At Nauvoo in the early 1840s (the date is
not certain) the Prophet Joseph Smith gave
a great discourse on the temple. He said,
among other things: “Now, brethren, I obligate
myself to build as great a temple as ever
Solomon did, if the Church will back me up.”
He went on to prophesy that some there living would live to see it with their eyes.
He closed by saying: “And if it should be
the will of God that I might live to behold
that temple completed and finished from the
foundation to the top stone, I will say, ‘Oh,
Lord, it is enough. Let thy servant depart
in peace,’ which is my earnest prayer in
the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.”
As the months passed and the difficulties
increased, apparently he came to feel by the
Spirit that he would not live to see the Nauvoo
Temple finished. In anticipation of that,
he made several important decisions.
On May 4, 1842, he called to his side nine
of the most faithful of his brethren—Hyrum
Smith, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Willard
Richards, Newell K. Whitney, and others.
In our official records we now list only seven, because two of the nine became apostate.
William Law and William Marx
When Brigham Young said that there were men at Carthage who had received their temple endowments,
he meant met at Carthage in the mob. He had in mind at least one of those two.
“If it should be the will of God that I
might live,” he had said. Now, he continued
and said in effect, “It is not the will
of the Lord that I should live, and I must
give you, here in this upper room, all those
glorious plans and principles whereby men
are entitled to the fulness of the priesthood.” He proceeded in an improvised and makeshift way to do so.
How did Joseph Smith know all these ordinances,
and how were they transmitted to us today?
The promise is recorded in section 124 of
the Doctrine and Covenants, given in 1841,
that the Lord would reveal to Joseph “all
things pertaining to this house, and the priesthood
thereof, and the place whereon it shall be built.”
We have from Brigham Young this testimony,
that after they had received these glorious
blessings the Prophet said: “Brother Brigham,
this is not arranged right. But we have done
the best we could under the circumstances
in which we are placed, and I wish you to
take this matter in hand and organize and
systematize all these ceremonies.” Then,
Brigham Young later said, “I did so. And
each time I got something more [meaning that
each time he worked on systematizing he had
not only his memory and the records kept by
Wilford Woodruff and others but also the light
of revelation], so that when we went through
the temple at Nauvoo [and without Joseph]
I understood and knew how to place them there.
We had our ceremonies pretty correct.”
Speaking of that occasion in May 1842, Joseph
said: “The communications I made to this
council were of things spiritual, and to be
received only by the spiritual minded: and
there was nothing made known to these men
but what will be made known to all the Saints
of the last days, so soon as they are prepared
to receive, and a proper place is prepared
to communicate them, even to the weakest of
the Saints; therefore, let the Saints be diligent
in building the Temple, and all houses which
they have been, or shall hereafter be, commanded
of God to build; and wait their time with
patience in all meekness, faith, perseverance
unto the end, knowing assuredly that all these
things referred to in this Council are always
governed by the principle of revelation.”
Other sources tell us more of what was in
the heart and mind of the Prophet in this
period regarding the temple. Speaking in 1835
to a group of elders about to go on missions,
he had said, “You need an endowment, brethren,
in order that you may be prepared and able
to overcome all things.” Bathsheba W. Smith
recorded that on one occasion the Prophet
said to her, “You do not know how to pray
and have your prayers answered.” Then she
added that when she and her husband received
their endowments, they learned how to pray.
Mercy R. Thompson recalled that she received
her temple blessings in an upper room of the
Mansion House prior to the temple dedication,
that the Prophet’s wife, Emma, officiated,
and that the Prophet said to her (Mercy Thompson), “This will bring you out of darkness into marvelous light."
To some of the elders he said "The keys are certain signs and words by which false spirits and personages
may be detected from true [spirits and personages]. The elders must know them all to be endowed with power,
to finish their work, and to prevent imposition. Elsewhere he says the Temple must be built to organize the Church.
He told the sisters of the Relief Society, who had begun with a constitution of their own, that they were
on the right track but that he must do it according to the priesthood, which he proceeded to do but then said,
"But there is more sisters which we cannot present to you until the sanctuary is finished.
Elsewhere he said that the temple was built to help the Saints prevent being overcome by persecution.
more than a half-dozen of those who finally received their blessings just prior to the movement west recorded
belief that the Church of Jesus Christ  
 would not have survived,
had not they received the blessings of the 
 Nauvoo Temple.
It might have survived in some physical 
 sense, but not spiritual.
As for temple proxy service, Jacob Hamblin
recorded: “The Prophet Joseph had told the
people that the time had come which was spoken
of by the Prophet Malachi, . . . the Saints
must seek for the spirit of this great latter-day
work [meaning the work of the temple] and
that they must pray for it until they received it.”
