behold an Israelite in whom there is no guile. I can't think of a better appellation to have the Lord give you that this person is pure of heart. This person doesn't have ulterior motives. This person isn't looking to find a way to aggrandize themselves at the expense of others. This person just wants to help and love others. These words are given unto you, and they are pure before me. Wherefore, beware how you hold them, for they are to be answered upon your souls in the day of judgment.
Gerrit So after saying something very nice, there's a little bit of a threat that comes in there in verse 12. Now Partridge doesn't know it yet. He doesn't know anything about what his job is going to be yet. Because D&C 41 only says he's going to have to do what the laws of the church say. Well, the laws of the church, Doctrine and Covenants Section 42, is going to be received a few days later. And part of what it's going to outline is a radical, radical teaching related to church property and personal property in the church. It's going to outline the consecration of properties that members of the church are going to give their property to the church and the church is going to then apportion out to people property by stewardship. And the person whose job it's going to be to do that is the bishop, is Edward Partridge.
Gerrit So he doesn't even know what he's signing up for when this revelation is given to him, when he's ordained to be a bishop. Five days later, he's going to have it outlined to him that, oh, you know, the most precious thing in all of American history that matters more than literally anything else, private land ownership. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to give that all to the church, and you're going to be the one who decides who gets what land apportioned back out to them. You know. Yeah, I mean, it's worse than an early morning priesthood meeting. And that's not the only thing Partridge is going to be required to do, because Doctrine and Co. section 52 received, again, just a few months later, is going to command him to go to Missouri, and he's going to go. And this is a huge ordeal. Even the fact that he's leaving to go on the initial trip is a huge ordeal. And his family is in a terrible position, because what you have going on here is you have all of these Latter-day Saints arriving in Ohio with very little food, very little clothing, very few means to do anything, and they're all arriving in late winter or very early spring.
Gerrit So the weather is still terrible. Well, the existing members there in Ohio are trying to take these Latter-day Saints in as much as they can. And so the Partridge family does that. The Partridge family is going to take in many of these people that are just arriving from Ohio to try to take care of them. And so when Edward Partridge is commanded by Revelation to travel a thousand miles to Missouri, what he's leaving behind is his wife Lydia Partridge and their family, who are all ill. They're sick because some of the Latter-day Saints that they took into their house had measles, and measles can be deadly. It can be deadly now, even more so then when they had no idea what caused disease at all.
Gerrit Every treatment they applied was obviously worse than the actual disease. But she talks about this, Lydia Partridge does. She said that their children had all contracted measles from some of the recently arrived New York members who were staying there. And she wrote that their eldest daughter was taken down with lung fever. And while she was at the worst, my husband was called by revelation to go with a number of others to Missouri to locate a place for the gathering of the saints. The unbelievers thought he must be crazy or he would not go. And I thought myself that I had reason to think my trials had commenced, and so they had. But this trial, like all others, was followed with blessings for our daughter recovered. So you see a little bit of Edward Partridge's faithfulness here. He was not a, you know, well, they weren't even called Latter-day Saints yet, or they, you know, they're still calling them Mormonites.
Gerrit He was not a Mormonite in December of 1830. By June of 1831, he has been called to be the Bishop of the church. He's been called to be the arbiter of taking in all of the private property of Latter-day Saints of the church, and then, and then distributing it out in whatever fair manner, according to their wants and according to their needs, as well as serving all other kinds of religious duties. And now he's leaving his family to go on a thousand mile mission that at best is going to take him at least three months because it takes three to four weeks just to get there, three to four weeks just to get back. That's if there's no problems. And you have no idea how long they're going to stay there. He's leaving his sick family behind.
Gerrit He's leaving his businesses behind, which are also suffering. He's lost all of his community standing because he's become a Latter-day Saint. And there goes Edward Partridge walking to Missouri. So you get the idea of the intense commitment of faith that someone like Edward Partridge has. That he goes from being skeptical that Joseph Smith is a prophet at all, from essentially going to New York to prove that he's not really a prophet to a month and a half later, being the first bishop in the church, to three months after that, being sent on this thousand-mile mission.
