Moroni Part 1

Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Professor Richard LeDuc explore the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the life and teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith. They examine the original historical sources and provide context for events of the past. They approach the history of the Church with faith, expertise and humor.

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, Professor Richard LeDuc.

Richard Hello, Gerrit. In this week's episode, we are going to read a couple of emails that we've received over the past, we're way behind on reading a couple of those, and we're going to get to a question about Moroni eventually, potentially. Maybe.

Gerrit We don't know.

Richard We don't know. This email comes to us from Larry. It will be highly redacted.

Gerrit We don't know.

Richard We don't know. This email comes to us from Larry. It will be highly redacted.

Gerrit Everything Larry says has so many profanities in it.

Richard No, no, that's not it.

Gerrit Every email Larry sends is just asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk.

Richard No, no, no. I think he's referring to your PhD, Richard. We work very hard to not mention specific things, that he mentions all of those specific things in the email. And so it would be a little defeating.

Gerrit Right.

Richard So this will be heavily redacted. I'll just sum it up. Hey, guys, you guys are amazing. I love you so much. Larry, there you go. That's pretty much how it goes.

Gerrit Right.

Richard So this will be heavily redacted. I'll just sum it up. Hey, guys, you guys are amazing. I love you so much. Larry, there you go. That's pretty much how it goes.

Gerrit That doesn't sound like Larry, that doesn't sound like Larry. That's not the Larry I know.

Richard I must say, I was impressed that you did both parts of Hero Worship without mentioning somebody. And then he says other things that would be a dead giveaway as to who that is. And then says that he had several people that were actually affected by this very topic. And this is something actually is relatively near and dear to Gerrit's and my heart, just from the standpoint that we have many people that we love very much that kind of get pulled into these, you know, these personalities that, you know, the people just love and then when they do things that the church disagrees with, rather than siding with the church, they go the other way and it's heartbreaking. Anyway, he says that he had several people that went down that path and he forwarded our episodes to them. So hopefully, Larry, that that helps, but more important, that they soon become a premium subscriber.

Richard That's always what we're helping for. We got another one on Hero Worship. This one comes to us from Deidre. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Dear Gerrit and Richard, I'm very happy. Richard will soon have his doctorate. I can sense a big party coming on. You're right about the party, not right about it being close.

Gerrit She has a lot more faith in you than you do in yourself.

Richard My wife, my friends, everyone that knows me. I'm not a pithy person, not witty, pretty much dry toast. I first learned of your podcast when Gerrit was on another podcast. A likely one much, much better than this one. She didn't say that, but we know.

Gerrit Well, she didn't say that, but read between the lines.

Richard Yeah, that's right. I was so impressed with his scholarship in church history. After hearing about the audacity of Dirkmaat, I was hooked. My husband isn't much of a podcast person, but I convinced him to start listening and he was hooked. I've learned so much and my testimony has gotten more deeply rooted than ever, and I had a deep testimony. When you announced the premium content, I was pretty sure we were one of the very first to purchase it. We've learned more about church and American history than... I see why you wanted me to read this now, Gerrit.

Gerrit Well, no, thank you, Deidre. She's like the Rachel's mom of our premium content.

Richard Yeah, it's very nice.

Gerrit Rachel's mom was like the first person to click on and download our podcast.

Richard Well, so it is interesting, though, one of the things... We receive a lot of feedback, most of it negative. And when we do, much of the feedback that is negative, it's actually my favorite part of doing all of this, actually, is when people absolutely blast us. I literally laugh out loud every time. But some of the feedback, I'll paraphrase, kind of distill it down. Richard, stop talking. Richard, you're an idiot. And this is just from my wife. These are just emails from my wife.

Gerrit Yeah, I was going to say, these are just Becky texting you.

Richard Yeah, she's texting me on the side. No, but so that, you know, there's some... The free episode that drops on Thursday is generally lighter fare, right? As we talk about a couple of issues and hit a couple of things. And so if you hate...

Gerrit And we're casting a wide net.

Richard Of course.

Gerrit As if our presentation was in any way professional or premeditated at all. As if we weren't operating on a shoestring budget with gifted mics.

Richard With only Deidre's money.

Gerrit With Deidre's money, with gifted advertising. I mean, every part of the show is just a Potemkin village of fakeness.

Richard I love that reference. Could you explain quickly what that is really quick?

Gerrit I think if I did, people would call that a tangent.

Richard It's on brand. It's very fun.

Gerrit The Potemkin village is a reference to when the Tsar was going to sail down the Volga. He, of course, had been receiving false reports about how wonderfully great everything was going, because if you gave people good reports, well, then you would be murdered. Don't shoot the messenger. Most monarchs didn't really believe that. They believed, you know what, shoot the messenger and also the person who sent the message, and then figure out what's going on. And so the czar is going to sail down the Volga. I'm leaving out all kinds of details. And so these people are sent ahead all along the way to build up fake storefronts and fake, you know, essentially movie scenery along each of these villages to make it look like they were much more prosperous than they were, to have paid people come out and cheer the czar as he sails past.

Gerrit And that, so it's a Potemkin village is a, it's a false, it's something that has a veneer that's appearing to be one thing, but it's really another. And I can't think of a better way to describe our podcast.

