Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:00:03             Brigham looked up to Joseph, admired Joseph, followed Joseph. Brigham’s first reaction is that he cannot comprehend that Joseph could be taken or what would happen. Then his third reaction is that quiet reassurance of the Holy Spirit that comes into his heart and mind, and he realizes, no, wait a minute. We have everything that we need. Joseph gave us the keys, the authority.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:34             Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith and I am your host. I’m here with my co-host, John Bytheway, who’s words tend to edify. John that is section 136. We’re getting towards the end of the Doctrine & Covenants here. That’s verse 24. Let your words tend to edify one another, and John, I’ve known you for a long time. Whenever you’re interacting with someone, I can see it. You want to build them. You want to edify.

John Bytheway:               00:01:04             I learned her from you, Hank. Thank you.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:07             And your wonderful wife. Kim is not a wit behind you. She is a builder.

John Bytheway:               00:01:10             Well, she’s the best.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:12             What is it Mark Twain said, I can live for a few months on a good compliment. You both are that way. John we are very blessed today we have Dr. Keith Erekson joining us. Dr. Erekson. Keith, welcome.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:01:24             Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:26             This is an honor. I’ve listened to quite a bit of what you’ve done. I’ve seen you on the face-to-face videos with the church. John and I, we’re gonna try not to be nervous here.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:01:36             Well, me too. It’s exciting to be here.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:39             This is gonna be fun. We’re gonna start with a difficult section today, section 135. That’s the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. We’re also gonna look at Section 136, Brigham Young and the trek West. That’s a lot. John, what comes to mind? What have you been thinking about as we’ve been preparing?

John Bytheway:               00:01:59             I think about Carthage Jail a lot. You know how you go to a place and a song runs through your mind? There’s a heaviness there, but I also hear myself singing inside “millions shall know Brother Joseph again”, how that has come true. Here we are sitting here today, almost a couple of hundred years later, and we’re talking about that. Wow, here we are, and everything that I hold dear comes from the Lord through His church restored through His prophet. Well, that’s what I think about.

Hank Smith:                      00:02:31             I was thinking about Section 136, John, sometimes we get in our head, Keith can probably speak to this, that these people knew this was gonna work out. Oh yeah, we gotta move to the Salt Lake Valley now. Then we’ll build the conference center and things will be awesome. They’re heading out into the wilderness, fleeing a country. They don’t know if they’re gonna survive. They don’t know if this is going to work. If you think in your head, oh, they know. Then you take away the pain, the difficulty that they must be facing as they head out towards the west and not knowing what’s going to happen to them. Keith, as you’ve been preparing for our lesson here, where are we gonna go? What do you wanna do?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:03:12             These are two really wonderful sections. I think we need to spend time in the text, maybe put it into context and take one in turn and they go different directions. They do point to our testimony, our witness of Joseph Smith and of Brigham Young. So I think after looking at each section, maybe we pull back a little and reflect about prophets in general. These two, what their missions and legacies teach us. What it means for people in the 21st century who are trying living in that same uncertainty. We have uncertainty about different things, but we still have a living prophet to guide us through our times of trouble, and that might be where we could go in the end.

Hank Smith:                      00:03:58             Yeah, that’s exciting. I think, John, as I was looking at these two sections and Keith came to mind, I thought, there’s no one better who can do this. Now he won’t agree. He’ll say there’s a lot of people better. Keith is in a wonderful position as a historian for the church to take a look at both of these great men and tell us about them and help us get into their hearts and their minds. John, there might be someone out there who doesn’t know who Keith is because I think you did a background check, a credit check.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:04:28             My mom will be listening. She wants to know, what do you do?

John Bytheway:               00:04:33             She gave me a few pages here. So Dr. Keith A. Erekson is an award-winning author, teacher, historian, who currently serves as the director of historical research and outreach for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’s also on the editorial board of the Church Historians Press and he’s authored numerous books and articles on topics including politics, hoaxes, Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley, and Latter-day Saint History. His work has been published in various scholarly journals, including the Journal of American History, the History Teacher, the Journal of Abraham Lincoln Association, the Oral History Review, and the Latter-day Saint History Journals. He possesses two decades of international management experience in this. I love this part, Hank. Library administration, higher education, scholarly publishing, and wait for it. Automotive manufacturing. Didn’t see that one coming.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:05:32             That’s where life began. That’s right.

John Bytheway:               00:05:34             He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from BYU. A doctoral degree in history from Indiana University and an MBA from UTEP. He grew up near Baltimore, Maryland, but now lives near Salt Lake City with his wife and children, automotive manufacturing. How did you fit that in all the rest of that?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:05:53             That’s actually where it started. That was my first career. I started there just as a college student working summers. I served a mission in Brazil and came back, when my company was expanding into Latin America, they whisked me along. I went back to Brazil as now a expat worked there. We launched several plants. We built the seats for various companies, GM, Ford, whatever. But we were the seat manufacturer that they would then plug in as it came down the assembly line.

John Bytheway:               00:06:27             So you were fluent in Portuguese at that point?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:06:30             Yeah, I learned new words as a missionary. I hadn’t learned words like assembly line or other words, more colorful words, that you use to help employees behave.

Hank Smith:                      00:06:45             That’s great. Well, Keith, we feel privileged to have you here.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:06:50             Well, I’m just honored to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Hank Smith:                      00:06:53             We know you’re very busy in your position with the church, and this is a blessing to us and our listeners. Let’s get underway. I wanna give Joseph and Hyrum and Brigham and these incredible Saints a lot of time since we have you here. The Come, Follow Me lesson this week is entitled, “He Has Sealed His Mission and His Works With His Own Blood. It begins this way. The afternoon of June 27th, 1844 found Joseph and Hyrum Smith in jail once again accompanied by John Taylor and Willard Richards. They believed they were innocent of any crime, but they submitted to arrest hoping to keep the Saints in Nauvoo safe. This wasn’t the first time that enemies of the church had put the prophet Joseph in prison, but this time he seemed to know he would not return alive. He and his friends tried to comfort each other by reading from the Book of Mormon and singing hymns. Then gunshots were heard, and within a few minutes the mortal lives of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum had come to an end. And yet it was not the end of the divine cause that they had embraced and it was not the end of the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There was more work to do and more revelation that would guide the church forward. The end of the prophet’s life was not the end of the work of God. A beautiful introduction. Keith, where do you want to go from here? Should we just take on 135 on its own?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:08:17             Yeah, that makes the most sense. Spend a little time there that really sets the scene for that afternoon. There’s maybe one other little detail from that day that’s been really meaningful in my life. That morning Joseph dictated a letter back to people in Nauvoo with some instructions and things to do, but then he asked them to give him the piece of paper and in his own hand, he wrote a little note that morning to Emma. The note said, dear Emma, I am very much resigned to my lot knowing I am justified and have done the best that could be done. Give my love to the children. Those were the last words. That gives you a little window into his thinking. He had done what he could. His thoughts were with his children and family.