Richard Do we know any additional details to his conversion or just that he went?
Gerrit Well, so, I mean, one part of it's actually pretty odd. So I don't know if, it's certainly not inspiring, but the first thing that impresses him, so I don't know how much he's grumbling on the way there. I mean, having traveled between Kirtland and Fayette myself several times, by the time you get to the Pennsylvania border, everyone's grumbling, you know, like, what are they doing here? Anyway, and, but he goes to Palmyra first, because that's where, you know, the Book of Mormon was published in Palmyra. So, you know, and when they go there, they see Joseph Smith Senior's, you know, in Hyrum Smith's fields. And he remarks that he's impressed that their fields are, like, laid out orderly and that they're, you know, actually taken care of. Which apparently, it carries a lot of favor, right?
Richard So he goes there, this guy's a fake, he's a phony, I'm going to prove it to him. Hey, those are some nice rows he's got there.
Gerrit Hey, that's how I would have planted that wheat. Okay, okay, they can't be complete drunk idiots because they laid it out, okay. Anyway, then he goes down to Fayette and he meets Joseph and he stays up all night talking with Joseph and then he's baptized the next day.
Richard Really?
Gerrit Yeah.
Richard We don't know necessarily the details of any of that conversation.
Gerrit Well, I mean, there's some discussion of it, but yeah, there's this powerful experience that he has and it's so transformative. I mean, I can't even imagine too. I mean, imagine Lydia Partridge. Your husband says, I'm going to put a stop to this Mormonism right now. And then he comes back a few weeks later. So I'm a Mormon. And also, by the way, I'm a bishop and I lead this church. It's like a classic, almost like a rom-com thing where the guy's like, I'm not going to let him build this here. And then the next thing you know, he's the foreman leading the project.
Richard That is an impressive show of faith in just such a short period of time.
Gerrit It's so transformative. And you see that with a lot of these people. Well, so that's one of the cool aspects of Doctrine and Covenant section 41. And it's when the office of bishop is first introduced. And for a long time, there's only one bishop. And then you'll move to having two bishops. But you are not going to have the kind of situation where you have multiple bishops in the church, like we do today in the church, until very late in Nauvoo. Really the last year and a half that Joseph's there, do you start to call other bishops that are going to start covering wards, which are areas of the city of Nauvoo, which is how we start to get our designation of a ward as a congregation. It's actually one of the things that's really weird to people who join the church. When you say, oh, our ward meets there. To everyone else in the world, a ward is a geographic location, usually a political designation of a geographic location inside a city, not my congregation, which is what it is to a Latter-day Saint.
Gerrit But also to everyone else in the world, the term steak means a good meal, and to us, it's, you know, it feels like a longer meeting when it's a steak conference. At any rate, but the cool, well, that's obviously, hopefully that was kind of cool at least, but one of the things I want to talk about is that the focus of Doctrine and Covenants, Section 41, for a long time was actually directed in a different way. So the section heading used to read like this in the 1981 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, which is what almost everyone listening to us here, I'm guessing, read for most of their lives. I mean, I don't know if we have any, you know, nine year old listeners who are like, oh no, I remember when I was an infant.
Richard My daughter's nine. She doesn't listen.
Gerrit Yeah, yeah. To you or to this podcast?
Richard All of it.
Gerrit Yeah, to anything.
Richard Anything I've ever said.
Gerrit It seems like they listen to things on YouTube.
Richard That's right.
Gerrit If we could find a way to get everything we say on a YouTube channel with some kind of pet or maybe a surprise opening of a.
Richard Yeah, I was going to say next week, I'll open gifts and play with them.
Gerrit If we could get everything we have to say packed into a surprise doll, I think this is really a good way to spread the gospel. At any rate, the section ending said, used to say, revelation given through Joseph Smith, the prophet of the church at Kirtland, Ohio, for February 1831. The Kirtland branch of the church at this time was rapidly increasing in numbers. Prefacing this revelation, the prophet wrote, the members were striving to do the will of God so far as they knew it, though some strange notions and false spirits had crept in among them and the Lord gave unto the church the following. So that kind of locates the purpose of this revelation in that there are people in the church who are believing strange notions, false things, false spirits, and so God's going to give this revelation to correct them. Now, the problem with that is that as you then begin to read the revelation, you find that there's really not anything that talks about false spirits in the revelation.