Richard Well, so all that to say is that if you hate the free podcast, you're going to love the premium. That's what I'm saying. So if you, if you don't like this, if you just want Gerrit to be spitting truth about Martin Luther and John Calvin, the, and you know, the American Revolution, and you know, we haven't gotten into rice tariffs. That'll be quite a while, but we have gotten into other.

Gerrit We've done a lot of taxation.

Richard Yeah.

Gerrit I mean, we, I mean, how many, how many tariffs have we talked about? I mean, so many.

Richard Yeah.

Gerrit I mean, we, I mean, how many, how many tariffs have we talked about? I mean, so many.

Richard So anyway, just to say, if you hate this, you're going to love that. So I learned in a textbook, many times we listened several times to a single podcast to really absorb the content. I have to say you guys get pretty silly and off topic at times. I don't have one example of that actually. I don't think that that's ever happened.

Gerrit Hopefully she didn't listen to the first eight minutes.

Richard Nope. And I audibly tell you to rein it in and get back on track. I am Rachel's mom, and she knows I don't do silly very often. When you were telling about family mottos, I believe mine was, don't embarrass the family. That's our LeDuc family motto. Other people, return with honor, remember who you are. Ours are like, well, just don't get arrested, essentially. Don't embarrass the family. I had to write and tell ours, which is, don't bleed on the carpet.

Gerrit That was a low par.

Richard I had six of the most rambunctious kids ever. There was always lots of blood. Well, head injuries will have lots of blood. Gerrit, I believe you have a story for this.

Gerrit I want to sympathize with that family motto. Now, my mom listening right now, Renee, is not going to like the fact that I'm about to tell this story. But my older brother and friend of the show, Dallin, who's also my friend. At one point in our youth, I don't know how old we were, but we were pretty old. I mean, I was probably 12, so that'd make Dallin like 15. So, I mean, we were substantial. We weren't just like 10 pounds at the time. And Dallin and I were, I'm sure Dallin would say he was playing. And to me, I would say I was fighting for my life because there's a very thin line between the two. And the older brother is always able to just, yeah, I was just fooling around. That's why I hit him in the face.

Gerrit Just fooling around. And for this purpose, Dallin is a mobster from New Jersey. But anyway, in the course of this, we were at the top of the stairs. And he, in my memory, he can email the show if he wants to present a different memory, pushed me down the stairs. And I mean, I went down all of the stairs. I hit multiple times, and I hit the bottom landing and the wall at the bottom of the landing so hard that my mom comes running in from the kitchen, from the other room, screaming. And you know what you want to hear as you're dazed with a concussion at the bottom of the stairs, you know, because your brother's tossed you off of it. What you want to hear is, are you okay? That is, or what are you doing? Or down, stop that or something.

Gerrit Instead, the first scream was, don't break the stairs. Because I had in my audacity of hitting multiple of the stairs before I finally got to the landing below, as my body was churning over it and hitting. I had the audacity to land with great force on multiple stairs. Including the landing. I asked her, I said, later, I said, Mom, I can't believe you said don't break the stairs. Her response was some, it was very much someone born in the 1940s. She was like, well, bones heal, but we can't afford to replace the staircase. So that was her excuse.

Richard Well, so, and here, her email gets a little somber. So this is a little, my heart actually aches on this. I've watched four of my six children leave the church and have taken most of my 17 grandchildren with them. I never imagined that could be possible, and it has broken my heart. I feel that if they would listen to your podcast and several others, it would help them understand the gospel better. But I also know that you have a desire, that you have to desire a testimony more than you desire other things. Thank you so much for your testimonies and all you share to help others. Keep up the good work and keep on track. One of the things that is so difficult here, Gerrit and I actually were talking about this on Sunday. There's lots of reasons why folks leave the church, but one of the most heartbreaking and sad is you hope that the main reasons aren't that they heard something and it's not properly sourced, maybe it's not even true in any way whatsoever, and that in that ignorance, they get whipped up into where they throw aside things that are so sacred, so important.

Richard We were talking through all of the things that you give up when you are removed from the church, but that is heartbreaking.

Gerrit Yeah, I'm so sorry to hear that. I mean, the difficult thing to see people rush to sometimes embrace things that aren't true and knowing that that's going to lead to pain and unhappiness, if not immediately at some point in the future. I think that that's why we always come back to focus on the fact that the Lord is merciful and that the bounds of His mercy are such that we don't comprehend them. Hopefully, that gives us hope, even when we're dealing with difficult things. But to the point that she had made, people that we love in our families, in our friend circles, people who we went on missions with, who for one reason or another have apostatized, and apostasy at any level is frustrating, but it's especially frustrating when that apostasy comes from someone who in all other respects was die hard in the Gospel, but just decided to follow the wrong voice and became convinced that their political cause or their social cause was more important than the Gospel.

Gerrit And so when a certain talk is given in general conference or when a certain blogger decides that they're upset with the Church's policy, they apostatize, they leave over it. And that was what spurred us to talk about it. And again, there are many examples. So we could talk about that topic every single week probably. And you know, we'd have fewer listeners every week.

Richard Well, we currently do. We have every week fewer and fewer.