"Blessed is he," he said to Reuben McBride, who was the first man to be baptized in the font,
which they dedicated two years before the temple was finished.
"Blessed is he who is first baptized for the dead in this dispensation. Brother McBride had a crippled hand.
The Prophet said to him in faith, "Wash your hands in that font, and you will be healed."
The doctors had told him that it would take a year. He was completely healed in a week.
Horace Cummings recorded: “Concerning the
work for the dead, [Joseph] said that in the
resurrection those who had been worked for
would fall at the feet of those who had done
their work, kiss their feet, embrace their
knees and manifest the most exquisite gratitude.”
The Prophet added, “We do not comprehend
what a blessing to them these ordinances are.”
One who caught the spirit of this work was
Wilford Woodruff, and his journal is full
of memories and details. Wilford Woodruff
is the man who wrote in a journal almost every
day for sixty-three years, thereby producing
perhaps the most important single historical
treasure we have in the Church. Why did he
keep the journal? Because the Prophet admonished
him to. By my estimate, more than two-thirds
of what we have of firsthand records of Joseph
Smith’s discourses and counsels to his brethren
would have been lost had it not been for Wilford
Woodruff’s makeshift shorthand and then
staying awake, often till past midnight, transcribing
his notes into readable English. In that journal
Brother Woodruff recorded the Prophet’s
announcement that the Saints could be baptized
for the dead in the Mississippi River prior
to the temple’s completion, but that there
would come a time when the Lord would accept
that no longer. They would have to do it in
the temple. This privilege was received with
great joy, and people flocked to the riverside
to be baptized on behalf of departed relatives
and friends. Not understanding at first, they
were baptized without regard to gender—men
for both men and women, and women for both
men and women—and without a recorder present.
But with the benefit of further thought and
revelation, the Prophet was able to put this
right, so that things were done in order,
witnessed, and properly recorded.
In the Nauvoo period, the Prophet was at least
able to get a roof over his own head, with
the help of his brethren, and that home became
the crossroads. Visitors came, some prominent,
some merely curious, and some of course intent
upon his destruction.
Many things recorded in the journal of Charles L. Walker, who was an orphan who lived in the Prophet's home,
indicating how kind the Prophet tried to be
in coping with this increasing flow. Josiah
Quincy, later mayor of Boston, was one of
those who came. Another, whose diaries we
haven’t been equally eager to read (they
were locked up in a vault for a century),
was Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy
Adams and grandson of John Adams, both United
States Presidents. Charles Francis Adams was
not as impressed with Joseph as was Josiah
Quincy. He was full of prejudices. He was
a little unhappy about having to pay a quarter
to Mother Smith in order to see the Egyptian
mummies upstairs in the Mansion House. Of
the Prophet’s claim to be able to translate
some of the inscriptions, he wrote merely,
“The cool impudence of this imposture amused
me.” He did, however, speak of the shame
and injustice of the Saints’ being driven
and persecuted in a country whose constitution
guaranteed religious freedom. But to him,
the Prophet was a lightweight and a deceiver.
"Like a bed of gold," Wilford often said,  "concealed from human view.”
In that same home there were meetings and
other efforts on the Prophet’s part to strengthen
his brethren and further prepare them. During
the winter of 1843–44, for example, he met
almost daily and sometimes twice a day with
all the faithful members of the Council of
the Twelve. Orson Pratt finally complained,
“Why do you give us no rest?” and the
Prophet replied, “The Spirit urges me.”
Erastus Snow says of that period that he learned
more in a few months in council with the Prophet
than he had learned in all his life before.
Others, Parley P. Pratt among them, tried
to keep notes. In that period Joseph reviewed
every restored principle, authority, and ordinance,
completing it with a summary of the summary
in a meeting in late March 1844 in which he
said, in effect: “Brethren, I have conferred
upon you now, every key and principle and
power that has been bestowed upon me. Now
you must round up your shoulders and bear off the kingdom or you will be damned. I am going to rest."
In that same meeting the Prophet reconfirmed
to the Twelve that Brigham Young, the presiding
head of the Twelve (whom he had ordained thus
at Quincy, Illinois, late in 1839), held the
keys of the sealing power. They knew it then,
they knew it later, and all that has been
said about other leadership intentions of
the Prophet are false witnesses.