Hank Smith:                      00:09:15             Now I’m resigned to my lot, meaning what’s going to happen is going to happen. Yeah.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:09:21             Yeah. I think the text picks up in the aftermath of the martyrdom. Word gets back to Nauvoo fairly quickly. I mean, we’re still traveling over land at the speed of a horse, but certainly by the next morning June 28th, people are waking up and hearing this news. The immediate reactions are shock and mourning. We see this in all kinds of records from the Latter-day Saints from this summer of 1844. They write letters to each other. If you’ve heard the word in Nauvoo, you’re gonna send a letter to your sister back in New England or somewhere. We see people in shock reporting on their feelings and the loss and disbelief. As the intro mentioned, Joseph had been imprisoned before and he had always come out. For some people there was a little sense, oh yeah, they can’t do anything to him. This was a shock, a real disconnect that people also write in their journals.

                                           00:10:30             They go to personal places to share their feelings or their distress or their wondering. In time, we start to see more creative and more public expressions. We mentioned already the poem that WW Phelps wrote that has been set to music is Praise To The Man, but poetry becomes a way. John Taylor writes a poem, oh, give me back my prophet, dear, full of that feeling of loss, and then editorials, they’ll start to publish statements about the church or Joseph. That’s where this text, that’s section 135, emerges is in this moment trying to make sense of things. One thing we do in history, we look at little documents, little items, artifacts, and we try and understand bigger things that are significant. This one does illustrate that in a really telling way. One of the questions with Joseph’s murder was, is it over? What will happen? Where will we go?

                                           00:11:34             What is the future? One of the last things that was happening in Joseph’s life was they were preparing a new edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. They had one edition published in 1835. That was a second effort at publishing the revelations. The Book of Commandments didn’t come to pass in Missouri, but they do publish the Doctrine and Covenants. Since 1835 to 1844, there had been additional revelations and more things, and so they were working on a second edition and they were right at the final phase of that, just about ready to publish. Joseph is murdered. This text is prepared. It’s inserted into the Doctrine and Covenants, and it’s so late in the process. They have to print it in smaller font, so it looks different. You open your book and the whole book looks one way. This was clearly added right at the end, but I think that’s an important part of the witness.

                                           00:12:32             It is clearly added to the question of what will happen? Will the work go forward? Yes, the work goes forward and we add a last minute addition as the work continues to go forward. In many ways this becomes the most important published statement of Joseph’s mission. It’s in that moment of the shock of his death. It goes directly into our canonized scripture. From there, it has been a part of the text that we study and give us inspiration literally from weeks, moments after his death. This witness is what we think about as we think about his mission and legacy.

John Bytheway:               00:13:18             I love the idea that, let’s insert this in there and we’re going forth with the publication this is not over. This is going forward that they knew that. That’s a great insight.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:13:31             It’s kind of like the first little clue, oh, here we go. Here comes the Doctrine and Covenants. It’s still on track.

Hank Smith:                      00:13:37             You know, I was in Carthage Jail once with Alex Baugh, who is on our show this year. One thing he said that I’d never thought of is one of the greatest moments in Latter-day Saint history is when the people of Nauvoo do not retaliate. This is their prophet. They do have the Nauvoo Legion. They could have retaliated and they do not. I’d never even thought of that. What Joseph and Hyrum mean to them and the emotion that could have brought up, especially after having lived through Missouri. We’re not gonna let this happen, and yet they do not respond in violence. It’s pretty incredible, pretty remarkable.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:14:21             Well, let’s maybe go into the text itself. The opening verse talks about sealing their testimony with their blood, and our lesson, we’ve hinted at pulls that imagery. I think it’s interesting that it seals the testimony of the Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon. They’re both listed there. The Book of Mormon is the first book that launches the Restoration. The Book of Mormon is published in March of 1830 and the church is organized a few days later and then we’ve got the Doctrine and Covenants that will be published just a few weeks, this second edition. These books are also the book ends of his public ministry and bringing the word of God to us, his death becomes the seal that makes them binding or permanent or in effect. We have a couple of verses that narrate, that tell the story, that set the scene, the time and the mob size and the the final words.

                                           00:15:25             But then we get to verse three, which as I was reading it this time, it reminded me of my days as a university professor trying to help people write clearly and to have a thesis statement to present your claim and then to follow it with evidence in support. Verse three does this. It makes as a declaration the thesis that Joseph has done more than any living person save Jesus Christ. That isn’t just empty rhetoric, it’s followed with in this short space of his life. He’s brought forth and translated the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God. He’s published it. They’ve sent the gospel to the four quarters of the earth. This one is one that Latter-day Saints tend to forget. Modern saints often have a narrative that the church was kind of an American church for a long time. We went to Utah.

                                           00:16:21             We hid for a while and then somewhere in the 20th century we kind of woke up and started going to the world. That is not at all true for the first generation of Latter-day Saints. They absolutely knew that the message of the Restoration was for the whole Earth. The Quorum of the Twelve is sent to England. Missionaries are sent to the Pacific. We have today eighth generation members of the church on Pacific Islands because the missionaries had been there that long. Orson Hyde is sent to dedicate the holy land in the early 1840s and comes back home through Europe. They have a vision. This tiny group of people have a vision that this is to go to the four quarters of the Earth and they’re doing that work. The Quorum of the Twelve takes seriously their mission that they should be traveling, that they should be special witnesses of Christ to the whole Earth.

                                           00:17:16             Verse three continues that he’s published the Revelations and the Commandments and then the last piece of evidence is that he has gathered the Saints. They do that in the clearest expression of that is Nauvoo. The idea of gathering of course is around in Kirtland and in Missouri, but it really comes to bear in Nauvoo when now thousands of converts are coming from the British Isles. They’re flowing in, they’re building a temple. There is a literal people gathering and there’s this bigger gathering of Israel. Joseph has received those keys. Those are becoming manifest in ordinances that we can do in the temple in Nauvoo. That’s their thesis and the evidence that this work of bringing forth these messages, sending them to the whole earth, gathering the children of God is the most important thing that’s been done since the mission of Jesus Christ.

