Posted by:
pollythinks
(
)
Date: May 03, 2015 06:31PM
I just received an invitation to come to Relief Society to hear an upcoming lesson on "Joseph Smith, an Instrument in the Hands of the Lord (from Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Ezra Taft Benson)”…followed with…”We look forward to hearing your testimony about Joseph Smith and how this knowledge and understanding has impacted your life in a positive way.”
Even though I won’t be going to this lesson, the subject matter leads me to speak out regarding Joseph Smith (although I cannot obey the guideline of “hearing my testimony about Joseph Smith…in a positive way” (which, for me, is too much to ask).
My personal thoughts regarding what to say, is that Joseph Smith, generally speaking, was not an honorable man.
Why do I say this? Because myself, along with a great many others, known him to be a liar, a prevaricator, unfaithful to his wife, took advantage of every naïve female he could get his hands on to have intimate relations with him (including women already married to other men, and underage girls), and then tried to obfuscate (confuse/hide) this reprehensible fact by teaching the obnoxious practice of plural marriage as God’s will for him--all of which pretexts caused countless thousands upon thousands to live extremely difficult, harmful, and unhappy lives. (How dare he claim God as having “made him do it”?)
Some might ask how I know these things happened. The answer is that many of his victims publically complained about his indecent treatment of themselves, or of their daughter, or even their wife. Indeed, this is a main reason why he ended up in jail (as a local newspaper had printed a expose’ of Joseph’s escapades).
I didn’t always know these things (as the church certainly doesn’t teach them), but I learned them through studying church history (including the standard works, and the 7-volume “History of the Church”, and other church-related books. There certainly is not a paucity of creditable related material to read.
A little of my background and credentials: During my innocent and growing up years, I asked few significant questions about doctrine, and generally, naively believed what I was told. Why, I reasoned, would anyone have cause to lie or make-up such things? I knew my inactive parents (who grew up in church surroundings), wouldn’t lie to me about such things, but neither did they bother to tell me what they believed, one way or another. I think they believed the BoM was authentic, but it was never on their reading list. Church things were just a heritage they left alone, apparently feeling it best to just leave “well-enough” alone, and even seemed relatively uninformed regarding such things, especially considering my father’s grandfather was a well-known polygamist.
Although neither parent taught their children any church doctrine, my mother drove we children to and from church, where we could learn on our own (I was frequently the only one who attended). One of the things I learned during these sessions (through reasoning on my own), was that the church “must be true”, as it had the Book of Mormon (which also must be true), as how else could it come into being, if not as I had been taught?
It never occurred to me that this book could have been fabricated by Joseph Smith, as so many other people seemed to believe in it, and accepted Joseph as a prophet. Therefore, the church and its prophets must be “true”.
Of course, when I was growing up, we never knew a dark side to J.S. existed (presumably because most members were just as naïve about such these things as was I). Instead, we were taught how lucky we were to be members of a church that had a “living” prophet on earth today, in our time. (Sound familiar?) Enhancing this picture were relatives of mine who lived during J.S’s time, and (seemingly) had accepted him for what he claimed to be---a prophet of God. For instance, my great-grand father was encouraged—and then chose--to take on plural wives for himself (as advised by Brigham Young).
Countless others along the way chose to skedaddle themselves out of this mess, rather than be involved in it.) But not my family.
Having accepted all the above as “good enough” proof of the legitimacy of what I was taught growing up, I hung around, more or less, to young adulthood, and a decade or two afterwards.
Nonetheless, I finally “grew up” and started being inquisitive--especially regarding curtain offense dogma taught in church (related to the men being presumed as superior to the women), and began to take a much closer look at the church’s history and doctrines. This was easy enough to do, as the standard work (the Bible, BofM, D&C, PGP--with the Bible getting the short end of the stick), and the 7-volume “History of the Church” (mainly the first 3 volumes), all provided more than adequate--if some conflicting--information regarding the beginnings of the church under the directions of J.S. (and his miraculous claims). (I was aware that NO ONE in known history had anywhere near the amount of visits from angels as Joseph claimed.) Was this truly a renaissance? (The short answer, I discovered, was no.)
Indeed, the more I read, the more red lights began to stick out everywhere. Real angels appearing here and there? God and Jesus (the story changed a couple times) appeared “in person” to J.S.? The three apostles, Peter, James and John appeared and laid their hands on J.S. and Oliver Cowdery to “bestow” on them the priesthood (even though none of these men--I repeat--NONE of them, “held” the priesthood themselves).
These problem areas appeared on many fronts.
Another one (I learned), is that the prophet Moses proclaimed, by revelation, that only—that is, ONLY--his brother Aaron (and his progenitors) were to be set-aside and ordained as priests. Period.
It appears that Joseph was not aware of this mandate, and therefore arbitrarily ordained men as priests to his heart’s content, and without any credentials or authority given him to do so. Moreover, this presumptive right is still practiced in today’s church (as if it had come from person to person, the first of which had authority to begin (“restore”) the practice in the latter-day church (an erroneous belief). If one were to try and follow the trial of where the credentialed authorized right to indulge in this practice originated in the church, it would lead to a dead end. This is so because J.S, on his own, that is, between he and Oliver, ordained each other to whatever office title they felt they needed.
Yet another major oddity uncovered, is Joseph’s self-fabricated story of an angel who supposedly led Joseph to a buried “gold-like” primitive book (later known as the Book of Mormon). In reality, this story was just a yarn put-together by Joseph Smith, who decided while he was at it, to include a plagiarized hunk of scripture from the King James Bible (in trying to lend an authoritative air to his fiction). Nevertheless, the BofM’s existence is but a whopper of a tale. Like the rest of his miraculous claims, its existence was completely faked, as was also true regarding the story he made-up of his need to interpret the content of what was in this specious book. Joseph accounts regarding how the BoM came into being never happened, let alone, his not having to interpret what was written in his fictitious book.
The more I studied, the more I realized that all the above claims by Joseph Smith were complete fabrications (a claim of mine which can be proven to be true by any hardy-type folks willing to follow the plowed trail.
Indeed, all this evidence appears to prove Joseph Smith a fabricator extraordinaire.
Unhappily, all the made-up accounts mentioned above are still taught to members today, as realities.
At any rate (and as many others have stated), "I studied myself right out of the church".
PS: I ran out of time to try and list J.S.’s positive aspects. I apologize. (Maybe next time.)