Gerrit It's actually kind of a fun pastime. I mean, I'm not going to call anybody out, but it's kind of a fun pastime to go read Doctrine and Covenants commentaries written before 2013 and tragically even some written after that that are trying to make portions of this revelation mean what the section heading says. So where does that section heading come from? Well, it explains. It's coming from the history of the church. So why is that written in there if in fact as you go through the section, there's not anything that really... I mean, there are ways you could try to find it. He that receiveth my law and doeth it the same as my disciple and he that receiveth it not and doeth it not the same as not my disciple. You know, so people have said, oh yeah, that's a reference to these people that are following these false spirits because they're not really receiving it. And so therefore, I mean... But there's a lot of verbal gymnastics going on.
Gerrit There's a lot of... It doesn't say it directly, but this must be what this means rather than a direct conversation. It's important to know that historically speaking, the church grew very quickly in the Kirtland area, as I said, essentially doubling and then tripling the whole numbers of the church in New York. And it happened very quickly and also without very much supervision. So all these missionaries, these four missionaries, Oliver Cowdery and Parley Pratt and Ziva Peterson and Peter Whitmer Jr. they preach for about three weeks in November of 1830 to the residents of the Kirtland area and Mentor, Ohio, and that's where Sydney Region is converted. Dozens and dozens and dozens of people are converted. Well, that's not actually the mission these guys were sent on.
Gerrit They were sent to go preach to the American Indians. So after staying three weeks and having all kinds of success, unlike every other missionary who's been in a super successful area, they essentially transfer themselves out. We've got to keep going. We've got a revelation. Maybe at this point, Oliver Cowdery has been chastised enough. He's like, look, D&C 28 was enough for me. We were told to go preach, we're going to go preach. So they leave. Two of the most prominent community leaders among these people, Sydney Rigdon, who's, it's probably about half of the members who have been converted in these early days in the Kirtland area, were members of his congregation, or were, you know, because he begins preaching the Book of Mormon from the pulpit. Well, Sydney Rigdon leaves and goes to find Joseph Smith. Edward Partridge, who's one of these community leaders, also leaves to go find Joseph Smith.
Gerrit The missionaries leave, and they go on to what is eventually, they go through Missouri, they end up in Kansas before they get kicked out, but that's a story for another podcast. Once again, one that we'll never cover. We'll never tell it, and it will be when we're, you know, doing Philemon in the New Testament probably. But imagine, you know, those of you who serve missions, or maybe some of you have lived in areas of the church where it's very rural or there's not very many members. Imagine if in the most rural part of your mission, there were hundreds of people baptized all at once, and then they were cut off completely from any other direction from the church. They have no internet. They have no other church leaders that are there visiting them, and six, seven, eight months go by. When you went back to that area, what might you find?
Gerrit My guess is not terribly sound doctrinal practices. You would find some things that were not what you thought they were. I mean, my goodness, I experienced this in the information age on a mission to a state in Wisconsin. There was a branch where there was some conversions that happened, but it was this kind of out-of-the-way branch. And when you went there to church, you had to go back out and check the name on the marquee to make sure you walked into the right church because of some of the things that were being taught and said there. Well, imagine what happens in Ohio. All of these people have been converted. Several of them have been given the Melchizedek Priesthood. So they're able to ordain people. They're able to conduct meetings and things like that. But not only do they not have any of Joseph Smith's revelations, because the missionaries didn't have any of those.
Gerrit None of them have been printed yet. They also didn't have very many copies of the Book of Mormon even because the missionaries had only so many copies that they could carry. And their job was to go preach to the American Indians. So yes, there's some copies that are left in Kirtland, but most people don't have a copy. So you have all these people converted. There's no handbook of instructions. There's no churchofjesuschrist.org. There's no tradition and culture of the church that, oh, my dad grew up this way. There's nothing to govern people. And in the absence, well, that void is going to be filled. It's going to be filled as it naturally is, and that is by the beliefs and practices that people carried with them into the church. It's not an odd thing that if I grow up believing that hell is a certain thing, and I convert to a new religion that, you know, hasn't had a conversation with me about hell, that I would keep my existing beliefs about hell until I was told something different.
