Hank Smith: 00:01 Welcome to followHIM. A weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come, Follow Me study. I’m Hank Smith.

John Bytheway: 00:09 And I’m John Bytheway. We love to learn. We love to laugh.

Hank Smith: 00:13 We want to learn and laugh with you.

John Bytheway: 00:15 As together, we followHIM.

Hank Smith: 00:20 Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my pure in heart co-host, John Bytheway. Hello, John. You are pure in heart.

John Bytheway: 00:32 My kids have a better adjective for me, it is ordinary. That would be…

Hank Smith: 00:36 Okay, yeah. Yeah. I’m here with my ordinary cohost, John Bytheway. The kids are all, yes, finally.

John Bytheway: 00:44 That would be dad, yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:46 We want to remind everybody that you can find the podcast on social media. We have an Instagram page. We have a Facebook page, our wonderful Jamie Neilson runs those. So come on over and check out all the extras that we have there. If you want to watch the podcast, rather than listen to it, you can find it on YouTube. And if you want to go to our website, followhim.co, followhim.co, and please take time to rate and review the podcast, that really helps us out. Hey John, we have a guest here that is renowned for her knowledge of church history. Tell us who we have with us.

John Bytheway: 01:22 Oh, I’m so excited. I told Kim, my wife, this morning, Hey, we’ve got Susan Easton Black this morning. She said, “Oh my favorite church history teacher. But don’t tell her that because I had others too.” But so glad to have her back. She taught church history and doctrine at BYU for 32 years. First woman hired as a full-time faculty member in the college of Religious Education. I think they just call it Religious Education now. Received the Carl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Award in 2000, was the first woman to be honored with that. She is a popular speaker, a prolific writer. She’s one of those that can speak without notes for days and days. I think she has a photographic memory. She’s the mother of three, she’s currently married to George Durrant. They’ve served several missions together, including a season as writers for the Church Curriculum Department.

John Bytheway: 02:14 I don’t know who wrote this, but that sounds very Coctrine and Covenants. Including a season as writers for Church Curriculum Department. She’s been part of the Doctrine and Covenants Central team. I hope people know about bookofMormoncentral.org, and Doctrine and Covenants Central as well. These great websites. She’s authored more than 130 concise biographies, as well as a series of insights from each section. And recently was honored with a lifetime achievement award by the Latter-day Saint Publishers Association. And I don’t know, have you counted all the books that you’ve written? I mean, I think they have an entire wing at Library of Congress for you don’t they?

Dr. Susan Black: 02:57 I don’t think so. I think, John, as a professor, we were always told you had to publish or perish. And I was the one professor that took it heart.

John Bytheway: 03:10 I have a wing at Goodwill, but not at… Yeah. Oh, that’s wonderful. But we’re so glad to have you. I know that our listeners will be excited that you’re back as well. And thank you for being with us again.

Dr. Susan Black: 03:23 You’re welcome. It’s a treat.

Hank Smith: 03:24 Oh, Susan. I am so excited because at the heading we only have one section to study today. It’s Section 124, and it’s the first section given in a place called Nauvoo, Illinois. And when I saw this, I thought, “We’ve got to get Susan on the show,” because I’ve been to Nauvoo with you. I’ve seen your love for it. I’m hoping our listeners can feel some of that as well. Tell us… Back up. Section 123 is 1839. Section 124 is 1841. That is two years between sections. Yeah, let’s back up and tell us how, and when, and what happened to get us to Nauvoo, Illinois.

Dr. Susan Black: 04:16 Oh, thanks a lot, Hank. Anyways, just great to see you again and John too. So if we back up to 1839, we know that many of the Saints who had fled from the extermination order in Missouri went to a place called Quincy, Illinois. And there they were assisted. Joseph Smith describes it, he said, “He could have gone toe-to-toe with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, if it had not been for the charity, the goodwill kindness, of the people at Quincy.” But once we were there in ’39 for a few months, in May of 1839, a conference will be held. And the decision at the conference is that the saints would now go up to an area that Isaac Galland and others owned called Commerce.

Dr. Susan Black: 05:15 So the very first Latter-day Saints to leave, then, from Quincy to come all the way up to Commerce, you’re 40-plus miles, depending on which road you take, right, was Joseph Smith and his family. And they arrived on May 10th, 1839. So once they’re in Commerce, you start to see many of the Saints that had gone to Quincy moving up. Others had gone to Iowa moving up. We can find them as far away as St. Louis moving up, some still in Kirtland make the decision to also move up. So between ’39 and this revelation in January of ’41, you have thousands of Saints now head up to a place called Commerce, that Joseph will eventually rename Nauvoo, which means a “beautiful situation.” And truly it was for a while.

