Sidney Rigdon's Apostasy Part 3

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, the long-suffering, the absent in our last premium edition professor, nearly doctor, maybe not, Richard LeDuc.

Richard Thanks, Gerrit. Hello, Gerrit, and thanks for having me back. I really mean it this time, legitimately thanks for having me back. I was replaced by your lovely wife, and she did much better.

Gerrit The early metrics on her are just through the roof. I'm just going to tell you right now. I mean, she's likable. She had good questions. We had someone say that she had a good radio voice.

Richard Yeah, I've never been confused with the good radio voice or good questions. But it's really nice to have me back. I'm in Arizona. I apologize if there is a sound issue. I'm working on a microphone that has Mickey Mouse ears. They have limited selection at Walmart. We're doing the best we can. I apologize for mentioning Mickey Mouse. I know they're a litigious group.

Gerrit He's fine. He's fine. He's fine. He's fine.

Richard So anyways, it's great to be back, Gerrit. I'm so close on the dissertation. I can taste it.

Gerrit So for those of you who don't know, because you don't subscribe to our premium, because you don't really care about us or the podcast, or you aren't a missionary. See, that's the thing. If we can just get you to go on a mission, then you get the premium content. We're trying to push. We assume that there are tens of thousands of young Latter-day Saint men and women who are like, I just don't know if I really want to go. Then they hear, you get free premium content of the Standard of Truth podcast? If I don't get to find out about a German cursing at the American troops of the Revolution, I don't think I'd be a whole man. So then they decide to go on a mission, and it's our way of just building up the kingdom from the bottom up.

Richard That's right. That's right. Bottom up. That's obviously also a tip of the cap to Truman G. Madsen, who Gerrit and I had listened to 500 billion times on our missions, the Timeless Questions Gospel Insights, which is available on the YouTubes, as well as Joseph Smith, the Prophet. I can't remember the name of it, but it was great.

Gerrit Yeah, Joseph Smith, the Prophet.

Richard So Angie filled in, she was incredible, she was great.

Gerrit Yeah, so over the weekend, Richard had a deadline when it was time to record. So Angie, in the last second, she was pressed into service, and she handled it like a trooper. She pretended she cared about the Constitutional Convention, not nearly as much as Richard pretended to care about it.

Richard I was actually, that's one that I wanted to be a part of. I wanted to talk New Jersey Plan, because Madison's coming in for this Super California. He can put that in his ear, Gerrit.

Gerrit You're very good about that. Well, so the unintended consequence of having Angie on as the guest host, guest co-host, I guess, of the premium content was the enormous amounts of cards and letters we started to receive. Within minutes of that dropping, we had multiple people texting me, emailing, asking if Angie was going to be on the show permanently. And then we had multiple people, I hesitate to even say this, but there was a considerable number of people who thought, this is my shot. Richard is, he's clearly on the wane. And I'm pretty sure I could just slide right in there, and I'll be the next host. So we're a high demand outfit like that.

Richard I received zero cards or emails asking for my concern, well wishes, interest, who are you? Nothing.

Gerrit We did have a couple of emails where people said, keep fighting Richard, you'll get through it.

Richard So I had not had time to read any of them. I have been in it up to here, and I've got my hand is at my knees. That's how deep I'm in it. All the way to my ankle.

Gerrit Well, hopefully he's nearing the end, folks, either of his sanity or of the dissertation process. It's one of the two.

Richard One of my favorite, so I usually try and crash a class of yours from time to time. It's a lot of fun. And one of my favorite things that you say, I think you said it on the podcast. I know you say it to your students every year as it relates to procrastination. Could you share that? It's one of my favorite spiritism.

Gerrit Well, like when you're a professor and you have a, you know, like you'll have an assignment and it's usually either a paper or an exam that's open for, you know, say a week or it's open for two weeks. So meaning that the entire time during that two weeks, a student could open it up and take it on their own, you know, on a digital device, but they, you know, they still need to take it. Now, the troubling aspect of this is it legitimately doesn't matter how long you have the assignment open. If you had the assignment open 20 minutes or 20 years, you would still have the same problem. And that is minutes after it closes, or sometimes the next day you'll have a student say, oh my gosh, I thought I could take it on Friday. And you're like, well, it'd be pretty hard for you to take it on Friday since the school year ended on Monday. Why in the world would you, the last day of finals was, was Monday.

Gerrit What, what made you think that you would just magically have an extra six days to the final grades were due two days ago? What, why would you think that? And so what I always tell students is I'm begging you not to wait till the last second, because if you wait till the last second and something goes wrong and your computer doesn't work and your mother-in-law shows up and you're not even married. So now that's a whole thing that then, then, you know, you might have something end up keeping you from taking the exam. So I always tell them, look, I know some of you are going to procrastinate. I know you are. I know it. The most important thing, the most important part of waiting until the last second, however, the most, it's literally the key part of waiting until the last second, is knowing when the last second is. If your plan is to put off taking the exam until literally, if you wait any longer, you fail the class, you probably need to know what that time is.

Gerrit It is a stunning number of students who just, who don't ever look, it never changes, it's always been posted, they don't even look one time to see when the assignment that they're waiting until the last second to do is due. And then they're stunned. They're like, I had no idea that it wouldn't be open for two weeks and one more extra day on top of the two weeks. That's naturally how most, I mean, it's, so yeah. So the most important part about waiting till the last second is knowing when the last second is.

Richard Well, so the thing that's funny as it relates to the dissertation is that the deadline that I had was the end of the day on Monday. And I asked all of the members of my committee. So look, I'm not procrastinating this. I'm having, I was having trouble doing in the data analysis portion. I was having some trouble with the multi-level aspect of the repeated measures of the stuff that nobody cares about. Yeah.

Gerrit Everything you're saying right now sounds like you're gambling.

Richard Well, that's what the dissertation is about, actually. I start with President Hinckley's quote, and then it's 200 pages of gambling.

Gerrit And then I parlay that into a number of temples under President Nelson's term.

Richard They eat it up in the sooner state. So I asked him, I said, so I have to submit this today, Monday. I just got the data to run, and now I've got to write it up. And I said, are you going to look at it tonight? And they said, no, we're going to look at it tomorrow morning. I'm like, all right, what time?

Gerrit When are you going to wake up?

Richard So I got varying answers between 7 and 8, and they're lying to me. No one's getting up at 7 and opening up my dissertation. Yeah.

Gerrit No, no, I roll out of bed. The first thing I do is I could have a cup of, well, for me, hot chocolate, but for them, I could get a cup of coffee. But you know what I really want to do? Read about implied referrals. I need to do that right now.

Richard Yeah. All right. Yeah. So 7 o'clock.

Gerrit Sure.

Richard Sure, Dr. Arnold. Sure. So anyway, so I says to him, I says, I says to him, all right, so I'll have it to you before 7 AM. And then I wrote until I submitted it to them at 5 in the morning. What would have been Tuesday morning? So just under the wire, Gerrit, very exciting.

Gerrit Yeah, wow, that is. But you still don't know, you don't have the feedback yet.