Gerrit That's actually very normal that you would keep your existing beliefs until you have a reason to change. Well, the Latter-day Saints are going to be in this position where they are left without any direction. And Joseph, in January of 1841, he starts to feel, 1831, he starts to feel very uncomfortable and sends John Whitmer with several copies of the revelations that have been received. Again, none of them are printed yet. We don't have printed revelations yet. He sends him to the Kirtland area to go check on what's going on with these members. Well, what does he find when he arrives is that these people are straight crazy. He finds that they are doing all kinds of things that are not, all kinds of things that don't even make sense.
Gerrit Part of what he writes here. The devil took a notion to blind the minds of some of the weaker ones and made them think that an angel of God appeared to them and showed them writings on the outside cover of a Bible and on a parchment which flew through the air. And on the back of their hands, and many such foolish and vain things, others slid on the floor, and such like maneuvers which proved greatly to the injury of the cause. It's actually hard to even understand what he's talking about there, right? That there are words on the back of a parchment that are flying through the air. Okay, I can kind of get that. But now also they are now on the back of my hand. I don't know if it's like a butterfly, and it rests down on your hand, the parchment does. At any rate, what John Whitmer sees disturbs him greatly. And we have some other accounts.
Gerrit Levi Hancock is an early convert in Ohio. He's one of the people that's deceived by these false representations of spiritual power, and he talks about it. He talks about one of my most favorite named people in early church history, Heman Bassett. Heman Bassett claims, this is Levi Hancock writing later, he claimed he had a revelation that he'd received in Kirtland from the hand of an angel. And he would read it and show the picture of a crown that the angel declared to be God's crown, and then he would bear testimony of the truth of the work. Now, I can't think of a doctrine in the church that matters less to our salvation than what does the crown God wears look like.
Gerrit I mean, ham radios and food storage has to be more Priscian, don't you think? I mean, it has to be a better example. I mean, of the things that you could be like, this is what God's crown looks like, and if you don't accept that that's what it looks like, well, then you're a believer of false doctrine. People sometimes get strange notions about what's the most important part of the gospel. Interestingly, it's almost always something that they've decided is the most important part of the gospel, not what the prophets keep saying is the most important part of the gospel. Reminds me of a terrible missionary experience I had where I had some good ones. I just don't talk about those. We went, I was on a team up with a member, you know, just me and a member going to go, we were trying to give a church video to someone, and then at the same time also share some discussions. And most of these always turned out being, people just trying to get something free.
Gerrit There were a lot of prank calls. I thought it was very interesting that when I was in Kenosha, Wisconsin, someone took the time to calculate out what the address would be. Were we to drive on a certain road directly into Lake Michigan? And that's the address that they gave for their house. And so when we went to go deliver it, yeah, wait a minute, 400? And yeah, there are waves crashing, and that's where we're at. So a lot of them didn't pan out. Well, this person, unlike all of the others, seemed to be genuinely interested, and they were super excited when we got there. And so we start talking about it, and the guy's listening. He's like, oh, okay. And I said, we believe God has prophets on the earth today. And Joseph Smith, so I start to tell the Joseph Smith story. I start to tell that Joseph Smith has this powerful experience.
Gerrit I'm about midway through. A pillar of light. Yeah, I am. I'm in the middle of the discussion of exactly over my head. And the member who's with me interrupts me very angrily. Elder, elder, elder, elder. Just stop. Just stop. Just stop. He kept saying it like I was killing somebody. He turns back to this investigator. Okay, this is not a member. This is not a part member family. This is some guy who was drunk one night and saw a message about our Gospel videos and decided he would order it. And now we're at his door. He knows nothing about Latter-day Saints. He doesn't even know that's what the name of our church is. I have to explain myself twice. And then he's like, what? I'm like, the Mormons? You ordered this? Oh yeah, Mormons. Okay, yeah. He doesn't know anything about us. And so this member stops me in the middle of the Joseph Smith experience, turns back to this guy, and in an angry way, not even in a nice way, angrily, like he's mad that the guy hasn't said, that's it, you've talked to me for two minutes, I'm ready to get baptized.