Hank Smith: 06:14 And when they got there, what made them choose that piece of land versus somewhere else?

Dr. Susan Black: 06:22 Well, somewhere else, I think might’ve been expensive. For Isaac Galland, he was willing to trade properties that we’d had in Far West and other places in Nauvoo that we’d been, or other places in Missouri that we had been forced to abandon. And so basically for no money down, they’re able to move up there. And with signing land contracts, land properties, Sidney Rigdon was a big signer. Joseph Smith also, we moved to that area. But it was not desirable. And part of the reason is part of the land is a swamp. And so this land, if we were to look at it historically, we’d say it was once, of course, what they called Indian Territory. We’d say Native Americans. And then you start to get settlers moving in, our first being James White and his family who named it Venus. And you realize that’s a great name, and it attracted a lot of men.

Dr. Susan Black: 07:27 If a man’s going to go west to a new land, he typically goes alone. And then if he likes what he sees, then he goes back and gets his wife and sweetheart. And sometimes they’re actually one and the same. And so James White goes, he calls it, Venus, men moved there, but the swamp made it very difficult. And when they were there, they built two-storey houses thinking they could get above the smells of the swamp. And the problem was they suffered from swamp fever, and we know it was malaria. And you take the word apart, mal air, and easy, to get above the bad air, you build a second storey house, like the homestead.

Hank Smith: 08:17 Okay, just build up.

Dr. Susan Black: 08:19 You just build up. But pretty soon they’re sick. They leave. And then come these entrepreneurs like Isaac Galland, that… Well, they created what you would call a paper town. They actually drew their town out where they had four parts, they had a big canal coming down the middle, and their plan was they would take these pieces of paper, go East. And at that time, and probably still today, some of the really rich people in the United States lived in Connecticut. With the idea they’d sell their land to the people in Connecticut, who wouldn’t know it was a swamp land, right?

Dr. Susan Black: 09:03 And such a deal, buy something out here on the Mississippi. Well, it doesn’t work because there’s, remember the run on the bank in ’37 that so effected the Kirtland Safety Society, and then the state of Illinois had a run on the bank in ’39. And suddenly entrepreneurs like Isaac Galland and others are looking for, where can we dump this land, and who are people desperate enough? That Joseph says, “No better place presenting itself, I now go to Commerce to build up a city that will be a light into the world.”

John Bytheway: 09:42 The first time I visited Nauvoo I thought… I assumed swamp means it’s at the same level of the river, and you’re going up a hill. I thought, “How is this swampy?” And the swamp evidently didn’t come from the river, right? It came from springs?

Dr. Susan Black: 10:00 Right. There’s a lot of springs under Nauvoo. Nauvoo’s built on limestone, and water runs down from the bluff onto the flatter portion. You do get floodwater. I mean, you see Nauvoo now, and to get there, many of us cross the dam down by a place called Keokuk, right? And then right outside, as we come up to Nauvoo, we can see that Nauvoo is a peninsula that juts out into the Mississippi river. But that by forming that dam, they created out of the Mississippi River a lake, called Lake Cooper. And so a lot more water than the Saints would have seen. I mean, I think with spy glasses, you could actually see across to Montrose at the time, and see two islands that are now submerged due to the lake effect.

Hank Smith: 10:56 Oh, okay. So the river would have been a lot smaller.

John Bytheway: 11:00 Yeah. And the swamp wasn’t the river being high. The swamp was runoff from the bluff and springs or whatever, and so they had to dig these ditches to drain everything. Was that job one?

Dr. Susan Black: 11:13 Right. And so, yeah, job one. You go, “Boy, I’d like to be one of the first to arrive in Nauvoo.”

John Bytheway: 11:19 So I can dig a ditch.

Dr. Susan Black: 11:22 And definitely the assignment was dig ditches. And almost like you’re digging ditches so you can have a little tributary, so you can control the water now as it heads to the Mississippi. And leading that effort will be the Seventy, and eventually Nauvoo will have 35 Quorum of Seventies. I mean, it just, but it was dig those ditches and eventually they’ll move to public works like the Nauvoo House and Nauvoo Temple, a music hall, that kind of thing.

John Bytheway: 11:53 And I think, isn’t it true that by the side of the road, you still see the ditches on the north south road there?

Dr. Susan Black: 11:59 Right. If you’re coming down Durfee Street, the main street that will lead up towards the temple today, right next to the Nauvoo State Park, you can still see remnants of the ditches. And having been there last week, they need to mow. Otherwise ditches fill in and pretty soon you’re really back to that swamp.

John Bytheway: 12:21 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 12:22 You were just there last week, Susan?

Dr. Susan Black: 12:24 I was.

John Bytheway: 12:25 So the elders quorum is for moving people and the Seventy are for digging ditches. Okay.