John Bytheway:               00:18:20             It reminds me of one of my favorite paragraphs from Preach My Gospel. I don’t have it with me, I’ll just have to summarize, but it’s something like throughout history, God has had a pattern of reaching out to his children through a prophet and throughout history his children have had a pattern of rejecting him. Amazingly it says they even rejected Christ and then this great sentence, consider our evidence that God has again reached out to a prophet. The prophet’s name is Joseph Smith and the evidence is the Book of Mormon. This paragraph, I’ve thought of that I put it in my margin, the Doctrine and Covenants, many other documents, instructions for the benefit of the children. Men look at the evidence to back up that first sentence in verse three.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:19:09             And it’s not ever a competition between prophets. I think if you sat them down, they would never do this, but I think they would also acknowledge that in past dispensations the work was geographically limited. They didn’t have communication methods or transportation methods to go to the four quarters of the earth in the time of Moses or Abraham, these past dispensations, so there’s a geographic limit and we see over time there is a temporal limit. Ultimately, those dispensations pass away, their messages are rejected. This final dispensation has neither of those limits. It will go to all the earth. It will extend to all who have lived on the earth or will yet live, and the only temporal limit will be when the Savior returns to rule over the work that has been prepared.

Hank Smith:                      00:20:02             I’m guessing, John, our listeners are maybe tired of me saying this. Do you remember when 40 was old? You thought, man, that person is old, and then you hit 40 and you thought, I know nothing. I thought my parents knew everything at this point, and then you ask ’em and they say, yeah, we had no idea what we were doing. I remember being 38 and a half and going, this is how far he got. He was 38 and to me at this point, well, I’m 10 years older than that now. I look back at 38 and go, I didn’t know what I was doing. I think John Taylor lists, this is what he did and this is enough for a lifetime. If he was 90 and he did this, it would be impressive. It’s even more impressive that all this was done. He’s a young 38.

                                           00:20:46             We think of Hyrum as the older sibling. He’s younger than all of us at 43. It’s impressive to me, and I know I’ve said that multiple times that we’ve studied something like a section 42 or section 88 or section 93 and thought, oh yeah, this is pretty common for a 30-year-old farmer to be putting out this philosophy and light and truth and restoration of scripture. John, you and I were just talking with Dr. Dirkmaat. We hadn’t hit record yet on one of our episodes with him. Do you remember what he said about the book of Moses? He just kept saying, this is 1831. He is giving us this in 1831, the book of Moses.

John Bytheway:               00:21:29             For me, the Pearl of Great Price. You just read it and think the text itself is so beyond speaking of automotive manufacturing. You go to a Schwinn bicycle factory and out comes a Genesis GV 80 right? How did this come out of that. This frontier farmer. How did this come out of that?

Hank Smith:                      00:21:51             I like what you said there, John. It’s remarkable. I wish I could somehow come up with the right words to describe the awe that I have for Joseph Smith. Whenever I try to put words to it, it doesn’t seem to capture it.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:22:06             Well, and what I think is interesting is that same awe is in this text. This is coming from the people who were close to him. We don’t exactly know who the author was. It’s probably a couple of people. Of course, John Taylor and Willard Richards are in the jail, so some of those details are definitely coming from their experience. There could have been others working in the printing, but these are people who’ve spent the better part of 10, 15 years with Joseph. They have that same awe. There isn’t this sense of, oh yeah, he wasn’t that great once I met him, this is their witness and the shocking moment of his loss. This is their witness.

John Bytheway:               00:22:49             Going back a bit, I was listening to the Latter-day Saints channel the other day and somebody mentioned that they heard someone say they were a seventh generation member of the church and they were Polynesian and he was like, well, I’m fifth generation. My ancestors crossed the plains. How could somebody be seventh? But it goes way back to those islands. Where is it? Parley P. Pratt that went to Polynesia very early.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:23:14             Yeah. It’s Addison and Louisa Pratt who take us into the Pacific in the early 1840s. Parley will get to Latin America and Chile eventually.

Hank Smith:                      00:23:24             Keith, I think I had it in my head. Oh yeah. We’re pretty much a United States church. We’re out in Utah. Then we go to the world. You’re right, it’s not just the United States and England. Isn’t there a pioneer who’s from India in crossing the plains?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:23:43             That’s correct. In the 1850s, a convert from India moves overland, eventually gets to Liverpool, then from there crosses the ocean and she ends up in the handcart companies, including the ones that have trouble, but she makes it. The four quarters of the earth. You’re right on there. What’s great is that God knew that from the first day in 1820 and Joseph in that first generation knew that. We are the ones who forget it a little and we just need to remind ourselves what they knew.

Hank Smith:                      00:24:19             What year was it, John? That they’re in that little schoolhouse? This church will fill North and South America. It will go to all the earth. I think it’s as early as 1831, in Isaac Morley’s farm. Keith, let’s keep going. What do you wanna do next?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:24:35             Well, maybe it’s worth the comment here. There’s a really beautiful line, a beautiful tribute to Hyrum and it talks about how in life Joseph and Hyrum were not divided and in death they were not separated. In our memory of Joseph, we have put a little distance between them and part of it is our reverence and celebration as Joseph as a prophet. Part of it is just the way things unfold. For the first generations of saints, Joseph and Hyrum, the prophet and patriarch were integral. They were connected. They were always together. They were preaching together, teaching together. If you wanted to understand something that Joseph said, you could talk to Hyrum. Hyrum was also a speaker. Hyrum didn’t keep a journal. He didn’t keep the same records. He didn’t have the whole office full of clerks that Joseph had. In some ways, we often forget Hyrum just because the records are silent.

                                           00:25:39             In early memories of the martyrdom it’s Joseph and Hyrum together, there are paintings, the early monuments that we build are of Joseph and Hyrum. There are statues on Temple Square or used to be of Joseph and Hyrum that were made in the early 20th century when they put up a monument at Joseph Smith’s birthplace in Vermont. The original draft celebrates both Joseph and Hyrum, prophet and patriarch and then the monument that’s actually there is just about Joseph and his birth. Hyrum gets celebrated nearby on a hill. Patriarch Hill gets named after him in some ways because he was removed from the monument, just in the planning phase. We have a few places. We have now some statues of Joseph and Hyrum on horseback, a couple of images that bring them back. Do think this text is worth reminding us that these two were very closely connected and revered. The tragedy that people felt is for both, they’ve lost both the prophet and the patriarch.