Richard I don't know if I'll defend next week or not. Three of the four members have approved it to move forward. The one who is the methods professor, she's reviewing the analysis to determine if it's acceptable. And if it is, then I will defend on Tuesday.

Gerrit You know, what's interesting is how many...

Richard It's not all dependent on a couple of weeks.

Gerrit It's interesting how many people have written in solidarity of you, talking about how utterly useless a PhD in business is. Like they've written just to say, I mean, one guy wrote in and said, you know, I have two master's degrees in business-related fields. They're both useless. Someone wrote in to say, oh, I've got a PhD, also useless. I feel like they're trying to encourage you to quit, not so much as trying to encourage you to finish. Yeah.

Richard My wife is like, if you don't defend this on Tuesday, I'm done. I'm like, well, I mean, in fairness, she has been a freaking, she has been long suffering on this. But so it'll either be defended on Tuesday or will get kicked out a couple of weeks because of additional edits and things and that, but it'll, but it'll be done. It'll be done soon. And the, the, the, the thing that I threw over the fence is a, I remember when you finished your dissertation, I was very interested to read it because it was about, it's about the church. It was about interaction with the federal government and how we, how the latter days things were treated by the federal government.

Gerrit Yeah, there was all kinds of chicanery in there. There were stolen election results. There were, there was, you know, prevention of voting. There was Mormon battalion. There was John C. Bennett murders and William Smith. I mean, it was, it was like, it was like, it was like a romance novel.

Richard It was, it was a who's who of people we don't care for. So, so, but I remember you, you being super self-conscious of it and saying, oh no, I would be embarrassed if you read it. I don't, I don't. And I never understood it until Tuesday morning at 5 a.m. And I understood it.

Gerrit One hour before your first professor got up out of bed and desperately charged for his computer to start reading what you had said in. I mean, he probably shoved his wife out of the way into a wall trying to, I've got to get to it, get out of the way. Don't you try to stop me.

Richard All right, Gerrit, jumping in to the Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag. This one's going to be relatively short because we want to get right in to Sydney Rigdon.

Gerrit And by right in, we mean 15 minutes in. That's right.

Richard We want to get in to Sydney Rigdon as desperately as my dissertation committee wants to get in.

Gerrit So open his email.

Richard At 630 in the morning.

Gerrit What the thing is, is that he knows that if he tells you 8 o'clock, you'll send it at 10 a.m. So he has to lie about when he's getting up because that's what students have done to us. Students have like, hey, what time would you actually read that? I don't know, 4 a.m. 4 a.m. is when I'm getting up because you know you're not sending it at 4 a.m. But I did.

Richard 5 a.m. Central time. It's a relatively short one. By the way, my son's name is Rigdon because we like to name our kids after apostate members of the church.

Gerrit Yeah, that's what we're doing.

Richard Yeah. William Law LeDuc. So my concern is that his mission president, if you saw the podcast, which he doesn't, like, boy, Rigdon, three apostasy episodes. How about that? So this one's a relatively short one. This comes to us from Tyler and it reads, The closing bit on Rigdon Apostasy part two hit me so hard. I've often thought, why would some expect an infinite god that happens to teach morals and principles matching today's teachings today? If each general conference talk only reinforces what we believe and we push aside or put on a shelf the things we can't handle, we miss out. Tyler, it's a great point, Tyler. That leads us exactly into where we are now.

Gerrit Well, I hopefully that is how people... Part of the reason why we study these things isn't just because we're talking about the succession, but also because Latter-day Saints today are constantly faced with other calls to believe in different things. And part of the aspect of making this Covenant relationship with God and accepting this is God's true Church is giving up part of your individualism in arguing, well, this is what I want and this is what I believe. And that is really, really hard. It's especially hard for Americans. It's hard for Americans, Western Europeans, who have this, an ideology of individual liberty, that's part of their personal makeup. Now, of course, everyone's free to believe whatever they want to believe. But you're not free to believe and teach, at least, whatever you want to believe and be a member of the Church.

Gerrit That there's something that you have to give up if you are going to be a member of the Church. So, I mean, look, you can still obviously think whatever you want to think. But the moment you start teaching from the pulpit, that you think baptism is for the dead is a false doctrine. Well, we care about you, we love you. Don't worry, we don't actually believe in hell. But if we did, you're going there. So that's where we end up. But when last we left you, we were, it does sound like a radio. I think Richard's laughing at that for some reason.

Richard No, it's a good jerk. By the way, when you're talking about the baptism thing from the pulpit, I think of the George Costanza line. Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?

Gerrit Yeah, right. Yeah. Was that wrong? Yeah. So we talked about how, and really what we followed in this progression is how Rigdon initially acts as if he is Joseph's greatest confidant, at least publicly, while he's claiming authority, although privately tells Brigham Young, the church is not being led the right way. Telling Brigham Young essentially that he's going to discard some of Joseph's teachings. And then we read in the Rigdon's newspaper that he created, how Rigdon had moved within six months from that position to the position of Joseph Smith was a sinner. And people who say things like, well, we're just going to uphold Joseph Smith. We're going to follow the teachings of Joseph. Well, what if Joseph taught false things?

Richard So I did want to just talk, because that really was irritating. When you were reading some of that stuff, it was super, super irritating. How far removed was Rigdon from the church? Has he already started separating himself? I guess I'm not... How long ago would that have been?

Gerrit So in September, so in August, late August is the meeting, the meeting of where the saints know about where Rigdon speaks and Brigham Young speaks, and some people later say that they felt like Joseph's mantel is even his visage fell upon Brigham Young. And the church votes at that point. Well, in early September, they're still trying to convince Sydney Rigdon, to follow where the keys and authority are. And that's when Rigdon tells Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve in private, that the church had not been led for a long time by the Spirit, and that he intended to publish all of the things about the church. I mean, almost this kind of threat against the church. And it's by January of that year, that is, so he leaves, so he's cut off, he's excommunicated. He claims they didn't have authority to excommunicate him, and himself goes to Pennsylvania, where he gathers up his followers and founds his own church.

Gerrit Begins publishing his newspaper. And then, you know, so that's in September by December and January. So just three, four months removed from this initial claim, I'm the guardian to do what Joseph wanted to do. He's already taking these shots at Joseph Smith, that Joseph had taught some false doctrine and the church can't follow that false doctrine.

Richard So, but I mean before that though, like before Joseph is killed.

Gerrit So yeah, I mean, that's one of the very difficult things to discern. There's clearly issues with Sydney Rigdon prior to that, that if you had to find a place, it really seems like Joseph and Sydney become estranged in part because of the radical doctrines that Joseph is teaching in Nauvoo. And in particular, when John C. Bennett is doing his, you know, his doing his work, when he is clandestinely teaching people what he calls spiritual wifery, which is essentially just adultery with no strings attached, conjugal relations. Bennett is claiming that Joseph Smith is the author of it and that Joseph Smith is the one who said that that was fine and the one who's teaching it.