Dr. Susan Black: 12:31 The Seventy, yep. That’s how it was at first.

Hank Smith: 12:35 So Susan it’s January of 1841 when we get this revelation, what’s happened that even spurs this? This certain revelation here?

Dr. Susan Black: 12:48 Well, as they come into town, you realize you’ve got to drain the ditches, put in your houses, put in your gardens, your shop next to your house, your barn. And basically everybody’s a farmer. And so some people say, well, Joseph Smith orchestrates and is the architect of Nauvoo. And I go, well, when they’re all farmers, they can’t all live together. So if you looked at any given map between 1839 and ’41, you can see Joseph Smith has 23 communities on one side of the Mississippi. And then on the Iowa side of the Mississippi, you’ve got 15. So between all that, you have all this going on, but then the question comes, we’re now to January 19th of 1841. When can you count that the Saints and Joseph Smith would actually be living in Nauvoo and not out on his farm? You’d say the winter months. And so January 19th, Joseph Smith… and we don’t know the location that he was at… but Joseph Smith at Nauvoo received a very long revelation from the Lord, which takes 145 verses. And that’s our Section 124.

John Bytheway: 14:13 And it’s the longest section, isn’t it?

Dr. Susan Black: 14:16 Well, I think you could look at Section 76, there are a few that could kind of rival it.

Hank Smith: 14:20 That could compete, yeah.

Dr. Susan Black: 14:21 But for this time period, for sure it’s the longest.

Hank Smith: 14:26 Susan, I know we’re going to talk more about the revelation itself, but I just want to hear a little bit about your experience in Nauvoo. I know that you have a home there, or had a home there, which you donated, but what do you think about Nauvoo? Why do you love it so much? I’ve been there with you, and you can almost feel it coming off you. It radiates off you, a love of this place. Why do you love it so much?

Dr. Susan Black: 15:00 Well, okay. I love Nauvoo, I’ve served four missions now in Nauvoo. I’ve written scripts. I’ve tried to find all the people that lived in the different communities. So, that was a mission. I’ve served a mission for a year in the temple there, I’ve done the song and dance on the stage, helped set up their lands and records office. So you could say all of that. And had a house there since 2005. How do I feel about Nauvoo? I actually think it started for me, I took a Church History trip with my favorite professor at BYU, Milton V. Backman, Jr. And I went through Missouri with him, and we got to Nauvoo and he just lit up. And the crazy thing, so did I, and I’ll always be grateful for that. And I found myself doing so much research in Nauvoo, and got tired of the hotels and the rent something for a week.

Dr. Susan Black: 16:05 And I go, that’s it, I’m going to make this a more permanent. And you’d say, I love the people in the past. I’ve written about, I think every person that walked the streets of Old Nauvoo, from their land properties, did they do baptisms for the dead? Were they a member of the Church? Do they join the reorganized church? Anyway, I just have loved it. And if you were to say, how do I feel about the current people in Nauvoo? I mean, just to give you one example from yesterday, I had a moving van company going to stop by my home and bring some things to Utah, right? And they were late, and a friend sat in my home for over an hour waiting for them. And then when they arrived, she asked if they’d eaten and they hadn’t. And she went home and got food and brought it back to them.

Dr. Susan Black: 17:01 Those kinds of neighbors are hard to come by, right? And I love the people at Nauvoo. This last week, I gave a couple of talks, and one night we went over to Annie’s Custard and found it was closed. And I slammed on the door, “Let me in.” And Helen opened up and I go, “I need to eat this, this, this,” and she would not allow me to pay. Now, that’s when you know you’ve got… I have some just amazing friends there. And I think in Joseph’s time, the Lord picked up and took the best of the best, and I think it’s still the same today. So I love the current people in Nauvoo as much as I have the ones in the past.

Hank Smith: 17:47 All right. I can’t imagine how Annie’s Custard is going to get bombarded by people saying, “Susan says we don’t have to pay.”

Dr. Susan Black: 17:57 Well, I hope they tip really well.

John Bytheway: 18:01 Can I have the Susan Discount? Yeah.

Dr. Susan Black: 18:03 Yes, yes.

John Bytheway: 18:04 Hey, I wanted to ask you, I think I remember once just throwing out the name of my fifth great grandfather, and that you knew exactly who it was, that I think was endowed in Nauvoo his name was Samuel Alexander Pagan Kelsey.

Dr. Susan Black: 18:22 Yep.

John Bytheway: 18:22 Does that ring a bell?

Dr. Susan Black: 18:23 So ,I know you can see behind me.

John Bytheway: 18:25 His name is in there.