The Prophet came to love the situation at
Nauvoo—the beauty of that place, the temple,
and the zealous construction efforts of the
Saints. As a way of trying to prevent a recurrence
of what had happened in Missouri, they had
their own charter, their own plan of government,
their own city ordinances. They even had their
own militia, the Nauvoo Legion. It was not
a great crack unit of military men, but the
group of several thousand was at least drilled
occasionally and was trained to be able to
defend the Saints’ lives and homes under
pressure. It was the fear of that legion,
John Taylor suggested, that postponed disaster
as long as it was postponed. But the irony
is that, having enlisted and trained up to
five thousand men, many of them very young
men, the Prophet himself insisted during his
final days that they must stay home during
the very crisis that they might have done
something to resolve. He submitted in a statesmanlike
way when he might instead have
leveled the whole of Illinois.
We read of the organization of the women. 
 I have hinted earlier of the Relief Society
and its strength, what great women they were,
how the Prophet charged them and pleaded with
them for compassion and help. He often said
it was not just their duty to aid and save
the poor in a temporal way, but it was ultimately
their duty to save souls. He said in their
midst that it is the nature of woman to have
largeness of soul and compassion.
To Eliza R. Snow he once gave a watch as he stood to speak in a meeting.
That is still part of the our artifacts in the Historical Department of the Church.
Emma, denominated the elect lady in an early revelation, was the president. The kinship she felt with those
sisters and theirs for her has sometimes been
obscured. It was strong. It was moving. And
what they went through and how they coped
with everything from breech births to the
last stages of malaria will someday be known,
to their eternal credit.
Nauvoo also is the place where the Church
established patterns which have continued
to our own generation. There, for the first
time, were the rudiments of a youth organization,
for example, as well as the beginnings of
sacrament meetings and an orderly procedure
in them. In Nauvoo there was not a Sunday
School per se, but often there were Sunday
meetings besides sacrament ­meetings—prayer
meetings and teaching meetings of various
descriptions. The Saints were straining then
as always to outdo their resources as they
struggled with missionary work, and ­mission
after mission was opened.
The Nauvoo era also was the period of a life-and-death
struggle, for there were many who by that
time were organized against the Church and
who swore they would bring Joseph Smith and
his kingdom of blockheads to naught. Joseph
would say that he had suffered interminably
because he claimed to be a prophet, though
in fact everyone can be a prophet. His argument
went roughly like this: All around me the
Christian world is saying, “There are no
prophets and therefore you are a false prophet.” Then, he remarked, "What is a man who stands at a pulpit and
says, “If you will do so and so you
will be saved, but if not, you will not be
saved,” is he not making a prediction about
salvation and the things of God? Therefore,
being a predictor he must either be a true
or a false prophet. I have been given authority
to say that certain things must be done in
order to inherit the fulness of salvation
and that some of the things men have claimed
are requirements are not. The Holy Ghost is my witness.
It is ironical that men who did not believe
in prophecy nevertheless predicted that the
Church would fail. “Thus ends Mormonism,”
said a newspaper headline the morning after
the Prophet was killed. Mormonism has not
ended.
At the end of the Wentworth letter (written
in 1842) the Prophet wrote a paragraph which
I reread in moments of discouragement. “No
unhallowed hand can stop this work from progressing;
persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies
may assemble, calumny may defame, but the
truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly,
and independent, till it has penetrated every
continent, visited every clime, swept every
country, and sounded in every ear, till the
purposes of God shall be accomplished, and
the great Jehovah shall say the work is done.
Magnificent, prophetic promise!
But just as he said that, he also said that
as the work of the kingdom of God increases
and expands, so the work of opposition will
increase and expand; and that the closer we
come to ­living celestial law, the greater
the opposition to be expected. Let us now
focus on some gems that came from the Prophet
in this period that are not as well known
as others of our scriptures, but which were
nevertheless recorded by those whom we can trust.
“Mormonism,” he wrote, “is the pure
doctrine of Jesus Christ; of which I myself
am not ashamed.” When asked what was different
about Mormonism, he replied in effect, “We
teach and testify of Jesus Christ.”
Remember Van Buren, when [Joseph] asked him for redress, asked Joseph one day:
"What's really different about you people? What do you have that other Christians don't?"
Joseph replied, "The Holy Ghost,"
The Holy Ghost is a summary, really, of what has been manifested in the modern restoration.
Here are some gems that I would like to share:
"No one will ever inherit the Celestial Kingdom, unless he is strictly honest. That's a hard one.
My own Bishop has told me that when he asks the question, people almost universally reply, "I try,"
Eventually, we must do more than try. Never labor only for Zion and our Brethren. I must rephrase that,
"Never labor only for Zion and your Brethren." In other words, the principle of consecration.
The temporal and the spiritual are inseparable.
