I know there's lots of things I could say about Joseph Smith, and I don't have very much time, and I'm pretty sure that Mark's going to pull the plug if I go into the second or third hour. But I wanted to share just a few aspects about his character and some of his teachings. And I thought I'd maybe do it by talking about probably a little bit more obscure experience. And that is that in 1843, there's a guy by the name of John Finch who comes to Nauvoo.
Now, he is an Owenite socialist. So I'm guessing that you didn't join the fireside today expecting to hear about socialism. But he was among this group of people that believe that people should pool their resources.
They should live together in communities. He was highly suspect of organized religion. I mean, he wasn't quite an atheist, but he really sees any organized religion as just an effort to suppress people. And so he tours these various utopian societies in the United States. And he comes to Nauvoo.
The Latter-day Saints have been pooling their resources, and they have this idea of consecration of properties. And so I think maybe that intrigues him. But you can tell that when he comes here, what he really expects to find is some pompous and very religious figure who's being waited on hand and foot and is clearly this deceiver. And so he meets Joseph, and he writes about that experience later.
He gives a little bit of a description there that you can see on the screen, that he was about 38 years of age, well-built, athletic, 5 feet 10 inches high. He's actually taller than that, so John Finch is not the best judge of height, but well-built, athletic, light flaxen hair, prominent nose, rather sharp at the point, an intelligent, cunning Yankee countenance. Now, I'm not even entirely sure what that is, but I'm guessing that means he looks like a New Englander, which he was. He was well-dressed, polite, obliging, and well-behaved. communicative in conversation.
He seemed to be much respected in his family and among all those who came into his house. He was cheerful and playful in his manners. He was considered an excellent wrestler and often exercised his dexterity among his friends in the street before his own house. He was liberal and charitable in speaking of other sects and said that he considered that the great principle of Christianity was love and affirmed that there was more of this love spirit among his followers than to be found among.
any other sect. Now, this is pretty funny. You can tell the skeptical Finch then asked Joseph, you know, so how is it you got to become a prophet? I asked him how he became a prophet and what the nature of his inspiration was. He laughed and said that his enemies said that he was a false prophet and that his disciples believed him to be a true prophet.
So between the both, a prophet he became. You can sense a little bit of Joseph Smith's nature in that. response that he had to him.
One of the things I love about this is his statement that the great principle of Christianity is love. And if I had to describe an aspect of Joseph Smith's character that, you know, it would be great to focus on, great to emulate, was just how much he cared about other people. And that really, it permeates through much of his teachings.
I think maybe some of that comes from his own personal experiences. You know, Joseph Smith is growing up in a world of religious tumult, and you know, every Latter-day Saint knows that, but do they know the types of things that were being taught? I mean, why is it that Joseph Smith suddenly starts to have a great question about his eternal soul?
Well, in the world surrounding him, you know, Protestant Christians that were preaching, they were certainly highlighting the fact that People are going to go to hell. In fact, most people are going to go to hell, you know, and here's your one-way ticket and welcome to the barbecue. The Calvinist teachings of this idea of a very small people that we're going to be saved, very few in number, are kind of emulated here.
And, you know, it's something that I'd share with you. This is Jonathan Edwards who gave the great sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Notice how he explains God's relationship to mankind. God abhors you. And he's dreadfully provoked.
His wrath towards you burns like fire. He looks at you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He has a purer eyes than to bear you in his sight.
You are 10,000 times as abominable in his sight as the most hateful and venomous serpent. Now, that's not exactly the message that you hear, you know, in church on Sunday about how much God loves you. In fact, the message that Jonathan Edwards is sharing is that God hates you.
And he hates you. Because you're a sinner. You're vile in his sight because of that, because you're a sinner.
And once you get through this life, lucky you, you're going to end up most likely going to hell. And as Edwards explains, he gives you an idea of what this hell is like. It would be dreadful to suffer the fierceness of the wrath of the Almighty God for one moment, but you must suffer it for eternity.
There will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long forever, a boundless duration before you. which will slow up your thoughts and amaze your soul.
And you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions and millions of ages, in wrestling with this almighty merciless vengeance. And then, when you have done so, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that that is all but a dot to what remains. so that your punishment will indeed be infinite.
Wow, I mean, that certainly is a message about God. You can see the reason why a young Joseph, hearing sermons like that, might, as he writes in the 1832 account he gives of the First Vision, at about the age of 12 years old, my mind became seriously unimpressed with regard to the all-important concerns for the welfare of my immortal soul, which led me to the searching of the scriptures. I mean, this idea... is something that matters to him because he's hearing about the fact that hell is terrible and you're probably going there. Well, how can I get away from that?