Dr. Susan Black: 18:27 And that’s actually a better sight, but you’re seeing that I’m sitting in my library, which I think is actually the biggest room in the house. And where you see those blue books, they still just keep going, and there are… Well, it’s 48,000 pages. And it’s of the people that had known the Prophet Joseph with a real emphasis on those in Nauvoo. And you know, I’ve said, “Why would I do all this?” And I’ve said, “If I thought my husband was funnier, I probably wouldn’t have done it.” I just had some free time, okay.

John Bytheway: 19:08 48,000 pages because I had some free time. Okay.

Dr. Susan Black: 19:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 19:13 And John, that brings up a great point. If people will open up their Family Search App, you can actually go to a thing called Map My Ancestors, and you can see if you had relatives in Nauvoo.

John Bytheway: 19:24 In Nauvoo, yeah.

Hank Smith: 19:25 When I go there, I had two relatives that lived in Nauvoo, George Washington Clyde and John Wooton, both in Nauvoo. Buried there.

Dr. Susan Black: 19:36 Yeah. The pPophet Joseph Smith said that there would be people that would come along after him that would take unusual interest in his generation, and time, and his people. And I think obviously you two have, I don’t know if you’d call it just a passion, but the love for the people. It doesn’t mean that they all stayed faithful, but when they were on the scene, they all made a contribution. And I think sometimes, we get after people that don’t hang in every minute of their lives, but I think they were there, and their contribution needs to be remembered.

Hank Smith: 20:19 Yeah. And there’s just, there is something about that place. I love going there. I love taking groups there. John, I know you do too. You come around that bend and up towards the temple, and oh, you’re just… There’s nowhere like it.

Dr. Susan Black: 20:34 Yeah. It’s a sight. I think we all say, sorry John, that we go to different sites and I’ll ask, do you feel the Spirit of the Lord? In Nauvoo even on their missionary vans, it says, “Spirit of Joseph.” So you want to ask, did you feel the Spirit of Joseph? And I’ve had an occasion to read all the dedicatory prayers from the little bakery to the Jonathan Browning Gun Shop to the Wainwright. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. And it’s so interesting, even though you can read, say in the Bakery, read about Lucia Scoville and his bearing children and the wedding cakes and the cost of all that.

Dr. Susan Black: 21:16 But before they’re all said and done, they’re dedicated to the memory of Joseph Smith. So whether you’re looking at the Women’s Garden by the Nauvoo Visitor Center, or you’re way down the street at the Boot and Shoe Place, memory of Joseph Smith. And it’s interesting, it’s not just the memory of Joseph Smith. If you began to look at dedication dates, your most consistent dedication date is always in June, and it’s around the martyrdom. So Nauvoo is a Restoration place in memory of Joseph Smith. And what’s it a memory of? The martyrdom that he sealed his life with his testimony of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Doctrine and Covenants we’re studying this year. Isn’t that great?

Hank Smith: 22:11 Yeah. Yeah, that’s beautiful. John, you were going to say something about Nauvoo, coming around that bend?

John Bytheway: 22:16 Oh, I just, the first time I ever went there, Hank, you were probably in Third Grade or something. I don’t know. But there was-

Hank Smith: 22:24 The Saints had just left, right? When I came there.

John Bytheway: 22:26 Yeah that’s right. I was like, “Bye!” No, the temple was just grass, but there were four stones marking where the corners would have been. And so for me seeing that and having it affect me that it was gone and then coming back later and seeing the temple fully finished was just really a wow moment to see it back there again. And I’m sure Susan will remember, when exactly, when did President Hinckley make that announcement? I remember an audible gasp when he announced it, and when did we finish it?

Dr. Susan Black: 23:06 Okay. All right. So in April 1999, I’m sitting at home, I’m watching [General] Conference and wearing sweats. I’m no dummy. I know my name’s not being called off. So I’m sitting home, and it’s at the very end. And President Hinckley is thanking everyone for their talks. And then he starts coughing. And I’m saying to myself, and before he coughs, he goes, “I have an announcement to make.” And then he coughs. And I’m saying to myself, “Somebody get him a drink of water. I mean, if there’s anybody’s announcement, I’d like to hear, I’d like to hear his,” right. And then he says, “I’d like to announce we’re going to rebuild the Nauvoo Temple.” And suddenly for me, just tears. Anyway, you might enjoy this. When Conference was over, I got a call from a friend at the Nauvoo Stake Center that said their Stake President, Darrell Nelson, who now owns the fudge shop in Nauvoo, that he wanted her to call me and ask what went on the rest of Conference.