Gerrit Turns back to the guy and he says, look, patriarchal blessings, that's all you need to know. Patriarchal blessings, that's it. As you might imagine, the person felt like they did need to know more than just the word patriarchal blessings and then asked us to leave. So, again, I'm sure this member meant well, but to him, his patriarchal blessing was I guess the biggest source of faith to him. But it's not all you need to know as a member of the church. In fact, you can, I'm not advising it, but you can certainly go your whole life as a member without ever receiving your patriarchal blessing and be endowed in the temple and married and sealed and move about your life and you're fine. It's not a saving ordinance.
Gerrit In fact, it's not an ordinance at all. It's just a blessing. But to this member, it was the most important thing. So I can only imagine that he would have thought he had a picture of God's crown were he living back then. There's another person who apparently the way that they would receive revelation is they would jump up and grab the door post, so the door post over the door, and they would swing back and forth until they were getting into a full swing, until they were basically perpendicular with the ground, swinging back and forth. I can only imagine this was fun to watch. And then they would let go, which would cause their head to go slamming into the ground, knocking them unconscious. Surprisingly, when they woke up, they would then say that they had many dreams and visions while they were asleep.
Gerrit And in the absence of anyone saying, yeah, that's not how Joseph receives revelations, it isn't by smashing his head into the ground in order to do it. As Levi Hancock wrote, and he's very honest, he's writing this many years later, of the whole idea of, oh, here's these revelations, he said, and I believed it all like a fool. So he's pretty critical of himself because he believed that these really were coming from them. To give you another idea of the types of things that are being manifested, John Whitmer is going to explain even more fully. Again, explaining their worship. He said, some had visions, and they could not tell what they saw. Some would fancy themselves that they held the sword of Laban, and they would wield it as expert, as a light dragoon. So they're feeling the spirit, and then pretending that they have the sword of Laban in their hands as they spin their fake invisible sword around.
Gerrit I mean, it's one way to know that you're feeling the spirit, I guess. You're waving it around. Some would slide or scoot on the floor with the rapidity of a serpent, which they termed sailing in the boat to the Lamanites preaching the gospel. This is by far the best of all of the descriptions we have, that apparently people were feeling the spirit in their meetings, falling on the floor and sliding like a snake while they yelled, I'm sailing to go preach the gospel to the Lamanites. In other words, these were the greatest fast and testimony meetings that have ever existed. You were never bored. You were always excited. There goes Sister Johnson. And she's sailing to the Lamanites. As Whitmer concludes, many other vain and foolish maneuvers that are unseeming and unprofitable to mention.
Gerrit Thus the devil blinded the eyes of some good and honest disciples. These things grieved the servants of the Lord, and some conversed together on this subject, and others came in, and we were at Joseph Smith Jr. the Seers, and made it a matter of consultation, for some would not turn away from their following unless God would give a revelation. Therefore the Lord spoke to Joseph. So this is one of those places where it's very important to understand that the history of the church is not being written in 1831 when these things are going on. John Whitmer's history that I've been quoting from, the history that is today's history of the church, that you have as Joseph Smith history as part of it, they are being written in 1838 and 39 and 40 and 41 and 42. They are being written more than a decade after these events took place.
Gerrit And so as they're trying to write the history, as they look back on the events that were going on, they know that Doctrine and Covenant section 41 is the first revelation that's received in Ohio. And what do they remember about getting to Ohio? Oh man, do you remember when we showed up in Ohio and people were sliding across the floor, claiming they were sailing in a boat to the Lamanites preaching the gospel? Of course you remember that. It's the most pressing aspect. And in fact, Joseph is going to receive multiple revelations. Doctrine and Covenant section 43 is going to talk about this. Several sections during this three, four month period are going to directly try to handle the fact that there's all these, not only false representations of worship or feeling the spirit, but literally false spirits that are trying to deceive people.
