I’ve begun writing down notes for the presentation that I plan to give on Friday, 8 August, at the 2025 FAIR Conference. And, by the way, the conference organizers have included a special discount code that folks can use in order to register for the conference at a reduced rate — which, the organizers say, is “just our way of saying thank you and making it easier for more people to attend.”
The discount code that they’ve given to me is ‘DAN10.’ And further information about the 2025 FAIR Conference can be found at https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2025-fair-conference
Hamblin had been involved in violent conflicts with the indigenous peoples of Utah Territory, but he later recalled a profound change of heart that occurred during one of those conflicts when his gun jammed. He said that the “Holy Spirit forcibly impressed upon me that it was not my calling to shed the blood of the scattered remnant of Israel [the American Indians], but to be a messenger of peace to them” (195).
In February 1853, in Tooele Valley, Hamblin purchased a ten-year-old Goshute or Shoshone boy from his destitute mother. (The boy’s father had been killed.) Hamblin named him Albert and, having adopted him, raised him as a son. Albert referred to Jacob Hamblin as his father and enthusiastically accepted the faith of the Latter-day Saints.
On one occasion, Albert reported to Hamblin that he had been herding sheep when he saw a personage in a white robe who proceeded to take him on a tour of the heavenly realms. He was told that someday he must “bear witness to all the Indians on the earth and try and bring them to occupy the same sphere that this glorious personage did.” Thereafter, Albert often expressed a desire to serve a mission to the Shoshone. (195)
Jacob Hamblin soon settled in southern Utah. But, when Albert was seventeen, Hamblin sent him up to Salt Lake City for six months under the patronage of Brigham Young, who, among other things, sponsored the boy’s education there and ordained him an elder. After Albert returned southward, he kept in touch with President Young, the young man signing at least one of his surviving letters “your Bro. in the gospel, Albert Hamblin.”
Two years later, while Jacob Hamblin was on a mission to the Hopi people in Arizona, Albert died of pneumonia. Before Hamblin left, Albert had predicted his own death.
He told Hamblin that “I shall bloom in another place before you get back. I shall be on my mission!” When Hamblin asked him what he meant, Albert responded, “I shall be dead and buried when you get back.” The mission that Albert referred to was in the afterlife. (196)
One additional note: Jacob Hamblin was born in Salem, Ohio, to a farming family. On 3 March 1842, at the age of twenty-two, he was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In a memoir that he wrote later in his life, he described the moment when, after the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, he chose to follow Brigham Young and the Twelve:
On the 8th of August, 1844, I attended a general meeting of the Saints. Elder Rigdon was there, urging his claims to the Presidency of the Church. His voice did not sound like the voice of the true shepherd. When he was about to call a vote of the congregation to sustain him as President of the Church, Elders Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt and Heber C. Kimball (all members of the Quorum of the Twelve) stepped into the stand. Brigham Young remarked to the congregation: ‘I will manage this voting for Elder Rigdon. He does not preside here. This child [meaning himself] will manage this flock for a season.’ The voice and gestures of the man were those of the Prophet Joseph. The people, with few exceptions, visibly saw that the mantle of the Prophet Joseph Smith had fallen upon Brigham Young. To some it seemed as though Joseph again stood before them. I arose to my feet and said to a man sitting by me, ‘That is the voice of the true shepherd—the chief of the Apostles’.”
An interesting essay was posted today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Seek Ye Words of Wisdom: ““Wicked Traditions” and “Cunning Arts”: Wise Men, Sorcery, and Metalwork in Nephite Society,” written by Dan Belnap. Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Seek Ye Words of Wisdom: Studies of the Book of Mormon, Bible, and Temple in Honor of Stephen D. Ricks, edited by Donald W. Parry, Gaye Strathearn, and Shon D. Hopkin. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/seek-ye-words-of-wisdom/.
“In the ninetieth year of the reign of the judges, four years after the ministry of Samuel the Lamanite, the “great signs and wonders” that he had prophesied of concerning the coming of Christ began to appear. Yet even as they convinced some, others expressed doubt as to what the signs meant, believing instead that the coming of Christ was a “wicked tradition, which has been handed down unto us by our fathers, to cause us that we should believe in some great and marvelous thing which should come to pass . . . therefore they can keep us in ignorance” (Hel. 16:20). As the reference suggests, the belief in the coming of Christ, a prophecy that had defined the Nephite people since their arrival in the New World, was now viewed by some as propaganda that was deliberately espoused and perpetuated by others to keep the general population compliant under the current leadership.”
I mentioned the other day that we at the Interpreter Foundation have decided to turn our weekly Sunday evening Interpreter Radio Show into the Interpreter Foundation Podcast. A number of factors (and frustrations and concerns) went into our decision — including, most recently, the radio station’s decision to move its studio (for at least the fourth or fifth time since our show began) to a new location, making the drive much longer for our all-volunteer hosts, and including, also, steadily improving podcast-related technology. True, though, to the consistent personal form that he has shown day after day and week after week and month after month over the past fifteen or twenty years of his anonymous public obsession with me, my ever-vigilant Malevolent Stalker is not buying my face-saving tale. He knows that I’m lying. He knows that we were actually run out of the radio station. In support of which I offer the illustration above.
Given the abject, even shameless, religiosity of the state of Utah, one isn’t surprised to see that the state is doing grave damage to the prospects for humankind on our planet. Here is a frightening piece that was recovered directly adjacent to the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: “Utah ranks 5th in top 10 healthiest states in the U.S., leads in life expectancy: A study from the Lighthouse Dental Center used information from the CDC to rank the healthiest states in America, and Utah came in at No. 5”
But if preceding generations refuse to die off at a gratifyingly high rate of speed, Earth’s population won’t decline. In fact, it may even increase. And that, of course, is something that must be strenuously resisted.
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