Of the Holy Ghost he said elsewhere: “If
you will listen to the first promptings you
will get it right nine times out of ten.”
He is talking here of the impressions—elsewhere
he speaks of flashes—that come from the
Spirit. All of us tend to second- and third-guess
these promptings (apparently women do it less
than men). For instance, we are given a Church
assignment, and an impression comes as to
what to do with it. And then we begin to forget;
we start to analyze and doubt. How shall we
do it? Nine out of ten times “the first
promptings.” That was his counsel. It is
wisdom.
“Any man who will not fight for his wife
and children is a coward.” Joseph Smith,
the Prophet of the Lord Jesus Christ, was
not a pacifist. Yes, his voice was always
for peace. But read Doctrine and Covenants 98. When men beat their plows into swords and attack,
there is a law of God that justifies defense. Therefore, ugly though it be, justifies war.
The Prophet felt, and said elsewhere, that 
 one thing uglier than war is cowardice
and the refusal to stand for one’s own 
 loved ones in the breach.
Another comment on honesty: “A man who has an honest heart,” said the Prophet, “should rejoice.”
Speaking of the United States he once said, (I've often believed but never seen in print)
"The only nation on the Earth where the Kingdom of God could be established."
"If you will thank the Lord with all your heart every night, for all the blessings of that day,
You will eventually find yourself exalted in the Kingdom of God."
Power statement on the spiritual necessity of gratitude.
The scripture says, “He who receiveth all
things with thankfulness [notice the “all”
in that: difficulties, strains, disaster,
setbacks] shall be made glorious; and the
things of this earth shall be added unto him,
even an hundred fold, yea, more.” Joseph
was one of the most grateful men who ever
lived.
Oral tradition attributes another wise maxim
to the Prophet: “Don’t climb to the extreme
branches of the tree, for there is danger
of falling: cling close to the trunk.”
Translation: Avoid the vain mysteries and
the discussion of them. Avoid imaginative
speculation. But Joseph Smith, one must quickly
add, made a distinction between the mysteries
of godliness—that is, the deeper things
that can only be known by revelation to the
soul on the how of living a godly life—and
the speculative pursuit of matters that are
without profit to the soul. “I advise all
to go on to perfection,” he said, “and
search deeper and deeper into the mysteries
of Godliness.” The vain mysteries are those
of which we know nothing and need not know
anything—whether, for example, the pearly
gates swing or roll, or what is the ultimate
destiny of the sons of perdition.
"Cling close to the trunk,” said Joseph Smith.
Now one of the strongest and wisest statements
I have ever heard on egoism. The question
was put to him: “Joseph, is the principle
of self-­aggrandizement wrong? Should we
seek our own good?” Listen to his answer.
“It is a correct principle and may be indulged
upon only one rule or plan—and that is to
elevate, benefit, and bless others first.
If you will elevate others, the very work
itself will exalt you. Upon no other plan
can a man justly and permanently aggrandize
himself.” That is another way of saying
with the New Testament, “Whosoever shall
lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s,
the same shall save it.” To paraphrase:
He that seeketh to save his life has mere
physical survival. He that is against me,
or indifferent to me, will lose it.
"What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the
whole world, and lose his own soul?” Nothing.
Through all his Nauvoo teachings Joseph displayed
a sense of mission. Lorenzo Snow reported
a day when someone came and asked Joseph (it
had happened hundred of times), “Who are
you?” He replied, “Noah came before the
flood. I have come before the fire.”
That leads to a probing question: How much did
Joseph Smith know about himself and his own
calling? Clearly his knowledge grew and expanded
from the initial encounters of the Sacred
Grove. But what really was implicated in that
tantalizing phrase picked up by enemies and
friends, “You do not know me”? Or, in
his turning to people on the stand (this happened
at least three times in Nauvoo) and saying,
“If I revealed all that has been made known
to me, scarcely a man on this stand would
stay with me”? In another case he said,
“If the Church knew all the commandments,
one-half they would condemn through prejudice
and ignorance.” To [a group] he once said:
“Brethren, if I were to tell you all I know
of the kingdom of God, I do know that you
would rise up and kill me.” Brigham arose
and said, “Don’t tell me anything that
I can’t bear, for I don’t want to apostatize.”
Well, it is fascinating work to speculate.
Two things on record may help with ­questions
about the scope of Joseph Smith’s role.
In a Nauvoo discourse Joseph refers to the
first chapter of John wherein John the Baptist
was asked, “Who art thou?” He replied
that he was not the Christ. “What then?
Art thou Elias? Art thou that prophet [who
is to come]?”