Gerrit Now, Bennett will later publicly admit that that is not the case, and then he'll go on later to recant his public admission. It's a very messy thing. It's almost like John C. Bennett's a liar, who says constantly different things to whoever he's around. Well, Bennett is going to make these claims, and in the midst of that Bennett controversy, something happens with Nancy Rigdon, which is Sydney Rigdon's daughter. Bennett is going to claim that Joseph Smith asked Nancy Rigdon to marry her as a plural wife. Now, this is in 1842, and that Joseph is practicing plural marriage by this point. So the fact that that could have been possible, well, this is where the whole letter comes in, which we, the disputed letter that we talk about, where at least the claim is made by Bennett.

Gerrit He publishes the letter that Joseph wrote this letter to Nancy Rigdon trying to convince her of the truthfulness of God's command that plural marriage was ordained of God. Now, it actually doesn't even say plural marriage in the letter that's alleged. And so the authorship of it is quite contested. You know, I have a whole article that I write on it about the fact that it's, you can't just simply say, oh, this is Joseph or oh, this isn't. It's very difficult to tell. At any rate, it's clear that after that point, this is a real kind of a rough thing that it seems like Rigdon doesn't at first totally believe that Joseph has nothing to do with it. Now, Rigdon clearly has a problem with the teaching of plural marriage to begin with. And now it's involving his family.

Gerrit Now, despite that, that's in 1842. In 1843, Rigdon's still doing things, working for the church and probably the greatest evidence that Joseph hadn't seen the relationship as being completely separate, is when Joseph runs for president, when he declares his candidacy, his vice presidential candidate is Sydney Rigdon.

Richard Well, but that's the thing. Political campaigns are difficult. The wear and tear on, out on the stump, I can imagine.

Gerrit I see. So what you think happened is Sydney Rigdon started holding some rallies. And the next thing you know, he's like, that's it, I hypothesize.

Richard He goes, he goes on a pretty, pretty aggressive MSNBC show, and they come at him pretty hard and he's frustrated. And yeah.

Gerrit So they ask him a bunch of questions, and when he tries to answer, they ask him other ones. And he's like, you know what, I've had it. Well, so it is, it is clear, I think, to most historians that their relationship in 1842 and 43 and 44, is not what it was in in 1832, when they're seeing the vision. In 1832, Sydney Rigdon is, is really one of the most essential aspects of the church. Translating the Bible with Joseph, I mean, he's the scribe for the translation. He's there for the vision doctrine, Covenant Section 76. He's publicly attacking those who say anything against Joseph throughout the entire Kirtland Safety Society and Mormon War in Missouri. All of those things through which hundreds of people apostatize, Rigdon doesn't even flinch in those things. He does not even consider going against Joseph over the whole Kirtland Safety Society failure.

Gerrit And that's where you lose multiple apostles and at least somewhat related, multiple of the three and the Eight Witnesses. And Rigdon doesn't flinch during those moments. So I do feel like, and we talked about this on an earlier episode of the, you know, condemning your son Rigdon, that I don't think it's an easy thing to place and to say, well, this is when Sydney Rigdon, you know, because he hit his head that he started going crazy or that he stopped really believing. If you were just a historian and you didn't know that many, many, many years later, that reminiscent account of a third hand source claimed that Rigdon wasn't the same after that, you wouldn't see that in the documents.

Gerrit You would certainly see Rigdon as a kind of, he's kind of at times, he's brash to the point of irrationality at times, but he was brash to the point of irrationality in 1832 before the mobbing, right? So you wouldn't, you wouldn't go, oh, wow, there's a huge change. As a historian, at least, you wouldn't point at that and say, I see the change. You just wouldn't.

Richard I have always, though, been fascinated by the idea. It's one of the things, look, I've had spiritual experiences in my life, but I've never seen an angel. And every time I read the Book of Mormon, I mean, the first couple of chapters, right? Cause that's generally how you have.

Gerrit Yeah, I mean, right when you get to the Isaiah ones, then you're out, but I get it.

Richard That's why I've said before, I start on 4th Nephi. I start on 4th Nephi and I'm back.

Gerrit It's all up from here.

Richard Well, yeah. And then you end at the end of 3rd Nephi. And it's like, hey, this is a good, this is a happy ending. So, but the situation with Laman and Lemuel and an angel and the whole thing, it's one of those things that's always just been crazy to me. And Sydney Rigdon has seen things far greater than Laman and Lemuel. I mean, he has seen some of the greatest things that are like unable to describe.

Gerrit I saw God and Jesus and the Kingdoms of Glory.

Richard That's one way to put it.

Gerrit Yeah, yeah.

Richard So, man, it is an interesting phenomenon that that occurs and that he sees it, and he knows these things to be true, and Joseph Smith to be a prophet, and yet, and yet still.

Gerrit Well, so I think that's because in their apostasy, people, they apostatize by degrees. Now, if Sydney Rigdon were going around saying, I never saw God and Jesus, and Joseph Smith was never a prophet. Well, that would be a pretty big, that would be something almost impossible to explain.

Richard Right.

Gerrit But that's not what Sydney Rigdon is saying. He doesn't have to deny the spiritual experiences he has. In fact, he actually utilizes those spiritual experiences to claim that he's somehow more in the right in his position. And then the only thing standing in his way is whether or not Joseph is still a true prophet.

Richard Right.

Gerrit But that's not what Sydney Rigdon is saying. He doesn't have to deny the spiritual experiences he has. In fact, he actually utilizes those spiritual experiences to claim that he's somehow more in the right in his position. And then the only thing standing in his way is whether or not Joseph is still a true prophet.

Richard That's actually a funny line in Six Days in August is when Sydney Rigdon is essentially flexing how many visions have you had.

Gerrit Yeah, he flexes it to Wilford Woodruff, who will have about seven million more than Sydney Rigdon will have in his life. But Wilford Woodruff basically lives most of his life on the other side of the veil. It's almost like his entire life is a near death experience, where he's just always a little bit on the other side talking to spirits. He's quite the visionary. But the reason why I think it's important we point that out is, that's actually how modern apostate movements are going, and movements that might turn into apostate movements. I mean, if you're looking for a self-check, if you are passionately following anyone who is saying, now, here's where the brethren are wrong about, fill in the blank. Fill it in. You are on the road to apostasy. And you don't think you are.

Gerrit Nobody wakes up in the morning, and like Richard's dissertation committee, scrambles at breakneck speed, tripping and falling all over themselves to read about implied referrals. Nobody wakes up in the morning. Desperate. Desperate to apostatize. It happens by degrees. It happens a little bit at a time, and it happens by the way of justifications. Think of the people that Rigdon seduced. Think of the people who Rigdon was able to lead out of the church. He started off by saying, I am the real successor to Joseph. I was the one who was with him at the vision. So he's claiming his spiritual experience. I was a member of the First Presidency. He's claiming his authority. I am the closest thing there is to Joseph. Right?

Gerrit It's always very me-centric, and it's kind of persuasive. And it's only after you get people to initially follow you that you then start moving that needle a little bit further and a little bit further and a little bit further and a little bit further because you're not going to get people if you don't do it in this kind of gradual way. Now, I'm not saying that's how Rigdon thought it out in his mind, but I will tell you this. It is obvious. It is clear. It is beyond dispute that Sydney Rigdon is misrepresenting himself to the Saints in Nauvoo in August of 1844. He is publicly proclaiming that he is going to carry on the work of Joseph, that he's the true successor to Joseph, and he is privately saying Joseph was wrong.