Gerrit Again, we could talk more about some of those things when Joseph receives the High Priesthood. There's a manifestation of Satan that they have to cast him out of multiple people. So it's the most rememberable thing about those first couple of months in Kirtland, that these people have some crazy ideas and they are worshiping in a crazy way. So it's not surprising that as they try to provide context, the writers of the history to this time period. Oh, that was the first revelation in Kirtland. Oh, yeah. Remember how everyone was crazy when we showed up? It makes a lot of sense. But one of the things that we discovered when the Book of Commandments and Revelations was rediscovered is that the earliest version of Doctrine and Covenants section 41 has a different context that's given in the section heading.
Gerrit And I want to share that here. Oh, I should also share with you what Parley Pratt. Remember, he's the one who converted many of these people. In his history, when he writes about, you know, so he converts a bunch of these people, goes down to Missouri. When he gets back, you know, he finds everyone is crazy. And so he writes, he says, as I went forth among the different branches, some very strange spiritual operations were manifested, which were disgusting rather than edifying. Some persons would seem to swoon away and make unseemly gestures and be drawn or disfigured in their countenances. Others would fall into ecstasies and be drawn into contortions, cramps, fits, etc. Others would seem to have visions and revelations that were not edifying and which were not congenital to the doctrine and spirit of the gospel. In short, a false and lying spirit seemed to be creeping into the church. Even Joseph Smith himself wrote this to Hiram.
Gerrit Joseph writes a letter in early March to Hiram, in which he spells Hiram's name wrong, but he writes this letter to Hiram and explains, I've been engaged in regulating the churches here as the disciples are numerous, and the devil had made many, many attempts to overthrow them. And then he writes in a new sentence, it has been a serious job. So it's clearly the way they remember these early days in Kirtland is we are just fighting for our spiritual breath here against these false representations and false spirits that are deceiving people. But, as I said, in the earliest manuscript, the heading that John Whitmer wrote in 1831, when he copied this revelation into the Book of Commandments and Revelations, he instead wrote, At Kirtland, Yaga County, Ohio, given to the church in these parts, it pointing at the office of Edward.
Gerrit And again, they never use last names in any of these headings or in any of these revelations. So it's Edward Partridge, pointing out the office of Edward. Also, there was a man by the name of Copley in the township of Thompson, who had requested his brother Joseph and Sidney Rigdon to live with him, and he would furnish them houses and provisions, and then Joseph inquired of the Lord and received as follows. Now that is as different a context of the revelation as you could possibly get. The context that was provided in the history of the church was, oh yes, this revelation was received when everyone was crazy, and Joseph needed to receive a revelation to help settle things. Instead, this originally written context provides a very different understanding of the revelation. And what do you find in the revelation then?
Gerrit Verse 7, And again, it is meet that my servant Joseph Smith should have a house built in which to live and translate. And again, it is meet that my servant Sidney Rigdon should live as seeming them good inasmuch as he keep with my commandments. There are references to where Joseph and Sidney are going to live. Why are there suddenly references to where they're going to live? Well, that's because Leman Copley has said to Joseph and Sidney, don't settle here in Kirtland. Come settle on my... Leman Copley has a thousand acre farm in Thompson, Ohio, which is like 20 miles away. And he's a converted shaker. He's one of the people that's converted. If you want to learn all about Leman Copley, we have a previous podcast that talks about Doctrine and Covenants, section 49, which is all about the mission to the shakers that is caused by him.
Gerrit The reason why I said this gives you an insight into Joseph's character is Joseph is arriving early February in the middle of Ohio, I mean, northern Ohio, right there on the lake. I mean, anyone who's been in Cleveland in February, I don't even need to describe anything else. They already know that sounds terrible. Joseph has left everything that he had. He is arriving without anywhere for him to stay. He doesn't have a house. He doesn't have any money to buy or rent a house. He doesn't have any land or any money to buy or rent any land. And as he arrives, this wealthy convert, Lehman Copley, says, no, no, no, don't settle here, Joseph. You need to come settle where I have this huge farm in Thompson. And I'll give you houses. I'll give you provisions. I'll take care of you.