Dr. Susan Black: 24:18 And I said, “I’ll tell, but you got to tell me what happened when the announcement was made in Nauvoo.” And she said, “Some started whistling, clapping, others got down on their knees, they’re praying.” And I go, “Well, what are you doing afterwards?” And she said, “We’re all going to that depression that John talked about, where you had the stones and you had the circle in the middle, the circular staircase and where the baptismal font had been.” And she said, “We’re going to hold hands around that lot,” which is on four acres. And she said, “We’re going to sing ‘The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning.’ ” And after that, it will take almost six months to get approval from the Nauvoo City Council for there to be the construction to go forward. But then construction goes forward, and Nauvoo had never seen the like. Nauvoo struggles now to be a town of 1,000 people.

Dr. Susan Black: 25:18 And suddenly you’ve got Jacobson and Layton Construction. They’re just rolling in with big trucks. And eventually you get a, oh, you get the open house. And over 330,000 people toured that open house. And then you get, it’s now coming time for, when will it be dedicated? And I can remember friends in the Joseph Smith Building, we’d run through and we’d say, “April 6th, it’s going to be dedicated April 6th.” And we go, no, no. And and others are saying, “No, May 15th, the priesthood.” And you’d say, when was it dedicated? June 27th, martyrdom, 2002. And to get a seat in the building for the dedication, well, I would have done anything. So in this case, I took General Authority wives back there, showed them the sites and guaranteed a seat for the June 27th, 2002. And I had said, “Hey, even if I’m sitting on the horns of the oxen, I just got to get in.”

Dr. Susan Black: 26:23 And I ended up pretty much nosebleed upstairs, but got to be in a sealing room. And President Hinckley, it was just so amazing to me. You’ve got men singing from the choir, the Tabernacle Choir, singing “Praise to the Man,” which was the funeral eulogy given by W.W. Phelps, there in the corners. And then President Hinckley, when he stands up, before he dedicates that building, he says, “I want to tell you about a man named Thomas Ford.”

John Bytheway: 26:56 I remember this.

Dr. Susan Black: 26:57 And okay. I don’t know if I was the only one that just practically jumped out of my seat, but I have read a lot of boring books in my life and I’ve written even more, right? But Thomas Ford wrote a book called The History of Illinois. And in The History of Illinois, you read and read, and then you read he has three fears. And his three big fears were that there would be someone who would keep alive the name of Joseph Smith. So thank you, Hank and John, you’re telling the world. I love that. And all of those missionaries out there return. And then his second fear was that place names, like Nauvoo, a little tiny town out in the middle of nowhere. I mean, your closest airport is St. Louis. I mean, it’s going to take you three, four, who knows how long, depending how many times you stop. And that place names like Nauvoo, Palmyra, would be as familiar to people around the world, such as Bethlehem and Gethsemane. I can say this.

Dr. Susan Black: 28:07 And then his third fear, he was fearful that there would be a great speaker who would one day link his name to Herod and Pontius Pilot. And who was that great speaker? I mean, you could tune in all over the world, do the Hosannah Shout in stake centers everywhere. And here is this just wonderful man that’s about my size, right? Gordon B. Hinckley now stands up and says, “I want to tell you about Thomas Ford.” And the whole world learned that he literally turned his back. It’s not like he shot the gun that killed Joseph, but he made it possible by his total inept… I mean, he just didn’t fulfill his assignment. So wow, to be there and then to listen to President Hinckley dedicate that building. And then to ask people afterwards, walk Parley Street and change it to the Trail of Hope. In other words, to Trail of Hope, we’re heading West, was just one of the most spectacular days of my life.

Hank Smith: 29:18 I got to read this to you, Susan, I have it on my phone here. He says, “It is to be feared.” This is Governor Ford. “It is to be feared that in the course of a century, some gifted man like Paul, some splendid orator, who will be able to, by his eloquence, to attract crowds of thousands who are ready to hear and be carried away. He may command a hearing and may command in succeeding, breathing new life and make the name of the martyr Joseph ring is loud and stir the souls of men as much as the mighty name of Christ himself.” And then he lists off these names, “Sharon, Palmyra, Manchester, Kirtland, Far West, Adam-ondi-Ahman, Nauvoo, and Carthage may become holy and venerable names. Places of clastic interest, in another age like Jerusalem, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives, Calvary.”

Hank Smith: 30:11 And he says, “This author feels degraded by that reflection.” You think? He says, “He will be hitched on the memory of Joseph Smith,” meaning himself. I don’t want to be hitched to the memory of Joseph Smith. So I mean Governor Ford became a bit of a prophet there in saying, yeah. Yeah. Those names are important to us. Every one of them. Yeah. And I remember you told me a story about President Hinckley at Governor Ford’s grave. Do you remember telling that story, Susan, that he would pace in front of that grave and get…

Dr. Susan Black: 30:53 Yes. I think for President Hinckley, his love of history, of Church History sites, I mean, you just start to look and you just can find him at dedications, rededications all over the place. And he had strong feelings about Governor Ford.