                                           00:26:48             That’s a really terrible blow. Then I guess this text rounds out here with a clear verdict. They are martyrs, they are innocent. Those are really strong words, really powerful words, especially in the history of Christianity. Jesus is innocent of the things that he’s charged with. There are other martyrs for the cause of Christ. Over the centuries, Joseph and Hyrum join a very select group of innocence and martyrs. The text ends with the invocation of a really powerful image. The image of blood. Blood has been symbolic throughout the history of God’s dealings with his children. We see blood offerings in the Old Testament. We see Jesus instituting the sacrament to remind us of his blood. This tribute ends with the blood that we see that has been shed. There’s literal blood. Then they take it to the heights that this will raise the church above earthly courts.

                                           00:27:56             They cannot be impeached. Their blood has been shed in the United States. It will open the door to all of the nations. That blood joins with other blood, the other martyrs seen by John the Baptist that this big testimony crying out from the blood of the martyrs is both a condemnation of a ruined world. I think that’s the phrase. The world is ruined and a plea that Jesus will return and of course when Jesus returns those prophecies or that he returns in red, symbolizing that he tread the wine press alone, he has bled and borne our sins. That bleeder is the one who will return and redeem Joseph’s blood, but also all of our sins and our blood. Ultimately, this blood is also a way symbolically we connect Joseph and Hyrum to Jesus and the witness that they bear of his ministry and his return.

Hank Smith:                      00:29:04             Keith, in your reading, I loved that you described Joseph and Hyrum’s relationship. They’re not apart a lot. I remember reading the history of Joseph Smith by his mother. You know when he has his surgery that Hyrum would squeeze his leg to give him some relief. All the children would help him get around and move.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:29:28             We have those stories of personal ministry, massaging, assisting and that’s a very intimate service, physical touch and ministering to pain. Hyrum is present at many events, but not all of them. There are many significant events where John the Baptist appears to Joseph and Oliver and the revelation that’s now section 76 is Joseph and Sidney and I think another interesting thing about Hyrum is he is very present, very central, but he’s also not always the one right there. Hyrum too has to have a testimony come to him through the Spirit that, oh yes, John the Baptist appeared to Joseph and Oliver. I wasn’t there. He has to gain that witness. We get a little sense of that seeking from Hyrum when he comes to Joseph before the church is organized and asks what he can do and Jesus answers and we often emphasize the second part of the answer.

                                           00:30:33             This revelation is in section 11, and this was a scripture mastery scripture to seek first to obtain the word before you declare it and we emphasize that earlier in that revelation. Jesus also tells Hyrum that he needs to learn how the Spirit of the Lord works. He needs to put his trust in that Spirit, which leadeth to do good, to deal justly, to walk humbly. That is one of the things that Hyrum learns very well. He learns to have a witness of the Spirit, a testimony of Joseph and the great work, even though Hyrum is not in every occasion, Hyrum is there as part of the whole story, but he’s there as someone who gets a witness from the Spirit. Now he is one of the eight witnesses, so he does get to have that experience, other experiences. He’s just like you and I and other converts. He has to go to God and get a witness from the Spirit that these things are true and he gets it and he bears it and he is true to that witness to the very end.

Hank Smith:                      00:31:36             When you think of the love between those two and the entire first family of the church, they have sacrificed so much at every turn. John, I know you like to start your Book of Mormon class that way.

John Bytheway:               00:31:53             I did yesterday. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have Lucy Mack Smith be our guest today and she might say among other things, do you know what it cost my family to bring you this book? ’cause it cost a lot.

Hank Smith:                      00:32:07             Yeah. She had lost her husband in 1840. Son Don Carlos in 1841 Alvin earlier in 1823 and now Joseph and Hyrum in 1844 and she’ll lose Samuel right?

John Bytheway:               00:32:22             And then Samuel.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:32:24             Yeah, and after that is when she sits down to record her history. That is the moment in 1844, 45, 46 where her mind turns to telling the story of this family and they have challenges. They’re not all perfect. William Smith causes trouble at various points along the way. Arguments among fam, disagreements. They work through all of that.

Hank Smith:                      00:32:51             If you love the Book of Mormon, the Smith family comes with it, right? If you love the Doctrine and Covenants, it is a family. We often talk about Joseph and Emma and we should, they were all involved.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:33:04             The family is the first to hear the tidings. After Joseph has the first vision, we get a sense that he doesn’t talk very much about it. He tells in his own history in the Pearl of Great Price that his mom asks him and he says, nevermind, I’m fine. I just learned your church is wrong. You know a great little quippy answer. He does tell it to the pastor and has that kind of chastisement, but he seems to have kept that experience to himself. The last piece of evidence for that is when Moroni appears to him a few years later, one of the things Moroni tells him is you have to go and tell this to your dad. This time Joseph resists and Moroni has to persuade him. No, your dad will believe you. Joseph tells him and his dad says, go and do that.

                                           00:33:56             That night they come back and the family is just thousands of questions what has happened and then they see that Joseph is tired and so they say, okay, everybody, he’s tired. Let him sleep. He’s awake all night, everybody, get up early tomorrow, do your chores and we’ll come back tomorrow night. So it’s that following night where Joseph gives his first testimony of Moroni and the book and the Nephites. Then Lucy will tell us that Joseph spent many nights telling them about the things that he would learn and the ancient people and their clothing and their warfare and their experiences. The Smith family is the first audience to hear the glad tidings from Cumorah.

Hank Smith:                      00:34:41             Keith, and I’m glad that you’re here to make sure we don’t read over this and not feel that connection in the entire family and between these two brothers who loved each other. Would it be okay if I read a little bit of Willard Richards?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:34:55             Willard is our main source for the Joseph Smith manuscript history.

Hank Smith:                      00:35:00             K. Then I can give the firsthand account.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:35:03             Since he wasn’t shot, he’s pretty good. John Taylor was kind of worried about surviving in that moment.

Hank Smith:                      00:35:12             So he might not.

John Bytheway:               00:35:13             It’s pretty interesting that the law of witnesses, Joseph and Hyrum, pair, and then Willard and John survive.

