Today, this weekend, and nearly two centuries ago

Here are some notes from a rough and only partially finished manuscript:

Another indication of the Prophet’s sincerity is the striking fact that his own family manifestly believed him.[1]  “The parents and all living brothers and sisters of Joseph Smith believed his account of his visions.  In fact, the two grandparents still alive in 1830 also believed.”[2]  For example, the Joseph Smith Sr., the Prophet’s father, traveled two hundred miles—a significant and taxing journey in the frontier America of that period—to carry a copy of the Book of Mormon to his own father, Asael Smith, the Prophet’s grandfather, not long before Asael’s death in 1830.  On the basis of what he regarded as divine revelation, Asael had long anticipated that some member of his family would be “raised up” as a benefit to humankind. In his eighty-eighth year, he recognized Joseph as the fulfillment of his own revelation.[3]  Joseph Smith Sr., as Oliver Huntington later recalled, “leaned and relied upon his son Joseph in all spiritual matters as much as boys generally do upon their parents for temporalities.”[4]  And here is Lucy Mack Smith’s description of life in the Smith household in the period immediately following the visit of Moroni:

From this time forth, Joseph continued to receive instructions from the Lord, and we continued to get the children together every evening, for the purpose of listening while he gave us a relation of the same. I presume our family presented an aspect as singular as any that ever lived upon the face of the earth—all seated in a circle, father, mother, sons, and daughters, and giving the most profound attention to a boy, eighteen years of age, who had never read the Bible through in his life.[5]

[1] “A prophet will always be held in honour,” said Jesus, with slight but realistic hyperbole, “except in his home town, , and among his kinsmen and family” (Mark 6:4 [NEB]; compare Matthew 13:57; Luke 4:24; John 4:44).  

[2] Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage, xiv-xv.

[3] Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage, 148-149; also Black, Stories from the Early Saints, 2, where further references are given.

[4]$ Andrus and Andrus, They Knew the Prophet, 71.

[5] Lucy’s Book, 344

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This column of mine appeared today in the “Latter-day Saint Living Weekly” section (previously the “Mormon Times” section) of the print edition of the Deseret News and, online, in LDS Living:

“Why Latter-day Saints Need to Defend Our Beliefs, Even as We Avoid Contention”