Gerrit Yes, every week. We're hoping to bottom out. We started with Rachel's mom. We're going to end with Rachel's mom. Although I think she stopped listening. Let's have Rachel talk to us. I saw Rachel just two days ago. I need to ask her, is your mom still listening?

Richard Well, you know, it's like the series Growing Pains. You know, eventually those characters are boring and you need to bring in a young Leonardo DiCaprio to reinvigorate the series and bring people back.

Gerrit So who's going to be our Leonardo DiCaprio? We don't even know. We don't know anybody.

Richard Well, I think I'm Tracy Gold. I think that's obvious.

Gerrit I mean, what am I then? The Steve Urkel of Family Matters?

Richard What's his name? Kirk Cameron.

Gerrit Kirk Cameron? There are a lot of people yelling at the radio right now saying, I know Kirk Cameron. Kirk Cameron was a friend of mine.

Richard It's you, sir. I know Kirk Cameron.

Gerrit All right, well, let's keep going.

Richard Next subject, great podcast. Even if you have abandoned Facebook, save, of course, you're promoting your Swampland tours.

Gerrit Our Swampland tours? We don't as yet have a tour to either Louisiana or Florida, but we would like to do one.

Richard Well, I mean, Illinois.

Gerrit Yeah, right. Just all of Nauvoo.

Richard So glad I discovered your podcast a while back, and even more glad I finally remembered that I found it more recently. You should go back and listen to more episodes. You know, help the download numbers. As both a gospel doctrine teacher in my ward and a seminary teacher in our stake, I'm always looking for more data to help me teach and answer questions that may and sometimes do pop up in the course of class. No doubt, my newfound information about George Adams will come in handy. No, seriously, no.

Gerrit I think if you can't work George Adams into your seminary class, you're failing. You're failing them.

Richard Well, yeah. Well, I will say, you know what? You hold on through 2023. You hold on through whatever garbage we're throwing at you in 2024. But 2025, man for seminary teachers and Gospel Doctrine teachers everywhere.

Gerrit We're back to the...

Richard Come follow me. We'll be back in Gospel Doctrine for the Doctrine Covenants. And it's go time on Idol. This podcast will be wonderful.

Gerrit As long as I don't find a George Adams to worship and follow before them.

Richard The humor and tomfoolery, that's a first, with which you both infused church history is quite hysterical at times. Well, I don't think you need to put it at times. You could...

Gerrit Yeah, I should have just left that open. Always.

Richard Often reminding me of the old sports radio duos I enjoyed during my college years in North Texas. You know, go TCU. That was a brutal loss.

Gerrit North Texas. She's got to be saying Mean Green.

Richard You think she lives in Denton? No, wait.

Gerrit The University of North Texas.

Richard Yeah, but I mean, come on, though.

Gerrit So I don't think she said North Texas, meaning Dallas, did she?

Richard Well, I assume it means not Houston.

Gerrit Anything that's not Houston or Brownsville.

Richard Maybe it's Amarillo.

Gerrit Amarillo by Moroni.

Richard I don't care that much about sports, even when the Cowboys were beating the snot out of the Bills in 49ers. Yeah, okay. I just enjoyed laughing along with the radio guys having a good time and riffing with each other. Gratefully, I extracted my head from my behind about 2016 and gave talk radio the boot. Podcasts, audio books and even silence are much better. We hear that a lot on our podcast.

Gerrit I have found that silence is better than most podcasts.

Richard Yeah. Wait, do you mean that Simon and Garfunkel song? No, no, just quiet.

Gerrit Yeah, just meditation.

Richard Nevertheless, thank you for bringing to mind more innocent times in American history. Back when Bill Clinton was the biggest threat we could muster as a nation or so it seemed. Your recent episode on Hero Worship, part two specifically, is what brought me to the keyboard. I wanted to cheer loudly while listening to Gerrit diss on the discord and stupidity that is letting our politics become more important than the gospel and replacing our heavenly king with flawed flesh. Thinking the outcome of doing so won't be worse than when the San Andreas fault actually blows its gasket. Although, as I found myself forwarding the episode to a friend, it was a bit weird that I had to add to my text every episode before this was packed with humor, but Gerrit is dead serious for most of the time. Sorry. I will say, I know we've already said this here, it is just the most frustrating thing, which is why Gerrit spoke about it so eloquently in the last couple episodes.

Richard At least angrily. Yes, angrily as well. Yet it was exceedingly appropriate that you were. My friend and I have discussed this very subject over and over. I've even touched the third rail a time or two or four or five in my classes to suggest, okay, say firmly that as long as the brethren are ticking off people on both sides of the aisle, they are doing something right. That comment never fails to draw some sharp breasts and uncomfortable seat shifting from my more polarized friends on both sides of politics. I staunchly believe that if Lord is it I, isn't our knee-jerk response to hearing something with which we disagree, we are not in the right place to receive revelation, let alone be taught by the prophets. I remember, actually, Gerrit and I when we were living in a house that was broken up into four apartments, and his kitchen was a hallway.

Richard I remember our elders quorum president in the Utah State 482nd ward or whatever it was.

Gerrit Yeah, it was like it was seriously like in the hundreds, like the 132nd ward.

