Hey, I’m Hannah and this is Firm Foundations.
Thanks for watching.
In this series we are learning how to separate
the facts from the fiction in LDS history
and doctrine.
Emma Hale was a lovely, refined, intelligent,
middle-class young lady in the 1820s.
She met Joseph Smith in Pennsylvania when
she was 23, while he was boarding in her parents’
home.
After falling in love, Emma and Joseph eloped,
despite her parents disapproval due to Joseph’s
lower class and odd religious work.
This is where Emma’s life of comfort ended.
The couple first stayed with Joseph’s parents,
but moved back to Pennsylvania to live with
Emma’s parents less than a year later after
Joseph got the Book of Mormon plates.
Emma scribed for Joseph as he translated the
Book of Mormon.
She bore a strong witness of the gift and
power of God by which he translated, and of
the truthfulness of the Book.
As Emma’s first preganacy wore on, Martin
Harris did most of the scribing.
To convince his skeptical wife, Martin begged
Joseph to let him take the translation manuscript
home to New York.
Knowing better, Joseph finally relented and
let Martin take the pages.
While Martin was away Emma gave birth to a
boy who died shortly after.
She nearly died as well.
Over a period of weeks, Joseph and her mother
nursed her back to health.
Women in Emma’s time knew they were risking
their lives to have children, and the Lord
addressed that concern and explained why He
spared her life in a revelation he gave Emma
through Joseph shortly after the Church of
Jesus Christ was restored and Emma was baptized
and confirmed into it in 1830.
The Lord called Emma an “elect lady” and
gave her several callings: to compile hymns,
to expound the scriptures and exhort the saints,
to scribe for Joseph, and to comfort and console
Joseph.
He promised to “preserve” her life if
she remained faithful.
The Lord’s revelation to Emma is the only
one in the Doctrine and Covenants in which
the Lord speaks directly to a woman through
his prophet.
The Lord’s voice is more tender when he
talks to Emma than when he speaks to Joseph
or others, and the revelation is very encouraging
and comforting.
But it is also tough.
It foreshadows Emma’s hardships and blessings
and eventual exaltation.
In one passage the Lord acknowledges that
He and she will sometimes be in a kind of
tug of war over Joseph: He tells Emma to comfort
“my servant, Joseph Smith.
. ., thy husband,” as if he wants her to
understand that Joseph is the Lord’s servant
first.
Another passage that is easy for us to miss
must have been a huge dilemma for Emma.
“Go with him at the time of his going,”
the Lord told her, speaking of Joseph.
Emma obeyed that.
She moved with Joseph to Ohio in the dead
of winter 1831, five months pregnant with
twins, and when she boarded the sleigh and
headed down the road away from her parents’
home, she never saw them again.
That act of obedience reveals how deeply she
loved the Lord and her husband, and how sincerely
she believed them both.
Emma gave birth to her twins early in April
1831, and they died within hours.
On the same day, Julia Clapp Murdock also
gave birth to twins, before she died.
The twins father, helpless to feed and care
for them, gave the twins to Emma and Joseph
to raise.
In March 1832, one of the twins was very sick
during a mob attack on Joseph Smith where
he was beaten, dragged from the house and
covered in hot tar and feathers.
Emma tried her best to protect her sick babies
during the attack, but the boy died , and
Joseph believed his death was caused by the
exposure he suffered the night of the attack.
In 1832 Emma gave birth to Joseph Smith III,
her first natural born child who would survive
to adulthood.
Another son was born in 1836.
Emma was a great influencer in the early church.
Brigham Young credited her as the catalyst
for the Word of Wisdom.
He said a bunch of men would invade her home
for a school that was training them to be
church leaders and missionaries.
During the meetings they smoked and chewed
tobacco, spitting it around the room.
Emma got to clean it up and prompted Joseph
to do something about it.
In 1833 he sought and received the mind of
the Lord about tobacco and other substances
that were debated at the time, and the Lord
revealed the Word of Wisdom that is now D&C
89.
Unfortunately for Emma, the revelation also
forbade tea, which was a favorite drink for
her Emma.
However, the Word of Wisdom was implemented
slowly, as it was meant more as a forewarning
for saints today than in her time.
In 1842 the Lord called Emma Smith as the
first president of the Relief Society in Nauvoo,
Illinois.
Her goal was to relieve suffering and poverty,
love and minister to those in need.
In essence, she led the women of the church
in living the Law of Consecration through
service and donations.
Emma was also called to create a hymnal and
throughout her life she curated and published
two.
The first book contained the texts of 90 songs.
Her second included 304 hymn texts.
She included some favorite hymns from her
Methodist background or other Christian traditions
along with original hymns written by saints
There was nothing the Lord called Emma to
do that she didn’t throw herself into--except
plural marriage.
Joseph taught the apostles in Nauvoo, “The
Lord will feel after your heart-strings, and
will wrench them and twist them around, and
you will have to learn to rely upon God and
upon God alone.”
As though that wasn’t sobering enough, he
added, “If God could in any other way more
keenly have tried Abraham than by calling
upon him to offer his son Isaac, he would
have done it”
Emma must have felt that God had found a way
to try her more keenly than He tried Abraham.
Historical records don’t reveal exactly
what Emma knew about the revelation on plural
marriage, when she learned it, how she felt
about it, and how she responded to it.
She didn’t leave us a record of her views
on this matter.
