“Let me be one of that number.”

Tomorrow — Tuesday — I’m slated to spend a significant amount of the day interviewing Ron Esplin on camera.  He currently serves as a general editor of The Joseph Smith Papers and as director of the Brigham Young Center.  I’ll be interviewing him for the docudrama portion of the overall Six Days in August project, a series of short features that we’re calling Becoming Brigham.  So yesterday, in preparation for the interview, I reread Ronald K. Esplin, “Authority, Keys, and ‘the Measures of Joseph’: A Detailed Exploration of 1844 Succession,” in Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, ed., Joseph Smith: A Life Lived in Crescendo (Orem: The Interpreter Foundation and Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2024), 745-882.  It builds upon his important earlier article, Ronald K. Esplin, “Joseph, Brigham and the Twelve: A Succession of Continuity,” BYU Studies 21/3 (1981): 301-341, and it is an extremely significant piece.

Something that has saddened me greatly over the past few years has been hearing certain members of the Church — active Latter-day Saints! — badmouthing Brigham Young and even rejecting him and the Twelve as legitimate successors to the leadership of the Saints following the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.  Their attitudes astonish me.  Some persons have gone so far as to allege that John Taylor and Willard Richards were the actual killers of the Prophet and the Patriarch, on Brigham Young’s orders!

Happily, Ron Esplin’s article offers a powerful corrective to such misguided views.  Among other things, he demonstrates on the basis of abundant documentation how faithful and loyal Brigham and the Twelve were to Joseph Smith.  I will share here a few more of the many passages from the article that I marked as I was going through it.

During remarks given at a special conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 8 September 1844, Brigham Young addressed an audience of approximately 7,000 Saints.  Recent events, he said, reminded him of Paul’s lament that some were for Paul, some for Apollos, some for Cephus, and some for Christ.  He thought that, among those present that day, some were for Lyman Wight, some for James Emmett, some for Sidney Rigdon, “and I suppose some for the Twelve.”  He wanted all to speak their minds:

The business of the day will result in this thing: all those who are for Joseph and Hyrum [who had been martyred about a month and a half before], the Book of Mormon, book of Doctrine and Covenants, the Temple and Joseph’s measures, and for the Twelve; they being one party; will be called upon to manifest their principles openly and boldly.  (813)

As Ron Esplin summarizes Brigham’s remarks,

He intended to know those who wish “to tarry and build up the city and build the Temple, and carry out the measures and revelations of our martyred prophet” — but “opposite parties” shall enjoy the same liberty.  Those who believe Sidney Rigdon is the man to be “the first president and the leader of this people” should “show their principles as boldly, and be as decided as they are in their secret meetings and private councils.” (813)

In Brigham’s view, the stakes were extremely high, and he knew on which side he would stand:

If there are not more than ten men who hang on to the truth, and to Joseph and the Temple, and are willing to do right in all things, let me be one of that number.  If there should be but ten left, and their lives should be threatened; threatened with destruction by mobs, the Temple not be built, &c., because they are determined to do right, let me be one that is martyred for the truth.  (813-814)

At the October 1844 general conference of the Church — the first to be held after the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith and, thus, the first to  be conducted under the leadership of Brigham Young and the Twelve, Brigham announced it as

a “test of our fellowship to believe and confess that Joseph lived and died a prophet of God in good standing.”  None should fellowship the Twelve, he insisted, “who says that Joseph is fallen.” . . .

On the second day, before conducting business . . . the Saints sustained the motion of Heber Kimball “that we as a church endeavor to carry out the principles and measures . . . laid down by Joseph Smith . . . praying Almighty God to help us to do it.”  Brigham Young then explained that this vote signified that “we receive and acknowledge Joseph Smith as a Prophet of God; being called of God and maintaining his integrity and acceptance [with God] until death.”  (831)

On this same theme, I call your attention to the remarks that Gerrit Dirkmaat presented at the Interpreter Foundation’s eleventh birthday party back in August 2023, under the title “‘Sweeter than Honey’: Brigham Young’s Devotion to Joseph Smith’s Teachings After the Martyrdom.”  The video runs about forty-nine minutes:  “Gerrit Dirkmaat Remarks at Interpreter Foundation’s Eleventh Birthday”  We are scheduled to record an interview with Professor Dirkmaat on Wednesday.

Up just today on the website of the static and never-changing but plainly declining Interpreter Foundation:   Interpreter Radio Show — February 23, 2025, including Doctrine and Covenants in Context: D&C 23-26

For the 23 February 2025 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show, the hosts were Steve Densley, John Thompson, and Kris Frederickson, with special guest Blake Ostler. They discussed Blake’s recent article in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship and Come, Follow Me Doctrine & Covenants lesson 12.  Their conversation was recorded, edited to remove commercial interruptions, and archived, and is now made available to you at your convenience, for no charge.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard each and every week on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

I’m very surprised, but (contrary to my expectations) the 2021 Interpreter Foundation theatrical film Witnesses seems to be still available for free streaming.  I expect that its availability will end very soon but, just between you and me, I’m not at all unhappy that someone appears, thus far at least, to have neglected to put a stop to it.  I hope that you’ll take the opportunity to see the film.  Even if, as some of my critics did, you’ve already negatively reviewed it.