“I ask for your prayers and faith that I may have the instruction of Almighty God and the gift of the Holy Ghost. I wish to set forth things that are true and which can be easily comprehended by you, and I pray that the testimony of the Spirit may carry conviction to your hearts and minds of the truth of what I shall say. Oh, my beloved Saints, pray that the Lord may strengthen my lungs and stay the winds and the weather. Let the prayers of the Saints to heaven appear, that they may enter into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, for the effectual prayers of the righteous avail much. There is strength here, and I verily believe that your prayers will be heard.”
Joshua was watching Joseph’s face. He was about fifty or sixty feet away, but Joshua could see that he was very determined. His body was erect, his shoulders back, his voice strong. This certainly wasn’t a man looking over his shoulder to see what enemy was lurking there.
“I do not intend to please your ears with superfluity of words or oratory, or with much learning; but I intend to edify you with the simple truths from heaven. In the first place, I wish to go back to the beginning—to the morn of creation. There is the starting point for us to look to, in order to understand and be fully acquainted with the mind, purposes, and decrees of the Great Elohim, who sits in yonder heavens as he did at the creation of this world. It is necessary for us to have an understanding of God himself in the beginning. If we start right, it is easy to go right all the time; but if we start wrong, we may go wrong, and it will be a hard matter to get right.
“There are but a very few beings in the world who understand rightly the character of God. The great majority of mankind do not comprehend anything, either that which is past, or that which is to come, as it respects their relationship to God. If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves. I want to go back to the beginning, and so lift your minds into a more lofty sphere and a more exalted understanding than what the human mind generally aspires to.”
Joshua had to admit it. The contrast between Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon was dramatic. There was power in Joseph, and you could feel it energizing the hearts of his people. They were fixed on him now, every eye turned to him. The children had quieted, and only the fussing of a baby here and there could be heard.
“I want to ask this congregation—every man, woman, and child—to answer this question in their own hearts: What kind of a being is God? Does any man or woman know? Have any of you seen him, heard him, or communed with him? Here is the question that will, peradventure, from this time henceforth occupy your attention. The scriptures inform us that ‘this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’ There can be eternal life on no other principle.
“It is my privilege to be the man who comprehends God and to explain those principles to your hearts, so that the Spirit seals them upon you.” His head came up now, his voice hardened in sudden challenge. “And if that be the case, then let every man and woman who does not know God henceforth sit in silence. Let them put their hands to their mouths, and never lift their hands or voices, or say anything against the man of God or the servants of God again. But if I fail to do as I plan, to teach you about the character of God, then it becomes my duty to renounce all further pretensions to revelations and inspirations. It means I am no longer a prophet and should be like the rest of the world—a false teacher.”
As the faces all across the group registered shock at that, Joseph paused to take a drink from a glass of water that Hyrum handed to him. He finished and continued. “There are those who would say that my life should be forfeit because I am a false teacher—”
Benjamin swung around and shot Joshua a quick glance, and to his own surprise, Joshua nodded. Joseph was taking them on. The gloves were off now. This was a bare-knuckled, head-on refuting of the men who were furtively trying to bring him down. Joshua couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed that Joseph was looking directly at Foster now. The doctor seemed to sink down in his seat, aware that many people were staring at him as well.
“There are men who have pretensions to godliness, but when their ignorance of the knowledge of God is made manifest, they will all be as badly off as I am. If any man is authorized to take away my life because he thinks and says I am a false teacher, then, upon that same principle, we should be justified in taking away the life of every false teacher. But if that were the case, where would be the end of blood? And who would not be the sufferer?
“I will prove that the world is wrong, by showing what God is. I am going to inquire after God, for I want you all to know him and to be familiar with him. And if I bring you to a true knowledge of him, all persecutions against me ought to cease. If I teach you truly of God, you will then know that I am his servant, for I speak as one having authority.”
Another pause, another quick drink. “I will go back to the beginning before the world was, to show what kind of being God is. What sort of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and hear, all ye ends of the earth, for I am going to prove it to you by the Bible and to tell you the designs of God in relation to the human race and why he interferes with the affairs of man. God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man.
“I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us—yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did.”
He stopped, once again letting his eyes move from face to face. “Do you wonder if I am right? Well, I shall show it to you from the Bible. I wish I were in a suitable place to tell it and that I had the trump of an archangel, so that I could tell the story in such a manner that persecution would cease forever. What did Jesus say? Mark it, Elder Rigdon! The scriptures inform us that Jesus said, ‘As the Father hath power in himself, even so hath the Son power.’ To do what? Why, to do what the Father did. The answer is obvious—in a manner to lay down his body and take it up again. Jesus, what are you going to do? To lay down my life as my Father did, and take it up again. Do we believe it? If you do not believe it, you do not believe the Bible. The scriptures say it, and I defy all the learning and wisdom and all the combined powers of earth and hell together to refute it.
“Here, then, is eternal life—to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, how to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you. And how do we do that? Namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one, from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings. Then you shall sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power.”