Hank Smith:                      00:35:22             Keith, if it’s okay, I’m going to read something I’m sure you’ve read countless times. This is Willard Richards firsthand account of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum. It’s pretty remarkable that there are people to tell this story. You’ve got literally bullet after bullet after bullet coming into the room and two of the four survive. Willard Richards is not shot at all. John Taylor is quite a few times, Willard Richards is not shot and he’s able to tell the story or we wouldn’t know anything about what happened. I’ll just read some portions of it. He writes, a shower of musket balls were thrown up the stairway against the door of the prison in the second story followed by many rapid footsteps. Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Mr. Taylor and myself who were in the front chamber closed the door of our room against the entry at the head of the stairs and placed ourselves against it.

                                           00:36:17             There being no lock on the door, no lock that was usable. It’s interesting that the lock doesn’t work in a jail. The door is a common panel and as soon as we heard the feet of the stairs, a ball was sent through the door, which passed between us and showed that our enemies were desperados and we must change our position. Joseph Smith, Mr. Taylor and myself sprang back to the front part of the room and Hyrum Smith retreated two thirds across the chamber directly in front of and facing the door. A bullet was sent through the door, which hit Hyrum on the side of his nose. When he fell backwards, extended at length without moving his feet. From the holes in his vest, pantaloons, drawers and shirt it appears evident that a ball must have been thrown from without through the window, which entered his back on the right side and passing through, lodged against his watch.

                                           00:37:09             As he struck the floor, he exclaimed emphatically, I am a dead man. Joseph looked towards him and responded, oh dear brother Hyrum, and opening the door two or three inches with his left hand discharged one barrel of a six shooter. Mr. Taylor rushed into the window, which is some 15 or 20 feet from the ground when his body was nearly on a balance, a ball from the door within entered his leg and a ball from without struck his watch, a patent lever in his vest pocket nearly the left breast and smashed it into a pie, leaving the hands standing at five o’clock and 16 minutes and 26 seconds. Joseph attempted as the last resort to leap the same window from once Mr. Taylor fell when two balls pierced him from the door and one entered his right breast from without and he fell outward exclaiming, oh Lord, my God. An instant cry was raised.

                                           00:38:00             “He’s leaped the window” and the mob on the stairs and in the entry ran out. Willard Richards then says he goes to the window and watched some seconds to see if there were any signs of life regardless of my own, determined to see the end of him I loved, being fully satisfied that he was dead with a hundred men near the body and more coming around the corner of the jail and expecting a return to our room, I rushed towards the prison door at the head of the stairs and through the entry from once the firing had proceeded to learn if the doors into the prison were open. When near the entry, Mr. Taylor called out, take me. I pressed my way until I found all the doors unbarred returning instantly caught Mr. Taylor under the arm. Can you imagine he’s got broken bones and rushed by the stairs into the dungeon or the inner prison, stretched him on the floor and covered him with a bed in such a manner as not likely to be perceived, expecting an immediate return of the mob. I said to Mr. Taylor, this is a hard case to lay you on the floor, but if your wounds are not fatal, I want you to live to tell the story. I expected to be shot the next moment and stood before the door awaiting the onset.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:39:11             Willard Richards, we are so indebted to his record. As you mentioned, he’s a witness. He is a member of the Twelve. He is also Joseph Smith’s personal secretary. He is the church historian and recorder. He is the Nauvoo Temple recorder. He’s also got a role with record keeping in the city of Nauvoo. Willard Richards is our records guy. He thinks about it. He spends his time doing records. He’s in the room. He reconstructs this text, this timeline a little bit later and you can see him reconstructing it. He’s piecing together where the balls entered John Taylor, and this isn’t him writing in the moment. This is him thinking about it and putting it together and feeling the burden that as a witness he needs to give the most comprehensive account that he can because future generations would need to know. We’re so indebted to him. One of the things he records for us is that there is a prophecy that Joseph offers, that there will be a time when bullets fly around him and he will come out unscathed and this is that time he is preserved for other things, but especially to make this record.

John Bytheway:               00:40:32             That prophecy that you mentioned was so interesting that bullets will fly around you like hail. They won’t pierce your clothes. I think was his ear nicked? Another thing talking about Joseph and Hyrum, I know that in Old Testament times, it seems like people’s names sometimes indicated their mission. I remember Joseph Fielding McConkie. You guys remember him having us look up the name of Joseph, which he who adds, the name of Hyrum means my brother is exalted and I remember thinking, wow, that’s kind of amazing.

Hank Smith:                      00:41:12             John, I love that. And it goes right along with the end of verse three. In life they were not divided and in death they were not separated, they went together. Let’s talk more about Carthage. Keith what do we know happens in the jail?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:41:27             One important survivor story comes from John Taylor. John is hit by several bullets, but he doesn’t die and in particular there’s one story that John will tell his entire life. He lives till 1887, so he’s got more than 40 years to tell this experience. He will tell it often about how one of the bullets, a ball would’ve hit him in the heart, except it was stopped by his watch and if it had hit him he said, you know, I wouldn’t be here. That’s the the upshot of his witness. The watch had a glass face, the glass was shattered, but he kept the rest of the watch. Mostly what happened to it, it was compressed. It was smooshed together, but he would pull it out and show his children. He would show other people. This was an important part of his testimony and an important part of the testimony that he passed on to other generations.

                                           00:42:28             And then a few years ago in the 1990s, there was some analysis that was one step removed from the watch itself, but it just said, you know what? If John Taylor’s watch had really been hit by a ball, it would’ve been totally destroyed. One of the evidences they provided is that Hyrum Smith has a watch that’s hit and it’s blown to pieces. John Taylor’s watch is just smooshed with a broken glass. There was this idea proposed that well, maybe he wasn’t hit by a a bullet, maybe he just fell down or and smooshed it somehow.

Hank Smith:                      00:43:08             Right. Hit the window sill or something.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:43:09             Hit the window sill. That’s a common way that they would talk about it. Well, that idea was articulated in the 1990s. It circulated around, we mentioned it in Saints volume one, that it was published in 2018. The idea was there and it was kind of nagging at us in the church history department. We actually did one of our most exciting historical studies. Most of the time when you do history, it’s in the library, it’s in the archive, but every now and then we get a study like this. We went out and we purchased several old watches. We also went out and purchased several old period guns that were functioning. A lot of the ones in our museum collection don’t function anymore. Pulled together some forensic experts from modern law enforcement. We had a couple of different agencies who work with this kind of analysis of bullets and force and trajectory.