My mind became exceedingly distressed. I became convicted of my sins and I felt to mourn for my own sins and for the world. Well, the message that he shares that he receives in that first vision, right? I cried unto the Lord for mercy, for there was none else to whom I could go and obtain mercy. And the Lord heard my cry.
Joseph Smith's religious experience is one of desperation, of begging God for that grace that seems so elusive in the world he was living in so that he could be saved. He tells the story, while the attitude of calling upon the Lord, a pillar of, he writes fire at first, but then crosses that out, light above the brightness of the sun at noonday came down from above and rested upon me. And I was filled with the Spirit of God, and the Lord opened the heavens upon me, and I saw the Lord, and he spake unto me, saying, Joseph, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee.
Imagine the weight that is lifted off of this young man as he hears the Lord speak the words that his sins have been forgiven. It's a transformative event for him, and one that will, I think, affect how he views both God and other people for the remainder of his life. My soul was filled with love for many days, and I could rejoice with great joy, and the Lord was with me.
But I could find none that would believe this heavenly vision. Nevertheless, I pondered these things in my heart. So it was a transforming event. And I think all of us can relate to that. If you have felt that power, that Holy Spirit come upon you, as you know that this is not a bedtime story.
This is really... God's kingdom on the earth. You're filled with this sense of peace and understanding and love, and you have this desire that's talked about, right, in the Book of Mormon, a desire to do good.
You kind of sense and feel what it is that Joseph was feeling. I wonder if that experience with God early on is what connected Joseph to this idea of love. Now, while Joseph had this love for other people that was certainly a characteristic of his personality. The reality is there were a lot of people that didn't love Joseph. I know this is going to come as a surprise to many of you, but there are people who don't like Joseph Smith and say bad things about him.
This is sometimes really troubling to us. I mean, Joseph is, for many of us, one of the reasons why we believe his first vision, his translation of the Book of Mormon, the revelations he received. They're so miraculous that it's the reason why we believe.
And yet we are surrounded at times by those who denigrate and castigate, those who say that Joseph was a liar and a deceiver and that Joseph was this and Joseph was that. This is exactly what the angel Moroni had told Joseph from the time he told them that there were plates, that God had a work for me to do, that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindred's tongue. that there should be both good and evil spoken of among all people.
Sometimes the very fact that there is such a crushing weight of people saying negative things about the prophet. causes us to doubt in our own belief and testimony. We might say to ourselves, well, if there's so many people that are saying so many negative things, then there must be some truth to that. But we don't have to go any further than examining our own New Testament to see that however logical that argument might sound, it actually is false.
Our Lord and Savior was on this earth doing nothing but good works, healing people, performing miracles, even raising people from the dead. And yet, as you read these New Testament gospels, you'll find that the reaction to him was, sure, a couple times positive, but mostly what people had to say was negative. Then they said unto him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and thou hast a devil.
One of the things that Jesus is most often accused of is being either a servant of Satan, being possessed of Satan, or being the devil himself. Imagine how wrong they could possibly be. The one being in all of existence that is as opposite from Satan as it could possibly be, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, was mistaken by the supposedly great learned people of his day as being evil or being possessed by the devil.
We wouldn't want to take what the majority had to say about Jesus in his time and say, ah, yes, that there must be some truth to it, because there was no truth to it. He was the Lord and Savior. This is certainly true when we examine Joseph Smith. I loved what Dr. Blow had said about, you know, early on, because he wondered, why does we talk so much about Joseph Smith?
It seems like, you know, OK, we're. we're talking a little bit too much about this. You know, we should really only be talking about Jesus.
You might wonder, why does Joseph Smith matter? And so, I mean, just briefly, some of the reasons why what it is that Joseph taught matters. First and foremost, is that Jesus Christ lives. I know that Jesus Christ lives because I know that Joseph Smith saw and talked to Jesus, and not just one time, over and over and over again. I don't have to rely solely on the witnesses, the true witnesses from 2000 years ago who walked and talked with Jesus.
I have much more modern example of this. And so that's first and foremost, Joseph is a modern witness that Jesus is the Christ, that he was resurrected. And if Jesus was resurrected, then that means all of us are going to be resurrected.