Richard It was a lot. But the elders quorum president had a certain political leaning. Great guy. But had a certain political leaning and I had an opportunity to speak with him after. I think, Gerrit, you did as well, right? He had a certain feeling about a certain thing that was going on in the world. And President Hinckley made a comment about that thing that was different from his opinion. And it was a pretty special thing, like the example Gerrit gave from the student in his class, where his response was more like what's being said here, Lord is it I, and his response was, I think I probably ought to rethink that thing. And it was quite beautiful, actually. Anyhow, thank you for confirming my beliefs. Well, that's the key, right?

Gerrit You come for the tomfoolery, you stay for the fact that we confirm your biases. That's what we're looking for.

Richard That's right. That's right. If we would have said the opposite. Anyway, no one gets hurt that way. Besides, you are both such important influencers. That's adorable. That is hilarious. Well, I appreciate that. No doubt the prophet agrees with you too. I bet at least President Nelson, if not a full third of the First Presidency, has a premium subscription.

Gerrit I can guarantee you that no one important listens to us at all.

Richard Except for Garla, obviously. And Deidre and Larry.

Gerrit Except for yourself. The people who email very...

Richard No one with keys.

Gerrit We've been bishops, we've been teachers, we've been residents. I mean janitorial keys. I mean people who lock up the building at night. None of them listen.

Richard Oh yes, by the way, listening from Houston. Well, I wasn't even close. Now, whether you count me as a listener in the South, Texas as a whole or Houston, which would eat alive many other states just based on geographic square miles, let alone population, I'll leave that to you. Have a great week and keep smashing those download records, Darla.

Gerrit Darla, that is an absolute... I love the fact that even in all of that, her Texas nationalism comes out.

Richard Oh, no question.

Gerrit We're bigger than all the other states, just so you know.

Richard Alaska would like a word.

Gerrit Well, the problem is they'd have to find at least one person who could come down and talk to you. You have to walk 300 miles to find one guy.

Richard Sorry, go ahead, Gerrit.

Gerrit I was just going to say thank you so much for that email, Darla. And I really do feel that way, and that's part of the reason why Richard and I both feel that way. And both Richard and I have had our personal beliefs at times, you know, challenged, rocked, felt, you know, differently by things that are presented, taught or understood in church doctrine. And that is why our knee-jerk reaction needs to be, I follow the prophet. That's what I do. I follow the prophet because I believe the prophet is a special witness of Jesus Christ. And I follow Jesus Christ. Now, I follow the prophet because I follow Jesus. And if the prophet is the special witness for Jesus, says this is what we believe, then it's hard to find a better expert on that, right? Oh, wait a minute. I talked to a guy who used to work in that industry, and he says the prophets wrong about that.

Gerrit Well, congratulations to that guy. The whole point of having a prophet is the prophet sees what we cannot. He is a seer, and he reveals what it is that we would not otherwise believe and understand. And that's what being a Latter-day Saint is. It's part of your baptismal covenant. It's part of your baptism. Your interview is accepting that God has a restored church on the earth today. And that, in fact, is going to lead us into our next topic.

Richard So we received this email a while ago. In fact, we believe that the child of the person who wrote this is possibly applying to colleges this fall.

Gerrit Yeah, I'm pretty sure that they're one of Andrew's mission companions.

Richard Oh, I've got to send those. I totally forgot to do that. I was guilted into it in the other emails. I'm going to send those out. When you start talking on the topic, I'll just start ignoring you. I'll send those links out to those missionaries.

Gerrit Yeah, that'll be great. Because then while I say, what do you think, Richard? And then it's just dead silence. And then not only are the people listening not listening, my co-host isn't listening.

Richard That's the Richard LeDuc guarantee. Dear Dirkmaat and Professor LeDuc, I'm currently in active labor at the hospital. And listening to your...

Gerrit This is by far the... We have never had anyone write us an email while they were in labor.

Richard I will say, my general jovial nature is something that my wife puts up with most of the time. And enjoys occasionally. But at the time that we've had our five children, I don't think I've ever been less funny in anything I have ever said. And one of the great tragedies in my life has... I've lived a fairly charmed life, obviously, is that our son Max was due to be induced on the 5th of May. And I had put together a playlist of nothing but mariachi music to play during childbirth. I was very excited about it.

Gerrit It makes sense, yeah.

Richard The hospital rejected our insurance, and we had to go to a different hospital. And so he was born on the 7th of May instead of the 5th. And I still am heartbroken about that, by the way. My wife... It saved our marriage, obviously, because she would not have found that hilarious at all. On the 13th version of La Cucaracha, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. Anyway, I'm currently in active labor at the hospital and listening to your podcast that came out today. If that doesn't get this email read, I don't know what will. I will say the Standard of Truth promise that we make to all of you is if you're listening to a podcast and emailing us while in labor, then we will read your emails.

Gerrit But only after the child has already received the Aaronic Priesthood or gone to her first high school dance.

Richard Yes, seriously. So this comes to us from Rebecca. How was it when your child received their patriarchal blessing last week? All right. My husband already listened to the episode this morning, but gets to re-listen to it now with me. My husband is also delighted that today is the 21st of September. Well, there we go. A little earth, wind and fire action. 21st of September, because it's the anniversary of Moroni's visit with Joseph Smith regarding the gold plates. The 200th anniversary no less. It also happens to be the anniversary of the day he proposed to me. Yep. We're cool like that and got engaged late at night.