                                           00:44:09             So we set up a couple of scenarios. Basically the research was we shot a lot of watches with old guns and we had multiple experts doing the analysis and they came back with some different findings. These were all published in BYU studies a little while ago. We concluded that just falling on the watch was not enough to crush it. The way it gets crushed, there are internal pieces of the watch that get pushed out and they cause indentations, so we get metal pressing into other metal. That doesn’t happen when you just fall on a windowsill or on the floor. I think we’ve successfully ruled out that as a possibility and then we did find if you shoot a watch directly from close range, yeah you can blast it to pieces, but bullets are flying in every kind of direction. Some of them are coming right through the door, but there are also people on the outside of the jail shooting from a distance.

                                           00:45:12             The damage in Taylor’s watch, we could replicate that with a bullet fired from like 200 yards. We could also replicate it on a ricochet. We had some sharp shooters. You would have to hit one thing and bounce off and hit the watch because of the loss of velocity. We could then replicate the same thing. At the end of the day, we had a bunch of shot up watches. I think we also shot up the windowsill theory. We also couldn’t disprove John Taylor’s witness or to say it the other way around. The experience that he narrates is entirely plausible to be in that setting. There are multiple ways in which a bullet could cause that kind of damage to his watch, but also not take his life. That was a a fun afternoon.

Hank Smith:                      00:46:04             As someone who loves to get into the details of things, I really appreciate that. That’s fascinating.

John Bytheway:               00:46:12             And they weren’t the way we think of bullets today, these were, they were just lead balls.

Hank Smith:                      00:46:18             Like a marble almost.

John Bytheway:               00:46:20             Yeah, about the size of a marble, right?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:46:22             Yeah. And then pushed through not the smoothest barrel always. So yeah, there could be all kinds of variations in the gun and the ball and the distance and the flight path.

Hank Smith:                      00:46:36             Willard Richards, they don’t come back. Obviously for him, he is not wounded incredibly, his first fear is that it was temporary. He wants to save John Taylor’s life. I imagine then getting John Taylor out of the jail would be also pretty painful and difficult getting him to the hotel across the street.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:46:57             The murderers flee as murderers often do.

Hank Smith:                      00:47:00             Yeah, to my knowledge, no one is ever convicted of a crime.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:47:06             That’s right. No one’s convicted. There is a trial. A couple of people are charged. They’re all acquitted.

John Bytheway:               00:47:12             Keith, I’m really glad you’re here because I know that there was a book going around about the fate of the persecutors of the prophet or something, which I’ve learned was just not really good history. Can you comment on that?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:47:27             Yeah, I’d love to. It’s terrible history. That’s the quickest way to do it. This book was published in the middle of the 20th century. That is the title, the Fate of the Persecutors. And the main idea was that the author claims to have followed all kinds of people who persecuted Joseph from Missouri and Carthage and then follows them to the end of their lives and terrible things happen to them. Their eyeballs fall out of their sockets. They die these crazy deaths. The gist of it is that God got his vengeance on all of these people and that’s kind of the way it’s presented. The only problem is that it’s not accurate. We face one major limitation and that is that in Carthage, the people in the mob blackened their faces because they didn’t want to be identified. We don’t know who most of the people are and you can piece together some, but that was the point.

                                           00:48:25             They didn’t want to be known. So the idea that a hundred years later I’m gonna track them all down and prove that their eyeballs fell out is just absurd at the first level. Here’s a second interesting angle. There was a book published in 1978 by a historian and a lawyer. The lawyer was just a young law professor at the University of Chicago named Dallin Oaks. I think he went on to do something, but little lawyer, Dallin was working on this project with a historian Marvin Hill, a professor at BYU. They write a history of the trial of the people who were charged with murdering Joseph Smith. So we’ve got half a dozen people or so who get charged and they’re acquitted. The whole book is interesting. It’s called Carthage Conspiracy about all the ins and outs of the trial and the legal maneuvers and that’s a great read.

                                           00:49:19             They do pause at the end and they say, there is this book out there, Fate of the Persecutors. You can’t track all, most of these people down because they’re unknown. Here are six. Yes, they were acquitted, but there was enough information to make a charge. So let’s follow these guys. And it turns out none of them suffer any ill effects. They go on in their careers, they get promoted, they get government appointments. One of them serves in the Abraham Lincoln administration. One of them becomes a postmaster, which was a position of esteem for those people. Tried and acquitted the most public facing people. There is no negative implication in their lives or their careers. They go on and do whatever they would do. The history, the evidence in the book is bad. I also think the rationale behind it, the idea that says that best way to bear testimony of Joseph is to go and show how God tortured other people. That is a wrongheaded way to think about prophets and our witness of living prophets too.

Hank Smith:                      00:50:31             Right and we don’t need to sensationalize a story like this. It is touching and inspiring as it is.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:50:40             And tragic and heart-rending and yes, all of those things.

John Bytheway:               00:50:44             That young lawyer, Elder Oaks and Marvin Hill, that book was called Carthage Conspiracy.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:50:50             That’s correct. It’s a legal history of the trial.

John Bytheway:               00:50:53             So that’s one that you could read and feel some confidence in.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:50:58             Yeah, and depending on how much you like legal history, it is the ins and outs. But if you’re a lawyer you might love it ’cause they go deep into the maneuvers and how they admit evidence and how the prosecution moves and how the defense responds. And it’s blow by blow. It may not even be as exciting enough for courtroom TV ’cause there isn’t someone on the witness stand pointing, it’s kind of dry legal history. But it’s a very significant history that works through all of the aspects of what happened with him. President Oaks has since talked about his experience doing that research and one of the things he uncovered as that young lawyer were the court records from Hancock County. That’s the jurisdiction. When he looked at them, he unsealed them. There’s a way they would bind up the records to put them into deep storage. It was clear that those records of the trial had been recorded, but they hadn’t been looked at for almost 140 years. He cracks the seals and blows off the dust and he has the excitement that scholars and researchers have when you are digging into a source that you know nobody’s seen before. It’s gonna bring insights that we haven’t had. It’s a significant book on lots of levels.

Hank Smith:                      00:52:19             That’s fantastic. Keith, verse four, I noticed talks about some days before maybe we could read that and have you comment. It says, when Joseph went to Carthage to deliver himself up to the pretended requirements of the law, two or three days previous to his assassination, he said, I am going like a lamb to the slaughter, but I’m calm as the summer’s morning. I have a conscience void of offense toward God and towards all men. I shall die innocent and it shall yet be said of me he was murdered in cold blood. Leading up to June 27th at five o’clock in the afternoon. How do they get there?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:52:59             Well, there’s a whole bunch we could say maybe one thing I would share with your listeners is the Joseph Smith Papers team did create a podcast called The Road to Carthage. And it takes us through all of the different layers. There are political issues, there are religious issues, there are economic issues, there are cultural issues that bring us there in the immediate few days before at kind of a personal level, pressure has intensified in Nauvoo. Joseph escapes, he crosses the river to try and let things cool down. While he is there, Emma and others invite him to come back and they say, things are intense here, we need you. There is some sense that some people have said he’s run away, he’s a coward. Joseph does come back and he’ll say things like, if my life is of no value to my friends, then it’s no value.