But there are other points that we can make. God has called prophets in our day and gives them revelation to lead the church. Joseph Smith matters because he's the beginning of those prophets. God revealed the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price as new scripture and the word of God. Joseph Smith matters because it's through him we know that we are all children of a heavenly father and a heavenly mother.
The very fact that we know that we have heavenly parents is because Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. Because of Joseph Smith. We know something far different than what it was that Jonathan Edwards was teaching, that nearly everyone was going to burn in an eternal fiery pit of hell forever.
Instead, what do we know? That God loves everyone equally, and that everyone will have an equal opportunity to be saved, even if they don't find and accept Jesus in this life, that there's an opportunity in the next, that God is a God of equality. God is a God that allows for everyone to be exalted.
That's a beautiful concept, one that is lost and wasn't a part of the Christian world in Joseph's time. The idea of the pre-existence is at once one of the most radical doctrines that Latter-day Saints believe, but also the most important in helping understand who we actually are. that we all lived before we came to this earth.
The standard Christian belief is that people are created at the moment of conception or at birth, but they didn't exist before that. God creates them at that moment of conception. We don't believe that. We don't believe it because of the prophet Joseph Smith. We understand that we are eternal beings who lived before we came to this earth.
That marriage, you know, Dr. Blow talked about this as well, that marriage was designed by God to be eternal. While other Christians believe that marriage ends when life ends, because of Joseph Smith, we believe that marriages and families... can exist forever, and that also that everyone will have that opportunity for that eternal ceiling in the next life, if not in this. And frankly, one of the things that speaks to me most is that all of our suffering and all of our losses are going to be made up to us in the next life.
I don't need to tell any of you that this life is unfair, that there are things that happen to people that are unfair. that there is suffering that is unjust. I know that when we think of suffering, it's easy to sometimes say, well, it's all just the result of agency. You know, oh, you know, I made a bad decision.
And because of that, I'm now suffering the consequence that we all simply chalk up to agency. It's a little bit more difficult when we chalk it up to someone else's agency. This person did this horrible thing. And because they did that, I'm suffering.
But even then we say, well, it's the suffering because of agency. But the reality is that there's all kinds of suffering in this life that are outside of individual agency. The child that's born with a birth defect, the natural disasters that at times sweep hundreds, if not thousands, off of this world, the various horrific diseases that plague this world. they're not as easily attributed to that.
And so it's important to understand that while we suffer in this life, there will come a time that God will make up to us everything that we have lost. That's the teaching that I take from Joseph Smith. Now, among some of the documents that we worked on in the Joseph Smith papers were some of the previously unknown sermons that Joseph had given in the Council of Fifty Minutes. And I thought I'd share just one of those parts with you because, again, I think it's beautiful, primarily because Joseph's a better speaker than I am.
And so we might as well just cut right to the chase. Nothing can reclaim the human mind from its ignorance, bigotry, superstition, but those grand and supplying principles of equal rights and universal freedom to all men. We must not despise a man on account of infirmity. We ought to love a man more for his infirmity. To me, that's one of the most beautiful sentiments.
that I've ever heard, that our tendency is to see that someone is a sinner and that they're struggling and that they have difficulty. And my natural tendency is to say, oh, well, that guy, he's obviously not right with God. And Joseph's teaching that the true spirit of Christ is the opposite of that, to see someone who's struggling and to love them more precisely because they are struggling, because that's how our Savior loves.
us. He doesn't cast us aside because we're sinners. He desperately loves us more because we are sinners.
He desperately wants us to have his grace. If I can know a man is susceptible of good feelings and integrity and will stand by his friends, he is my friend. The only thing I'm afraid of is that I will not live long enough to enjoy the society of these my friends as long as I want to. Let us from henceforth drive out from us every species of intolerance. When a man is free, he is capable of being a critic.
When I have used every means in my power to exalt a man's mind, and have taught him righteous principles to no effect, and he is yet inclined in his darkness, yet the same principle of liberty and charity would ever be manifested by me as though we had embraced it. Joseph is teaching that we love people when they embrace the gospel, and we love people when they don't. We love people when...
they are members of the church and we love people when they leave the church. That whether or not they accept the gospel is not the deciding factor on whether or not we treat them in the way that our Father in heaven wants us to. Now, one of the more, one of the reasons why I love Joseph Smith is because I understand the resurrection more because of both the scripture that he revealed. The Book of Mormon that he translated, the Bible, verses that he made inspired revisions to, the revelations that he received, and also the sermons that he gave on the idea of the resurrection.