Gerrit Did he plan that? So this is my question. Did he plan to get engaged on Moroni Day? If so, he basically needs to be a co-host at this point. I mean, if he's that church.

Richard He's Leonardo DiCaprio.

Gerrit Exactly. We've got to bring him in. If he was like, you know what? You know what? What would be more special than giving you a treasure than when the treasure from the earth came? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how he did it.

Richard That's pretty, that's pretty good. But he made it perfectly clear to me that it was the Joseph Smith stuff that made this an exciting day for our son's birth, and less our engagement of marriage. Well, you know, spiritual things are important as well. I know that Dr. Dirkmaat sometimes likes to find an email that will introduce a topic he just wants to talk about. Think Mormon Battalion. Well, Rebecca, that's, I mean, to break the, you know, the fourth wall on that, I mean, a hundred percent, yes.

Gerrit I need people to write emails asking about the particulars of, you know, the Council of 50 Debates. That's what I need.

Richard I also realize you did recently touch on this topic though, because we listened to the premium content, and so have already heard some great stuff from you about Joseph getting the plates. Yes, there's a premium episode on crinkling leaves, or as Gerrit would call it, Holy Places from Our Past, where Gerrit talked about the Hill Cumorah and the receiving of the plates and the lessons learned from Joseph on being able to not receive them and then eventually receive them. I highly recommend that episode. Rather than using this email to talk about Moroni, you can use this email to talk about one of the early apostles, Heber C. Kimball. He would be a good tie-in for the apostles and apostates and apothecaries. She doesn't mention that here. Episodes, you've been avoiding. It's funny, we avoid polygamy. Apostles and apostates are just poor planning.

Gerrit Well, I mean, there's so many to choose from. There's so many. And then we always have, you know, we're trying to be topical. And so we get all these emails. And so we're like, you know what? Next week, we're going to do John C. Bennett. And then we get, you know, someone's in labor and says, read our email. And so, all right, we'll read our email. Well, I mean, you know, I mean, the restoration is ongoing. Right now.

Richard Yeah, this is like an episode of Law and Order.

Gerrit Well, I do want to talk about this. You actually have hit something I'm excited to talk about.

Richard Well, yes. Well, so, but first of all, Gerrit, you describing this like it's a Law and Order preview where it's ripped from the headlines.

Gerrit Ripped from the headlines, but it's all, you know, black and white. Yes, they didn't even know that George Adams had gone to Palestine.

Richard Apostles, apostates and apothecaries, episodes you've been avoiding. Here's why. Despite the obvious opportunity, we will not be naming our son Moroni, Joseph or anything of similar tribute. We're sticking with the name we already picked out for him, which is Heber William. This would also be the opportunity to talk about Heber J. Grant. They were both great Hebers, so have at it. Even if you don't want to talk about Moroni's visit or either of the Hebers, I'm still in labor at the hospital listening to your podcast from today, so please read my email. Thanks for everything you do. We've been listening since episode one. Thank you, Rebecca.

Gerrit Well, first of all, Rebecca, I mean, I hope everything went well. I believe we did email and said we hope everything was okay. We didn't hear back from that email, so you're going to have to now email again. Or maybe that email hasn't gone through. I don't know.

Richard Well, there is a PS here. I'm the one who sent the story a few months ago about my three-year-old who I was surprised to discover knew how to properly pronounce Dirkmaat and says she likes to hear him laughing loud. So there you go. Aw, man.

Gerrit See, we have one person who likes us. Well, probably not anymore. Well, because she's probably 17 now.

Richard Well, first of all, so you're hearing what you want to hear. She didn't say that she liked us. What she said was she knows how to pronounce your name. That's very different.

Gerrit Right. To me, that seems to be a win. I take it my wins. Look, there's a lot of good topics she gave us there that we could easily do. But I think we will tackle it. I know it's a little bit after Moroni Day. And by the time this drops, it's a little bit closer to Halloween. But I think there's a couple of things that I want to talk about with this, just because Joseph Smith and Getting the Plates is such an odyssey that Moroni is going to shepherd young Joseph Smith. Through. Now, maybe some of this we will have touched on the premium content, but this is important enough that we're going to talk about it with everybody. Even the people who sent us an email saying, my flesh is willing, but my wallet is weak.

Gerrit I want to set the stage a little bit more about the mindset Joseph is in when he first meets the angel Moroni. Now, just as a little bit of a refresher, I mean, for those listening, it's important to remember what kind of a life Joseph Smith had growing up. He had a loving family. So he had that going for him. He had his mother and father seem to very much care about him, and he seemed to very much care about them. I mean, we really don't have any negative reports on that on either side. But his family is a traveling family. And, you know, some of our listeners, no doubt, could relate to moving multiple different times in the space of a short time when they were kids and how much that throws off your rhythm. Well, that's certainly what's going on with Joseph, right?