                                           00:53:57             So he comes back knowing that the pressure has escalated to a conflict with the state of Illinois that they need to face that there’s a personal layer here. The state of Illinois will charge Joseph with treason is a term that they use, but it’s related to the destruction of a newspaper. It’s interesting the governor of Illinois will tell Joseph, I think it’s okay that you shut down the newspaper. This is the Nauvoo Expositor that had published things about Joseph. It was written by former church members who were angry about a whole bunch of things. And the governor in that moment says, I think it’s in your authority to stop a newspaper. And they used a law at the time they declared it a public nuisance. Joseph is the mayor of Nauvoo. And so if there’s a public nuisance, that’s one of the things elected officials do.

                                           00:54:51             The governor of Illinois also says, you didn’t just stop the printing, you destroyed the press and the destruction of private property is a line too far. That’s not how it works in America. And that’s the charge that ultimately takes him to Carthage, which is the county seat, Hancock County seat, which means there can’t be bail. So he has to stay there. They can’t just have a quick hearing and get him out. It is interesting that same lawyer, Dallin Oaks would also look into that question. Early in his legal career, he wrote a legal article in one of the Illinois legal journals and he finds the same conclusion that the governor had. That shutting down a press is definitely within the purview, but destroying the press crossed a line. That’s what brings Joseph back to Nauvoo and he’s arrested and then taken to Carthage. He bids farewell from his family in Nauvoo and travels. It’s about 20 miles from Nauvoo to Carthage.

Hank Smith:                      00:55:56             It’s interesting that you brought up Governor Ford. He writes something in 1854, so this is just 10 years later that I found so fascinating. He’s writing a history of Illinois and he mentions Joseph Smith. This is 10 years after Joseph has died. The Saints have moved to Utah. He says that he fears that some gifted person one day will make the name of the martyred Joseph stir the souls of men as the name of Christ himself. Listen to these cities. He names off Palmyra, Kirtland, Far West, Adam-ondi-Ahman, Nauvoo and Carthage Jail could become holy names like Jerusalem, Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives. And then listen to what he says. He’s scared he’s gonna be a villain. He says in that event, the author of this history, who is the governor, feels degraded that the humble governor of an obscure state who would otherwise be forgotten in a few years stands a fair chance like Pilate or Herod to be dragged down to posterity. Keith, what is his role? What would you say as a historian for Governor Ford?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:57:13             Well, I would say he was a pretty good prophet in this case. Those places are well known. The story has been told and Governor Ford doesn’t come out shining in the account. We should say it this way. Like any person has multiple actions, some things he does are helpful to the Saints. Some are kind of neutral, some are harmful. And around this specific moment times where he’s unable, for example, to protect Joseph and Hyrum in the jail, despite promises that nothing would happen, you’re not gonna come out looking good in that history. And there are later times after Joseph’s death, he continues as governor, Brigham Young and the Saints keep interacting and promises he turns back on and tensions escalate. And it’s hard really to get by the fact that Joseph is murdered on his watch. The Saints don’t forgive him for that. In the end, he comes out with a losing record in this history.

Hank Smith:                      00:58:12             Yeah, that statement is pretty incredible, isn’t it?

John Bytheway:               00:58:15             I wonder if at the time they thought, okay, that’s the end of Joseph Smith and his movement. I’ve got a newspaper clip from the Boston Globe that says the blow that subdued Joseph Smith has palsied the arm of Mormonism. They will now scatter in the four winds and gradually merge into the great mass of society, which is totally wrong. And I have another one from the Cincinnati Gazette. July 3rd, 1844. So the martyrdom was on June 27th. This is verbatim: important from Nauvoo. Death of Joe Smith and Hyrum Smith. Terrible excitement at the west. We yesterday received by the western mail, the following particulars of the death of Joe Smith, the prophet and his brother Hyrum. They were both shot. There was a tremendous excitement at the West in consequence of their death a dreadful civil war was expected. And then this last three words, thus ends Mormonism. I researched it and 11 years later, thus ends the Cincinnati Gazette. They’re gone. I’m wondering, this is 10 years later when Governor Ford says that, has he noticed the church has not disappeared? Has he noticed the movement from what he’s heard? And now he’s going, oh great, now how am I gonna be remembered? I mean, they’re really bad at prophesying some of these newspapers.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           00:59:46             Yeah, and in some ways the idea was even more widespread. We do have these third party newspapers making those observations. We have avowed opponents of the church like Thomas Sharp and others in Illinois who say similar things. This will be the end. We’ve cut it off at the head. And you know those kinds of ideas. We talked earlier about some of the immediate reactions of the Saints. Some of the Saints have the same wonderings. It is not at all clear to them in the summer of 1844 what will happen, how it would unfold. Maybe this becomes a segue into our section 136. Brigham Young has the same questions. Brigham is not in Nauvoo in Illinois when Joseph is martyred, he’s in New England. Word comes to him a little bit later and he has three interesting reactions. The first one is he realizes that on the day of Joseph’s martyrdom, he felt this profound depression and despair and didn’t know why.

                                           01:00:55             Now the news he realizes, oh, that’s why I felt so terrible that day. The second thing he feels is that sense of loss and concern. Brigham looked up to Joseph, admired Joseph, followed Joseph. Brigham’s first reaction is that he cannot comprehend that Joseph could be taken or what would happen. And then his third reaction is that quiet reassurance of the Holy Spirit that comes into his heart and mind. And he realizes, no, wait a minute, we have everything that we need. Joseph gave us the keys, the authority. Joseph taught us the ordinances. That third piece is the conviction that brings Brigham back to Nauvoo. He calls the other members of the Twelve are out, campaigning for Joseph and preaching the gospel as missionaries. Brigham calls them back to Nauvoo and and it’ll take them about a month to get there and others will come sooner and later he does say, we need to come back Twelve and gather back to Nauvoo. So he has all of those reactions. That’s Brigham Young, President of the Twelve. That first kind of knee jerk fear is, oh my goodness, what will happen? How can we do this without Joseph?

