{"id":45046,"date":"2017-11-27T11:42:23","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T18:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=45046"},"modified":"2017-11-27T11:42:23","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T18:42:23","slug":"father-mother-believed-not-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/11\/father-mother-believed-not-children.html","title":{"rendered":"“Father and mother believed him; why should not the children?”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
At the Joseph Smith family farm between Palmyra and Manchester, New York
(Image from LDS Media Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

From a rough manuscript of mine:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another indication of the Prophet\u2019s sincerity is the striking fact that his own family manifestly believed him.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201cThe parents and all living brothers and sisters of Joseph Smith believed his account of his visions.\u00a0 In fact, the two grandparents still alive in 1830 also believed.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 For example, the Joseph Smith Sr., the Prophet\u2019s father, traveled two hundred miles\u2014a significant and taxing journey in the frontier America of that period\u2014to carry a copy of the Book of Mormon to his own father, Asael Smith, the Prophet\u2019s grandfather, not long before Asael\u2019s death in 1830.\u00a0 On the basis of what he regarded as divine revelation, Asael had long anticipated that some member of his family would be \u201craised up\u201d as a benefit to humankind. In his eighty-eighth year, he recognized Joseph as the fulfillment of his own revelation.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Joseph Smith Sr., as Oliver Huntington later recalled, \u201cleaned and relied upon his son Joseph in all spiritual matters as much as boys generally do upon their parents for temporalities.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 And here is Lucy Mack Smith\u2019s description of life in the Smith household in the period immediately following the visit of Moroni:<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2014all 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.<\/strong>[5]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

According to the 1875 testimony of Joseph\u2019s younger brother, William Smith,<\/span><\/p>\n

Joseph Smith, at the age of seventeen years, with the moral training he had received from strictly pious and religious parents, could not have conceived the idea in his mind of palming off a fabulous story, such as seeing angels, etc. . . .<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

There was not a single member of the family of sufficient age to know right from wrong but what had implicit confidence in the statements made by my brother Joseph concerning his vision and the knowledge he thereby obtained concerning the plates.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Father and mother believed him; why should not the children? I suppose if he had told crooked stories about other things, we might have doubted his word about the plates, but Joseph was a truthful boy. That father and mother believed his report and suffered persecution for that belief shows that he was truthful.<\/strong>[6]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Or, as William put the same point in 1884,<\/span><\/p>\n

All believed it was true, father, mother, brothers and sisters. You can tell what a child is. Parents know whether their children are truthful or not. . . . Father knew his child was telling the truth.<\/strong>[7]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cA prophet will always be held in honour,\u201d said Jesus, with slight but realistic hyperbole, \u201cexcept in his home town, , and among his kinsmen and family\u201d (Mark 6:4 [NEB]; compare Matthew 13:57; Luke 4:24; John 4:44).<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Anderson, Joseph Smith\u2019s New England Heritage<\/em>, xiv-xv.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Anderson, Joseph Smith\u2019s New England Heritage<\/em>, 148-149; also Black, Stories from the Early Saints<\/em>, 2, where further references are given.<\/span><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a>$ Andrus and Andrus, They Knew the Prophet<\/em>, 71.<\/span><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Lucy\u2019s Book<\/em>, 344<\/span><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Cited in Milton V. Backman, Jr., Joseph Smith\u2019s First Vision: Confirming Evidences and Contemporary Accounts<\/em>, 2d ed., revised and enlarged (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), 149.<\/span><\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> \u201cThe Old Soldier\u2019s Testimony,\u201d a sermon preached by William B. Smith in the Saints\u2019 Chapel at Deloit, Iowa, on 8 June 1884, and reported by C. E. Butterworth, in The Saint\u2019s Herald<\/em> 31 (1884): 643-644. See also William Smith, William Smith on Mormonism: A True Account of the Origin of the Book of Mormon<\/em> (Lamoni, Iowa: Herald Steam Book and Job Office, 1883), 10-11. [See originals.]<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 From a rough manuscript of mine: \u00a0 Another indication of the Prophet\u2019s sincerity is the striking fact that his own family manifestly believed him.[1]\u00a0 \u201cThe parents and all living brothers and sisters of Joseph Smith believed his account of his visions.\u00a0 In fact, the two grandparents still alive in 1830 also believed.\u201d[2]\u00a0 For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"Father and mother believed him; why should not the children?"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    From a rough manuscript of mine:   Another indication of the Prophet\u2019s sincerity is the striking fact that his own family manifestly\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/11\/father-mother-believed-not-children.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Father and mother believed him; 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