1. Excellent point about revealing who should be the successor. Actually, there were SEVERAL claims that one was chosen by JS. What JS did was to promise it severally and at the right time just ex whomever he thought was getting too powerful. 2. This should remind one of the issues between the Sunnis and the Shiites. 3. Did JS write the letter claimed by Strang? Did JS anoint his son? An enquiring mind would like to know. We know that BY took control of the newspaper in Nauvoo and imitated JS's voice and still had problems consolidating control. We also know that Strang, originally against polygamy, later practiced it. We also know that Strang "translated" the voree plates (lol). 4. Many dictators die without the succession being settled. Reason? Keep the competition going and playing one apostle against another - "who loves me more...?". Worked for JS even getting an apostle to give him his 14 year old daughter.
Guess he saw it coming though (I go as a lamb to the slaughter) and so it is his own fault for not running away and leaving his followers to fend off the angry at him mobs.
If God wanted him to be a martyr God could have done it a little less "Wild West" with a gun and people taking bullets for him.
Well, Mormons did that Oath of Vengeance thing in the temple for a number of years, but that got nowhere. My guess is that God gave up. He's just God, you know. Not like he can do everything. I'd bet God's an angry old coot now, sitting in his underwear and sipping off-name beer while watching pro wrestling.
I think God smote his people, as his is so fond of doing, with a curse of boredom.
He fixed it so that as the years progressed, everything they loved about the church--the little girls, the plural wives, the wine, the cigars, the murders-for-cause-is-a-kindness, the having absolute power to abuse women and children, you know--all the things that make life worth living to God's faithful, all these things he would take away, leaving them with
Janitor duties in a ward building completely stripped of every uplifting element, bland and uninspiring in the extreme.
The earthly equivalent of living in the void as far as information and interest are concerned. A life of obedience and boredom, filled with longing and hope for a better life after death and sacrificing the colors, the scents, the sex, the smells and the experiences of this life for an imaginary life that will never come.
It is a fitting punishment to be Mormon and just marking time until the release of death.