Hank Smith: 31:15 Yep he did.

Dr. Susan Black: 31:17 Yeah. You want to be on the good side of a prophet, you know all of us, John and Hank, we got to make good choices here.

John Bytheway: 31:25 I just remember when I came back there, I couldn’t… I think my family commented on it. I couldn’t stop shaking my head just that there was this temple. We were back. I mean, I couldn’t… All my seminary, all… That we’d got kicked out of Nauvoo and that they were painting it and they had to leave and it was back and it was gorgeous. And I just couldn’t… I can’t look, we’re in Nauvoo. So that was, I’m so glad you relived some of that force, that dedication and everything.

Dr. Susan Black: 31:58 And we only had one picture of the old Nauvoo Temple, right? And so suddenly architects and those that are designing it are desperate. What should be included on the inside, outside, colors? And we know that Joseph Smith’s Red Brick Store, where they had the first endowment, that the inside of the store was painted with buttermilk and ox blood. And so it was red. And so as I’m talking with the architect, trying to give ideas, I said, “Well, of course the inside is red.” And if you’ve been in the temple, you quickly notice I have no power or influence. And having served in there a year as a missionary temple worker, that I can assure you, I haven’t found one red building, or one red room in the entire building. Yes. Well, the other thing is that when they had the wooden font, and that’s the one that was really used for baptisms, right?

Dr. Susan Black: 33:04 When they had the wooden font, the oxen were all wood. And then the bowl that they hold up was all wood. And so everything was wood, except the ears of the oxen were tin, T-I-N. And so I said to the architect, even though you’re doing stone, I want those tin, T-I-N ears, on the oxygen so it gives it this bling. Bling was big, it would kind of really pop out, but once again, no power or influence and obviously it didn’t happen, but I still think it would look great.

Hank Smith: 33:38 A little chrome on those oxen.

Dr. Susan Black: 33:41 Yes.

John Bytheway: 33:41 Yeah. It reminds me of, I was reading in the Saints book about the Kirtland Temple. Did I recall that the roof was red, and the sides were blue or something?

Dr. Susan Black: 33:53 Right. The roof’s red, and then the window casings blue and the doors all were green.

John Bytheway: 33:58 And the doors green? And it’s just, I think that clothes go through fashions, and so does architecture and colors, but.

Dr. Susan Black: 34:08 Right. So how it used to be back then, you’d build a log cabin, and then you got money coming in, you built a clapboard house and then… But how you knew somebody was well to do is that they would splash their buildings with color. And nowhere do you see it better than that John Johnson Farmhouse back in Hiram, Ohio. The floor in Joseph Smith’s bedroom, the blue, red, green, kind of looks like a checkerboard.

John Bytheway: 34:33 Yeah. And the revelation room, is it orange trim? I mean, there’s trim around the fireplaces that are-

Dr. Susan Black: 34:41 Right.

John Bytheway: 34:41 The way the wood is varnished or painted is kind of swirly.

Dr. Susan Black: 34:45 And you have all the turquoise.

John Bytheway: 34:45 And you’re like, oh, that’s very interesting when you see it.

Hank Smith: 34:48 The Whitney home is bright yellow. Yeah. That’s it.

Dr. Susan Black: 34:51 Yeah. So you can tell, we need to… We’re now all, what? Gray or beige, and you’re like, what?

Hank Smith: 34:56 Yeah, where did we lose it?

Dr. Susan Black: 34:57 We need to splash our homes.

John Bytheway: 34:58 If we can afford some paint, let’s…

Hank Smith: 35:00 Yeah, let’s go bright green. I’m sure my wife will be really excited about that.

John Bytheway: 35:07 Well, let’s go into some of these verses. I love how this starts with this idea of a proclamation. You want to lead us through how this revelation begins?

Dr. Susan Black: 35:20 For me, I love Joseph Smith, and I love the boldness as the revelation begins. And especially as he is saying to do a proclamation to all the kings of the world. And then as he goes forward, he tells them to awake. You’re like, okay, kings. What are they to awake to? And they’re to awake to the needs of the daughters of Zion, and to bring their gold and silver, and basically to help build up what is known as the corner stake of the Church, then Nauvoo, Illinois. And wouldn’t that be great if they had, and if they would do it today. Nauvoo could sure use it.

Hank Smith: 36:11 We’ll just let you take the show here, Susan, walk us through the revelation verse by verse, what you want us to see.