Gerrit The interesting aspect about this is, if I were Joseph, I would have already said, when do we leave for Thompson and how quickly can you give me food? And Joseph doesn't do that. He knows he's been called by God to go to where he was at. And instead of simply saying, well, God must have provided this. I guess we're moving to Thompson. He instead asked God. And the revelation he receives, he at least interprets as, you're not going to Thompson. There will eventually be a house built here. Now, by the way, that house isn't going to be built for years. For years, Joseph is going to live in various people's houses. He's going to live in the Morley House. We all know he's going to live in Newell K. Whitney's house, and then Newell K. Whitney's store, and then he's going to eventually move down to Hyrum, live in the John Johnson farm. I mean, Joseph isn't going to actually have a house for years.
Gerrit But he essentially turns down this offer of free land, free food, free housing, because he asked God. And I like to juxtapose this against Joseph Smith in 1828, when he doesn't see any possible way that he could pay for the printing of the Book of Mormon. It seems impossible that he could pay for it. And Martin Harris, one of the only people outside of Joseph's family who believes that Joseph really has plates and that he's really translating them, and certainly the only person that Joseph knows who can actually pay for the printing of the Book of Mormon, Martin Harris says, Joseph, I really need to take the pages to show my family. And Joseph asks, but the answer is no, you can't take them, to which Martin Harris says, you know, I really, you know, and so Joseph asks again.
Gerrit And then Joseph asks again. And instead of taking the Word of the Lord, when he first receives it, he keeps asking and asking and asking until he gets the answer that he thinks he wants. And then, of course, the pages are going to be lost, as we all know. The Joseph Smith of early 1831, just a few years removed from that incident, is in pretty dire straits. The commandment of God has required him and all other New York members to leave everything and to come to Ohio. And Joseph's worried about his family. He's worried about Emma. He's worried about his parents that are going to be coming along. He's worried about how he's going to take care of himself. And it seems to be this fortuitous presentation from Leman Copley. Hey, I've got you covered.
Gerrit And Joseph takes from Doctrine and Covenants section 41 that he's not supposed to move to Thompson. Instead, he moves in with other people in Kirtland, and that's where the church is going to be headquartered because that's where Joseph is. The other aspect of this story, not only does it reveal that Joseph now isn't going to follow simply whatever the dictates of the secular world are as far as where do I get my next meal, now he's going to ask God. But the other interesting aspect of this is that only a few months after this, again, if you go back to our podcast in Doctrine and Coven Section 49, you'll learn Leman Copley is going to apostatize. And there are some Latter-day Saints who have settled on his property. Joseph isn't one of them, and he is going to evict all of the Latter-day Saints from his farm, and they are going to lose again all of their time, all of their labors, all of their crops that they had spent working on that farm.
Gerrit So I can only imagine what a catastrophe would have been for the early church if all of the church had moved to Thompson, because that's where Joseph was. If Joseph had just simply taken the offer, because that's what was in front of him, and that's what he needed, without asking God, or perhaps getting the answer from God to stay in Kirtland and then just going anyway, then it would have been a much more difficult thing for the church as the entirety of the church would have been evicted from Lehman Copley's land in Thompson. So I think it's one of those cool insights into Joseph Smith's personality and his character. Joseph Smith was flawed. Joseph Smith claims that he is this rough stone rolling, that he has areas that need to be broken off for him to be polished. But the difference between Joseph in summer of 1821 and 1828, who doesn't seem to want to take the Lord's answer because he's so desperately worried about the physical needs that he and the soon-to-be church are going to have to publish the Book of Mormon, to the Joseph of early 1831, who has even more pressing needs, and so do the Latter-day Saints that are following, but instead he's going to put it entirely up to God.
Gerrit We don't have record of him asking God over and over. Are you sure? I can't go to Thompson? He said he'd give me a house. Instead, you have Joseph who is desperately trying to follow the dictates of what God would have him say, and have him do. And to me, it's inspiring, and it's also a little condemning, because I don't even think I would have asked God where I would have arrived, and I had nothing, and someone said, hey, you can come live on my farm. I would have said, okay, and I would have gone without even asking. But Joseph has developed this desperate desire to try to do whatever God wants him to do. Anyway, hopefully you enjoyed that story. You learned a little bit more about Doctrine and Covenants, Section 41, and also the crazy things going on in Kirtland after the first conversions. We hope to have you join us again next week.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