John Bytheway:               01:02:14             I love this part in Saints that describes what was going on. I’m starting on page 558 in the first volume. Phoebe Woodruff wrote her parents and described the attack at Carthage. These things will not stop the work any more than Christ’s death did, but it will roll on with greater rapidity. Phoebe testified, I believe Joseph and Hyrum are where they can do the church much more good now than when with us. I’m stronger in the faith than ever she affirmed. I would not give up the faith of true Mormonism if it cost me my life within one hour from the time I am writing this for I know of a surety, that it is the work of God. As the letters of Mary Ann, Vilate and Phoebe traveled east Brigham Young and Orson Pratt heard rumors that Joseph and Hyrum had been killed, but no one could confirm the story.

                                           01:03:03             Then on July 16th, a member of the church in the New England branch they were visiting, received a letter from Nauvoo detailing the tragic news. When he read the letter, Brigham felt like his head was going to crack. He had never felt such despair. His thoughts turned instantly to the priesthood. Joseph had held all the keys necessary to endow the Saints and seal them together for eternity. Without those keys, the work of the Lord could not move forward. For a moment, Brigham feared that Joseph had taken them to the grave. Then in a burst of revelation, Brigham remembered how Joseph had bestowed the keys on the Twelve Apostles. Bringing his hand down hard on his knee he said, the keys of the kingdom are right here with the church. Interesting how it took him a while to, wait a minute, Joseph prepared for this.

Hank Smith:                      01:03:52             We have to remember they did not, this was a shock to them. To you and I we’ve known this story our whole lives. What you said earlier, Keith, he always comes back. Joseph has gone off to jail before and he’ll come back many times.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           01:04:05             Yeah, this was different and personal and poignant.

Hank Smith:                      01:04:10             Keith, before we move on to talk about Brigham Young in section 136, which I’m excited to do, we haven’t had a lot of opportunity to talk about Brigham this year, like we have Joseph. There may be a listener out there who has experienced the prophecy of Moroni, Joseph Smith History chapter one, verse 33, only one chapter, verse 33. Joseph says that Moroni told him that his name, Joseph Smith, should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds and tongues, or that it should be good and evil spoken of among all people. I can imagine Joseph saying, really me? I’m just a kid, you know, on a farm in New York, there is plenty of evil spoken of Joseph Smith today, 24/7 online. What would you say to someone who’s listening who doesn’t know if they can trust Joseph Smith? You’re a historian of the church. You’ve done this for your career. How do you feel about Joseph Smith from all you’ve read and written?

Dr. Keith Erekson:           01:05:13             Yeah, this is a really great question about Joseph Smith. More in terms of a relationship than in terms of a fact. Often we talk about things from history there about names and dates and facts, and we can memorize lots of facts about Joseph Smith. I don’t know Joseph personally, but over the course of my life, I have had a relationship of learning about him. Some of it is personal. My grandfather, for example, was the caretaker of the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial in Vermont, so we would go visit there. I grew up in Maryland. We would visit and spend time with my grandparents, but it was also one of the things grandpa did was take care of this place. That’s important for Joseph. There’s a little bit of that that just kind of infused in to my life. I also had experiences testing the things from Joseph Smith, reading the Book of Mormon, praying, getting an answer, being a missionary, teaching people about his experiences.

                                           01:06:28             I had other experiences where some of them are maybe too personal to share, but just times, there’s one term from the literature about historical commemoration that is that people want to get synchronized with the past. We might do this on the same date. We find a synchronization with the past because this day so many years ago, we also get synchronized in a place. We might go to a place and say, this was the place where something has happened, and I’ve had those kinds of experiences visiting other historic sites and feeling synchronized or in a connection with Joseph and his mission and his work. Maybe I’ll share one last experience, and for me, often testimony is that it’s experience. It’s not facts. We often express testimony as facts. I know these things, but we gain testimony through experience. That’s how you trust people. You asked about, you know, can I trust Joseph?

                                           01:07:36             You trust people you’ve had experiences with. I can’t give you facts why to trust somebody, especially in this age of misinformation. We trust God because we’ve gone to him and he’s answered our prayers. He answered them then he’ll answer them now. That kind of experience, I’ll share one recent one. One of the things I like to do is ride a bicycle. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. That is to ride a bicycle from Nauvoo to Carthage. The old road is not there anymore, so we do have indications of where that was, but they, you can roughly approximate the ride, and one of the things I like about doing that, I’ve talked about synchronicity, is you do get to feel the lay of the land and you get just a sense of how things unfold.

                                           01:08:33             The other thing I like about it is it’s just time to think. I was all alone. It was a sunrise ride the way that it worked out, and so it’s just time to think. One of the things, as I thought through Joseph and his witness and his legacy, as I got closer to Carthage, there is a spot where the old road runs along the river and it’s still there, so I got to that point where I’m closest to the road. I’m not on a paved road that the farmers have added later. I’m down in the river. It’s cool. You go up the bluff in Nauvoo, you’re kind of on a plane, and I come down to the river. I just had this insight, this impression, come over me. Out of all of the things that Joseph did, I could do one thing that he couldn’t, that’s not the inspiration that you think to get the insight was you can go back to Nauvoo and bear your testimony again, and I did ride back to Nauvoo.

                                           01:09:35             It was a loop ride, but the bigger insight was that was Joseph’s final ride, his final moment. He went that path and he didn’t come back. Thankfully, I am still around and I can share my testimony with my children, with my family, and we all, as members of the church in the 21st century have the opportunity to continue to bear the testimony, as Joseph said, of Jesus once after the many testimonies which has been given of him this is the testimony last of all, or latest of all, the most recent one, hot off the press. This is my recent testimony, most recent of all, yeah, I had experience as a child, but my testimony most recent of all is that we can continue to do the work which Joseph started and which we celebrate in this tribute, in this revelation.

Hank Smith:                      01:10:35             Thank you, Keith for that. We love the prophet here, on followHIM. I think everybody knows that John, anybody who’s listened to us and as section 135 says his blood and his brother Hyrum’s blood is an ambassador for the religion of Jesus Christ that will touch the hearts of honest men among all nations.

Dr. Keith Erekson:           01:10:56             Coming up in part two, half of the people who cross the planes are under the age of 21. We sometimes lose that from photographs of old pioneers, but this is like a giant YSA conference. People are falling in love. They’re having fun. They’re courting, they’re teasing, they’re enjoying. Sometimes the young men would take the axle grease and they would rub it on the beards of men who were sleeping.