Dr. Susan Black: 36:18 All right. So looking at the revelation, you’ve got the first 14 verses is Joseph Smith and a great desire to send a proclamation to all the kings of the earth, to the presidents of the United States, to governors, to all rulers, to let them know we’re in Nauvoo. And then it switches from there to talk about men that Joseph had known who had a great integrity, and of them only one was alive at that time. So you get Hyrum Smith, his brother, a man of great integrity, but then Joseph… The Lord refers to two others. David W. Patten, who died at the Battle of Crooked River, and Joseph Smith, Sr., who had died in 1840. But all three of the men having integrity. Could you imagine anything better said about any of us, that you could count on us no matter the situation? And I like that. From there on out, you get there’s much talk about two buildings, and when I come on with you, it seems like I always get to do buildings. And I like that.

Dr. Susan Black: 37:42 So the Nauvoo House and the Nauvoo Temple, and then Hyrum Smith becoming officially ordained patriarch. And I like his being a patriarch. Hyrum was so serious about being a patriarch that he set aside three days a week that you could receive your blessings from him. So every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I think of Hyrum Smith. I think of the literally dozens and dozens of patriarchal blessings he gave from 1841 to ’44. And then at the end of the revelation, it goes through the leadership of the Church, starting with the First Presidency down to the deacons quorums, and that’s where you get so many names in Section 124. But I think for us, the part that would perhaps be the most interesting and long lasting, I know you want to hear about the presidency of the deacons, right?

Dr. Susan Black: 38:49 Okay. All right. But I think probably if we talked about the Nauvoo House and a little bit more about the beginning part of the Nauvoo Temple, it might serve our listeners well. So on this Nauvoo House, so interesting. You can walk around the outside and see it today, but it isn’t a place that the typical tourist goes. But you’d say, let’s say you wanted to do a family reunion, had a youth group, some kind of friends all getting together, it would be a wonderful place to rent. And you’re right down there by the Mississippi River, you’re right across the street from the Homestead. But this Nauvoo House looking at it anciently, we know that Joseph Smith will call, then, four men, and the Lord names them. You get George Miller, Lyman White, John Snyder, and you also get Peter Haas. And their job is, and they’re all mentioned in Section 124.

John Bytheway: 40:02 Verse 22, George-

Hank Smith: 40:04 George Miller’s verse 20.

Dr. Susan Black: 40:07 Okay. And then keep going. You’ll find Lyman White, John Snyder, and Peter Haas. And they’re trustees for the building of this Nauvoo house. And what I think is so interesting, sometimes when you get the people at the top, they then assign out and they continue sitting at the top, right? And are not actively involved in, say, the building or the getting. But if you were to look at each one of these men, you can find them going out on missions to be able to get money, to get lumber, whatever’s needed for this Nauvoo House. So I like them a lot actually.

Dr. Susan Black: 40:53 So they form a organization and they form it one month after the revelation, in February 1841. And it’s the Nauvoo House Association between these four men, they estimate that what is going to be the Nauvoo house has a possibility of being worth, and to be able to build, $150,000, which is big money at the time. You get John Snyder, he goes all the way to England to collect money for this, and he comes back with over $900, I think it’s pretty impressive, from the English Saints that are trying to save up their money, to be able to come to the United States, to be able to help with the building of this building.

Hank Smith: 41:49 And Susan, for those of us who’ve never heard of the Nauvoo House, what is it exactly?

Dr. Susan Black: 41:54 Well, it was supposed to be an L-shaped kind of like a hotel, where there would be a resting place for kings and queens, people like us, to come and to sit and to play the great things of the world. What I think is so interesting, as they try to raise the money, they did subscriptions like stocks, and you could put in $50 up to 15,000, but no more. And it’s interesting, the only people that could buy stock in this, you think of, “Hey, you could buy stock,” but the only people that could buy stock were those who believed the Book of Mormon to be the word of God, and those who believe Joseph’s prophecies. And I don’t know of any other stock company that would have this caveat that says, “To buy stock in our organization, you’ve got to know the Book of Mormon is true, and Joseph Smith a prophet of God.”

Dr. Susan Black: 42:59 Now they will actually begin building. And it’s quite a large facade. The first floor… it was ultimately to be three floors… but the first floor would be rock. And then the other two floors brick. But as time went on, we know at the death of Joseph Smith, we know they were up to almost the window line, but then things stopped. And the Nauvoo House goes into the ownership of Emma Smith. For Emma, they continued building in 1845, and it’s going up even higher with the bricks. But then Brigham Young is, he’s very concerned about we need a temple. He’s concerned he’s going to take the people West, and he wants the Nauvoo Temple finished. So he takes everybody off Public Work projects. Even those drainage ditches we talked about, everybody’s off. You’re not working on the music hall, you’re not working on what we call the Cultural Hall.