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Yeah, we really look forward to you going back and listening to this podcast in 2025.

RichardBanter

Yeah, you list two houses in Colesville now. There's a crash.

RichardBanter

No, no, no. Here's the literal keys. Here's how you get into the Xerox machine.

RichardBanter

I will say though, just from a testimony or spiritual perspective on this, it does speak to the nature of the spirit and what happens when bishops are called and set apart, because what you're describing is something that is completely impossible, and yet thousands every year do this thing.

RichardInsight

So he goes there, this guy's a fake, he's a phony, I'm going to prove it to him. Hey, those are some nice rows he's got there.

RichardBanter

Now, I can't think of a doctrine in the church that matters less to our salvation than what does the crown God wears look like.

GerritBanter

Interestingly, it's almost always something that they've decided is the most important part of the gospel, not what the prophets keep saying is the most important part of the gospel.

GerritInsight

In other words, these were the greatest fast and testimony meetings that have ever existed.

GerritBanter

But he essentially turns down this offer of free land, free food, free housing, because he asked God.

GerritInsight

But Joseph has developed this desperate desire to try to do whatever God wants him to do.

GerritInsight

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
The early Kirtland converts were just odd people with strange beliefs.
D&C 41 was given to correct the false spirits and strange worship among the Kirtland converts.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

When the New York Saints were told to move to Ohio, many sold their farms at a loss or left them, giving up status and livelihood to follow revelation.

Edward Partridge went from skeptic to the Church's only bishop in weeks, then left a sick family and his business to travel a thousand miles to Missouri.

Without printed revelations or leaders, new converts filled the gap with the practices they already knew; the gospel's center is what prophets keep teaching, not our pet topics.

Offered free land and housing when he had nothing, Joseph asked God first and accepted the answer, a contrast to the 1828 lost pages.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
Front-loading for 2025No one studying the Old Testament needs a D&C 41 episode now, but in 2025 they'll be so ready, with 30 million downloads (1:13, callback 1:56).
Episodes promised, never madeD&C 37 and 38 will wait until the Pearl of Great Price, and the Lamanite mission until Philemon (8:02, callback 39:06).
The Colesville housing crashList two houses in Colesville and the market collapses (11:36).
Here's the keysRichard's bishopric training: the keys to the Xerox machine and a couple of hours of download (18:08).
The only true missionWisconsin, where nobody listened to 18-year-olds, a branch so odd you checked the marquee, and a prank address in Lake Michigan (20:40, callback 40:07, 46:32).
Ham radiosEven ham radios and food storage beat the shape of God's crown as a doctrine (45:27).
Patriarchal blessings, that's all you need to knowA member cuts off Gerrit's First Vision discussion with a confused investigator (47:33, 48:48).
Unboxing the gospelRichard's nine-year-old doesn't listen to anything he says, so they consider a YouTube surprise-doll channel (34:25).
Sailing to the Lamanites"There goes Sister Johnson. And she's sailing to the Lamanites" (51:52).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
Compare the 1981 heading of D&C 41 with the current one and with John Whitmer's 1831 heading in the Book of Commandments and Revelations (57:06).
D&C 42 and the law of consecration: what Edward Partridge signed up for five days after he became bishop (23:51).
How wards got their name: bishops assigned to geographic wards of Nauvoo in Joseph's last year and a half (32:21).
Leman Copley, the Shaker mission and the eviction from Thompson, told in the D&C 49 episode (1:04:37).
SOT Litner · S2E2.