Gerrit If that's what you believe, Sydney, why aren't you saying that in the August meeting? Why aren't you standing up on that wagon or that pulpit or whatever he's standing on and saying, Joseph was wrong? And let me tell you why. Now, you know, you could give him some grace by saying, well, he later came to believe that Joseph was wrong. Okay. Except that he's telling people during that exact same time that he thinks Joseph's wrong. But he's not telling people publicly. And that, to me, demonstrates a dishonest heart at this. Oh, you want to do what God wants you to do, but you also want to get followers. You must. Otherwise, from the get go, why didn't you proclaim to the saints that church has not been led by the spirit for a long time? Why don't you say that? And when we relate that to our own day, look, I know it's raw for some people that the presidential election just happened.

Gerrit But I'll tell you what, leading up to that presidential election, I heard Latter-day Saints online, publicly, on both sides make statements like, if the Latter-day Saint vote in this state doesn't go heavily for this candidate, then I think it's going to hurt my testimony. And then we heard Latter-day Saints, after the election, say things like, well, my testimony has been shattered by the fact that so many Latter-day Saints voted this way. Your testimony shouldn't in any way be affected by how people around you vote. And if it does, if you're sitting there thinking, the prophets are wrong because they haven't taken a stronger stance on name, whatever your political issue is.

Gerrit Well, you don't know it, but those are the first steps to apostasy. Because the moment you have decided that anything is more accurate than what the prophet and apostles and leaders of the church say, that you happen to just know more than they do, the moment you cross that Rubicon, the moment you enter Rome with the legion, the same way that Caesar did, how do you ever take that back? Because if they're wrong about this, what else are they wrong about? And since you've already decided that politics are really your god, and that's how you're going to vote, that's how you're going to have your testimony, is based upon what your political beliefs are, well then, there's going to be a lot more political beliefs that you don't agree with the church on. Of course there are.

Gerrit And it becomes this steady slope. And look, this is on both sides of the ledger. I heard numerous people on the conservative side of the ledger publicly chastise the church for not coming out more forcefully against abortion and telling people in these various states how they should vote against abortion ballot measures, things like that. That was all over online. And these people were more than happy, more than willing to publicly say the church is not handling this right. I saw people on the other side of the ledger say something very similar, that if the church isn't going to speak out against one of the candidates in the election, then the church isn't doing its job, or I'm losing my testimony because why didn't they tell the saints that they couldn't vote for this candidate?

Gerrit Politics can't be your god. It shouldn't be your god. God should be your god. Jesus should be who you worship, not the person who happens to have a podcast that you like. Clearly, not this one, but other podcasts that are political in nature and better.

Richard Hank and John, they do a great job.

Gerrit Podcasts that are good. Sounds like a Jeopardy category that you'd never get any answers on. Podcasts that are good, for 200. What is not the Standard of Truth? So that's part of the reason why we're spending time on this, because it really is a microcosm of apostasy everywhere. I think one of the indicators that Sydney Rigdon may be heading down the wrong route, as Joseph is teaching more and more radical doctrines, is Joseph's call out to Sydney Rigdon in the King Follett sermon. Now, Rigdon, of course, Biblical scholar, everything he's got, he's going to prove it to you through the Bible. And what happens when Joseph is giving this radical, radical sermon? This isn't just, hey, there's kingdoms of glory.

Gerrit This is God was once a man. The God who sits enthroned in yonder heavens is a man like yourselves. And then he takes it even further. And he says, the scriptures tell us. And then he gives a call out to Rigdon, which I've always wondered about. And the more and more I think about it now, the more I think, I think he might be publicly chastising Sydney Rigdon for his refusal to accept these doctrines. Because he says, the scriptures tell us, market Elder Rigdon, that the son only does what the father, what he sees the father do. And maybe that's Joseph trying to say, hey, you've got a real problem with the fact that I'm teaching that God was once a man. Well, Jesus is teaching that.

Gerrit And so why do you have a problem with it? Right. So that's, that's at least how Joseph's interpreting it. I don't know if that's the case. Maybe Joseph is, is just calling out Sydney Rigdon in that public meeting to show that it really is from the scriptures. But it's just a very, a very, a very odd way. And Joseph, you know, he was willing to do this. He was willing to call people out from the pulpit. If you're going to talk behind my back, saying I'm teaching false doctrine, well, from the pulpit, I'll let you know. You know, that makes you uncomfortable. But if it's uncomfortable, maybe you should stop talking about it behind my back. So I think it really is the doctrines. I think like many, many, many people, Rigdon has powerful spiritual experiences. He has visions. He has a certitude that the Book of Mormon is true. He knows that the Doctrine and Covenants' revelations are true. He knows that Joseph Smith was called by God. He just didn't think that that meant he was going to find out that God hadn't always been God or that plural marriage would be instituted by God in this dispensation.

Gerrit Many people are willing to die for what they believe right up until that thing that they believe in teaches something that they don't already believe. And I think that's part of what Tyler was getting to in his email. In September, Wilford Woodruff, September of 1844, Wilford Woodruff goes out to, he leaves Nauvoo and Brigham Young writes a letter explaining, kind of providing a summary of some of the things that have been going on in Nauvoo since the whole, you know, kerfuffle. I know that's Richard's favorite word with the succession crisis. And this is what Brigham Young writes. So this is September 23rd of 1844. Rigdon's gone. I embrace the present opportunity of writing a few lines to inform you that I received your epistle on the 8th and its contents duly examined. Therefore, I would say to you in the first place that everything is going on well here at the present.

Gerrit The temple is going on rapidly and with greater rapidity than it has been since the commencement. So, so notice one of the things that Brigham Young said is Joseph said we have to finish the temple. Joseph gets murdered. Brigham Young reiterates, Joseph said we have to finish the temple. And what is the faith of the saints in Nauvoo? They're working on the temple faster than they were before Joseph was murdered. I think that's a pretty awesome little insight there, right? And the brethren are rejoicing in the fullness of the gospel of the Son of Man. And everything seems to all appearances to roll on and to turn for the well-being, happiness, and prosperity of the saints of Almighty God. Praying that the God who rules the armies of Israel and sits enthroned in the heavens will hear our prayers in your behalf, that you may be sustained and upheld by the faith and prayer of the saints, that you may be unable to fulfill your important mission, which devolves upon you with fidelity, that the great work of our God may roll forth in mighty power through your instrumentality, and the kingdom of our God be established never more to be thrown down.

Gerrit And when he whose right it is to reign, should reign king of nations as he does king of saints. Now, Brigham Young's got it. Sometimes Brigham Young is on a roll. I'll tell you that. There are times when you are willing to stand up and say, Brigham, I'm following you anywhere. I know that Richard, your wife is a big Brigham Young fan.

Richard Yeah, she loves her some Brigham. She feels about Brigham the same way Brigham felt about Joseph.

Gerrit She feels totally devoted to him. I know, and when people have negative things to say, her dander is up.

Richard Oh, she will not.

Gerrit She will not, yep. It is not a way to win friends and influence people to start casually criticizing Brigham Young around Becky LeDuc.