Gerrit He's born in Vermont in 1805. When he's six years old, his family is going to pick up and move to New Hampshire. And that's where he's going to contract the disease that will lead to that leg operation. And shortly after that, I mean, he's going to have that operation. Obviously, that's rough. He's, you know, very difficult circumstances of recovery, not only the pain of the surgery, but also the recovery. So when he's eight or nine, his parents actually moved back to Vermont, but they moved to a different town in Vermont. All this while, the Smiths are not getting ahead financially. And in fact, they are, they're struggling. And it's when Joseph Smith is 10, when he's 10 years old. So think of, you know, Rebecca's, you know, child is probably 10 at this point, by the time we answer her email, not her three year old, the baby just born. When he was 10, their family is going to move again, this time pretty far away to Palmyra, New York.

Gerrit So that's in in late 1816, early 1817. What is going on with the family during that time? Well, they are in very deep financial distress. They're in financial troubles for lots of things. Father Smith is going to invest in various different things, trying to catch a break, to have things work out. And either through bad luck or through, I mean, frankly, chicanery. There are people who defraud him. The Smiths keep ending up back at square one. While other people around them are able to achieve this American dream. Now, you have to dive really deep back. Rebecca and Deidre, they'll know because they've been all the way back. They've been with us from day one. But if you're just joining us right now, well, you already stopped listening. So if you just joined us last week and you're looking for something, maybe replicable, it's so essential to understand how much of a person's self-worth and their value was tied up into their ability to achieve a modicum of independence.

Gerrit And by 1816, Father Smith has repeatedly failed. And in fact, he comes back to Lucy, comes back to Lucy after going on a trip to Western New York. And he says to her, we need to move to Palmyra. Now, I don't know what Lucy's reaction is. She gives no hint in her biography, in her book. She doesn't give any hint that she was upset. I mean, you think after moving five times in five years that she might be like, I don't know, Joseph, what if we just didn't move again and just tried to make it work here? Some of you have probably also had that conversation with spouses where it's like, hey, you know what, I think we just need to move and try another ward. Will you just stop fighting with the second counselor? We don't always have to move because you two disagree over who you should have picked in last week's football game. But for entertainment purposes only.

Richard Presently, 2005 April General Conference.

Gerrit But he says to her that we need to go to New York, and he makes a very specific claim to her. He says, because there you can raise wheat in abundance. That's what she writes. Now remember, she's writing this decades later. She's writing in 1844, and then it's going to be edited, and then actually that manuscript that we're most familiar with, Lucy's book, is from 1845. But we have the 1844 manuscript too. And she's writing about something that happened in 1816. So she's essentially looking back three decades ago, but that really sticks in her mind enough that that's what she's writing about. In fact, saying that if we go to Palmyra, and look, this area of upstate New York is sometimes called, at that early stage in American history, the breadbasket of the country. It is a place where wheat grows like crazy.

Gerrit It's like roses outside of my current house. I don't know what it is about Spanish Fork Utah and how my house is situated. I don't have a green thumb. In fact, I am completely worthless outside. I can do manual labor that my wife tells me to do, and even then I do it begrudgingly, I do it poorly, and usually she just does it herself because I'm so bad at it, right? But we have rosebushes that they grow. It doesn't matter what you do. It is the most perfect climate there is for growing roses. They grow like crazy. They'd be trees if we didn't chop them down. Over and over and over again. Well, this is what the reports of the country are for raising wheat. Now, why does that matter so much? Well, to delve a little bit into, please stay with me. If you've gotten this far, stay with me. But I'm going to talk about American financial panics and wars from the mid-18 teens.

Gerrit Is that how we get our listeners? You were saying we need to drive back.

Richard Yeah, I think we got everybody back with that tease, you bet.

Gerrit So what you don't know is that when the War of 1812 came to a conclusion, in the years following the War of 1812, this early period in American history, you think the world's on fire now. Man, think about the world that Joseph Smith grew up in. The entire time Joseph Smith was alive, up to this point, the entirety of Europe, and that meant most of the world, because of European colonies, were at war with the Napoleonic Wars. You had battle after battle after battle. Everything was unhinged. That entire time he was growing up. And the United States themselves gets drawn into the war, in the War of 1812. Because of all of this upheaval, prices for especially food stuffs had gone through the roof.

Gerrit Gone through the roof. Why? Well, because every crop yield in Europe has either a British or a Prussian or an Austrian or a Russian army marching across it. At some point during the early 1800s and the 1810s. The war was so destabilizing, so much destruction occurred from the Napoleonic Wars, that there was a demand for American food stuffs that was through the roof. And on top of that, the American population itself was booming. So you had internal demand, as well as this massive, massive, massive external demand. And in fact, Lucy even records in her book, that Father Smith had said, you can sell wheat for 250 a bushel. 250 a bushel. Now, so the plan is, we're going to move to Palmyra, and we are going to get a hold of some land.

Gerrit I don't know how we're going to do it, because we don't have any money, but we're going to work until we have enough money to buy land. It's the whole American dream. The American dream in the 19th century is, I'm going to work to save up enough money to buy land so that I can then raise enough crops on it to buy more land, so that I can then raise enough crops on it to buy more land until I can get to the point where I'm self-sufficient. And this is Smith's dream. And in fact, in Lucy's book, she talks about how they actually all sat down as a family. We had a family council, probably a little bit more helpful than my family councils. My family councils, when I hold them, I have a bunch of teenage participants. They are not problem solvers or willing to offer opinions on anything, unless it directly affects them, and then their response is just whatever is most selfish.