Dr. Susan Black: 44:08 You’re not working on the Nauvoo House, that temple needs to be completed. So as a result, the Nauvoo House is a shell of a building. It’s L-shaped, and when the Saints go West, there’s no building on it. And okay. But I think one thing I should say that, backing up when they put the cornerstone, the southwest cornerstone in the ground, and they’re about to dedicate this site, Joseph stops the whole thing. And it’s at the October Conference in 1841. And he stops the whole thing and he goes, “Wait, I have something to put inside the cornerstone.” And he runs across the street, back to his house, the homestead, he comes back after he’s kind of checked to make sure, he thought it was all there. And he puts in the Book of Mormon Manuscript and they then seal it up. The build.

Dr. Susan Black: 45:10 But the problem was, years later, Emma’s second husband Louis Bidemon has made the decision, he will pick up all the stones and the brick, and he will then build what we call today the Nauvoo house, Riverside Mansion, the Bidemon House. We have a lot of different names for it, but in doing so, he unearths this cornerstone, and he finds that the documents, including this Book of Mormon Manuscript that had been placed in that stone, there’s mold, much is disintegrated. And so if you were to look today, since… Well, it’s since, I think it’s 1909, that this house has been owned by what was first known as the Reorganized Church, now the Community of Christ. But we know in the cellar of that house, that’s one of the places, well, Joseph was first buried, as well as Hyrum.

Dr. Susan Black: 46:14 So significant things on the Nauvoo House. Let’s see if I can summarize this. One, it’s a revelation from God. Two, there was a huge effort to build it. There was a huge effort to acquire the needed money. And you could buy stock, but only if you believed in the Book of Mormon and Joseph’s revelations. We know that Joseph was buried there for a short time, until September, then, of ’44. And we know that workers were taken off because in Brigham’s mind, it was more important to finish the Nauvoo Temple.

John Bytheway: 46:53 Can you finish your thought about that Book of Mormon Manuscript, and where it ended up?

Dr. Susan Black: 47:01 For Louis Bidemon, he started giving away parts of it to different people.

John Bytheway: 47:05 Ugh.

Dr. Susan Black: 47:06 And you’re like, “Wait a minute. You want to see a treasure I’ve found? Take part,” right? And then eventually you get Franklin D. Richards is back there, acquires, and eventually you get much of it then acquired by our church, and then trying to pull it apart to see what’s in there. I think the great work of Royal Skousen is to just be cheered. His ability to look and find, and the Church’s History Department Archives, trying to preserve what there was left of it. And too bad on that occasion, Joseph goes, “Wait a minute,” and runs back and gets it. Because obviously we would like to have seen it all kept intact.

Hank Smith: 47:54 Yeah. This is the original manuscript. The one that Oliver Cowdery penned in-

John Bytheway: 48:01 It was his handwriting.

Hank Smith: 48:02 In Harmony. The printer’s manuscript, which is the second manuscript, it’s fully intact, right Susan?

Dr. Susan Black: 48:07 Right.

Hank Smith: 48:07 It’s this original that only about a third remains, which you’re, “Oh, you put it inside a rock,” right?

John Bytheway: 48:13 Did you put it inside a bag or did you…

Dr. Susan Black: 48:17 Right. And especially down by the Mississippi, I’ve gone back there several times where it’s flooding and we’re all sandbagging. And you’re like, “No.” So yeah.

Hank Smith: 48:30 Yeah. I’ve thought that several times, like, “Oh, don’t put it in there.” Susan, say what you will, I guess, about Joseph Smith thinking that nations and people all over the earth we’re going to go visit the Nauvoo House, but 100 and how long now, years later, there are people from all over the world that go visit Nauvoo. It just took a little bit of time.

Dr. Susan Black: 48:55 Okay. From literally all over the world. And there’s now hotels and bed and breakfasts, and other places that you can stay, but it’s been… Serving back there, I’ve been amazed how many times I’ve met people from Japan, Russia, and Orient. I mean, they’re just, they’re coming from all over to see a little town that, wow. Since the Saints left, since the 1860s, we’re… Well, okay. Just as an example, just that whole Hancock County in 2010, they did a census. And in the whole county, which includes Carthage, there was only one town named Elvaston you see on the way to Carthage and it was the only town that gained in population, and they went from 150 to 151 because a woman had a baby. And so, you look at this area and yet because Nauvoo is talked about all over the world, people will come and they see that beautiful temple and the spirit.

Hank Smith: 50:02 Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the nations of the earth are coming to Nauvoo. Maybe not as early as Joseph thought they would, but they are coming right now.

Dr. Susan Black: 50:11 But they definitely coming. And in my mind, it continues to be a light into the world.

Hank Smith: 50:15 Yeah, me too.

Dr. Susan Black: 50:17 Because of what you get there. I mean, you get baptisms for the dead, families can be together forever, the endowment, ceilings. We trace all that to Nauvoo.

John Bytheway: 50:32 Please join us for Part II of this podcast.