Richard And part of the reason for that is interesting, by the way, because like I say, her family joined the church before Joseph, and so having, you know, hearing them tell it. But the situation is that when people attack Brigham, one of the main things that they're doing when they're attacking Brigham is polygamy. Well, her family is straight out of polygamy, both sides, right?

Gerrit Yeah, they're like basically living in Colorado City right now.

Richard Yeah, they're floccasigil, haircuts, all of them. And so the thing is that for her, it's a direct attack on her family, right?

Gerrit Your family was wrong, your great-grandparents were wrong, everyone was wrong, everyone was living in sin, and all because I just don't really like the idea of polygamy. Well, we're not practicing polygamy. I know, but I hate it so much that no one could have ever practiced it. Have you ever read the Old Testament?

Richard Becky's nothing if not loyal, and so she does not stand for it. I think I've shared this story before. We're on a Hawaii incentive work trip, and she's at the poolside reading Helen Mar Kimball's book.

Gerrit Yeah, Why We Practice Plural Marriage from a Lurman Wife and Mother. I pointed that book out to her, so I do feel like I'm a little bit...

Richard We got a couple of looks, by the way. And by a couple, I mean a lot of looks.

Gerrit Yeah, you should have gotten it in highlights so that everyone could see very boldly what the title was, maybe put some flashing lights around it.

Richard Look, polygamy on a book title, it does good enough.

Gerrit When we get to season 38, someday we'll get to season 38. And when we do, we're going to break down her argument in...

Richard It's a great argument.

Gerrit I mean, it's a little beyond what I'm willing to.

Richard Speaking of going hard in the paint, she will not.

Gerrit Yeah, she goes hard in the paint. She essentially says, now, I'm not saying this about anyone listening. I'm just saying what she says.

Richard And also you're not saying this, this is something you would say on season 38. You're not saying it now.

Gerrit Even in season 38, I wouldn't say this. Right.

Richard You wouldn't say what you're about to say. You would never say that.

Gerrit I would never say this. But she at least says, and she says it pretty angrily that the only people who have a problem with polygamy are adulterers themselves. That's what she said. Now, I don't believe that. I know that there are honest, hearted people who do, but she is livid at the fact that people are trying to take away her rights to vote, take away her rights to her family, throw her husband in jail, separate her from her kids, all while claiming they have some kind of moral high ground. And she knows that they don't. You all are fornicators to every last one of you. But you're gonna come tell us that we can't practice polygamy.

Richard To quote a friend of mine, fornicating fornicators.

Gerrit Yeah, fornicating fornicators. So, yeah. So, anyway, Rigdon goes on after that. I mean, that was a really powerful part of that letter. He says, there's a great deal that has happened since you left this place. And you will see all the particulars by perusing the neighbor, the Nauvoo neighbor, and the times and seasons, where you will find that Elder Rigdon, along with some others, have been tried and cut off from the church by the unanimous voice of the same. Shortly after he came here, he began to work secretly and privately and underhandedly for to destroy the church if possibly. It has come out. So you know what's really interesting is one of the great claims of the Rigdonite apostates when they leave is that Brigham Young was secretly teaching false doctrines. And yet when Sydney Rigdon got to Nauvoo, he was the one that was holding private meetings, telling people in private that Joseph was wrong, but not telling the saints that publicly.

Gerrit Meanwhile, you've got Brigham Young publicly saying everything that Joseph said, all of it. What about this part? Did Joseph say it? Yeah, okay, that part too. Anything. If Joseph said it, that's what we're doing. Anyway, Brigham Young goes on and he says that he said that Joseph was a fallen prophet and that he had not been led by the Lord for a long time. Or to that amount. And also that he, Sydney, had in his possession documents whereby he could have destroyed Brother Joseph long ago if he had a mind to do so. So, like I said, Brigham is really working hard to try to bring Sydney Rigdon back into the church right up until that happens. And once you have to say is that Joseph Smith is a fallen prophet, and he's teaching false doctrines, and I was planning to destroy him, Brigham has very little use for you.

Gerrit In fact, he goes and talks about some other things, but then he goes on to close by saying, with regard to your question regarding the apostates, I would say to you to warn the saints in the East, and elsewhere in the region's roundabout, to have nothing to do with such characters, and to have no dealings with any of these men. And then he kind of answered, Brother Woodruff, with regard to your business, you know what you must do, da da da da da da. I think that's very key, okay? People who are criticizing the church, criticizing Joseph, that you should have nothing to do with, that they should warn the saints to have nothing to do with such characters, to have no dealings with any of those people. I'm always surprised how people believe that they can, you know, go read the arguments of someone who has no faith and that it won't in some way impact their own faith.

Gerrit Well, what do you think was going to happen? They don't have faith. They're not, they're trying to destroy your faith. And the crazy thing is, let's go listen to what they have to say, and suddenly they seem to destroy it. And I think we have to especially be careful in modern times when we want to believe what that person is saying. So when someone's teaching something like, oh, Joseph Smith never taught or practiced polygamy. Well, Sydney Rigdon is actually pretty good evidence that he obviously was. That's what Sydney Rigdon has a problem with. But yeah, that's what we want to believe. That's what everyone wants to believe. Is that what the church is teaching?

Richard No.

Gerrit And so your starting point for your argument, if you're going to argue that Joseph Smith never taught or practiced polygamy, your starting point is the Doctrine and Covenants is wrong. That the current church leadership is wrong. That every past prophet all the way back through to Brigham Young have all been wrong and to a certain degree dishonest. Because you don't just get away Scott Free by saying Joseph never practiced it. Because Brigham Young and every other prophet says that he did. Not to mention Eliza R. Snow and Bathsheba W. Smith, and call the role of great women in the early church. You are calling all of them liars. Well, that has a lot of people to indict. A lot of people who built your faith, what you claim to believe in, it's a lot of people to indict. Not on the basis of evidence, but on the basis of why I don't really want to believe that.

Gerrit Well, you're always welcome to believe whatever you want to believe. But there's a reason why no academic believes it. There's a reason why no one throws out every single source the way that someone who wants to believe that does. And, there's a reason why faithful members of the church have figured out a way to come to terms with the fact that God commanded the practice of plural marriage for a time. God's not asking anyone to practice it. Anyone asking you to practice it, they are the apostate group, that's how you know. But that's not the same thing as pretending the past didn't actually happen. It's not the same thing as rejecting revelation that's literally our scripture right now. Those are very, very, very different things. And don't allow yourself to be led by that flaxen cord. That flaxen cord will eventually lead you to the chains of apostasy. Just like the people who follow Sydney Rigdon at first.

Gerrit Telling themselves, no, no, he had greatest visions as Joseph did. He was a member of the First Presidency. And mis-queuing on the fact that, well, yeah, but you know all the 12. You know that they all love Joseph. Why are none of them following him? Well, because they're all just trying to get power. All of them are. All of them. Just all of them decided that they didn't believe in truth. And they just, you know, never mind the fact they've sacrificed their entire lives for this gospel. They just, all of them collectively decided that they, they were in it for themselves. Well, they were just deceived to think that they had power. Well, they're saying Joseph Smith put hands on them and gave them keys. I don't know if you can really be deceived by that. I mean, you kind of either got keys or you didn't. Now, we have to move on for time's sake to where this is eventually going to end up.