Joshua turned to his family. Caroline was leaning forward, her lips slightly parted, her eyes totally focused on Joseph. He suspected that even if he spoke to her she would not hear him. And in that moment, Joshua Steed understood with perfect clarity that he had come to Nauvoo for naught. He looked around. Nathan and Lydia had the same expression. Matthew and Jenny, and Kathryn in her wheelchair, were almost mesmerized. Derek, Rebecca, Will, Olivia. Men, women, teenaged boys and girls, even the older children—they were all fixed on their prophet, and he was indisputably teaching them with great power. It didn’t matter that what he was saying didn’t make much sense to Joshua. Now he understood why there were the huge numbers of people here. Now he understood that a group like Foster’s fools chirping in the background would hardly be a distraction. Nothing they were doing would bring Joseph down. Nothing!
“The Bible tells us,” Joseph went on, his voice sounding a little hoarse now, “that we shall be heirs of God and ‘joint-heirs’ with Jesus Christ. What does that mean? It means that we inherit the same power, the same glory, and the same exaltation as the Savior did, that we can ascend the throne of eternal power, the same as those who have gone before. What did Jesus do? ‘Why, I do the things I saw my Father do when worlds came rolling into existence. My Father worked out his kingdom with fear and trembling, and I must do the same. And when I get my kingdom, I shall present it to my Father, so that he may obtain kingdom upon kingdom, and it will exalt him in glory. He will then take a higher exaltation, and I will take his place, and thereby become exalted myself.’
“Can you not see it, my brothers and sisters? It is plain beyond disputation. When you climb up a ladder, you must begin at the bottom and ascend step by step, until you arrive at the top. So it is with the principles of the gospel. You must begin with the first and go on until you learn all the principles of exaltation. But it will be a great while after you have passed through the veil before you will have learned them. It is not all to be comprehended in this world. It will be a great work to learn our salvation and exaltation even beyond the grave.”
Joshua stood once again, winning himself irritated glances from those around him and a surprised look from Caroline. He ignored both, making his way slowly through the people, careful not to step on anyone. Once clear, he walked quietly back toward his house.
He had come to watch Joseph dethroned, he thought with some sense of irony. Instead he had just witnessed him entrench his position as leader of the Church more powerfully than ever before. Now Joshua knew there was only one thing to do. It would take him a month or two to finish up the sale of his business here in Nauvoo. Then he and his family would leave Warsaw. And now he wasn’t so sure that St. Louis was the answer anymore. They would leave and go somewhere far away. Maybe eventually that would make the difference. And yet, even as he formulated those thoughts, he knew it was foolish thinking. He had seen Caroline’s face. He had watched Will and Olivia. They would follow Joshua wherever he said, he knew that now. But what of it? Their hearts were here. Their confidence was fixed
on the man speaking of how to achieve celestial glory. Joshua understood now that he was never going to turn their hearts away from that. Never! And it left him filled with a great emptiness and sense of loss.
Though nothing was declared openly or brought before the full congregation of the Saints, the April 1844 general conference proved to be a pivotal moment in the ever-widening split between Joseph and his enemies. The opposition group was openly recruiting members of the Church to join them, but Joseph had hard evidence of their secret conspiracies now and moved quickly against them. The break was swift, inevitable, and final.
On the eighteenth of April, just a little over a week following the conference, Robert D. Foster, William and Wilson Law, and William’s wife, Jane, were excommunicated from the Church for unchristian-like conduct. Though not unexpected, it nevertheless came as a tremendous shock to the Church. William Law had been Second Counselor in the First Presidency. Wilson Law was a major general in the Nauvoo Legion.
Two days later, Emma Smith, who was now about three months pregnant with another child, took a riverboat south to St. Louis to purchase goods for the store and for the Mansion House. Immediately upon hearing that, some of Joseph’s enemies spread the rumor that Emma was extremely bitter over the whole issue of plural marriage and was leaving Joseph for good. This was the real reason for her departure, they said. Unfortunately for the rumormongers, five days later she was back in Nauvoo and went right back to the Mansion House.
On April twenty-sixth, Foster and his brother came to the mayor’s office and threatened Joseph with a pistol. They were arrested, disarmed, and fined one hundred dollars each. Now the spirit of rebellion was out in the open and growing uglier almost daily. That next Sunday evening, while the Saints gathered for a prayer meeting for the sick, the apostates gathered at the home of Wilson Law. After several affidavits attesting to Joseph’s “fallen” state were read, it was proposed that a new, reformed church be created. The proposal was greeted with enthusiasm, and immediately steps were undertaken to formalize it. William Law would be the new president; Austin Cowles and Wilson Law would be his counselors. Robert Foster and Francis Higbee and others were nominated to be apostles in a new “quorum of the twelve.”
During all this trouble, Joseph did not abandon his candidacy for president of the United States. His platform statement had been mailed to about two hundred leaders throughout the country in an attempt to build a base of support for his candidacy. It was decided that elders would be sent on missions throughout the United States to promote his run for the presidency. By mid-May, Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball and all the rest of the Twelve, except for John Taylor and Willard Richards, had left Nauvoo to go east.
As summer came, the Saints were alienated from virtually everyone else in Illinois. Many communities were jealous of Nauvoo’s explosive success; others resented the city’s liberal charter and the fact that the state legislature would not grant them similar license. With the Nauvoo Legion numbering five thousand strong, there was growing fear of the Mormons’ power. Criticism continued to grow that the municipal court system was more protective of Joseph than it was of the law. And the distaste for the unique Mormon doctrines—particularly the growing knowledge of plural marriage—only deepened the alienation and isolation.