Joseph’s critics would have thought it a stretch for him to say, “You see, there is a reference to a great prophet
to come. I am he.” With the discovery of
the Dead Sea Scrolls and embellished traditions,
sometimes fanciful, in later Judaism, it becomes apparent that two centuries before Christ,
a tradition taught that there were two messianic
figures to come. The Messiah ben Judah, the
Son of Judah, the Son of David, the Stem of
Jesse, would indeed redeem. But alongside
that set of prophecies and all they entailed
was another set about a son of Joseph who
would be a restorer of all things. I said
to a Harvard scholar who was famous for his
New Testament skill, “What possibly could
be restored?” He said, “Well, you know
the phrase in the Lord’s Prayer that says
‘Thy kingdom come.’ This was to be offered
by Christians who had just received the kingdom
in Jesus. But clearly the prayer presupposes
that something more is to come.” Then he
said, “There’s also that language in the
Book of Acts about the ‘restitution of all
things.’” This man is an expert on the
Dead Sea Scrolls. He knows nothing of Joseph
Smith (or didn’t before we had our conversation).
If the restorer wasn’t a Joseph named Smith,
the world must wait for “that prophet who
is to come,” who is to restore all things.
We might wonder if the Prophet himself knew
of these ancient patterns, if he had a glimpse
that there was such a strand, down through
the centuries, even between the periods of
the Old and the New Testaments, when men had
that word-of-mouth tradition. If so, did he
recognize his own greatness in that term?
In this discourse, he speaks of seven dispensations,
and says that the one Joseph led would be
the dispensation of the fullness of times. His brother Hyrum, who surely saw him as a man and as a brother,
yet said earnestly, “There were prophets before, but Joseph has the spirit and power of all the prophets.”
Joseph knew that he had been called in this
the greatest of all dispensations. And I think
he knew that meant something as to his own
calling, a calling that was initiated before
this world was created.
That leads to the second point on which he
gives us a little insight. “Every man,”
he said, “who has a calling to minister
to the inhabitants of the world, was ordained
to that very purpose in the Grand Council
of heaven before this world was.” And then
he added, with some care and caution, “I
suppose that I was ordained to this very office
in that Grand Council.” But he didn’t
merely suppose. By the end, he knew.
Brigham Young, who went without bread and
much else in order to hear the Prophet speak
on any subject at any time, even if he was
only expressing opinions—that same Brigham
Young who would die with the name of Joseph
on his lips—once said, in a family reunion
in Nauvoo, that what Joseph had in mind in
saying, “You do not know me” was essentially
a matter of heritage and blood. The Lord God
had made covenant with Joseph who was sold
into Egypt that in the last days that branch
of Israel would indeed run over the wall,
and God by appropriate unions of ancestors
had watched over that blood until it came
pure and unsullied into Joseph.
Brigham Young suggested Joseph was conscious
of this preordained role and how the Lord
had brought it about. As to the latter, an
interesting letter was written from Orson
Pratt to his brother Parley P. Pratt in
the 1850s that says in effect: “You will
recall that Joseph had a vision in which he
saw that our ancestral line [meaning the Pratt
brothers] and his [meaning the Smiths] had
a common ancestor a few generations back.”
Apparently neither Parley nor Orson was able
to confirm the link. The letter remained in
an attic until about 1930, but then a granddaughter
took it to Archibald F. Bennett, one of the
outstanding genealogists of the Church, and
he did the research.
He discovered that several generations back
from Joseph Smith there was indeed a common
ancestor named John Lathrop, and that not
only was he the common ancestor of the Pratt
brothers and Joseph Smith but also of other
early Church leaders, including Wilford Woodruff,
Oliver Cowdery, and Frederick G. Williams.
In fact one estimate concludes that one-fourth
of the early Church members in America were
descended from John Lathrop.
The Prophet taught we would one day discover
that all of us, regardless of our present
guesses and researchings as to origins and
family, have in our veins the cumulative blood
of Israel, and whether by actual birth or
by adoption into the kingdom, or both, the
Almighty intends that we shall belong literally
to the family of Abraham. Those of us who
have mostly gentile inheritance will find
that through the renovating powers of the
Holy Ghost we are made, as Joseph said, literally
the seed of Abraham. The visible effect of
that experience, he said, may be more powerful
than is the impact of the Holy Ghost on others
who have more of the blood of Ephraim. The
kingdom is not a “closed shop.” It is
not a power-mongering super-race. It is an
open family into which we are grafted, and
through which probably most of us have a heavy
genealogical debt.
Joseph was an Ephraimite. He was ordained
in the Grand Council before the world was.
And he was that great prophet who was to come.