Gerrit As time goes on, Rigdon is going to move from just saying Joseph Smith taught things that weren't from God and we don't accept them, to the reason why it's hard for this Gerrit to come to terms with Sydney Rigdon. Now, the Saints are going to be driven out of Nauvoo in the middle of winter, which means they are going to suffer horribly in Iowa. They leave months before they had planned to leave. They believe an army is on its way trying to kill them. And they are suffering all of the vicissitudes of cold weather and sickness and disease and all of those things. And a report reaches Sydney Rigdon in his newspaper about this.

Gerrit And so let's hope that we don't get Richard's dander up, since only one dander can be up at a time. If we get both of our danders, that's a lot of danders.

Richard Well, I'll tell you, if he starts the letter or starts whatever by saying that he wants a Super California with 108 electoral votes, then we've got problems, and my dander will be up.

Gerrit He doesn't do that, but in June of 1846, okay, so the Saints have left in February, right? And they went through a horrible time getting out, and they're just trying to readjust and trying to get across Iowa. I mean, in the middle of the rainstorms and the mud and the muck, and there's no roads, it has just been a nightmare. And so, Sydney Rigdon publishes in his newspaper, June 1846, this commentary about the state of the Saints. And you can tell that what he's going for is a gospel of prosperity. What he's trying to point out is, these Saints wouldn't be suffering if they were the true church. They're obviously not. And so, therefore, that's why they're suffering. As many of your readers, as well as the public at large, feel some interest in knowing the true condition of the Mormons.

Gerrit So, this is, what this is, is they have an informant, someone who was there with them in, you know, in Iowa, who's now going to give them an idea of what the state of affairs is. And of course, they're going to paint it an incredibly negative light. It's difficult to get correct information as the accounts published in the papers are generally false, either by design or else because incorrect information is difficult or because correct information is difficult to obtain. As we have by a young man, directly from their camp, information that can be relied on, we feel disposed to give it to the public for their satisfaction. So they claim that someone from Iowa probably apostatized and then came right to Rigdon there in Monongahela, Pennsylvania and told them all about it. Their camp is in the western part of Iowa, some 200 miles west of Nauvoo. Their situation, according to our informant, is as miserable as it well could be.

Gerrit The stock of provisions they took with them is getting fast reduced, so much so that they can proceed no further. Neither can they go back. They are without shelters other than tents and wagons, and their tents are so indifferent that they will not shed the rain, which has been incessantly falling since their arrival. And this awful condition is to be found, the aged and the infirm, the mother and the tender infant. When our informant left, they were going to fence in some 300 or 400 acres of land for the purpose of raising a crop of corn and try to preserve life. The remains of their furniture, which is in part consists of beds and bedding, they are sending off to Missouri to exchange for corn and bacon to sustain life. As a sample of the character of their leaders and as evidence of their real condition, we give a short address delivered by Brigham Young. The Sunday before our informant left, someone asked, where are we going? And what are we going to do?

Gerrit I do not know where we are going. Nor what are we going to do? Neither do I care, for you will all go to the devil unless there is less selfishness in the camp. Now, that is a ridiculous... This is going to come as a surprise to people just coming out of an election season. But not always are hearsay conversations reported accurately in the media. It is not always that people get that correct. And so, here you have Rigdon claiming that this is what was said. And that, you know, of course, the point he's trying to make is that Brigham Young doesn't even know where they're going. This must be cold comfort to the people. Nice alliteration there of words, by the way, or use of imagery, you know, cold comfort. They're there in the freezing cold.

Gerrit How about that? This must be cold comfort to a people who have been led by this same Brigham Young and his accomplices into the present wretched condition. But this short address speaks volumes of the real condition of that people. This said young professed to be a follower of Christ and to hold communion with him and to receive revelations from him. But where are his pretensions now? He's got, according to our informant, some 800 or 1000 people far into the wilds without food, shelter, and himself being judged without object. Now, it's thousands more than that. So very funny. Rigdon wants to attack them, but also lie about how many people are there because it makes it look like it's dwarfing his movement, which in fact it is. So instead of saying it's the thousands and thousands that it is, he's like, oh, there's like 800 of them. Uh-huh. Yeah. 800 is like one part of one company.

Gerrit I mean, it's way more than that. He neither knows where he is going or what he's going to do. This is the part that's going to make Becky upset because he's attacking Brigham, right? Such language is that of anything else than a man of God. A man of God knows where he is going and what he is going to do. And if he does not always know what will befall him, our informant says that it will, that is the, it was the interest of their leaders to go a little further west and form another camp and fence in another field and to go about farming there. But as proof that they did not know, as Young said, where they were going, nor where they were going to, to what they were going to do, he says they sent an embassy in search of Lyman White in his camp. Some of your leaders know about this Lyman, this said White, something over a year ago since left Nauvoo with a company of 100 or 200 for the Pine Country North. Since that, they left the Pine Country and took their march a Southwest direction. And Young has either by conjecture or some other way gotten to his head that said White and his company is some 500 miles Southwest of Council Bluffs.

Gerrit And has in this belief sent out an embassy to search for him with special instructions to White to kill Buffalo for them. Put all these sayings and doings together and they prove one thing. And that is that God is not with them. They are in the wilds of the West and know not what for, nor what they are going to do. I mean, this statement that they don't know what they're going to do is ridiculous. Never does Brigham Young say, you know what, I got no idea what we're doing out here. You know, just kind of hanging out, party and, you know, that's not, that's not what Brigham Young is saying. But, you know, once you put out a false statement, now you make this straw man that you then spend all of your time arguing against the thing that Brigham Young never even said. So you argue against the fake statement. But again, back to the gospel of prosperity. Well, I mean, first of all, all of Rigdon's followers made a choice not to go west.

Gerrit And for some of them, the reason why they didn't go is because they were about to leave the country and go 1,500 to 2,000 miles west into an unknown country in New Mexico.

Richard Was Rigdon a mission president in Germany?

Gerrit Oh boy, that's funny. That is a deep cut call out to our prosperity gospel ones. You'll have to go check that out if you want to know what Richard's talking about. Someone who listens for the first time?

Richard No, just the idea that you couldn't baptize. If you're not baptizing in Germany in the 70s, it's because you weren't righteous enough. Get out of here.

Gerrit Yeah. So the wretched state is, wretchedness is not easily conceived of. Our informant says when he left, which was some three weeks since the mud by reason of the incessant rains was six inches deep around their camp. Surely there is a day of reckoning, both for the leaders of this people and their persecutors. We are well aware that the leaders of this people introduced many corruptions among them and was the thing which gave their enemies power over them. Had they not have become basely corrupt, no enemy could have had power over them. They introduced a base system of polygamy, worse by far than that of the heathen. This system of corruption brought a train of evils with it, which has terminated in their entire ruin. After this system was introduced being in opposition to the laws of the land, they had to put the truth at defines to conceal it. And in order to do it, perjury was often practiced. This system was introduced by the Smiths some time before their death, and was the thing which put them into the power of their enemies.