Earlier this year, my youngest brother, Bryant, he suddenly and without any warning passed away from an undiagnosed ailment. And it was a tragedy. It continues to be. My family has a hole in it.
He was a good man. He had two little boys under the age of two when he passed away. and a wonderful loving wife.
And it is hard to each day miss him and to each day see the struggle that his family goes through. And it's not fair. And so it's because of that that I cling to what Joseph Smith taught about the resurrection.
In speaking the resurrection, I would say that God has shown unto me a vision of the resurrection of the dead. I saw the graves open and the saints as they arose, they took each other by the hand, even before they got up or while getting up and great joy and glory rested upon them. He goes on to say, what do you think is straight to relate to you that I've seen in vision relating to this interesting theme that those who have died in Christ may expect to enter into all the fruition of joy when they come forth, that when they possessed or anticipated here, so plain was the vision. that I actually saw men before they ascended from the tomb, as though they were getting up slowly. They took each other by the hand and they said, my father, my son, my mother, my daughter, my brother, and my sister.
And when the voice calls for the dead to arise, suppose that I am laid by my father. What would be the first joy of my heart to meet my father and my mother, my brother and my sister. And when they are by my side, I embrace them and they embrace me. Joseph Smith saw in vision that great day of resurrection when those who we have lost will be restored to us.
And lastly, in closing, I'd like to share with you the thoughts of the prophet John Taylor. Last month was the 177th anniversary of Joseph Smith's murder. He and Hiram killed in Carthage jail.
And in 1854, 10 years after that horrific event, The Apostle John Taylor spoke at an event commemorating it in Nauvoo. And he shared some things that I'd like to share with you. As I said, I know that people in your life, if they haven't yet, they will at some point say to you that if only you knew what they knew about Joseph Smith, well, then you wouldn't believe either.
They claim to have some kind of inside knowledge that if only others were possessed of that same special knowledge, then they would know the church isn't true, that Joseph's not a prophet. So I want to share with you what John Taylor, who was with Joseph when he died, had to say. I was blessed to be associated with Brother Joseph Smith. As President Young said he knew him, so did I. I've been with him under all kinds of circumstances.
When thick clouds of darkness gathered around and earthquakes seemed to bellow, and threatened destruction, when the forces of the earth were rallied against him, and also in times of prosperity. I've heard him speak as many of you heard him speak in public, to advance the principles of eternal truth and plead with the people to speak, to observe the laws of God and to keep his commandments that they might have a celestial inheritance. But I've also been with Joseph in private counsel, so I had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with his feelings, his ideas. with his views, and with his morality, with Joseph's truthfulness, and with his integrity. And I know that he was a good man, that he was an honest man, that he was a man of integrity, that he was a prophet of the Lord, that he lived in that capacity, and that he died in that capacity, and that he maintained his integrity to the end.
I was not only with Joseph living, but I was with Joseph dying. And this is my testimony concerning Joseph Smith. I know before God and holy angels, I do not think it. I know it. I know that he was a servant of God and a prophet of the Lord, that he lived and died in the faith.
And I not only know it by my natural sight and by the revelations of God, I know by that same way that he yet lives, for I have seen him. And I know that he lives, and I rejoice in the testimony that I can bear. I know that he will yet live, and I know that he is a friend of this people and watching over their interests.
He's a friend of President Young and watches over him, and that he's interested in the welfare and happiness and the exaltation of the saints of the Most High God. And having a knowledge of this thing sustains my mind, and it comforts my heart, and it strengthens me in the faith of the new and everlasting covenant and the principles of truth that we continue to hear. I love President Taylor's powerful testimony.
And so I hope that you'll take it to heart that when people attempt to convince you that Joseph is not a prophet, whatever they think they know, whatever they think they've read from whatever blog site or YouTube channel that they think has given them information, not one of those people. will know Joseph the way that John Taylor did. His testimony of knowing him personally is that he was a good man and he was what he said he was. And I'm not John Taylor.
I'm obviously not a prophet in a lot of ways, but I'd like to add my testimony to his. Well, I didn't know the prophet Joseph Smith personally in the past two decades of my life. I've spent studying and reading, writing about the things that he's done. And I can add to that testimony that he was a good man.
I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet. And I know that after having read all those things that he's written, all the things that someone wants to share with you in secret on the side to prove to you. I know it because the Holy Spirit of God has told me that Joseph Smith's a prophet. And I bear that testimony to you in the name of Jesus Christ.