All we have are a few insights left by others.
But they reveal Emma’s character.
They show that she was fiercely opposed to
infidelity.
She preached against John Bennett’s apostate
so-called “spiritual wife system,” by
which he and other predatorial men preyed
on vulnerable, poor women.
Emma was those mens’ biggest foe, and when
Bennett threatened to retaliate, Emma dared
him to bring it on.
She was fearless in the face of evil.
Her fierce loyalty to Joseph and the Lord
made plural marriage excruciatingly difficult.
She had left her parents and siblings to obey
the Lord and follow Joseph, she had buried
many of her children, spent most of her married
life in the homes of other people, and been
driven from two states.
She would willing do anything--except share
her husband, and that’s the test the Lord
gave her.
She didn’t pass it perfectly.
But she did pass.
Here’s why we can be so confident in that
assertion: The same revelation that gave Emma
her Abrahamic test also gives the terms and
conditions of the new and everlasting covenant
of marriage.
Simply put, the three conditions of the covenant
are to have your marriage sealed by one who
has sealing power, have it sealed by the Holy
Spirit of Promise, and something the revelation
calls “that too most holy” (D&C 132:7),
which is described in more detail in verse
19.
Verses 19 and 20 say that those who meet all
3 conditions will be exalted.
We know from historical records that Emma
was sealed to Joseph in May 1843, and we can
safely assume that it was verified by the
Holy Spirit of Promise, because in September
1843 they received the ordinance D&C 132:7
calls “that too most holy,” which means
that the promised blessings of verse 19 are
theirs.
Though neither Emma or Joseph was perfect
after receiving these sealing blessings, neither
committed the unpardonable sin the revelation
describes.
So they’re going to be together forever.
Some people who don’t understand that may
assume that Emma lost out on her blessings
when she didn’t follow Brigham Young and
the saints west after Joseph’s death.
But she understood the covenants she had made.
She knew the terms and conditions of the new
and everlasting covenant of marriage, and
they didn’t say anything about moving to
the Rocky Mountains.
As Joseph left for Carthage, Emma asked him
for a blessing.
He couldn’t give her one then so he asked
her to write her blessing and promised he
would seal it.
What she wrote reveals what she desired most.
She knew exactly what she was saying when
she wrote that she wanted to raise her children
righteously, including the baby she was expecting
at the time, and be united with Joseph and
“retain the place with God has given me
by his side” (Saints, 544).
Emma never saw Joseph alive again.
He was murdered on June 27, 1844, leaving
her a pregnant widow and sole provider and
caregiver for their children.
She was heartbroken
Brigham Young, President of the quorum of
12 apostles became the leader of the church
until such time as a new prophet was appointed.
Emma and Brigham had enjoyed a fine relationship
before, but now they went different directions.
She wanted to stay in Nauvoo beside her husband’s
grave, and she felt like she had a right to
property and records Joseph possessed.
Brigham was leading the Saints to safety in
the west.
He felt like the property and the records
belonged to the Church.
He invited Emma to come west with them but
she had no desire to do so
In 1847, the year Brigham arrived in what
later became Utah, Emma married Major Lewis
C. Bidamon, who was not a Latter-day Saint.
In April of 1860, her son Joseph III was ordained
the prophet of the Reorganized Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Emma and Lewis attempted to run a general
store and hotel, but the lack of people in
Nauvoo left them struggling monetarily for
most of their lives.
Emma died peacefully in 1879.
She was not perfect but that was not the standard
the Lord had set for her exaltation.
Rather, He had told her to “cleave to the
covenants which thou hast made” and promised
her “a crown of righteousness” (D&C 25).
She knew the covenants well.
She made and kept them intently, knowing that
the Lord would, in turn, redeem her and exalt
her with her husband.
Emma is a hero to me.
She was an educated, refined woman who choose,
time and time again to reevaluate and renew
her faith and testimony in the early church,
she remained true to her covenants through
a lifetime of intense opposition and extreme
trials She endured to the end in incredible
and admirable ways, pushing through trials
I would not have been willing to endure.
And to the end, she was forgiving and resilience.
During the time their marriage was strained
by the test of plural marriage and Joseph
was being hunted by Missouri officials who
were intent on prosecuting him, Emma met him
at his hiding place on an island in the Mississippi
River.
There in extreme hardship, with the internal
pressure of plural marriage and the external
pressure of Missouri battering them, came
Emma in a tiny boat to do what the Lord had
commanded her: “be . . . a comfort undo
my servant, Joseph Smith . . ., thy husband,
in his afflictions” (D&C 25:5).
Joseph’s journal entry about this event
says everything about Emma:
“With what unspeakable delight, and what
transports of joy swelled my bosom, when I
took by the hand on that night, my beloved
Emma, she that was my wife, even the wife
of my youth; and the choice of my heart.
Many were the re-vibrations of my mind when
I contemplated for a moment the many passt
scenes we had been called to pass through.
The fatigues, and the toils, the sorrows,
and sufferings, and the joys and consolations
from time to time had strewed our paths and
crowned our board.
Oh!
what a co-mingling of thought filled my mind
for the moment, Again she  here,
even in the seventh trouble, undaunted, firm
and unwavering, unchangeable, affectionate
Emma.”
Thanks for joining us!
Firm Foundations is created by me, Hannah.
Don’t forget to subscribe, and we’ll catch
you next time.