Gerrit But we like to have the image of democracy, even though we all know it's a dictatorship, and Angie is essentially Napoleon in this case. She's going to be the one who decides. But they get together and they discuss, what are we going to do? And they make the decision. We have got to use all of our means to try to get property. Why? Because once we get property, then we can plant this weed on it. The wheat is worth so much right now. If we can just get one, two, three harvests out, we are going to be golden. That's probably a little bit too much of a pun with wheat, but we are going to be great. We are going to finally pull ourselves out of this poverty, and we are going to take part in this American dream.

Gerrit And you know what? There is no reason for them to think that even though the war had ended, the War of 1812 ends in 1815, and the Napoleonic Wars also end in 1815. And so you might think, well, then there is going to be a coming crash of the market. But the crash didn't happen yet, right away. Pregnant pause. In 1816, things were still cooking along. There was every reason to believe that the world had become so hooked on American production that things were just going to keep going up and up and up and up and up. You might all know somebody, and I pray it's none of ourselves, who happened to buy a house two or three months before everything collapsed in 2008. And they bought a house that was incredibly high price with probably a high interest rate.

Gerrit And then the bottom fell out. And it was a disaster, right? For the Smiths, they arrive in Palmyra with nothing. In fact, Lucy says, we didn't have a penny to our name when we got there. So what do they do? They have to start hiring themselves out. They hire out their labor, and eventually they're going to start working on other people's farms, trying to save money. Lucy begins painting tablecloths in order to save money. They hire out their labor, they're selling things to anyone in town as they can, so that they can get money with the express purpose of purchasing land, so that they can then take part in this wheat bonanza that's going on. Well, they work really hard at it through 1817. They incur a bunch of debts. They get their land.

Gerrit And in one of those demonstrations, that just because you're good doesn't mean that God's going to make everything happen perfectly for you. No sooner do the Smiths buy land at the very height of the market, and they buy farming implements at the very height of the cost of those things, and they buy seed and everything they buy is as expensive as it has ever been in American history. No sooner do they do that, that the bottom falls completely out of the wheat market and the agricultural market in general in the country. Europe stops importing as much American goods, and so many more people are moving to the United States. And guess what all they all wanted to do? Well, they all wanted to do exactly what the Smiths did, and that's move west, find some land and grow wheat because it was worth so much.

Gerrit Well, when everybody wants to go grow wheat, it doesn't take Richard's Ph.D. in business to know that there might be a repression of prices coming down the line. There might be a correction of sorts if there's this overproduction. So wheat in December of 1816, when the Smiths are first getting there to Palmyra, it's selling for $2.53 a bushel. As the Panic of 1819 sets in, that's what it's called the Panic of 1819. It's the worst recession in American history up until the Great Depression, actually. But it's something that no one ever hears about because it was a long time ago, and I stopped listening to the podcast before we got to the 50th minute. But prices were $2.53 a bushel. By December of 1819, wheat prices were now $1 a bushel.

Gerrit By December of 1820, so the same year that Joseph Smith had his First Vision, wheat prices are only worth $0.68 a bushel.

Richard So as a, you know, to provide a frame of reference, one acre would yield nine to ten bushels of wheat. The Smiths would have, what, 20 acres cleared?

Gerrit Depending. They're clearing more and more all the time. So we don't have exact figures, but yeah.

Richard So, I mean, it's $2.53. So let's just, you know, let's just say it's 20 acres, right?

Gerrit We could say if the Smiths harvested 50 bushels of wheat, let's say they, whatever many acres is, let's say they have 50 bushels, okay? In 1816, those 50 bushels are worth $126.00. $126.50, right? The exact same amount of wheat in 1820, the year of the First Vision, is worth $34. Now, everybody listening to me, I want you to think about what it would do to your family financial situation if your income was cut by roughly, what is that, 75%?

Richard Yeah, pretty dramatic.

Gerrit Imagine if your income was cut by 75%. And we all know this, at least the people who own homes or cars who don't really own them, like me, the bank owns them, and I rent them from the bank, but the bank lets me think that I own them. And whenever I want to find out whether or not I own them, I just stop making a payment, and the bank very quickly informs me that I don't actually own them. And we all know that the problem with making 75% less than you made the year before is the bank doesn't adjust your debts. The bank doesn't say, you know what? You did owe us this much on your mortgage, but you know, I've seen you've had a hard time. So you know what? We're going to lower that down.

Richard Well, so, I mean, let's say that it was 40 acres, 40 acres at a 10-yield, puts you at about $1,012 on 40 acres, right? With that kind of a yield. OK, so if the average laborer income for a year is around $300, well, OK, a pretty good wheat harvest is going to net you 3X times what you would make as a general laborer. And you bought a house at that price.

Gerrit And the land that you're farming, it was also traded when you bought it.

Richard And now that same amount of land and that same wheat production, you are at $272 per year for the same production, which is dramatically less than even a day laborer's annual income. And now you're dead.