Gerrit And was the immediate cause of their death. This system, the 12 so-called, undertook to carry out, and it has terminated in their overthrow, and the complete ruin of all those who follow their pernicious ways. We went from Pittsburgh to Nauvoo as directed by the Lord, and in the name of the Lord warned the people. We told them that they would be scattered, and peeled, and driven from their places into the western wilds. Them and their wives and their little ones together, that they would be wasted and destroyed. For verily thus saith the Lord unto us, and it would be so unless they repented. But instead of listening to the voice of the Lord, they railed upon us, gnashed with their teeth, and threatened our life unless we desisted. We left them to their fate, and it has come, and it is coming on them to the very uttermost.

Gerrit And that we declared unto them, so it has come to pass. They are now in the wilderness, in parties and companies, and sending messengers to find each other. This we declared unto them would be their situation, until they were utterly wasted and made monuments of the displeasure of the Lord against those who, knowing the truth, departed from it and practiced iniquity, and used their liberty for a cloak to practice lasciviousness with greediness.

Richard So, wait, hold on. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So, he's been there the whole doggone time. He was there as they were driven from Ohio, as they were driven from Missouri.

Gerrit Yep.

Richard What was the case there? Same stuff.

Gerrit Very interesting. He doesn't mention that.

Richard Oh, you don't say.

Gerrit Yeah. Because, you know, Sydney Rigdon lost his house in Ohio and his house in Missouri clearly because he was practicing polygamy. I mean, that's the only reason why you ever lose your house, obviously.

Richard It is. So, the prosperity gospel is one thing that is an enormous irritant to me. It is because it's a false teaching that creates doubt and problem and faith crises for people. And it's very frustrating. And it is not. And we're out of time. And I know I just looked at the time. We're out of time.

Gerrit But no, we're not. We've got plenty of time because I'm not done yet.

Richard But this is ridiculous because the thing that he is claiming is the very thing that he has experienced time after time after time. Right.

Gerrit So when they're driven out of Missouri and people like John Corrill say things like, well, this is proof that God isn't with us, Sydney Rigdon rejects that. But here when the majority of saints, and it is very much the majority, it's thousands even though he lies about how many it is, when they're suffering because they've been driven out, and he and his followers went back to Pennsylvania, he's going to then claim, ah, this is proof that they are not beloved of God. It's such a funny argument, especially made, like you're right, from someone who's a Latter-day Saint, that because they suffer, that proves that they're not doing what God wants them to do. Okay, well, we're not yet, I know we're out of time, and this is a very long episode, and you're all wishing that we were done with Rigdon part.5, like you wish that we never even did this. He goes on, and this is where Gerrit's dander, look, my dander's already been kind of up.

Gerrit But this is where the dander breaks through the dam that's preventing my anger. The next paragraph. We warned Joseph Smith and his family of the ruin that was coming on them, and of the certain destruction which awaited them for their iniquity, for making their house, instead of a house of God, a sink of corruption. From them, we received like treatment, as we did from the twelve and their followers. The Lord has let them, and the world, see that he authorized us to say as we did. The Smiths have fallen before their enemies, as the Lord said they would, and their families sunk into everlasting shame and disgrace, until their very name is a reproach, and it must remain so forever.

Gerrit How are you feeling about Sydney Rigdon now?

Richard Yeah.

Gerrit So notice, now he's saying it. A year and a half later, he's now claiming that he condemned Joseph for introducing these plural marriage and other doctrines into the church. When Joseph was alive, he's saying he challenged him on it. He's saying he told him that this is not from God and it would be a destruction. Why wasn't that the first thing you said in Nauvoo there, Sydney? Where were you on that one? It's always great to be a whistleblower who blows the whistle, you know, five years after the company doesn't exist anymore. It probably need to be the whistleblower when people can hear the whistle. It is a matter of no small gratification to us to know that we were faithful to the trust imposed on us. Seeing their ruin, this is the Smith's ruin, has come to the very uttermost on the Smith's, their families, and all those who set their hearts to practice iniquity with them.

Gerrit We do not rejoice in the sufferings of any people, neither do we in theirs, but we do rejoice exceedingly, that we discharged our duty to them, and faithfully warned them of the ruin that was swiftly though slyly coming to them. We told them it would come on them, and at a time when they least expected it, and so it has come. So, you know, the pretenses are now gone, right? The claim that he's carrying on Joseph's mission is gone. It's no longer I'm a guardian for the church. It's that Joseph is wrong. And I don't have time to read all of it. I mean, maybe we should just make it part four, and I could, but it is, it is, it continues, it continues to go on.

Gerrit I'll skip to this part. We rejoice that we bore testimony to the corruption of Joseph Smith and his family. Now the Lord has made it manifest by the display of his own wrath. We incurred their displeasure because we testified of their corruption. And the Lord has made their corruption manifest to all and sustained us in opposing them. Sydney Rigdon is now saying that he publicly was opposed to Joseph. He's saying the Smiths. He's not talking about Brigham Young. And sustained us in opposing them. Notwithstanding, they sought our destruction by every means in their power, but God has brought and will bring the ruin on their own heads with vengeance. For vengeance has not yet ceased on the head of that family. Time will show, nor will it cease, until there is a repentance deep and sincere for iniquity's base and foul.

Gerrit Never has the Lord at any time fulfilled His word, which He authorized His servants to speak in His name to any people more fully than in the case of the people at Nauvoo. He is fulfilling it to the very letter, every word of it, just as He authorized it to be spoken, so that all may see and all may know that the Lord has done it and is doing it. The people were told that they would not finish the temple which they were building. They were told that they would not get the roof on and do some of the inside work, but they were told that they would get the roof on and do some of the inside work, but never would finish it. No people ever labored harder to prove the above declaration false. No pains were spared, but where has it terminated? Just where we said it would. They have fled and they are fleeing into the wilderness and their temple unfinished and will remain so after they are gone to return no more. Let so much suffice for the Mormons and their fate, a fate we knew years ago and testified of it.

Gerrit A word concerning their persecutors. That same God that is fulfilled and is fulfilling his word on the Mormons has a judgment and a curse upon their persecutors, which they in their turn will receive. For as they measured the Mormons, so shall be meted to them. As they have shown no mercy, so shall they in turn have judgment without mercy. And all this in the due time of the Lord, here we will leave them all for their present. Sydney Rigdon. He's claiming that he told them that they would never be able to finish the temple. And of course they do and they dedicate the temple. But all of these things he's pointing out is proof that they were wrong. Now, the best part about this is, this is one of the last issues of Rigdon's newspaper. Only a few months later, Rigdon is going to attempt to have his followers move to a type of communal type of society where they're sharing land and wealth and they're kind of like a Zion-like society.

Gerrit Well, this goes over about as well as a Carolina Panther draft pick for a quarterback. It's just not going to work out for you. And what happens is most of the people that were following him, all of the people that are reading this newspaper, the reason why the newspaper stops is Rigdon gets excommunicated from his own church. And the leader, one of the people that Rigdon baptizes was a man by the name of William Bickerton. Bickerton becomes the new leader of this movement. And Sydney Rigdon will attempt to form other churches. They will all ultimately fail and will later even claim to receive revelations. But William Bickerton will keep this movement together. But since the trajectory was already that Joseph Smith was a false fallen prophet who introduced false fallen teachings, the Bickertonite movement, or they don't call themselves that, but we don't call ourselves the Josephite or Brighamite either, that they're called the Church of Jesus Christ.

Gerrit They absolutely believe the Book of Mormon is true. They believe that Joseph Smith was inspired by God to translate it as a miracle, and they accept literally nothing else. They are the Bible plus the Book of Mormon, and that's it. None of the revelations, none of those things, which was the trajectory that Sydney Rigdon had already set them on. Once you say that Joseph Smith became a fallen prophet, well, when did he become a fallen prophet? This is actually the same problem that that when he apostatizes David Whitmer has. David Whitmer isn't quite sure when Joseph Smith became a fallen prophet. He's adamant that the Book of Mormon is translated by God. But then, as he gives various reminiscences, he keeps moving the start date of when he knew that Joseph Smith was fallen different places around. At one point, David Whitmer is going to claim that in the June 1831 conference of the church in Ohio, when Joseph first ordained people to the office of high priest, that that's how he knew that Joseph Smith had fallen.

Gerrit Even though Whitmer himself, in his own church, ordained people to the office of high priest 20 years before he was making that statement. So I mean, it's easy to look back and say, oh, I knew that Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet in 1830. Okay, so why were you still a leader of the church for the next eight years testifying that he was a member, that he was a true prophet? I find it similar to the people who will say things to me, like, I never had a testimony. I never believe. That's interesting, because I have your letter that you wrote me here saying that you are certain the church is true. So since I have your letter, either you were lying to me then, or you're lying to me now, or you are so incapable of discerning what it is you actually believe, that how could I possibly trust what you're saying to me now?

Gerrit Because here you are going on and on about how much you believe. And now you're telling me, not only were you wrong about that, that you never ever ever actually believed, well, then you're a liar, because I've got your words right in front of me. So I guess you're not a very good trustworthy source. I often think that, look, I realize people get derailed by anti Mormonism. People make flattering arguments to them. People get caught up in politics. They get caught up in social movements. They forget that the point is, this is the kingdom of God on earth. And it's not about predicting when the Second Coming is, or figuring out how to accomplish your social agenda inside of the matrix of the church. It's about following every word that proceedeth forth out of the mouth of God through his servants, the prophets.

Gerrit God has asked us to sacrifice, to consecrate, to building up the kingdom of God on earth. We all have different talents. We all have different abilities. We all come from different backgrounds. We have members of the church in places like Vietnam that are members of the Communist Party. We have members of the church in, you know, the the wiles of Upper Maine who, you know, think the Libertarian Party is sold out. We have members of the church everywhere of every political and social demographic, every racial and every age demographic. And what do we have that's unifying? The gospel of Jesus Christ restored to the earth today. I am begging you, don't listen to someone who tries to tell you, here's where President Nelson is wrong.

Gerrit When those words escape someone else's mouth, know that your testimony, even if that person is incredibly well-meaning, even if they feel very strongly, even if they're super smart, your testimony is in jeopardy. The moment you start to allow someone's smartness and their specialness and their claimed spiritual experiences and the fact that they're so right on the political views that you have, the moment you allow that to trump prophetic utterance, you have lost the entire purpose of belief in the first place. Everything you believe, everything that you want to believe, is because prophets of God have declared it. And if we are going to start saying, well, I think the prophets wrong about this. It's not very long before you're Sydney Rigdon, sitting in Pennsylvania, claiming that years earlier, you told Joseph Smith that he was wrong, that he was teaching false doctrines, and that God was going to destroy him.

Gerrit I know it's kind of rough to study this stuff. That's part of the reason why I think we moved away from apostles, apostates, and apothecaries.

Richard Yeah, we need to focus more on the apothecary piece.

Gerrit Yeah. So, look, we're going to get into Thomsonian medicine as well as Rushdian medicine. I think that will fall right online of, you know, implied referrals for things people want to listen to. But I know we've gone on too long, but I wanted to finish this off. Please stay close to the prophets and apostles. Even if you hear me say something inadvertently, which obviously I like, I'm desperately trying to follow the prophets and apostles, but I'm also doing this, you know, offhandedly. I don't have a teleprompter. So if I accidentally say something that seems like I'm conflicting with them, you don't ever listen to me. You only follow the prophets and apostles. That is what we have covenanted to do. Thank you so much for joining us.

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.

Sidney Rigdon's Apostasy Part 3

Chapters

Transcript

Quote board

Source shelf

Truman G. Madsen, Timeless Questions, Gospel Insights and Joseph Smith the Prophet (recorded lectures)

Tyler's email on Sidney Rigdon's Apostasy Part 2

Letter to Nancy Rigdon attributed to Joseph Smith (1842; published by John C. Bennett)

D&C 76

6 Days in August (film)

Joseph Smith, King Follett sermon, April 1844

John 5:19

Brigham Young to Wilford Woodruff, September 23, 1844

Nauvoo Neighbor and Times and Seasons, fall 1844

Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, Why We Practice Plural Marriage

Brigham Young to Wilford Woodruff, September 23, 1844, on the apostates

Sidney Rigdon's Messenger and Advocate (Pennsylvania), June 1846, on the Saints in Iowa

Messenger and Advocate, June 1846, alleged remark by Brigham Young

Messenger and Advocate, June 1846, on polygamy and the Smiths

Messenger and Advocate, June 1846, against Joseph Smith's family

Messenger and Advocate, June 1846, prophecy that the Nauvoo temple would never be finished

David Whitmer's reminiscences on when Joseph fell

Episode quiz

Who filled in for Richard on the last premium episode?

Fun with Numbers

From 1830 to 1846

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words

More from this episode

Claim check

Take it to class

Banter bin

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

In General Conference

Go deeper

Sidney Rigdon's Apostasy Part 3

Angie stole the show

Truman G. Madsen, Timeless Questions, Gospel Insights and Joseph Smith the Prophet (recorded lectures)

Tyler's email on Sidney Rigdon's Apostasy Part 2

Letter to Nancy Rigdon attributed to Joseph Smith (1842; published by John C. Bennett)

D&C 76

6 Days in August (film)

Joseph Smith, King Follett sermon, April 1844

John 5:19

Brigham Young to Wilford Woodruff, September 23, 1844

Nauvoo Neighbor and Times and Seasons, fall 1844

Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, Why We Practice Plural Marriage

Brigham Young to Wilford Woodruff, September 23, 1844, on the apostates

Sidney Rigdon's Messenger and Advocate (Pennsylvania), June 1846, on the Saints in Iowa

Messenger and Advocate, June 1846, alleged remark by Brigham Young

Messenger and Advocate, June 1846, on polygamy and the Smiths

Messenger and Advocate, June 1846, against Joseph Smith's family

Messenger and Advocate, June 1846, prophecy that the Nauvoo temple would never be finished

David Whitmer's reminiscences on when Joseph fell

Who filled in for Richard on the last premium episode?

From 1830 to 1846

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words