Gerrit And the even worse part about this is, okay, so what are you going to do? Well, farmers in America don't really have a whole lot of options, right? So it's not like I can start smelting ore here. I have land that I don't own, that the bank owns, or the person I owe the note to owns. So I can try to clear more timber and grow more wheat, which of course farmers do that, because even at diminishing returns, what am I going to do? In fact, farmers are very similar to professors, right? I say this having worked on potato farms my whole life growing up, in the sense that you don't really have a whole lot of other ways to make an income, right? I mean, sure, you can go get another job, but that other job is going to take time out of your farming and isn't going to be a very high-paying job because you're not an expert at being a Walmart greeter.

Gerrit You know, you're an expert at farming. It's similar for a professor. Like, you know, Richard occasionally has people ask him for his consulting expertise because Richard is a brilliant businessman. No one ever contacts me ever for any reason ever saying, hey, you know what? I need some historical consulting. You know what? Maybe there'd be a lot better fictionalized books written about Latter-day State history if someone was contacting me. But no, that's not what's happening. And so a farmer is going to either, well, they'll do lots of things. They're going to find ways to try to shore things up. But one way that they'll all do is if they have land that's not yet cleared, they'll go clear more land. And in fact, what is Joseph Smith doing in 1820? What's he doing when he has the First Vision? He's out clearing land.

Gerrit One of the accounts we have of the First Vision is he goes to where he had his axe stuck in the tree where they were clearing land. Why are they clearing land in 1820? They're clearing land because the bottom fell out of everything. And by the way, in the midst of the bottom falling out of everything, in the midst of going into a huge amount of debt, believing that you'd be able to easily repay it, only to have the market completely collapse on you, in the midst of that. Your biggest asset, Alvin Smith's labor goes away because Alvin dies in November of 1823. But in the midst of trying to repay this, you lose one of your laborers. So, this whole time period is one of extreme difficulty.

Gerrit Joseph talks about this, right? Owing to the indigent circumstances of my father's family, we were required to labor hard. I mean, Joseph talks all about it. That the only other thing you could do is, okay, we can clear more land of our own. And of course, as every other farmer does the same thing, the wheat prices continue to go down and down and down because now there's just more wheat on the market. And the second thing you can do is you can take the only other thing that you own, and that is your labor, and you can sell it. You can go sell your labor to try to make up some of these ends meets. And that's exactly what Joseph and Hyrum and Alvin and to some extent that we don't know because we don't have those same records, certainly Sophronia and Lucy Mack are doing that as well. The whole family, at the same time that the First Vision is going on, is desperate to try to recover these financial losses.

Gerrit And things just keep getting worse. When wheat prices drop from $2.50 to $1.70, that's a massive drop. And I'm sure the Smiths were like, you know what, it's got to recover. It couldn't possibly stay almost a dollar lower forever. And then by the next year, it's an even dollar lower than that. The reason why I'm talking about this, as I set the stage for what we're going to talk about with Moroni, is one of the most fundamental things to understand about Joseph Smith in these formative years, is that poverty is the most pressing thing that is going on in his family. It's what his family has schemed to try to get out of by trying to find ways to work. Even before that, his father is moving from place to place to place to try to escape it.

Gerrit There is not just the economic pressure of poverty that weighs down on you every single day. We can't make our bills. We can't pay our rent. We can't make our ends meet. On top of the actual economic pressures, and anyone who suffered financial reverses knows exactly what I'm talking about. On top of that, there is this social pressure, this idea that you're a failure. If you think people look askance at you today in America, when you get laid off from your job, you should go back to Calvinist 19th century America, where they literally believe that every single thing that happens is God's will. And if you just don't seem to be able to make ends meet, well, I know why you can't make ends meet, because you aren't chosen by God. So, societally, you have this pressure pressing down, whispers and looks.

Gerrit Now, it's weird that we do that, because it's not like the Smiths are the only people who got hit by the Panic of 1819. It's estimated that a third of farmers in some areas lost their farms. I mean, it is a complete and total economic disaster in America. But the Smiths are caught up in it. So, in our next episode, we're going to pivot a little bit from talking about the poverty to talking about the actual appearance of Moroni. But I had to set the table here. The reason why I had to set the table is Moroni is going to appear multiple times, not just three times in that night. He's going to appear over and over and over and over again. And the reason why he's going to appear over and over and over again is because there is a raw lump of clay named Joseph Smith that is going to have to be shaped if he is going to become the protector of the plates and eventually the prophet and the restorer, the priesthood of God on earth.

Gerrit So we will talk about that 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.

Chapters

Transcript

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Source shelf

Lucy Mack Smith, history (1844 manuscript; 1845 version)

Lucy Mack Smith, history, on the price of wheat

Lucy Mack Smith, history, on the family council

Lucy Mack Smith, history, on arriving in Palmyra

Wheat prices, 1816-1820

First Vision account mentioning Joseph's axe left in a tree (account not named on air)

Joseph Smith, history, on the family's poverty

Episode quiz

What was the family motto Deidre wrote in about?

Fun with Numbers

Then and now

From 1805 to 1845

Money said on air

Percentages said on air

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words

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Claim check

Take it to class

Banter bin

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

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